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YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

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Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#131

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

Incidentally, it's teh other way round for me. I find the contents of Netflix etc. utter crap and won't pay for it. However, there are some extremely valuable tech channels on YT that I appreciate a lot and I support individual creators. But YouTube/Alphabet? I have zero sympathy for these folks, two decades of small malicious steps did their work.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be. Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice. Plenty of tech companies have had the technical and monetary firepower to run a youtube competitor. But you just have to read a few threads on the internet from anytime in the last decade talking about youtube and monetization to see why no one wanted to jump in. This…

> Youtube was not free at the time vid.me came to be. Sorry but this take is pretty wild to me. I can understand that there is a paid option but YouTube is free today given that I can currently watch a video after watching a couple ads without paying any money. > Also, using money from one business to keep another business alive is not a monopolistic practice. I'm not sure this is true in theory but, regardless, to e…

I see nothing wrong with subsidizing customer costs per se. The only potential problems arise when this leads to lock-in. You could argue that subsidizing videos helps achieve lock-in via network effects. If we can just figure out a way to regulate away those network effects (forced interop), then there's nothing wrong with the subsidies.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#133
post #73

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

I feel like you're right about initial value proposition, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are other things about treating youtube as netflix/hbo/hulu: - I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there - 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading - I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get…

> 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading

Then you just use the ad-supported version, which seems to be what suits you.

> On youtube I can pay and content of interest could be deleted next second

Which online video platform doesn't suffer from that?

Sopranos is a core HBO product. YouTube does have YouTube's core content. Non core products get removed off MAX(HBO's new name) all the time. There's literally "Leaving Soon" section in my MAX app.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't watch those YouTubers.

It's hard to avoid them, given the money that the "sponsors" throw out. That shit's everywhere .

It's not that hard, I see very few in-line ads on the channels I watch. There are a few channels that do it, but it's a tiny minority of my subscriptions. (Rob Scallon is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but he's worth it :) )

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is a perfectly valid response. Equally valid is Google then saying, "well then we don't want to send you bytes."

The endgame here is adblockers that spoof ad views and even sometimes clicks rather than just blocking them. This is very very bad for google if they force adblockers to work like that. People will do it.

And the business buy the ads which get seen by no one, yet still Google makes money, just like with their other ads.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#136
post #73

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

I feel like you're right about initial value proposition, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are other things about treating youtube as netflix/hbo/hulu: - I can't upload random video to the netflix, and I have a certain expectation regarding content there - 99% of videos on youtube are not something I would pay for or expected to be paid for uploading - I can pay for youtube subscription and would still get…

It sounds like you don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube, so spending $x.99 a month wouldn’t make sense. Every user is different

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#137

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

NetFlix, Hulu, and HBO aren't trying to spy on everything I do online, and there's no evidence that paying for YouTube stops Google from doing that.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#138

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

Trying to get customers to pay for something they have been readily getting for free is a difficult proposition. Ask Vice News. This is the problem. YouTube was “free” for a long time and now it needs to turn a profit. Ads was the easy way to do that. Subs is the only way to sustain it.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube Premium is ad-free YouTube. That's literally "paying for YouTube". But it sure seems that you're trying to rationalize your unwillingness to pay for something and it does sound very entitled.

Eh, you're really just paying to remove ads. The rest of the product is available free already.

Several creators I watch have said they get more profit sharing from premium views than ad views. So even though it pains me to give money to Google "just" to make their product not shitty (removing ads and allowing background play, back when I had goog products on my phone), it's also paying content creators more.

I prefer to subscribe and watch on Nebula to support them more... but YouTube has such a good mix of content that isn't on Nebula that I find myself using it as a hub regardless.

Re: YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet

#140

It strikes me as so odd that people readily pay for netflix, hulu, HBO etc, but when the idea of paying for youtube comes along, who directly profit shares with small creators you adore, people fall over backwards in disgust. I guess it has to do with initial value proposition. If you hand out lemonade for free, people are going to be pissed when you start charging a dollar, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Ev…

This isn't about paying for youtube, this is about ads. People don't want youtube ads, and frankly it's their good right to not have to download, display and watch them if they so choose. What youtube now wants is proof that people have watched ads. This is problematic for 2 reasons. The first is that there is no way to prove you've watched an ad in a way that's not a privacy nightmare and extremely hostile to users.…

Would you prefer YouTube removed the free/ad-powered access and put everything behind a paywall?
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