Holy greed!

So sad there are no free alternatives such as NewPipe that do exactly the same thing.

The monthly savings from boycotting youtube continue to rise.

Uhm, so what extra value to subscribers did they add recently? Is it just a case of Google's costs going up or simply their need to make more profit to delight shareholders?

I have a YouTube premium subscription for one reason: I travel a lot and you can't put an adblocker on an old hotel TV that only has the YouTube app

Once I get to travel less, I'll go back to only using ublock origin and sponsorship block.

They emailed me thanking me for being a part of their journey for so long and as a gift they are delaying my rate going up by 3 months. Cool…..

First they try to block ad blockers, now they milk their users even more. Who didn’t see it coming? I guess people will just pay up.

Sucks for me. I use iOS (I'm sorry) and that's the original reason I got YouTube Red (back then): they make iOS users pay for background playback. Most of my YT consumption is documentary / essay / spoken word stuff so I need that feature to treat it like a podcast player, basically. Most of the rest of my YT consumption is in my living room, where ad blocking isn't an option (and I hear even if it was, they're catching up fighting ad blockers).

I hate the Web 2.0 "enshitification" of platforms, and I hate advertisements, and I'm willing to pay for a good, useful service. But this is a mixed bag. It's still 'enshitified' because most of what it serves me is algorithmic and nothing to do with the hundreds of channels I've subscribed to over the 13 years I've had this particular account. It's still chock full of ads because videos do sponsor blocks these days.

And the worst of it is they've got you by the balls and there's really nothing stopping them from being Netflix and just continuing to raise and raise the price. I was an OG Netflix Instant Streaming for Xbox 360 user...years later when they finally booted me off my own family plan, we were paying like...$23 a month? For what had at that point become the worst video service? What stops YouTube from bumping up to $19.99/mo a couple years from now? It's the only game in town.

OH and they're also selling all your metrics. That's the other thing. If I'm paying (through the nose) for a service, it shouldn't be double-fucking me by selling predictive measures of who I am and what I care about to filthy fucking "advertisers" (for-profit behavior manipulators).

YouTube (like every last piece of Web 2.0) was fun while it lasted. But it is now barely better than worthless.

These services think people get their money from trees. Also seriously who even pays for YouTube Premium? There are both adblockers and website download tools, both of which are completely free.

Wait, what the FUCK!?!

This price increase is live for new subscribers as seen on youtube.com/premium. Instead of $11.99, YouTube Premium now costs $13.99/month. Meanwhile, it’s $18.99 if you’re subscribing from the iOS YouTube app.

I’ve been paying $4/month over market rate this whole time?

I'm still not going to subscribe, weren't they worried about the amount of subscribers the other week!?

I've pre-emptively raised my ReVanced usage to 100% so IDRC.

Oh well, too late to join now. Thought about that subscription in the past, but now it’s clearly out of the question.

So... another 50 cents if purchased through India?

Price hikes suck but; I'm happy with YT premium, we watch a lot on TV (apple tv) and I skip between ipad and iphone every day. By all means if there's an EASY alternative that doesn't involve some janky bedroom api side loading jailbreaking shiz, i'm all ears though...

I had some crappy youtube thing on firestick before I upgraded to appletv and it was crap, ad free was nice but it was horrible and would always stop working in some form or fashion, it was a pain to maintain so I just paid for prem in the end.

I never watch on PC outside of short tutorial videos so browser addons are kinda redundant.

Oh no. Anyway.

Anybody on this thread on iOS, check out Vinegar. It’s a Safari extension for YouTube that converts the YT media player to a generic iOS one, removing ads and allowing PiP and other stuff. Best 2-ish bucks I’ve ever spent.

Oh I thought about subscribing for a couple of months, then again I have cancelled Netflix because money is tight. Now I have another reason not to subscribe to YT Premium.

Thanks, Google!