I guess this will be an unpopular opinion, but YouTube is justified in doing this imo. Video hosting isn’t cheap, especially providing 4K & 8K. They’ve gotta be able to support costs somehow, and if you’re not paying for Premium, you should be paying with ads. You’re also preventing the content creators from being compensated for content that you find valuable, useful, and/or entertaining.
I know ads are annoying, and I hate them just as much as you do. But a big reason why we have people who make super niche videos that help you learn how to fix something on your car or those regular videos that you watch every week is because the creators are able to get compensated for their work. Are you really saying that utility and entertainment isn’t worth 30 seconds of ads and it’s better to not support them at all?
Part of the reason we’re in this enshittification era of social media is because of the expectation of social media to be free. We need to learn from our past mistakes. It’s not sustainable.
May I ask why? That seems unsustainable to expect to be able to get the same amount of entertainment and utility from creators without helping compensate them.
Also, I would argue monetization has had to increase because of people using adblockers and the Silicon Valley mentality of “grow first, make money later.” Now that interest rates are high, social media companies are being forced to make money wherever they can since money isn’t cheap anymore.
If this is purely companies already being profitable and trying to just suck as much money as possible from their user base, then I would agree with you. But Twitter has been rumored for months to be close to having their lights shut off, and Reddit apparently isn’t profitable. Idk about YouTube, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not profitable and/or wouldn’t be able to exist without Google being its parent company today due to their other businesses diversifying their revenue streams.
There are plenty of viewers who don’t want/need/care about the resolution. Especially not 8K, probably not even 4K. People who watch on their phone, probably won’t even notice if the content doesn’t go above 720p.
Anyway, if YT wishes to charge for their service, they should try having more reasonable fees, and making sure fees actually remove all ads from the service, and actually reward creators fairly - they get much less than they should as a proportion of fees paid.
As it stands, it is much better to subscribe to the likes of Nebula or to individual creators through Patreon (if they host their videos there). The bill might end up adding up to something similar or even more than YouTube Premium, but at least you get what you paid for and the money goes to the creators, not to line Google’s executive’s pockets, which in the end means better content, better platforms and a better viewing experience.
I agree, a lot of the creators on YouTube make these great videos and channels because of the financial compensation they are receiving.
But there should be other video hosting platforms to break the monopoly of Youtube, so that Google would not be willing to do moves like this, for fear of losing viewers to other competitors.
They’ve never really made money through the AdSense payments though, and it’s not because of adblockers. YouTube is notorious for demonetizing videos for more or less no reason and for false DMCA claims that allow trolls to hijack AdSense from the video’s creator. Most money being made by YouTubers is being made through sponsorships or direct support through Patreon/Ko-Fi/etc
I guess this will be an unpopular opinion, but YouTube is justified in doing this imo. Video hosting isn’t cheap, especially providing 4K & 8K. They’ve gotta be able to support costs somehow, and if you’re not paying for Premium, you should be paying with ads. You’re also preventing the content creators from being compensated for content that you find valuable, useful, and/or entertaining.
I know ads are annoying, and I hate them just as much as you do. But a big reason why we have people who make super niche videos that help you learn how to fix something on your car or those regular videos that you watch every week is because the creators are able to get compensated for their work. Are you really saying that utility and entertainment isn’t worth 30 seconds of ads and it’s better to not support them at all?
Part of the reason we’re in this enshittification era of social media is because of the expectation of social media to be free. We need to learn from our past mistakes. It’s not sustainable.
deleted by creator
May I ask why? That seems unsustainable to expect to be able to get the same amount of entertainment and utility from creators without helping compensate them.
Also, I would argue monetization has had to increase because of people using adblockers and the Silicon Valley mentality of “grow first, make money later.” Now that interest rates are high, social media companies are being forced to make money wherever they can since money isn’t cheap anymore.
If this is purely companies already being profitable and trying to just suck as much money as possible from their user base, then I would agree with you. But Twitter has been rumored for months to be close to having their lights shut off, and Reddit apparently isn’t profitable. Idk about YouTube, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not profitable and/or wouldn’t be able to exist without Google being its parent company today due to their other businesses diversifying their revenue streams.
deleted by creator
That makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective.
Yeah, I kind of agree on this. The real question is: is YouTube currently profitable, and they’re trying to squeeze even more out of users?
It would be nice if companies could look at a tidy profit and just say “that’s enough” and leave it be. Alas, that’s not how capitalism operates…
There are plenty of viewers who don’t want/need/care about the resolution. Especially not 8K, probably not even 4K. People who watch on their phone, probably won’t even notice if the content doesn’t go above 720p.
Anyway, if YT wishes to charge for their service, they should try having more reasonable fees, and making sure fees actually remove all ads from the service, and actually reward creators fairly - they get much less than they should as a proportion of fees paid.
As it stands, it is much better to subscribe to the likes of Nebula or to individual creators through Patreon (if they host their videos there). The bill might end up adding up to something similar or even more than YouTube Premium, but at least you get what you paid for and the money goes to the creators, not to line Google’s executive’s pockets, which in the end means better content, better platforms and a better viewing experience.
I agree, a lot of the creators on YouTube make these great videos and channels because of the financial compensation they are receiving.
But there should be other video hosting platforms to break the monopoly of Youtube, so that Google would not be willing to do moves like this, for fear of losing viewers to other competitors.
They’ve never really made money through the AdSense payments though, and it’s not because of adblockers. YouTube is notorious for demonetizing videos for more or less no reason and for false DMCA claims that allow trolls to hijack AdSense from the video’s creator. Most money being made by YouTubers is being made through sponsorships or direct support through Patreon/Ko-Fi/etc