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How dare YouTube enforce their own policies on their own website?
I would love if everything was free, too.
And I'm not a Google lover. Ditched Chrome on all my devices a couple weeks ago.
I just think seeing everyone scream and cry about the movie theater hiring security guards cuz kids sneaking in the back are flooding the seats is pretty funny. Everyone wants their cake and to eat it, too. Both Google and their users.
I think a lot of people feel that youtube is getting to eat all of the cake and is only offering crackers in return.
I think people accept that services need to advertise to survive, but become upset when that level of advertisemeant becomes excessive.
The optimist in me thinks that if all the free users currently using ad blockers switched to paid users or free users that aren't using ad blockers, the amount of ads that actually get shown could be lessened... And in an ideal world that's what would happen. The pessimist in me says Google's current management is going to keep the ads where they are though.
There may be a market force in play here too though where they went "can we add more ads?" and they saw that if they added any more than they currently have, people just stop using the service. If that's the case/what they're bumping into (or what they start to bump into), there could genuinely be a drop in the number of ads after this rolls out.
Services are funded by advertisers. Advertisers are funded by their customers, the general public, after charging more for their products to fund advertisement. This is a symptom of the commodification of the collective consciousness. Absolutely disgusting.
No one would have adblock if the ad situation on websites never grew completely out of control.
This is absurdly inaccurate. I've been on the internet since AOL and adblockers have been around since the VERY beginning.
A company called Juno used to offer free dial up internet if you allowed a permanent banner of ads at the bottom of your screen. This was the early 2000s. Guess what existed even then, to block the ads? Just cuz a company was trying to get SOMETHING for providing something for free? Yup, adblockers. The narrative "oh, the companies started it!!" Is very easy to parrot, but companies advertising themselves is not wrong or unethical and blaming them for doing it is absurd.
They were niche back then. The amount of adblock users was effectively nothing compared to today.
Not how I remember it
And it would never have gotten completely out of control, if people didn't use ad-block.
We should never have tried to fund the web with ads in the first place. We're perfectly willing to pay for data plans, phone service, electricity. Web services should have been the same from the start.
Advertisers started this war.
Pop up ads came before ad blockers.
Nobody was doing this when it was static banners.
Oh, I fully agree, the moment we accepted the deal of ads for "free" stuff, it was always going to end this way.
There will only be a cease-fire when users start paying for what they use again. And even then, now that pandora's box is open, some will pull a hulu and try to double dip on both ads and a payment.
And it would never have gotten completely out of control, if people didn’t use ad-block.
"I wouldn't get so carried away beating you if you didn't make me so much angrier by trying to run when I smack you."
We should never have tried to fund the web with ads in the first place.
I agree. But here we are. And until it's illegal to do so (and, honestly, afterwards too), when a website I'm viewing politely asks me to download toxic ad content filled with psychological manipulation and malware, my computer will politely whisper "no." I might revisit this policy in the future if the entire advertising industry takes a huge step back to tone down their abusive shit, but in the meanwhile, I have no problem blocking malignant content from my presence. No means no.
A business plan that requires psychological abuse and exploitation of your customers is not an ethical, sustainable, or valid plan and the people who push it are not worthy of my consideration.
yea, it would have. corporations are an insanely greedy bunch.
Obviusly. But this was an arms race that was always going to pan out this way the moment we started expecting ads to fund the web.
I have YouTube premium included in my pixel pass subscription, so this doesn't necessarily effect me. However, you have a grossly uninformed opinion on data and how it works. You think data caps and fast lanes would've saved us from advertising? I'm sorry but the sad truth is it wouldn't have, the money from the ISPs isn't going to trickle down to the website owners, that's not how it works, that's not how any of this works. That's kind of one of the big arguments against data caps and fast lanes, it limits those websites from receiving traffic and in turn ad revenue. If anything those data caps would make things worse.
I think he means that instead of everything on the early internet being ad supported, they should have just made people pay. Think about it; how much of our problems are because everything is a race to the bottom to capture the most eyeballs? Clickbait, recommended algorithms designed to make you angry, news as entertainment, etc.
This was always the outcome of ads. If you want it to stop, start directly paying for things. If you want to continue this arms race to the bottom, keep doing what we've been doing. (not you you)
You have a grossly misinterpreted understanding of my comment. We pay for things like data because it just being free would never work.
Just like youtube or spotify being free has never really worked. I'm saying we should start paying for services like those the same way we pay for our data plans.
Which part of my comment made you think I was suggesting our data plans should somehow pay for our web services? That would be fucking stupid.
Unfortunately people like things for free, so "Free" means faster user acquisition.
But what really sucks is now everything feels like it's a microtransaction haven.. It's not just "subscriptions" but "Ad ons" and more.
Paying for a program feels almost dead, paying for a service is on the way out, because you're now paying to be on a ad supported service, and they'll keep trying to push that as "how it should be".
There are 18 year olds who have never bought a piece of software before. And there's probably plenty that have only purchased games. Push Xbox Game Pass more and we may even have people who never bought anything, because the modern world isn't about you "Owning" anything, it's about leasing, licensing, and reoccurring payments.
I don’t think Google will miss my skipping their ads, look at their bottom line. It’s ridiculous how many ads there are now and I’m not paying 12 bucks a month to watch a guy show me how to fix shit in my house.
I’m not paying 12 bucks a month to watch a guy show me
howthe wrong way to fix shit in my house.Don’t get me started on the removal of the dislike button
or 12 bucks a month to watch 12 guys show me 12 different wrong ways to fix shit in my house.
The actual guy generating the content by the way, not to be confused with the middleman platform that just serves it up to you.
They take away dislike button, something I consider essential to navigate content, the algorithm is like a hyperactive drug dealer always ready to sell you the next big hit thing "you might
likewatch" and according to google itself the last YT revenue was 29.24 billion USD - so, it's not like they are going to sink without it isn't it.So, yeah no thank you. They are doing extremely well, this is just squeezing every penny they can out of normal people so that the line goes up.
If they also stopped selling all my online data as a part of that subscription then I might consider it but it's hard to trust companies these days.
last YT revenue was 29.24 billion USD
That's a huge number, but it is meaningless. It's more important to focus on profit (or net income) and unfortunately those numbers aren't as easy to get. You can see all the financials but while Youtube gets revenue numbers, how much they pay to partners, and they spend on google services isn't itemized.
They are probably operating at a profit, but definitely not 29 billiuon dollars of profit
You don’t have a moral responsibility to pay someone who is selling your time and attention on top of someone else’s work. “The servers aren’t free!” Ok. Landlords are entitled to zero profit. The sooner we get there, the better. That’s the main thing Adam Smith and Marx agree on: rentiers are useless.
They're paying that person for their work if it's making them money and not charging them if it's losing them money.
You don't have a moral responsibility to use their service, but just because it's been free for years, that doesn't mean you have a right to it either.
I pay for YouTube Premium or whatever it’s called (because I hate ads) and I even own some Google shares. It is good for me in a very narrow sense when people watch YouTube ads.
But from a philosophical and economics standpoint, rent-seeking monopolists are bad for society and the economy as a whole, whether it’s a landlord charging rent to productive people, a toll road, or a monopolist dictating terms to productive people for the use of their infrastructure.
Google did not make any of my favorite YouTube videos. They do not give creators anywhere near 100% of the ad revenue. Maybe the split is fair but since they have a monopoly, it’s not. They are the equivalent of pre-capitalist English land barons who added very little (besides maybe some accounting) and took more than their share. YouTube’s profits are a tax on the creator economy in the same way Apple’s App Store tax is terrible for developers. We do not have a moral responsibility to pay taxes to private companies.
I disagree with the classification of "rent seeking". It's a service, with active expenses that you're not paying.
If you buy a toaster, the company that made the toaster isn't paying for the power that made the toast. That's different from say, a ticket to a zoo, a kayaking trip company, mini-golfing, cable, Internet, phone, or the power bill itself.
They do not give creators anywhere near 100% of the ad revenue.
And nobody could, even if you operated your own site, you'd have operating costs.
Maybe the split is fair but since they have a monopoly, it’s not.
I honestly don't even think it's fair to say they have a monopoly. Their service offering is unique, but there are other models that aren't YouTube clones. Reddit, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, and even "X" have video hosting options in slightly different formats.
The lack of a clone of a literal clone of YouTube is not a lack of competition. Additionally YouTube's business model is extremely expensive and requires significant investment in storage.
They are the equivalent of pre-capitalist English land barons who added very little (besides maybe some accounting) and took more than their share. YouTube’s profits are a tax on the creator economy in the same way Apple’s App Store tax is terrible for developers. We do not have a moral responsibility to pay taxes to private companies.
IMO, those are some serious mental gymnastics equating renting land you need to survive, that you're forced to pay to a government entity, or an app store which is the only possible source of apps for an entire operating system vs a website you have the choice to use or not use and that had active and large operating costs because of its extensive catalog of freely uploaded content.
I’m traveling right now but I’m gonna respond to thia and if I don’t, nag me.
No. Capitalists want to own everything. DRM that works is always abused until the product is intolerable to legit end users.
Yo ho! Thieves and beggars!
Never shall we die!You'll get downvoted to oblivion for common sense logic because people's biases are far stronger but who gives a shit about virtual popularity. I agree with you, it's their service, it's their terms. Fuck off if you don't agree. I can see more and more that the Lemmy community loves their own echo chamber and hates anything that goes against it.
I'm with you guys, as I put in another comment:
I'm extremely annoyed with the pro-piracy, sentiment against paid game mods, and general attitude against paying people money for the work they're doing attitude, that I've seen on Lemmy (and in gaming communities) recently. It's like everyone wants to be paid a six figure salary when it comes to their life and then they want to get everything they enjoy on a computer for free.