- I just pay for YT Premium. I’m genuinely curious why that option is so controversial? Happy to get people’s thoughts.
So I never see any ads and I feel like I get enough value for what I pay. It even helps me skip in-content ads with a single click.
- Where did you get the impression that it's controversial to pay for YT Premium? Most threads I've seen on this topic are composed of roughly half of the comments endorsing YT Premium, while the other half endorse adblocking from a privacy/autonomy perspective similar to the opening paragraph of the uBlock Origin manifesto [1].
What minor controversy I have seen is a small minority that argue either 1. You shouldn't pay for YT Premium because it enables user-hostile business practices or 2. You shouldn't use ad-block because it's effectively "stealing."
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md
- Many people I know are not technical enough to know about ad blockers, and refuse to admit to themselves how much YT they watch—eg that they would get value from either blocking ads or paying—when I mention the options
- I also pay for yt premium.
Most people do not seem to like pay to play, pay to “win”, etc and this falls either very close or in that category.
The long term economics seem questionable to me. Google can always turn up the heat a bit more with ads, charge more for the ads, play more of them, etc when they need to be more profitable. The only way they make more from premium subscribers is charging more and they will lose people each time they do. I guess technically they could make more if premium watchers viewed less content but there’s a pretty hard floor and I suspect the economics of it are much like soda fountains.
I’m afraid ultimately if premium becomes too large of a user base Google would need to turn it into an “ad-lite” experience to increase profits. Then we’re in an even worse place.
- > I’m afraid ultimately if premium becomes too large of a user base Google would need to turn it into an “ad-lite” experience
I wouldn't hesitate to cancel my subscription and stop using the platform at that point. Life can go on without YouTube.
- Privacy rights. Google’s ad surveillance eventually feeds ICE and its ilk, so I’ll not willingly reward this behavior.
- >Google’s ad surveillance eventually feeds ICE and its ilk
Is this a prediction about what might happen or a claim about what's happening right now? Also, there's plenty of reasons to object to government/adtech surveillance, but "youtube ads are going to help ICE deport people" is probably the worse examples that I can think of.
- Seems like the opposite? You can choose to either have ads or a paid subscription service. If you don't choose premium then you are implicitly supporting the "ad surveillance"
- How much do you use Google services on your daily life (Google search, Gmail, Google pay..)?
You might have unaware handed more your personal info them than you know
- YT Premium is my favorite monthly subscription - probably the highest value software that I pay for.
- It is very high value.
I would be happy to pay even more for an experience without AI slop masquerading as something else, and obviously fake or misleading news sources.
If Youtube or Meta spent a fraction of the effort identifying credibility as they do predicting user likes, they could do a passable job. I would especially like credible sources that express coherent viewpoints less correlated with mine.
Perhaps even a quality setting or settings so i could set my own thresholds of credible information and non-trivial entertainment.
Premium Quality Tier. Ad and Shit Free.
Like a beautiful statue in a simple block of marble, it is in there.
- > So I never see any ads
> helps me skip in-content ads
So you get ads still! Whether or not they are from YouTube or the video creator is irrelevant. I thought paying was supposed to supplant needing to advertise to me during the actual video.
- Alas, tubers feel the need to add sponsorships these days through either greed or reduced google revenue. Premiums "skip frequently skipped section" is about as easy as it can be to skip over them without blocking them entirely, short of using sponsorblock.
I'm not sure where the legality lies with them being able to skip it automatically if you're a premium user, I'd imagine their uploaders wouldn't be happy though.
- Because Google does not build a platform that is beneficial to the creators who make actually good and productive and positive content.
I don't want give Google money for building a Mr Beast platform. I want the stuff Nebula does.
So I pay for Nebula.
Paying an advertising company to not show you ads doesn't make that company not an advertising company, and the problem is being an advertising company. It's corrosive to society and people.
- I also pay for Nebula. I wish more content creators moved to that platform. It's so annoying to deal with YouTube's homepage to find the videos of the creators that are not in Nebula
- I pay for YT premium, but it’s less because of the ads, and more because of the stupid restriction of not being allowed background play if my phone is locked.
- Once upon a time we paid for features, instead of paying to remove inbuilt annoyances.
(In a sense, this is getting too close to paying a bully to stop harassing you).
- This used to work for free, they went out of their way to disable it so they could charge for it.
- It's a ransom.
- Not controversial per se but it’ll go the same way as Netflix - once it’s got adoption they’ll crank enshitification up to 11
- Does anyone have a good study as to how much advertising is too much advertising? There are some content creators on YouTube I enjoy watching but it's an ad every five minutes and it just ruins it all. For some, I've reached the point where I don't bother watching anymore because the ads are just too much. I sympathize with creators wishing to make money, but ... it's just becoming relentless. I'd love to see a study or even better YouTube internal analysis of how much viewers are willing to take before they just say enough.
- They really are unbearable: I use Duck Player primarily to view Youtube, connected via city wifi and every so often, I receive a message saying that youtube thinks I am a bot presumably because they are not getting ad revenue. Of course I have a workaround for this but annoying nonetheless.
- On our TV, using the official YT app, it just rapid cycles through the first few seconds of each ad. As far as I can tell, this is part of a Google-operated display fraud scheme.
I wonder how the new standards will impact our user experience.
Will they just halve the length of time each video is run and charge for twice as many impressions? They could also just run the ads in the background (with the video displayed over it + ad audio muted).
- google is seeing an uptick in viewing with a smartTV, so they think that means family time in the livingroom, thus 70s style TV is the model of the day.
have they considered home office, phones are just too small, and studios where you watch the screen and perform the "how too" from across the room are getting to be a thing [mancaves, shesheds].
i would definately have a curated, edited feed of YTz to a group viewing location, rather than a raw stream.
- Since 1999 we've had the DVR and commercials have been effectively skippable if you want to avoid them. This is worse than that. Not having the freedom and control to seek through the video stream ("unskippable") was innovated by the streaming takeover.
- back in the place between 70s-80s we used to identify commercials with an audio compression detector, blank frame detector, generally a device that detects artifacts of the ad process. then we could record on a VCR without ads as we went about our day.
it was a cat and mouse game eventually with programs being salted to spoof ad detection, regulations requireing a broadcaster to have some demarcation between ad and program, and on...
streaming has one fatal flaw, that decides final ownership, and that is eventually, the content is in the clear, in a space accessible to a technichal user, that can be replicated, and fitted with the requirements for a persistent file, and thus "pwnd".
at this point the ad can be snipped out, and is gone.
its a bad model, ads should be part of the content, depictions of product usage, and consumption, as part of the content seemed like an unobtrusive, actually pleasant association, every time ive seen it done, vs some screaming loud volume, shocking switch of subject and mood associated with a product that you dont need, and will subconsciously avoid as a result of the operant conditioning.
- Why are people even so dumb to use TV apps for a fucking TV? Just connect a "computer" to the TV and play YouTube with a mouse and KB and with Brave and Sponsor Block. If they ban adblockers and Sponsor Block there will be AI solutions that let you cut the ads out in the future.
Nobody should use shitty TV apps. It's like more convenient and practical to have some kind of PC like device attached to the TV for 100 other reasons as well. They are feeding this shit only to the dumb mass consumers who have no clue about anything.
"Just pay for YT premium" so that an evil megacorp is using your money against you, no, thanks! Donate to creators you like as directly as they allow it. They are also dumb and let Patreon or whatever suck large percentages off their donations for whatever retarded reason.
- > Why are people even so dumb to use TV apps for a fucking TV?
To address both the arrogant tone and the question itself: because sometimes people don’t have, don’t want to have or cannot use a computer connected to a TV.
Not everyone is a HN commenter with anger issues. Most of times these devices (TVs, streaming sticks and so on…) are used by normal folks that are not comfortable with computers.
- Good, less youtube, more free time.
- Has anyone ever actually purchased anything because you saw an ad for it?
- If you're asking whether advertising works, there is plenty of science making clear that it does, without fishing for anecdata.
As to whether every company buying ads is making a good investment, mileage may vary - but the blunt answer to your question is that yes, people do purchase things because they saw ads for it, the advertising economy is well understood. Companies like Google whose fortunes rest almost entirely on the known efficacy of advertising are not full of idiots who have never thought about whether or not ads actually work.
"Is an economy based on selling attention ultimately the most beneficial and productive one for all participants" is a separate question, but it's not the question you're asking.
- > there is plenty of science making clear that it does
Funded, ran, and interpreted by whom?
I can't remember the last time I bought anything just because of its ad, that I already did not know about or was going to buy anyway, nor I know anyone who did.
In fact, if I see an ad TOO often, it permanently turns me off the product or service.
The whole ads racket seems like a case of an emperor with no clothes at best, and a thin veil for mass surveillance at worst.
32 points by robtherobber 3 hours ago | 36 comments