I don't care what it costs to run YouTube. All I hear from the creators is "Support us on Patreon because YouTube doesn't pay" and they sure ain't asking us to buy YouTube premium.
I have literally seen 2 creators ever bring up youtube red, saying that yes subscribers do make up a more significant percentage of their revenue and did help a little bit when videos got demonetized. Every creator is saying some sort of the "I don't want all my eggs in one basket, I can't trust these platforms" argument.
Even if YT gave all the money to the creators, ads are so cheap nowadays that it would need them approx 20.000 ad views just to pay a month of premium (and that's assuming every cent goes to them) big creators and publishers sure make money out of ads, in the end they get millions of views. But a smaller creator thst works hours upon hours on a video is making probs less than minimum wage through ads. Ergo If they want to make money they need to rely on generous people.
Google ran Youtube at a loss for years to draw everyone in and now that there's no real competition (yet), are tightening the screws. Very similar to how Walmart will sell stuff at a loss to bankrupt locally owned stores and then raise their prices.
Exploitive megacorporation can pound sand. It wasn't a bad experience back when it was a single short ad before every video. Now I've had a wonderful ad free experience for years because of ad blockers. Why would I downgrade the experience and pay for it?
Google is attempting to remove the freedom of viewing HTML the way I want to view it from my own devices. While they're free to run their website the way they want to, the principle of attempting to remove your freedom of choice is not only a bad look, but violating.
These two things are different, and one does not negate the validity of the other.
I am sorry but that argument simply doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me. Unless I am missing a facet, you are saying that your autonomy outstrips their rights?
If we were to make an analogue version of that argument would your autonomy to use your hands how you see fit, allow for you to walk into a shop and take something without paying? It seems like, unless I’ve missed something, that’s the analogy.
Commerce and indeed society has always been a balance of personal autonomy and rules, with YouTube you’re going to a website and circumventing their chosen rules. I might not agree with YouTube’s methods, but I don’t think I can get behind the argument they are impinging on your technical rights any more than Tesco does if you try to half-inch a chocolate bar.
Well the creators I like don't see it as a good relationship. They keep leaving for Twitch, Patreon, Nebula, or quitting on content creation. If I'm a fan of them, I need to listen to their concerns about how YouTube is constantly threatening their livelihood.
The bully part comes in when YouTube music is rolled into the cost. I would pay for youtube premium if all I got was a premium YouTube (and therefore the price was substantially lower). But what they're doing is leveraging the popularity of YouTube to try and force the bolstering of YouTube music subscribers. Furthermore, they are currently increasing the price for premium in several markets. So the already too high cost is temporary at best and nearly guaranteed to go up even further with absolutely no increase in benefits. Paying to remove ads seems fine, but what they are attempting to do goes beyond that simple quid pro quo. They are being coercive and indirect to a degree I find unethical. Thus, bully.
I understand that they need the money to host the videos, but I won't directly pay them considering how they treat viewers and creators. I'm pretty sure they would be $100+ richer from me if they didn't remove the dislike count.
I haven’t used YouTube logged in since they force merged YouTube accounts with Google accounts. This make me a bit harder to track and my data slightly less valuable. I don’t like that my data will still being used to create an advertising profile even if I pay. If one of the features of YouTube premium was they would never sell any of my data across all Google services then I would be willing to pay for it.