YouTube

I will pay for premium when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities. Since they won't change, I won't pay.

when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities

The problem is that this will never happen. That boat has sailed - companies will never give up on their existing revenue streams. They may say that paying today will exempt you from the ads, but it's only a matter of time before they ramp up the cost and start showing ads anyway. That's how cable television started, and it's how internet streaming will end as well. And as for the not selling data/controlling the algorithm, well you have no way of proving that they don't do that so they'll do it no matter what they say.

There's no reason for google to do this whatsoever. They have their business model - any new revenue streams will 100% definitely not reduce the other ones at all. It's just gonna be another giant dump into the pile of enshittification.
I also want to be charged the amount they actually make off of me. I suspect that's less than the subscription price
I will never pay for premium. Yewtu.be and all the similar front end ad killers are always there when ublock Origin gets half a step behind in the never ending cat and mouse it seems to have with YT. Fuck tech companies. Fuck YouTube. Fuck Reddit. Fuck em all.
Who are they selling your data to?
- Literally everyone. Have you been living under a rock?
I simply turned off my watch history, no more algorithm.

"They do want to pay for premium! They just don't understand what a great value it is! SHOW THEM THE AD AGAIN! SHOW THEM ON EVERY VIDEO SO THEY WILL UNDERSTAND!!! "

Not to be rude, but I'm struggling to believe half the comments in this thread are legit. Do you really mean to tell me that Lemmy, a platform notoriously populated almost exclusively by anti-corporate tech people that really value FOSS and privacy –hence the reason why all of us are here instead of Reddit– has this many users thinking it is a remotely acceptable idea to pay for a Premium service for one of the most invasive companies online?

I think most of us understand the many underhanded techniques used by Google to achieve an almost monopolistic control of some aspects of the internet, but when talking about YouTube, suddenly all the logic is reduced to "if you use a service, pay for it, or else let them show you ads"?? what????? Also, what's with comparing adblocking to stealing????

My own answer to the topic of this thread is that no, I won't be paying for YouTube Premium anytime soon, possibly ever. Google has betrayed my trust many times in the past, and on top of that I don't consider adverts as a legitimate source of income, so I will block any and all ads everywhere without paying an extra cent.

"But if you keep using their service, so you need to give them some form of revenue! Otherwise you just want free stuff!" I only keep using their service because Google has spent many years dumping on other platforms so that YouTube is –almost– the only platform that still exists where all the good creators are, so I will begrudgingly watch them on YouTube because there aren't any options. But I will resist Google's many insidious attempts to monetize me to the best of my ability while doing so.

That said, it's really dishonest to claim that people who block ads on YouTube just want free stuff and don't understand that services have a cost. Personally, I pay for Nebula because I do support the project and the creators involved. But YouTube won't see a cent from me, not with my consent at least.

Not everyone is on Lemmy because they're anti-corporate, FOSS enthusiasts. For example, I came here because Reddit became a dumpster fire of unreasonable policies and very restrictive accessibility to the site. I simply will not install their app. Everything I've seen and heard about it is revolting. I'm certain I will hate it and I'm not going to bother trying at this point. Since a nontrivial amount of my time on Reddit was via an app, and that app no longer works, I'm just not going to use the service.

I like FOSS, and I support FOSS whenever I can, but I'm hardly anti corporate. The big G has tried and failed at getting monopoly status for most things. Arguably their most successful services are search, mail and YouTube.

Me, personally, I pay for Google's services and share those benefits with my family. We have extra Google drive storage, YouTube music/YouTube premium, and all the benefits that come with that (I don't recall all of them right now). One payment takes care of my entire household. So for less than $20/month we all enjoy all the benefits of those subscriptions. It comes out to less than $5/person/month.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting those services. I certainly don't hold that against them. I completely understand the viewpoint. YouTube is very aggressive about everyone having premium. I see ads on YouTube when I'm using it on my work PC for music or to look something up on there; because my personal Google account is not and will never be associated to my work PC. I see what it's like "on the other side" so to speak. I can see how aggro their efforts are to get people to subscribe to premium. How invasive the ads have become, and how annoying it is to deal with all that. I get it.

I also don't really hate Google for it. They want people to buy their premium service and they have taken steps to try to encourage that. I understand, but I don't necessarily agree with their choices.

In my mind they're not the most egregious offender for being anti consumer in their methodology. Good examples of anti-consumer behaviour is Netflix trying to put an end to account sharing, or Reddit's API changes that basically kicked out a nontrivial number of its users for seemingly no good reason. There's plenty more anti consumer actions from other companies that I can point to that are far worse than what YouTube is doing.

In my mind, Google has supported FOSS more than most big tech companies. Android, at it's core is FOSS, built on Linux. Chrome is based on chromium, which is FOSS as well. There's numerous other examples of Google supporting FOSS. Sure, they have their own versions of that integrate Google services into the products and provide extra features on top of what the FOSS versions do. But I can't think of any company that even comes close to the support of FOSS that Google has. In my mind they're simply not the worst offender. They're not innocent, but not the worst.

That's my opinion though and it's just one of many possible opinions. Far be it for me to impose my opinion on anyone else. If you want to distrust Google and use FOSS things instead, that's fine. It's your choice. If you agree but still don't want to pay them for premium, that's okay too. Or if you want to drink the Kool-aid and pay for all of their services, that's also your choice.

Have a great day.
- I'm only here 'cause it was the first lemmy instance I joined after the reddit bullshit.
  
  I pay for YT Premium.
  
  I'm also back on reddit arguing with people.
  
  So, yeah... I'm everything this place hates.
Shoutout to Nebula! I might pay for it but it's like old YouTube without the bullshit. Worth it in my opinion.
Absolutely agree with the youtube subscription part. I am not giving them money if i can.

So what do I do? Patreon. I watch ad free, and i give 1 dollar a month instead on patreon. Win-win.

P.S. However, this way only a select few get money from me, but it is what it is.
I started using nebula which costs $30/year (discounted price, easy to get). It has some of the YouTube creators, shares revenue with them, has no ads, and isn’t google.

Sure it has a fraction of the YouTube content, but there’s more new stuff there every day than I could watch. And it isn’t toxic like YouTube.
I'm only here because Reddit pissed me off. I toss money toward my instance and I'd be fine tossing a few bucks per month to YouTube if it meant no ads.
- You have it all wrong. Giving money to FOSS is okay, giving money to YouTube is bad.
See my other comment. I also noted a lot of the accounts that promote YouTube premium, are less than a week old. So there is suspicion of trolling or astroturfing
I've been riding an old "premium" subscription from the introduction of Google Play Music (or whatever it was called) years ago when it was introduced, for like $3/month. Seemed like a reasonable deal to me.

They did just (finally) jack the price up on me, though, so as soon as i get some free time i'm canceling.
For me it's a matter of practicality. I wouldn't pay if I didn't feel I had to. It's easy to block ads on PC, sure. Other devices, less so. I could get a Pihole or similar but then iirc you have to basically be playing cat and mouse with Google ad domains and that just sounds like a headache.
Half the community came from reddit during 3rd party app purge it’s no surprise they wouldn’t be too concerned or know anything about privacy

Reasons not to buy premium:

Google having a history of all the videos you watch via your account.
Even if Google provided an option to opt out of tracking there would be no reason to trust then since they have lied about not tracking people in the past.
YouTube seems to redirect any Premium profits intended to creators to the entity which made a copyright claim on a video. This would be sensible if YouTube’s copyright claim system wasn’t so vulnerable to abuse. Normal (yellow) demonetisation will pay out from Premium though. https://youtu.be/PRQVzPEyldc?si=5-wFn2SqPZLdOlqa
Features are removed from YouTube to incentivise Premium such as playing videos while your phone screen is locked.
Similar to above, Google have been increasing the amount of ads particularly on phones where ad blockers are harder to use. I.E. pushing users to Premium not by making the service better, but by making non-Premium worse.

Your utub link seems to contain a tracking Id.
- Not particularly surprising. It was copied from the YouTube iOS app...
Google having a history of all the videos you watch via your account.

They already do this anyway. They also do it whether you have an account or not.
Point one: I'm pretty certain they already track that. With or without account. And you're on the internet, without a VPN there is no privacy. You are also able to remove that history any moment you want. Is it Ideal? No. But you should've acted 10-15 years prior if you wanted to stop this. It's still not ideal though.

Point two: I agree. There does need to be space for them to repent, but they aren't actively trying to, so don't trust them (see the next point as an example of that).

Point three That's a shame. They really need to fix that, though with how corpos do things nowadays, not sure that'll happen.

Point four: That's normal, expected and a reasonable business decision. Most of these features they likely added after premium, and they're meant as incentives. Why else would you want to but their premium, if not for the added features?

Point five: This is shitty and mostly inexcusable behaviour. It's god awful, and they really shouldn't do it. I do have to play devil's advocate a little. They are fully, 100% in their right to do this. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet (and time). If we stop using their services, they'll stop making it worse. They are still A-holes for doing it though.
- Point one: I'm pretty certain they already track that. With or without account. And you're on the internet, without a VPN there is no privacy. You are also able to remove that history any moment you want.
  
  I mean sure, they could try combining the user agents my unofficial apps provide with my carrier's NAT IP to build a profile on me, but it would be highly inefficient and imprecise to the point where it's almost useless for them. With a Youtube Premium account they have an identity tied to an email address, full name, and payment info that they can relate every click in their apps and websites to. If I also use their other services with the same account, I would be paying them to spy on everything I do and sell my data, so other companies can sell me crap.
- I would be very interested to know how good they are at tracking a user across brand new browser sessions. I have mine set to delete cookies, cache and history (minus a few trusted domains) on close but I'd imagine it would be easy to differentiate between me and others in my household by browser fingerprints alone. The only question then is whether those guesses are reliable enough for Google to essentially treat those sessions as 1 person, or throw it away since there are bound to be quite a lot of cases where 10s or 100s of people on the same IP have very similar browsing habits and configurations and trying to figure out who is who would be incredibly difficult (think offices where everybody could have exactly the same laptop and share similar browsing habits due to working for the same company). That's my cope anyway. The alternative is Youtube over Tor for which would be painful.
  
  Points 4 and 5 on my end are essentially two sides to of the same coin. I should clarify, I don't have a problem with YouTube introducing a new feature and making that Premium-only.
What about the reasons to buy premium? Pretty much none right?
- I mean, fair. The two big reasons are that your views are worth much more than normal viewers to creators, so it does mean you're helping support the content you watch. Further, the more people who pay for content the less influence advertisers have. All this said, I would assume that $5 a month to your favorite creators (Patreon, Paypal, Librepay, etc) would be worth more to them than a share of your YouTube Premium subscription fee.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/PRQVzPEyldc?si=5-wFn2SqPZLdOlqa

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Fyi all the removed features of the YouTube app they want you to pay for? Work fine on Firefox
- Playing while locked doesn’t seem to work unfortunately in Firefox for iOS. You can do the trick where you start PIP and then immediately lock the phone to play in the background, but that only works if you don’t unlock your phone again.

The problem is that they actually don't mean that. And truthfully I don't mind the idea of paying for video hosting, that shit's expensive, but YouTube is going about it in the worst way possible.

slowing my buffer down is not how you get me to turn of my adblocker. no thanks.
- YouTube didn't slow down the buffer. It was ublocks latest update. There's a patch rolling out I believe.
No no, we mean it, at least at that price. I'd be willing to kick YouTube a few bucks a month. I'm not going to pay them more per month than most MMOs. They're trying to charge streaming service prices for content they don't produce.
- Because they pay the creators from that? They're not taking the whole thing as a cost for hosting
Right. Some people get stuck up about getting things for free that they think they should get for free.* But a lot of the problem is the obnoxious ways companies go about control and profit.

*There are important arguments to be had about freedom, still.
This idea that nobody on the internet is willing to pay for anything is outdated. Most people know that if it's not money, they're paying in data, time and/or attention. I much prefer paying with money, as do most people that use Proton, Kagi and other paid alternatives to free Google products.

Im not holding my breath for someone to start hosting petabytes of videos for free. I don’t like ads, so I’m just going to pay.

imagine paying to remove ads
- They started the war, never forget, never forgive.
It's also cool that YouTube Premium pays a bigger cut to creators when compared against regular YouTube ads.
- I do like that.
- If you want to support Youtubers, then buy their merch or something like that.
You say that as if it's the only option while being on a platform that explicitly isn't a single organization hosting the entire thing. There's no way this is a serious comment.
- Lemmy has 50 thousand users and hosts mostly text and static images. YouTube has 2.7 billion users and hosts mostly high quality video. Pretending it's even remotely the same is pointless.
Then give us a fair price. YouTube is not making any content, so I just wish to pay for the hosting privileges. That shouldn't cost me 15€/month. Give me simple prenium that removes ads for 6-7€, and I will jump in. It's all about what I feel I'm getting.

For instance, I fucking bought a 1300€ pixel 8 pro ROFL.
Counterpoint. There used to be far less ads
- Counterpoint. Still not making profits.

1 Ad - Fine. 2 Ads - Ok. 3 Ads - Closed YouTube.

4 Ads - uBlock Origin installed on Firefox
- Should have been from the beginning

They should include sponsorblock with youtube premium, I won't pay 12€ per month to watch more ads than on free tv. Youtube doesn't even make their own content. 5€ max for youtube would be okay with no ads.

Absolutely. 5$,sponsor block, no ads and no music premium bullshit. I don't want it.

Edit: I forgot! Give me the fucking downvote count back so I can quickly know which videos are bullshit you assholes!
YouTube cannot do that. YouTube's content legal system does not allow this.

That said, I use SponsorBlock and love it to the degree of finding it necessary depending on what type of content I am watching.

Why do people hate YouTube Premium anyway? I don't quite get it. I have had it since it was available in my country, and I love it.

Also, I have to say I use the YouTube Vanced app with SponsorBlock and custom layout (no shorts, no uploads, no etc.) and YouTube Premium subscription. I don't like the default YouTube app.

So, I don't know if I like YouTube or just the model and content/creators behind it.
- I just refuse to pay to watch youtube videos which is why I dont like youtube premium
No they need to add DVR so i can save all my favorite videos abd dont have to watch them live /s
How is it relevant that youtube does little in house production. The revenue is passed to the creators anyway(by watchtime)
- Oh yes you are right, thank you.

I pay for a premium account and I get more value out of it than Netflix or any other streaming service.

People are out to lunch on this whole situation. Try running a service that hosts somewhere between 2 and 3 billion Gigabytes of data. Where basically anyone on the planet can upload gigs of video and YouTube will still make it available 10 years later. You are never going to crowd source that, ever. I also pay for premium and I get at least 5x the value of any other streaming service. Just on home renovations, it's probably saved me 10k+ being able to watch tutorials about every kind of repair.
- Youtube Premium is literally the only subscription service I pay for. Apart from your reasons there is one very solid reason behind my choice:
  
  I can find shows and movies for free online if I bothered trying, it isn't difficult. I cannot easily do the same for Youtube content.
- Youtube can show ads and offers subscription without being this shitty though. Just look on how popular region-specific video services like niconico (japan) or bilibili (china) operate. They also have ads and subscription, but nowhere as crazy as google adding multiple video ads upon ads and pick a fight with ad blocker users (which used to be a minority when google haven't aggressively pushed more and more ads. the current popularity of adblockers today is google's own doing). This is only possible because google has killed off competitors in western market and now it's time for cashing out.
- I'm very curious about why YouTube allow users to upload what seems like unlimited footage in 4K HDR and keep it around indefinitely. Only guess is they don't want to miss out on the next big YouTuber. I upload a lot of video for very few views. There is no way in hell that Google make money from my account.
you're not putting the bar very high there

I had YouTube when it was YouTube red and I was a part of a family plan with my friend for a couple years. I split the family plan with a few people and ended up paying $3 a month. Eventually he moved across country and YouTube said that since we didn't have the same IP address that I could not be a part of the family plan so I ended up signing up for my own account. At some point I was trying to pay off my debt so I cancelled all my subscription services. YouTube premium included. I started watching YouTube and then I saw it. An ad. Something I hadn't seen in years. It was the most annoying thing ever. I couldn't believe that people put up with that. I was so annoyed by the ads that I looked at how to obtain YouTube and YouTube music for free without ads because I needed to save the money and the ads were so intrusive that this was what I was going to do and that is what I still do to this day.

I pay for YouTube Premium. I didn't really want that, I just wanted YouTube Music, but it didn't make sense to just pay for YT Music. I don't want Spotify and Amazon Music kinda sucks so YT music worked best.

Same for me but in reverse.
Remove music, deduct 2-3 € from the bill and I'd be happy enough with it.
Spotify suits my use case way better.
- I couldn't justify $14 a month for YT Premium especially when YT Music sucks so much. And it's very likely just going to get more expensive.
  
  If they could stop bundling them both together and give me an option to just get rid of ads, I'd probably go back to paying. But for now, NewPipe is a way better experience.
I actually used to pay for the Premium account in Google Play Music, but disliked YouTube Music so much when they migrated accounts over that I canceled my subscription. Have they improved the radio/music discovery parts at all?
- In the same boat. GPM was so much better than Spotify in terms of UI and basic features. People hype-up Spotify's recommendations, but since moving there after GPM shut down, I don't think I've ever had good music in my Spotify recommendations. Lack of basic features like being able to dislike specific songs, which they keep removing it with A/B testing, is so fucking infuriating!

YouTube premium has millions of users and it makes them literally billions of dollars. There is no boulder.

Absolute numbers are meaningless. They also have to maintain infrastructure for that many users.
The pebble thinking the mountain isn't there...

I would be fine paying for a YouTube premium account if I could get one for like $3-4 that just removes the ads. I don't want their music service.

But then you have to pay $5 for every funkin service, I use dozens of platforms, that's going to be $100 a month for all of it. It simply isn't feasible, and frankly, this is a systemic capitalist issue, and we need to revolt and tear it down.
I am pretty sure that yt music doesnt increase the price by 9 Bucks. Lets not push the blame on that.
- 15 euros is just as much as cable these days fuck that.
- I'm stating what I would be willing to pay for and how much I'd be willing to pay for it.

Google really is the king of "you don't REALLY mean 'no'. Try again."

YT Premium is the single most valuable subscription service on the net right now. Don't regret mine a bit. I listen to hours and hours of YT Music a day, and I watch probably a few hours of YT content a night as well.

If I compare the usage of Netflix vs Youtube

Last 7 days (from right now): 24h 30min
Last time I used Netflix in a high volume: Probably <12h. At absolute highest maybe 18-20h in total.

But: YT usage is consistant. Netflix/service of choice is at best a seasonal happening if a show is very good and you binge it.

So to me it's worth it enough to keep. But I'd want to have an option to remove music as I prefer Spotify, have optionally Jellyfin and dont need yt music.
I have never watched YouTube in my life and I buy my music by the album. Yes I am a psychopath
You say that today. Give it a couple years. I'm pretty sure that by 2030, the cost will be ~100 dollars/euros/whatever per month and you'll see 2 minutes of ads for every single minute of content you watch. (Okay, maybe the number of ads is an exaggeration, but I don't think the monthly cost is.)

Don't pay the Danegeld. It never makes them go away.
- Paying a business to provide a service you use is not ransom.
  
  "They might raise prices later" is an idiotic reason not to pay for something.
I get you're saying its a great value because of what you get out of it, but I'm not comfortable pricing things in that way... I'd rather it be based on the actual cost. I know real prices don't tend to work that way (or at least not in many cases) but it just feels icky and exploitative still.

Time to switch to private invidious/piped instances been using it myself with Yattee app on iOS

ITT: "it costs more than 5 bucks a month!" yeah, if you don't share with friends with family, it does. Also, music service included, deduct your spotify payment.

"You can just block ads" You can just miss the whole point.

"I rather support creators directly" I'm happy you do that. YouTube hosting is not free for Google/Alphabet, pay them too, or you'll have to teach each and every creator how to webhost + help em search a "real job" because selfhosted won't pay enough. Also, good fun browsing videos then.

IDK man, paying for YT Premium really isn't that bad. Assuming you already consume YouTube content, that is. And I'm pretty sure that's like 98% of first world population between 4 and 70.

Blocking ads on YouTube is no sustainable solution. Hosting Billions of Gigabytes of on-demand content is SUPER expensive. Like, it actually costs money. Other, wayyy smaller indie creator on-demand video platforms charge 5 bucks a month, but i'ts okay if they do it, because they aren't big bad Alphabet.

If that's your view, you don't have a problem with pricing, you have a problem with morals. And if you still do voluntarily consume YouTube content in private, with or without ads in any which way, you inarguably have a huge problem with your own morals.

YouTube premium is a good deal. It's priced very well compared with competition, it actually does pay indie creators and it let's you access to features that many users really do use.

BUTBUT THEY ARTIFICIALLY LIMIT FEATURES FOR NO REASON WITHOUT PREMIUM. I mean, it's subscription software and streaming, what else would they do? Every for profit subscription software provider and their mother does this. I develop hospital software and we literally do exactly this. If hospital A has feature x and hospital B also wants that, we don't just hand that out for free even when we just have to add it to their system in like 10 minutes... what did you expect? They already use our software (like you use YouTube), we don't have a huge incentive to just randomly add features if nobody paid for it. If we do, be happy about it, send me a gift card, if we or they don't, that's just business.

5 bucks? If only.. It's 12 euros per month here, which is simply too expensive for the kind of content I watch on YT. Especially considering the amount of baked in product placement (VPN, diet plans, that kind of crap) that I come across, I'm not paying that kind of money just to still get hammered with commercials. Sorry, but YouTube Premium is a bad deal here.
- Either watch ads or pay for Premium. Or don't watch Youtube. Those are the three choices most people will have. And it's Youtube's right as a private platform to give them those choices.
  
  It's worth it for me because I watch a lot of Youtube. In return, I don't watch traditional TV, so I don't pay for cable or similar things.
Why would I pay YouTube that when I can give it directly to the creators though. I'll just adblock and not put money in the hands of Google, while helping the creators more.
- Without the content delivery system, creators don't really have a way to share their creations with you.
- I mean without YouTube/ Google the alternative for most creators would be to host the videos themselves. And then you would have like 20 Sites which you had to check yourself regularly to get new videos. I get that YouTube isn't the best solution, but the alternative is much worse. There is a reason why we don't all still have our own small WordPress blogs.
- Why would I pay YouTube that when I can give it directly to the creators though.
  
  Do you?
5 bucks? I am in. But it’s 16 swiss francs. That’s just too much for me as I don’t need Youtube Music.
- Google tells me 24 bucks for family. That's equal to what I do. I actually do pay that for all of em, but technically, it's just under 5 bucks a person since I share with 4 others.
I pay for family account (6 Gmail account subscriptions I think). And share it with family. Between my sister/BIL and a friend, I would be paying 5 bucks a month. I pay for it myself but that's because I'm subsidizing it for them. She is an amazing cook and he's a doctor one speed dial away. Don't want to jinx that. But I digress.

My point is, it's way cheaper when you get family account and share the cost. If that's a possibility . Also, I don't use Spotify, and I download music and videos for trips. So there's that.
It's wild to me that this is so often called "just business" when, described this way, it's textbook racketeering.
- Could you explain to me how "if someone wants to use my work, they should pay me for it" could be perceived as racketeering, let alone "textbook?"
- The textbook this person owns:
  
  service provider: "Hello, I'm a window cleaner, do you want me to clean your windows? I'll actually do it for free this time! Please recommend me to your peers"
  
  customer: "yes please"
  
  service provider: "all done! Want me to do it again in three months time?"
  
  customer: "yes, I love free stuff!"
  
  service provider: "actually, I'd have to charge for that, can't work for free all the time."
  
  customer: "Racketeering!"
If only they didn't demonetize creators who accidentally say whatever SJWs don't like.

Or remove the slowdowns they deliberately applied to those who use Firefox (it's not a conspiracy, they really did it).

It would just be enough that Google aren't sons of removed and I would probably also be happy to pay youtube premium.

I prefer to pay my favorite creators with donations, patreon or merchandise.
- What people call "demonetized" on YouTube is actually called "no or limited ads" inside of YouTube Studio. It's not Google but the advertisers who don't want their Coca-Cola ads shown on those videos. YouTube Premium views still pay out on those videos since they're not ad views.
  
  If everyone paid for YouTube Premium and didn't use the ad-supported product, then advertiser boycotts would have no power.

I read everyone removed about the ads but I don't get them, and I have access to an awesome music streaming service too.. you know, cause I have premium..

I use Firefox with ublock origin and get all that for free
- I won't criticize you for that. If it works for you go for it. I just don't want to.
- You don't get access to youtube music with unlock origin. If you pay for a music streaming service anyway then going with youtube music and paying the few extra bucks to get yet premium is a nobrainer.
Why would you admit to making poor financial decisions?
- Why is it a bad decision? It's the same cost as Spotify, but I get ad free videos. I don't get this line of thinking..

mpv + yt-dlp Enough said.

I would pay if it were more a more affordable price.

I haven’t browsed apps in ages so idk if it’s still common, but I remember lots of apps having a lite version and a paid version. Lite version has ads and a sometimes couple less features. Full version ad-free and potential extra features.

I liked that. Let me decide if I enjoyed the app enough to pay for the better version.

Before Reddit went down in a fire, I paid premium even though I already had adblocker and no need for the premium features. And I would do the same for YouTube now, if it wasn’t so high priced.

I am consciously learning now what I think I subconsciously already knew. If I value something enough, pay for it. And I DO value YouTube’s videos. The current cost is just a bit uncomfortably steep for a monthly subscription fee.

Firefox + ublock origin on desktop, and youtube revanced on android 👍

Vivaldi + tampermonkey + GitHub scripts. And ublock, obv.

I noticed Mullvad's new DNS features seem to block a ton of ads by itself, so much that I can listen to Spotify Free for hours without any commercials!

Yet people keep going back there... curious.

And paying

Paying for spy-ware,
how dense do they think we are?!

Let Google rot :)

You have a phone, right?
- Yes,
  
  But the software on it has been completely re-done to enhance it's privacy and functionality.
  
  I'm running LineageOSforMicroG,
  with Magisk/LSPosed,
  to run things like AdAway/XPrivacyLua/Blocker.
  
  Additionally I replace everything I can with FOSS from F-Droid,
  and scan all apps from Aurora (Play Store) with ClassyShark3xodus, against well known trackers, to either look for better alternatives, or to block the spy-ware in them with Blocker.
  
  Further, a premium no-log VPN, which has been vetted (servers confiscated in the past, though 0 logs retrieved), configured as always-on + block connections without.

shows me 3 ads in a row

"oh, you don't want to see ads? too bad"

sounds kinda cynical

That only makes me fight 3x as hard.

Install Tampermonkey, download antiYT blocker scripts from GitHub, there's tons of them!

FTFY

I’ve been slowly whittling down my subscriptions over time. At one point I think I had like 12-14 subs to various services, be it streaming, games, etc. But I was also up to my eyeballs in credit card debt and I had extremely poor personal finance skills and practices. When I met my wife, who was the exact opposite of me (extremely responsible with her finances, knew where every single one of her dollars was going), I knew I had to cut back significantly.

Right now I have the following 5 subs per month;

Apple 50gb data (1/month) YouTube Premium Family (22/month) Crunchyroll (8/month) Prime (15/month) ChatGPT (20/month)

Basically 66/month in hard earned dollars.

Prior to this I had the equivalent of an overblown cable package with all the bells and whistles, spending easily 350+ per month.

I don’t judge anyone who decides to save their money, because we’re getting nickel and dimed to death. And by decentralizing the cost of subs to the point where it makes an Applebees menu look small, it makes it incredibly hard to figure out where your dollars are going, and hard to cancel as you need to contact a laundry list of independent service providers.

My wife and I use YouTube and Crunchyroll as our primary entertainment sources, so we can justify those expenses. But all other sources (Netflix, HBO, Disney, Paramount, Hulu, etc) are so infrequent that we only sub for a single month if there is something we absolutely want to watch, and even then, we wait until the season is wrapping up so we can binge it in a week and then cancel the sub immediately.

Just my perspective on it, and if we didn’t watch YouTube almost every night, we’d probably just figure out a way to hack the AppleTV to circumvent ads.

On YouTube is so much knowledge, so much educational content, it's no longer sufficient to administer it on a private level imo.

You want a platform that's supported by taxes?
- this is not feasible even in China

Lol if you think the adblock community represents a boulder that large. Remake this meme with a peasant throwing a pebble at a M1A2 abrams

if it's a pebble why the hell are they trying so hard to stop it?
- Because it might leave scratches on their profits and by all means, even it it will bankrupt them, they can't let someone marginally decrease their precios profits!
- Maybe they're afraid it could spread to a lot more users
if adblock users were a minority, why are they trying to stop them ?
- No-one ever answers your question. We're apparently a miniscule minority and at the same time worth fighting with millions of dev hours...

I just saw something similar on DuckDuckGo, and Firefox too - it's f-ing everywhere.:-(

And it's leeching into lemmy via obvious astroturfing too. Ah yes an account less than a week old that does nothing but bring up how they pay for YouTube premium mmkay
- Yikes!? Though never fail to underestimate the stupidity of... yeah okay I see your username, you already know that:-P.
  
  It's like why didn't peasants rise up and overthrow their royalty long so, as those in the USA & France eventually did? Bc there was always a tiny handful of people who benefited from the status quo, and were willing to defend it with their very lives.
  
  Or bc it's Lemmy, it could also just be a pure Troll:-P.

yep, and there's more problems:

we really gotta think what we do with our time. Spending in on youtube tends to have lower value nowadays.
most stuff on youtube is crap. It's there to make you addicted, to make you watch ads, to make you miserable. Long story short: "influencers" are a drug on society comparable in effects to Crystal Meth. It gives you a short high, but leaves you exhausted.
most "content creators" really just practice, how to manipulate many people into listening to them. There's a lot of makeup, but not much really to say. Best thing is to not listen to them.
"content creators" are waaaaay to often just people trying to make money. They're not trying to tell you something of importance. They're jus trying to squeeze money out of you.

Problems on Youtube's side:

it's a centralized system with platform lock-in. "Related videos" never takes you to other platforms. Search query is intransparent. They ask for waaaay too much money for what it costs them to maintain and develop their systems. I see nothing at all honorable at trying to squeeze money from users.

Youtube has grown into yet another one corpo-speak garbage companies. They used to be respectable, making interesting recommendations, with a clear mission to make knowledge accessible to everyone. Nowadays, they just try to make money.

I agree with all of your points, but I am learning a lot on a very diverse set of topics from YouTube. There are some amazing people making educational videos there. The most time consuming stuff I watch is "let's play" videos. I kind of let them play in the backgrounds sometimes to relax, like white noise.
- It's good if it works for you, but for me, it doesn't.
I don't use youtube for it's riveting entertainment, I use it to learn things.
Well said on all bullets!

I’ve been getting around the addictive nature of it by doing the following:

First deleted YouTube app and bookmarked Invidious links, that way if I want to find some specific video I can just search for it and not be bothered by ads or algorithm suggestions that are made to keep me in the loop of doom.

Second I’ve loaded epub copy of books I am currently reading on kindle or on paper to my phone, and made the Books and Kindle apps prominent next to Invidious, so when I am tempted to look for videos I can instead replace with reading books I have on my list.

My video watching habit has reduced drastically, mostly down to searching for diy fixes.

[even bigger rock] "No, Youtube, I don't want to watch TF2 content. Stop recommending it to me"

It's like why even have an algorithm if it's just going to show you what it wants you to see rather than what you want to see.

Because you are the product being sold, and advertisers are the customers
- I would get that but valve isn't paying them to push that shit, they're doing it out of their own volition.
Sometimes the algorithm can be dumb. Here's a tip:
- Doesn't change anything I've literally NI'd every single post of that matter and THEY KEEP SHOWING UP. I'll even DRC to channels that post that content primarily and they'll start show up half a year later. I've had it up to here with youtube's fucking algorithm deciding what I want.
Do you pay for premium? From what I’ve seen the algorithm is much more hostile to people who don’t pay. I literally _never _ have these problems about YouTube recommending stuff I don’t care about.
- Their algorithm is constantly trying to groom its viewers to the far right. They aren't getting a cent from me.

Haha yea, shame on them for trying to transition to a business model that's actually a great value for the customer compared to other music and video playforms, no longer relies on datamining customers to maximize ad-effectiveness, and brings in more income for creators than ads ever did...

It's a totally stupid idea, YT should just eat the costs and be subsidized by Google search revenue forever.

Why can't we just keep taking from the platform while its expenses are covered by some shrinking group of shmucks who don't know about ad-blockers yet, drowning in commercials?

/S

I don't understand this outlook. Like, sure, you can use adblock. One person stealing a mars bar isn't gonna hurt Walmart... But if literally everyone just took their shopping cart home, never once paying, Walmart would just... Cease to exist.

What makes people think that math is any different for online services?

If google goes down someone else will fill the void. And I don’t give a shit about their numbers, if it’s not financially feasible to host everything without running a loss for years to extinguish competition and then to hike up the price, they should have thought of that before.

Aside from that, any Corp that goes down is a victory in my book.
- Then I hope YT gets legally enshrined and archived in some way.
  
  Like it or not, it is the sole complete repository of a lot of video and audio records for recent human history.
  
  It's become something that should not be under corporate control. Something which should be treated with care and reverence.
  
  Yet it is, and isn't.
no longer relies on data mining customers to maximize ad effectiveness

You're an idiot if you believe they won't do that anyway.
- You don't say. Everyone does it.
  
  But it's a shit source of income that nets mere cents per user, and should be made illegal as soon as political will allows.
  
  Hence, a good service should not rely on collecting user data as a sole revenue source.
Google doesn't deserve your money.
You don't pay a bully so that they bully you a little bit less
- That's a very bad analogy.
  
  That logic would lead to defect-defect scenarios in all but the rarest of cases.
  
  By all means, defect when warranted, but if a bad company changing course doesn't net rewards, why would corps ever do anything other than the worst possible, taking as many users down with them as they can snare?
"Walmart would just... Cease to exist"

Utopia 😍
You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean YouTube's model is correct. The basic understanding we all need to have is pay people for their bread. Don't ever get more from someone that you aren't willing to pay back in some kind. 20% tip for waiting staff might suck for a person, but do not "NOT TIP". We tip till workers get fair wages or we don't go eat out, but don't go eat out and not tip. Same here. Don't head over to your creators on YouTube and deny them their fair share be it premium or ads.

YouTube takes a 45% cut on subscriptions. That's not fair share and they don't provide a means for creators to strike a balance. You can be angry at that. But don't ever be angry at that and not give some fair share to the creators. Additionally, with the whole Channel Membership, makes the whole YouTube Premium questionable. Why am I paying $14/mo for Premium and then $5/mo/channel I'm a member for? Why can YouTube not see that I've spent x% time here at so-and-so's channel and take x% of that Premium and send it to that creator (minus some off the top for infrastructure for themselves)?

This is ultimately what I dislike about YouTube Premium and what I like most about Patreon. In fact, the majority of what I once watched on YouTube has largely shifted there to Patreon. The things is, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask folks to be FAIR about what YouTube is giving, so you're right. But YouTube is a crap distribution platform that routinely robs creators of power over their media, exposure, and revenue and does so with impunity.

People shouldn't rob from YouTube to make a point. People should just leave to make a point. That's the fair thing to do. And if you do enjoy content from your favorite creators, always make sure you tell them so by putting money in their pocket. If we want fair wages for one, we need to remember we need to want fair wages for everyone. And more importantly, the folks running the show need to be more affable to listening to the folks tending to the fields. Be it employers need to listen to their waiters and pay them based on that or YouTube needs to listen to it's creators and address the various issues they bring up.

We're in an era where there's a whole lot of "I know better" in the workplace and really I think we just need more partnership between all involved. I think if we had more of that, we'd have a lot more of the other issues solved by proxy. That's ultimately what I have issues with YouTube, but just because I have issues doesn't mean I go stealing things from them. You are absolutely correct in that folks should play fair if they're heading to YouTube. We're all in this together folks, don't rob from each other even if you don't like the means by which they get the money.
- Cool, I was upvote number 469
- Premium already does what you're saying, channel membership is a separate thing

Man the astroturfing is wild in this thread. Didn't take long for them to follow us here from reddit.

Seriously it's insane. I checked some of their accounts and they're less than a week old
Fuck off. Not everyone (in fact, almost no one) who likes something that you do not is "astroturfing".
- No, you fuck off. "People liking something that they do not" is obviously not what prompted OP to claim astroturfing.
  
  It probably has to do with how far this thread, and YTPremium conversations in general, are deviating from the average conversation on Lemmy. Stances on convenience, privacy, and blocking ads are harshly different in this context compared to any other thread about anything else. I mean, this is the userbase that will umpromptedly talk about the benefits of using Linux, Firefox, uBO and SearX because of privacy concerns in almost every other thread.
  
  And this is happening in Google's favor, no less, a company that has shown time and again to not be above things like this.
  
  In fact, why does YTPremium discourse keep coming back? Why not the other million premium subscriptions? Why do we not keep talking about Twitch Prime, which is in a similar situation? Why are the alleged lurkers so eager to stop their lurking and talk about all the benefits of YTPremium every once in a while?
  
  There may be many reasons for this, both assuming honesty and otherwise, but one of the possibilities is certainly that an astroturf campaign may be going on at the moment. If, in addition to this, @Sheeple 's claim that many of the accounts supporting YTPremium are weeks old (tbh I don't care enough to check if this is true), then it is, with all probability, astroturfing.
  
  Or maybe it's not, and everyone here is just sharing sincere opinions that just happen to align a little too well with YouTube's own marketing campaign. But you got to understand that, given all these factors, at the very least it's sus as fuck.

More ads? MORE ADS!!!

Last time I talked about YouTube here, people liked to throw their money to Google....

It seems to be easy to turn a free service into a subscription service... I should probably buy Alphabet shares to profit from that...

I started paying for YT Premium a few years ago when there was an election on, and one of the absolute worst minor parties that's run by a billionaire just threw money at YouTube advertising.

I haven't looked back. I watch YT content on my ShieldTV poetry much exclusively, so adblock doesn't work anyway :/

So...when are we raiding youtube?

Tomorrow. At dawn. See my YouTube video for the details, and keep in touch on the Google spreadsheet.
- Make sure to attend the pre raid Google meet so we can discuss specifics