this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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I don't understand how anyone can put up with youtube without premium. Every time I visit a friends house I am shocked at the level of bullshit they are ok with. I'd pay a lot more than 10 bucks.
I'd happily pay for premium as I use YouTube religiously. But it's Google so fuck them, they already process my information in order to show me ads and profit off of my data. I think that's payment enough, so I'll just find any free way possible to watch YouTube without ads.
So you don't have any services like Netflix, Hulu, etc? I can guarantee they do the same things in one way or another.
Youtube is my reminder on new browser installs to install Ublock Origin. And I saw this newest effort to block it once. Updated Ublock, restarted the browser and it was gone again.
If I started waving little billboards in front of your face, how much would you pay me to go away?
Do you have anything to offer besides the billboard in my face? If not, you get dropped.
But muh free stuff
I dun wan it.
I was a day 1 subscriber of Google Play Music All Access, which I converted into a family plan when that was available, and was told that the rate I was paying would be grandfathered in. I didn't like the switch to YouTube Music, but it did the job and came with ad-free YouTube, so I was okay with it.
But then they told me that they were changing the $14.99/mo I was paying to $22.99/mo despite being grandfathered in, a more than 50% increase, and I said fuck that. Unsubbed, swapped to Spotify, and never looked back.
Would I pay for just ad-free YouTube? Maybe. But not for almost $300 each year. I'm keeping Spotify, so if Google made a plan for no ads for like ...$1 or $2 per month?, maybe then I'd consider going back.
The end result now though is that I just use YouTube less.
I was/am in the exact same boat, but share the subscription three ways (wife+brother) so the numbers are still somewhat favorable given our music and YouTube usage as a household.
https://piped.video
Or just use an adblocker and save the $$
A couple of five second ads doesn't bother me at all.
I'm from a generation that had no pause or fast forward on the TV before the internet. Every fifteen minutes or so you'd have near enough five minutes of ads. YouTube ads are nothing by comparison.
$10 a month isn't a huge amount, but it's $120 saved by the end of the year that I'd rather spend on something else.
I’m from a generation that had state television where there were no ads at all. I liked it that way.
Exactly. Starting from the premise that these services deserve the revenue from ads is completely wrong. As advertising has grown, so has corporate greed in extracting more value from users while providing a worse service.
Starting from the premise that we owe corporations the opportunity to subject us to mental abuse for any reason is the problem. Let's not forget what ads are and how they work.
I agree with you for the most part, but at the same time people need a way to find the things they want. There are lots of products and services that genuinely make life better, but without advertising you may never even know what you're missing.
That position is completely in the distance behind where we are now, with the pure exploitation and manipulative marketing, but it's still a valid point.
That's valid.
Thank you.
My rule of thumb has always been, since I was a child: if it's advertised on TV, it probably isn't that good.
TV advertising is expensive. The business needs to pay for that advertising, and they also expect to profit from it. Thus, the customers have to pay for the advertising, the profits to the business for the advertising, as well as the product, and the profits to the business for the product. So, in general, if it's advertised on TV it's probably not worth what they want you to pay.
Recently there's been an online therapy service that has grown massively called Better Health. It sounds really good, and content producers I like have apparently thought the same and started advertising it themselves - Behind the Bastards host Robert Evans actually voices an ad for them on his own podcast. However, I've also recently seen advertisements for their service on TV. Now, I'm wary, and I'm just waiting for what I think will be the inevitable controversy over their service.
So yeah, advertising has some valid purpose, but it's also basically complete and totally open warfare. Marketing executives are probably worse than estate agents at this point. At the same time, a person just promoting their idea might not be so villainous - at least right now, who knows what they'll do later?
In the UK you have to pay the TV licence for state television, so it's swings and roundabouts.
I'm from a country where we barely had ads on TV back in the day, and even now it's nowhere near as bad as on American TV. I've tried watching US channels online and it's feels like nothing but an insult. YouTube is bad enough for me.