Agreed. I've probably got a few thousand hours on youtube, more than just about everything else. It's immensely valuable, yet I refuse to pay for Youtube. Not quite sure why.
I'm perfectly happy paying for two $5 coffees a month that I hardly remember consuming, just because I was perched and a bit tired while on a walk in the city. I pay $25 for a more comfy seat for a 3 hour flight. I pay $15 for a single movie ticket, and another $15 for $3 worth of snacks. I pay $30 for a 30 minute cutting of my hair. I pay $20 for a 3 minute slingshot at the fair. I pay $30 for a 20min taxi.
Yet I refuse to pay $14 for Youtube that I use 30 hours a month, because with adblockers I don't have to. And if Youtube makes adblocking awful enough, I simply will pay. As annoying as youtube ads are, I'd never think to complain about them because it has an easy solution.
> There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for premium. It's 100% effective and works right now.
For now. With the ever increasing number of "premium" services that promised no ads, but slowly start introducing them, it is just a matter of time before YouTube does the same.
Yeah the problem for YouTube is that they bundle a bunch of other services with the premium package. They occasionally conduct surveys to gauge user awareness of these features. I myself don’t use any of them, just the ad-free experience.
Thus trying to reintroduce ads to the premium users will remove the only reason I’m paying for it in the first place.
Not the poster, but the point I think that Google is engaging in a clear-cut bait and switch. First, "free email, good UX", "free video hosting, minimal ads". Then, once the dependency sets in, use a standard playbook of degrading the lower tiers and charging for removing the inconveniences.
I am not claiming that Google is the only company doing that; it is not. But there is a reason that bait and switch is illegal in most places. My 2c.
This is not bait and switch, going by the definition on the Wikipedia page. It's closer to 'dumping' where goods or services are supplied below cost to drive out competitors.
> There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for premium. It's 100% effective and works right now.
It may be effective at not showing you ads on YouTube specifically, but then you’re helping Google build a more accurate profile on you (from your watch habits) to exploit further. Personally, I’m not comfortable with that because Google has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted.
I would pay for Nebula.tv if it had a few other specific creators.
Using YouTube enough for ads to bother someone does not imply it’s “enough” to pay for. There’s nothing paradoxical about it.
Humans don’t value things as a binary decision between it either being worth it as free or equal to the cost it’s being sold at. Everyone has a price point for a service they think is fair, for which they’ll start seeking alternatives when exceeded. This is how markets work.
Time spent does not correlate with cost-independent value. This is doubly true with social media platforms.
Requires getting out a credit card. Even simpler is an ad blocker.
As for the ethics of ad blocking, I'll consider unblocking ads when Google stops with the unethical (think Tai Lopez) and downright malicious ads (deepfakes of Elon suggesting to invest in crap like "Quantum AI"), and only then will I reconsider removing the blocker and maybe even paying.
Put simply, ad blockers provide a safer browsing experience.
Of course it's nicer to get stuff for free. Leeching is leeching, though, no matter how you try to justify it. Maybe you can find some alternative way to support the creators of the content you seem to be enjoying.
I'm very skeptical about this statement.
There is a simple way to stop watching ads: pay for premium. It's 100% effective and works right now.
What you are saying is that you want Google to make your ad experience better because you don't want to pay money to use their service.
You somehow use it enough for ads to bother you but not enough to pay for it.
This paradoxal type of user is too common and makes no sense to me.