The free ride is over. I feel like the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long. If you give someone a free meal every day for 15 years, and then suddenly take it away, they'll be pretty upset. But nobody ever asked why the food was free? It costs to make and it costs to deliver. Google have datacenters all over the world and we still expect the food to be free. They literal…
"the only reason this is upsetting to people is because it seemed to be free for so long" The issue, at least to me, is that Google has a sort of monopoly on >99% of content on Youtube. They provide virtually nothing[0] to content creators other than free †⸸ video hosting, and in return they get to gatekeep the content itself. All of the cost is offloaded onto the consumer, and there is little to no incentive (arguab…
Google pays creators 55% of the ad revenue, so yes Google has to pay for those videos.
> It costs to deliver, but why should Google be the only party who gets to deliver other people's content?
People upload to YouTube because YouTube gives them plenty of ad revenue. They don't upload to sites without a lot of ads since that would reduce their ad revenue.