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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#361
post #260

Thank you, Susan, for (maybe?) being responsible for the only case in Big Tech where you can actually pay to not be the product yourself. YouTube Premium is awesome.

Well, you continue to be a product delivering a lot of metrics to the platform beyond the ads you don't see, surely you are optimizing others ads. Not saying YouTube Premium is awesome, though.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#362

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

Youtube Vanced does a good job at blocking most ads, and the latest version has a feature that attempts to skip sponsored sections on videos. Well worth trying out.

I think it's important where possible for people to pay for the premium version, while it provides ad free value for money, though I don't begrudge people blocking ads in other ways if they truly can't afford it.

But I think it's short sighted and selfish to not pay for something like YouTube that you use and get value out of every day, when you can afford it. Either pay for it and support it or don't use it at all.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#363
post #164

YouTube for the things I enjoy has improved dramatically because the comment section is vastly improved. Everyone used to use YouTube comments as an example of a comment section dumpster fire, but they fixed it. I've seen the recommendations get better then worse then better again as they tweaked the algorithms. Right now it's better than it's ever been. Again, for me. One complaint: I like to upload interesting clip…

Nowadays the comment section on several channels I watch is full of spam, oftentimes 50+ fake accounts responding to each other in threads.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#364
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sponsorship in a video paid directly to the YouTuber is very different from a targeted ad that YouTube runs. It doesn't interrupt the content in unexpected ways (only ways planned by the creator), it's targeted based on content rather than data mining, and the creator usually tries to add a bit of personality to it. Not to mention you can skip them using the regular scrubbing controls rather than being forced to wa…

Yes. It is a somewhat-less-bad form of even more advertising. If you think paying to avoid some advertising is reasonable, why is paying more to avoid more advertising unreasonable?

Frequently you can pay more to individual YouTubers for that service, many have Patreon or other methods of providing early ad free versions of their content.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#365

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here I'm missing?

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#366
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are still ads and there are solutions to filter them out that Youtube could be more proactive about surfacing to premium users.

I think you're being ridiculous. Like, would you want YouTube to skip over this entire scene in the Wayne's World movie? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control? Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.

I think you're being unnecessarily adversarial here.

Sponsored ads in videos are everywhere, and well delineated. Third party tools exist to skip them already -- and YouTube already has the data on where they start and end. They even show them on the timeline, although they call "end of sponsored advertisement" "most replayed"… presumedly because of everyone skipping the ad, losing their place, and then having to step back to try to find where the content begins again.

Here's how this could work. I would pay an additional $10/month for YouTube Scarlet. Content creators would have three options -- declare that their videos have no sources of revenue outside of YouTube revenue; provide start and end time stamps for any external-revenue-generating segments; or do nothing.

For my $10/month, videos in the second category would skip their promotion. In exchange, some portion of my $10/month would go to the video creator, just like ad/Premium revenue does today, and the metrics on number of videos where this segment was skipped would be made available in analytics for sharing with sponsors. Finally, I'd have access to a user preference to suppress videos in the third category for appearing in recommendations, ever.

Does this deal with every case? No. Would it make YouTube more pleasant for me and potentially others who share my values, without impacting current regular and Premium users, and with a neutral or positive impact on content creators? I assert yes.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for youtube premium for ad-free youtube and to support creators automatically. Youtube music is not great, but its "free" to me.

That’s literally it. It’s probably inferior to both Spotify and Apple Music, but if you’re going to pay for YouTube premium anyway and are able to endure the weird UI… Then it might save you a small monthly fee you’d otherwise pay to competing services. It’d never survive in the market as it’s own service, and it’s clearly inferior even to its own predecessor Google Music. I have no idea who decided this thing was a…

I must have extremely unsophisticated music needs, I've never had any complaints using the interface or finding any music that I want.

I remember Google Music being pretty good, but YouTube Music seems good enough

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#368
It seems to me that YT as a product has vastly improved during her tenure and become an incredibly valuable brand that probably has more value than "Google" at this point. It's facing an existential threat in TikTok and still hanging on. It more or less shoved Vimeo aside. It's definitely moved on a bit from the early days of purely "home video" amateur content to be a real marketplace for professional and aspiring professional content.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#369
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is a somewhat-less-bad form of even more advertising. If you think paying to avoid some advertising is reasonable, why is paying more to avoid more advertising unreasonable?

It's unreasonable to expect YouTube Premium to filter out content inserted by the video creator when that's not the terms either you or the creator were given. I pay for Nebula and don't see any ads or sponsorships there, but I don't begrudge the sponsorships on regular YouTube. If the sponsorships bug you that much, use sponsorblock.

Yes, I agree that it is unreasonable to expect this of Youtube Premium, as that is not the value proposition of that product.

The original comment was proposing a new product, at a higher price point to reflect its higher costs, that /does/ cater to this expectation.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down

#370

I'm nervous about this. YouTube Premium is my favorite and most-used product. As long as ads stay gone and my grandfathered price doesn't change, I'm a very happy user.

Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here I'm missing?

Having the YouTube on the TV without ads is my personal favorite feature.
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