I agree the ads are obnoxious, but hosting YouTube is incredibly expensive, and online ads are incredibly cheap so... Even if they _weren't_ being greedy there would need to be A LOT of ads to compensate for the hosting & engineering costs.
Like... If you hate the ads THAT MUCH, but want to continue using the service, why not just pay for the service?
(side note: you also get streaming music (YouTube Music) when you pay for YouTube which is a nice bonus.)
It's a prisoners dilemma. The honest ones (who pay for YouTube premium) lost the most.
I always thought it was suspicious that all these tech companies survived for decades without being profitable. Now that ZIRP is over and they have to actually be profitable, it all makes sense.
Whats the alternative?
Do you have an idea about how much does it cost to run a website like YouTube?
I learned of an alternative recently, Nebula. One issue there is discovery, I consume a bit of youtube and had never heard of it before. The only reason I noticed it was Strange Parts mentioned it in his last episode and that he posted a new video there that will not show up on youtube for a bit. The first problem is discovery. YouTube is really great for content creators as they can get discovered with the massive amount of viewership.
The second problem is how much it pays. I tried to get a better idea of Nebula's model but this recent thread with the founder really did not answer the question for me. Felt like a redirection then just getting down into the economics of it. I would be curious what the actual per viewer income is between the two. We can immediately assume though that YouTube is paying more in total. They have the network with all the viewers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nebula/comments/16qeup8/does_nebula...
At the end of the day I would happily use something else but imo there really is nothing else that exactly serves the purpose. The majority of content creators are on YouTube in some form with only a very minority that have totally left it and done their own thing.
If you appear to be purchasing from Turkey (Türkiye), for example, then you’ll only be paying 29.99 Turkish Lira, or about £0.90, per month.
Well worth it for an ad-free experience (and picture-in-picture) in the native app imo.
There was (loud) sound, and half the information was buried under ads for certain pages.
Me being a teenager back then, decided I've had enough after a late night gaming session with friends ended with a stupid website screaming in my ear to buy a new car.
I installed an ad blocker and since then my web experience is (mostly) ad free.
When I see ads I immediately know what NOT to buy. I feel I've already paid with my lifetime, so I am not going to add (haha) money on top
Especially since you've been actively avoiding advertisements.
Follow-up: If you like someone's YouTube content, how would you suggest they be compensated?
- Netflix
- Hulu
- Prime (coming)
Since I got AdGuardHome on my network ads started to be very very very aggressive on YouTube so I just gave up and paid for it since I use it extensively during the day.
For Android, consider using "NewPipe x SponsorBlock x Return YouTube Dislike" [1]
The single view is not much worth - I estimate the streaming costs are quite high (think of all the bandwith you need for 4k/8k streaming with low latency).
Sadly I couldn't find numbers for YT profit.
Also i get to chose what runs on my machines, not them.
Wait, now that i think about it i wouldn't. I would rather give that money directly to few creators i watch, instead of them getting 0.01% of that.
How many would they continue using it, 5%? ~20% max the most?
It replaces the text 'skip ads' with 'Fuck Off'. That's it "
Okay then. Fun for 30 seconds. :)
