cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40372957
fyi:
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp lets you download videos (from youtube and also hundreds of other sites)
- for desktop, https://mpv.io/ is free and lets you watch youtube (or any other video) at even more and faster speeds than youtube premium does, among many other features
- for android, https://newpipe.net/ lets you play youtube in the background (and download videos, and block ads, …)
- https://ublockorigin.com/ blocks ads everywhere (and yes it does still work on youtube, at least in firefox anyway)
I am not against paying for services to unlock extra features, but I utterly despise the way YouTube premium is entirely composed of features we had but they took away.
Years ago I understand why streaming services want to implement paid subscription. But now, I heard that even on premium you will still get ads! It is just milking more money at this stage!
How would you suggest they get people to pay?
Come up with new features that people would be willing to pay for.
How is that any different from shifting existing features to premium? If you aren’t paying you’re lucky to get anything.
I dont pay and I ad block everything. I’m surprised I can use the site at all. These features are nice to haves and not core to using YouTube.
Lucky to get anything? YouTube couldnt even have grown at all if it was a paid product from the start. People made it into the success it is, by using it, because it was free.
Now when its a monopoly, they do a bait and switch.
So because they started off offering something for free they owe us? Its still free, there has been no bait and switch.
Yeah. They owe us, they owe their content creators, they owe the tax payers who built and power the platform upon which their platform sits. They sure ain’t paying their fair share.
Some artists making content are practically their own little PBS stations or something, I’m with ya!
Would it be more palatable if they told us using adblock w/o premium was “robbing creators of one-hundredth of a cent each time” or something? If I’m not mistaken there is a connection between content creator payouts and that.
3 billion active viewers is what makes up the majority of Alphabet’s stock value. The revenue from ads, donation extortion, and premium are peanuts. That’s why youtube will never go full paywall or hard ban ad blocker users.
As far as i know, there is a difference in psychology between taking away features and adding the new features already behind a paywall
With you on this. Freeloaders have so many options to use the same service
People pay for features they want. YouTube did a bait and switch and launched their service with all the features that were expected, such as running in the background, no ads, fast forwarding and everything else.
Now when the service is a monopoly, they are removing features instead of adding things that are worth extra money.
Its a bait and switch.
The cost of running YouTube is constantly growing. New features cost extra to develop and maintain. Monetizing existing features lessens the burden and allows the platform to keep providing their core service for free.
Youtube is owned by Google, market cap of 3.7 trillion dollars, third richest company in the America.
3.7 trillion is 62 million times the average American salary.
Lets pray together they will be able to manage their bills this month.
Why are you comparing the market cap of a company that runs multiple services for billions of users to the average American salary. That really shows where your brain is at and why you keep landing on the conclusion that this is unfair.
Maybe the example was a poor one, but the idea was to show that these companies have so much money, that im not going to feel sympathy for them needing even more.
Ok let’s take a look at the numbers. They might be unreasonable I dont know.
I couldn’t find YouTube’s profit or net income. So I’m going off the 2024 net income for alphabet which was 100b
YouTube is considered to be about 30% of alphabets valuation.
Let’s assume YouTube’s net income 2024 was 30b
Now they have 2.54 billion users. Divide that up and its about $12 profit per user and that is in their best year due to the election driving massive 30% increases in traffic and ad revenue.
I think $12 profit per user per year is reasonable margins.