Modders make mods for free. Video creators publish free videos on sites like Youtube or Vimeo today without any revenue stream. Prior to that creators published their content for free on sites like ebaums, or albinoblacksheep, or on personal pages.

Humans want to share. If Youtube had never existed, people wouldn’t have suddenly stopped making videos to share, they should have just found another method of sharing or created their own alternative. The desire to create and share is innate to humanity; the concept of monetary compensation is not.

As for wanting everything to be free (I’m not who you were talking to but I’m responding anyway)… I mean, yeah kind of? Here’s my question: why should everything be paid? I think that’s a backwards mentality. People were sharing stories and art and other creations for no reason other than the love of sharing long before Youtube, and they will keep doing so after. Imo not every effort in life needs to be directly compensated. To me this is the same reason I will never pay for game mod: I want to support and encourage a modding community who mods because they love do it and they love sharing with community, not because they see a possible revenue stream.

Imo turning your hobbies into jobs or “side hustles” is one of the worst consequences of capitalism, and one we should push back against.

Every person is already paying for Youtube with their data. The ads are asking above and beyond.

It would be an entirely different story if Google wasn’t primarily first a data-mining company, but since they are, and since selling that data (or the results of using that data) in of the MAIN revenue streams for their business, it is disingenuous to act like Youtube is some free service that is being offered to us. It’s not; it’s a massive data-mining operation of incredible value as it offers not just demographic information but vastly more details on individual interests and what kind of things they are likely to actually click and interact with than the vast majority of other platforms and sites.

We have got to stop ignoring the data aspect of businesses like Youtube.

You have already been paying Google for that 6+ hours before even a penny came out of your account - you’re just been paying in data. We have to stop pretending Google is some good guy that left an open platform in the world and just said “if you use it we’ll show you some ads.”

Ads aren’t even the main revenue stream for Youtube, data is. All of these points about “paying for a service” become moot the moment we acknowledge the value of the data Google is farming from our interactions. This is how we’re paying for Youtube. If you choose to buy Youtube Premium, understand that you’re paying to not have ad interruption. You aren’t paying for Youtube, because that was already happening, you’re just paying for the convenience of avoid ads.

Don’t be disingenuous. We are already paying for that service, in our data and attention.

It would be an entirely different story if paying for Youtube Premium immediately opted you out of participating in Google’s data-mining and data-selling, and if paying for Youtube Premium removed not just the overt ads but the algorithmically-manipulated advertising content as well (what is the effective difference between a Pepsi ad and a Good Mythical Morning video titled “trying every new Pepsi flavor”?), but it since it DOESN’T do those then we aren’t talking about paying for a service - we are talking about a company asking for every penny in our wallet for a service which we are already paying for.

Imo this should actually be illegal. I’m find with reasonable promotional displays and offers, but there needs to be some legal option to permanently decline. Having to tell YouTube “no” literally hundreds of times is legitimately ludicrous

Even when you aren’t seeing ads their algorithm is still controlling your front page, allowing them to push partner content that isn’t directly advertising but still acts like it. The differences between a commercial for Doritos and an episode of Good Mythical Morning titled “Trying Every Doritos Flavor” from the perspective of the PepsiCo marketing department are that people might willingly click on the GMM video and they probably didn’t even have to pay anyone for the video to happen.
Sure Rhett & Link may not have a partnership with Pepsi and are just innocently making content to give their audience (I genuinely believe this), so they’ve got no part in this becoming advertising, but you would have to be incredibly naïve to believe that Google’s algorithm isn’t smart enough to recognize that video and others like it as marketable content the promotion of which can be sold to PepsiCo.

Premium subscribers may not be seeing ads, but they are absolutely still seeing advertising.

edit: typos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_toilet

The most effective science fiction is that which is only an arm’s reach away from current fact.

Oh god, imagine midroll ads on Pornhub… “Oh yeah baby, lick that wet- [Overly loud and obnoxious Adam & Eve ad starts playing]”

Fair and I agree. I should have stated it in the past tense because what I really meant is exactly what you stated - that I wouldn’t have brought the adblock to Youtube had they not gone nuclear assault in their ad approach and made the choice unreasonable, now I am unwilling to engage with them honestly without ENORMOUS, HERUCLEAN efforts towards rehabilitation on their part.

Cheers.

Hopefully somebody who actually makes monetized Youtube videos will join the conversation to answer that one, as I’m not certain. I’m a pretty active Youtube watcher and fairly savvy on the culture, so from what I’ve gleaned I believe there is some control given to creators but I believe it is somewhat limited. For example if you watch the Sorted channel (a UK-based food channel) with ads on, they seem to pretty consistently happen at small scene transitions, which leads me to believe the Sorted team is doing their part to strategically place them.

Honestly, Pornhub has the infrastructure to take on Youtube, if they wanted. If they just cloned the site, sans content, and called it Videohub, there would immediately be a real contender in the marketplace.

If they kept the ads to 10-15 seconds at the start of a video and didn’t interrupt my videos for them, I would never use an adblock on Youtube (i’ll even give them an allowance for one 10 second ad interruption for every hour in the case of super long videos). But for as long as they keep trying to squeeze every goddamn penny out of me that they can, I will fight back and do everything in my power to prevent them from being allowed even a single ad impression off me.

I’m not unreasonable, but I refuse to accept unreasonable offers.

Yes Walmart is a shithole but don’t begrudge the people trying to make an honest living. It’s classist, it’s punching down at the wage worker by calling them a clown rather than punching up at the corporation for being a shithole.

Exactly my sentiment

Yeah I wish Vivaldi wasn’t Chromium-based, because I love all the bells and whistles of Vivaldi so much. But like, at the end of the day it’s still partly contributing to the Chromium dominance of the web, so I still have to default to Firefox as my primary.

I have never had a single conversation with any person wearing one of those wide-brim white girl hats which has made me desire to have a second conversation.

In some ways I appreciate that they’ve found an accessory to broadcast their narcissistic tendencies to others.

Forced Arbitration should absolutely be illegal. Here’s an article on the topic if you’ve never thought about it before:

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3986551-the-time-to-ban-forced-arbitration-is-now/

Facts. We have a burger place like this that people love for some reason, but I swear they most the mid-quality burgers for $20+. It’s crazy that people keep going there, imo.