If you come from a third world country I get it, but many of us here do not. $12 is less than half an hour of work for even middle class Americans and Europeans.
I guess if you don’t even watch YouTube I don’t understand why you are even in this thread.
—-
It is not just $12/month for YouTube that is the problem most people have to budget for all their content consumption between streaming services, sports subscriptions , music subs, newspapers you can easily spend upwards of $300/month , that is not including other productivity tools Saas you could end paying for like o365 , Dropbox and so on .
YT would be the one easiest to cut because you won’t loose access just have to put up with some ads unlike everything else .
For many not seeing ads is not worth $12 a month , for some like you the value is enormous so you see it as worth paying .
—-
I personally stopped paying for YT premium because I get most of the content from Nebula what I used YT for, at 1/10th the cost.
Also there is no way to disable Shorts and they won’t improve the by design poorer implementation on Firefox; both these make my experience using the platform poor even if I pay for it so I don’t bother.
I have only reasonably included couple of options in each category, you could mix and match preferences and use different providers or may get deals and it is part of combo with some other plan , however you will still be in this range.
- Streaming: ($121) (Prime, Apple have other uses bundled, Disney is undroppable if you have kids)
- Disney+ (ESPN, Hulu, Disney) - $20
- Netflix - $16
- Paramount+ - $12
- Max (HBO) - $20
- Peacock (NBC) - $10
- Apple Tv+ (via Apple One ) - $23
- Nebula - $5
- Amazon Prime $15
- MLS - $13
- NBA - $20
- Spotify(podcasts,list: $10
- YT music: $15
- Audible: 15
- NYTimes ( or main newspaper) : $16
- Bloomberg/FT ( or business daily): $25
- Economist/New Yorker (or other long form magazines): $20
On top you could be paying for
- any game network subscriptions like PlayStation Plus maybe $20-40
- one time purchases for movies/ games etc in addition to Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+ plans when they not included perhaps another $100 every month
- cable/internet/Mobile plans which are another ~ $200 easily
- Patreon/ podcasts or other creator specific subscriptions
- other personal productivity apps you may pay for (o365, Dropbox, email etc) maybe another $100
It's a strange argument anyway, nobody buys something simply because it's only an hour of work. The internet offers me a hundred subscriptions every day, if I buy them all because they're just 10 bucks I'm broke. Whatsapp cost 1$ once and they even dropped that because although it's great value, what matters is that none of it is exclusive.
More over, i'm constantly of the defensive with it. If i click on an impulse video -- aka one i watch guiltily but would rather not make a habit out of it -- Youtube disregards other videos i'd much rather watch and now gives me repeated videos of that one thing. I open a fair bit of stuff in Incognito just to avoid Youtube polluting my feed.
I think i'd happily pay $3/m for what i get. But generally it's not close to $12/m for me, especially when i don't feel like it's working for me.
I use YouTube far less than Netflix, Disney, Amazon, bbc, all of which are cheaper. Many YouTube videos come with burnt in adverts too.
I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. Of course Floatplane subscribers get the sponsorships edited out, that's the benefit of being a sponsor.
LTT was worried about their Youtube dependence, so created Floatplane. The fact of the matter is they wouldn't be in existence without Youtube and would probably die, even with Floatplane now existing.
There's no evidence anywhere that Youtube is dying.
~15€/mo and my family doesn't have to watch ads, we get YouTube music (not missing Spotify at all TBH) - that's well worth the money.
If you're a student or working low paid job I can understand - but on a site mostly for software professionals and startups ?
I currently pay for premium to avoid ads myself, so you don't get to call me any freeloader names while I complain that despite paying I still have to suffer shorts and utter shit suggestions and embedded sponsor ads and having to answer a ridiculous 2fa prompt on my phone every single time just because I use firefox in medium private mode , and annoying things like hiding downvotes, and serious things like censoring and invalid dmca takedowns and algorithmic promiting/hiding, etc.
Now, if Youtube was an independent company, that'd be a different story. But it isn't, so µBlock it is.
I suppose ultimately I am arguing that $12/month isn't "cheap" because it's really "$12/month and whatever time you spend on it". I used to dump so much free time into things like TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, and I am grateful their leadership answers to greedy millionaire/billionaire venture capitalists who can barely tell a mouse and keyboard apart.