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Honestly, I just use the internet less. I'm never going to pay. I can't be bothered with the loopholes anymore. If it bugs me to pay or subscribe, I leave. I'm fine with them not wanting me as a user, and I hope they're fine with me not wanting them as a supplier. They don't have anything that I actually need that badly.
Oddly enough I probably use the internet more than ever. It's just not that internet.
If youtube was a reasonable price I'd pay it. But being google, they not only charge a ridiculous price, but even if you pay that, they'll STILL sell your data on top.
Furthermore, it being a public company no profit will ever be enough. It doesn't matter if I paid 30$ a month, the next quarter the 30 billion profit won't be enough because it didn't grow from the previous quarter...
Fuck all that.
And if you buy any hardware from Google, count on it being discontinued and unsupported within a year. Anyone who continues to buy shit from Google is either deluded or a fool, or both.
Google fanboys are just as stupid as Apple fanboys. It's like watching two morons fight each other. These mega corps give no fucks about you.
I got a Pixel 5a refurbished because it's supported by LineageOS. Like a week after buying it I dropped it, cracking the screen. Got on iFixit, ordered a replacement screen, and once it got here spent an evening installing it. No regrets. But I am a fool, so that tracks.
My next phone will be a Fairphone now that they work with US carriers, though.
Weirdly, the only parts of the Internet that I'm really liking these days are Hacker News, Lemmy and the one part that I do pay for, which is Kagi Ultimate. It is very refreshing not to be the product and I do occasionally need to use a search engine for something.
Kagi AstroTurfing needs to stop.... Fuck off.
SearxNG. FOSS, selfhostable. Don't pay for a search engine.
Unfortunately it piggybacks of googles and co's indexing. What happens if we succeed as a FOSS movement and google goes under?
People genuinely like Kagi. I dont really see the problem
I doubt 1% of the comments are genuine users and not themselves botting/faking comments just to inject advertising.
I recommend Kagi at every opportunity, but am sometimes afraid of people assuming its astroturfing like this and not my real opinion.
Thats just downright conspiratorial
Yeah YouTube brings me a ton of value and I wouldn't mind paying a bit for it.
Not $14 a month though.
I'm so done with "browsing" YouTube. I also hardly ever click the links anymore when people post them here, and that is because of the ads.
There are some good channels that I occasionally checkout whenever I'm really bored, and I absolutely don't mind them getting the ad revenue like any other free tv show, but it's nothing that I can't do without.
In my opinion, good YT channels who make quality content ought to apply for other mean of distribution that doesn't scare away viewers. Let's say that f.i. Numberphile, Veritasium or Primitive Technology were on Netflix or even Disney+, I'd prefer to watch it there. That's how bad YouTube is.
If YouTube managed to get part of the all-in deals that I have on the other "real" streaming services, then they'd get some fraction of whatever my cellphone carrier pays to those. Right now I just don't want to bother with it.