I will pay for premium when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities. Since they won't change, I won't pay.
when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities
The problem is that this will never happen. That boat has sailed - companies will never give up on their existing revenue streams. They may say that paying today will exempt you from the ads, but it's only a matter of time before they ramp up the cost and start showing ads anyway. That's how cable television started, and it's how internet streaming will end as well. And as for the not selling data/controlling the algorithm, well you have no way of proving that they don't do that so they'll do it no matter what they say.
There's no reason for google to do this whatsoever. They have their business model - any new revenue streams will 100% definitely not reduce the other ones at all. It's just gonna be another giant dump into the pile of enshittification.
I also want to be charged the amount they actually make off of me. I suspect that's less than the subscription price
Not to be rude, but I'm struggling to believe half the comments in this thread are legit. Do you really mean to tell me that Lemmy, a platform notoriously populated almost exclusively by anti-corporate tech people that really value FOSS and privacy –hence the reason why all of us are here instead of Reddit– has this many users thinking it is a remotely acceptable idea to pay for a Premium service for one of the most invasive companies online?
I think most of us understand the many underhanded techniques used by Google to achieve an almost monopolistic control of some aspects of the internet, but when talking about YouTube, suddenly all the logic is reduced to "if you use a service, pay for it, or else let them show you ads"?? what????? Also, what's with comparing adblocking to stealing????
My own answer to the topic of this thread is that no, I won't be paying for YouTube Premium anytime soon, possibly ever. Google has betrayed my trust many times in the past, and on top of that I don't consider adverts as a legitimate source of income, so I will block any and all ads everywhere without paying an extra cent.
"But if you keep using their service, so you need to give them some form of revenue! Otherwise you just want free stuff!" I only keep using their service because Google has spent many years dumping on other platforms so that YouTube is –almost– the only platform that still exists where all the good creators are, so I will begrudgingly watch them on YouTube because there aren't any options. But I will resist Google's many insidious attempts to monetize me to the best of my ability while doing so.
That said, it's really dishonest to claim that people who block ads on YouTube just want free stuff and don't understand that services have a cost. Personally, I pay for Nebula because I do support the project and the creators involved. But YouTube won't see a cent from me, not with my consent at least.
Not everyone is on Lemmy because they're anti-corporate, FOSS enthusiasts. For example, I came here because Reddit became a dumpster fire of unreasonable policies and very restrictive accessibility to the site. I simply will not install their app. Everything I've seen and heard about it is revolting. I'm certain I will hate it and I'm not going to bother trying at this point. Since a nontrivial amount of my time on Reddit was via an app, and that app no longer works, I'm just not going to use the service.
I like FOSS, and I support FOSS whenever I can, but I'm hardly anti corporate. The big G has tried and failed at getting monopoly status for most things. Arguably their most successful services are search, mail and YouTube.
Me, personally, I pay for Google's services and share those benefits with my family. We have extra Google drive storage, YouTube music/YouTube premium, and all the benefits that come with that (I don't recall all of them right now). One payment takes care of my entire household. So for less than $20/month we all enjoy all the benefits of those subscriptions. It comes out to less than $5/person/month.
I don't blame anyone for not wanting those services. I certainly don't hold that against them. I completely understand the viewpoint. YouTube is very aggressive about everyone having premium. I see ads on YouTube when I'm using it on my work PC for music or to look something up on there; because my personal Google account is not and will never be associated to my work PC. I see what it's like "on the other side" so to speak. I can see how aggro their efforts are to get people to subscribe to premium. How invasive the ads have become, and how annoying it is to deal with all that. I get it.
I also don't really hate Google for it. They want people to buy their premium service and they have taken steps to try to encourage that. I understand, but I don't necessarily agree with their choices.
In my mind they're not the most egregious offender for being anti consumer in their methodology. Good examples of anti-consumer behaviour is Netflix trying to put an end to account sharing, or Reddit's API changes that basically kicked out a nontrivial number of its users for seemingly no good reason. There's plenty more anti consumer actions from other companies that I can point to that are far worse than what YouTube is doing.
In my mind, Google has supported FOSS more than most big tech companies. Android, at it's core is FOSS, built on Linux. Chrome is based on chromium, which is FOSS as well. There's numerous other examples of Google supporting FOSS. Sure, they have their own versions of that integrate Google services into the products and provide extra features on top of what the FOSS versions do. But I can't think of any company that even comes close to the support of FOSS that Google has. In my mind they're simply not the worst offender. They're not innocent, but not the worst.
That's my opinion though and it's just one of many possible opinions. Far be it for me to impose my opinion on anyone else. If you want to distrust Google and use FOSS things instead, that's fine. It's your choice. If you agree but still don't want to pay them for premium, that's okay too. Or if you want to drink the Kool-aid and pay for all of their services, that's also your choice.
Have a great day.
I'm only here 'cause it was the first lemmy instance I joined after the reddit bullshit.
I pay for YT Premium.
I'm also back on reddit arguing with people.
So, yeah... I'm everything this place hates.
"They do want to pay for premium! They just don't understand what a great value it is! SHOW THEM THE AD AGAIN! SHOW THEM ON EVERY VIDEO SO THEY WILL UNDERSTAND!!! "
Im not holding my breath for someone to start hosting petabytes of videos for free. I don’t like ads, so I’m just going to pay.
imagine paying to remove ads
Reasons not to buy premium:
I pay for a premium account and I get more value out of it than Netflix or any other streaming service.
People are out to lunch on this whole situation. Try running a service that hosts somewhere between 2 and 3 billion Gigabytes of data. Where basically anyone on the planet can upload gigs of video and YouTube will still make it available 10 years later. You are never going to crowd source that, ever. I also pay for premium and I get at least 5x the value of any other streaming service. Just on home renovations, it's probably saved me 10k+ being able to watch tutorials about every kind of repair.
you're not putting the bar very high there
ITT: "it costs more than 5 bucks a month!" yeah, if you don't share with friends with family, it does. Also, music service included, deduct your spotify payment.
"You can just block ads" You can just miss the whole point.
"I rather support creators directly" I'm happy you do that. YouTube hosting is not free for Google/Alphabet, pay them too, or you'll have to teach each and every creator how to webhost + help em search a "real job" because selfhosted won't pay enough. Also, good fun browsing videos then.
IDK man, paying for YT Premium really isn't that bad. Assuming you already consume YouTube content, that is. And I'm pretty sure that's like 98% of first world population between 4 and 70.
Blocking ads on YouTube is no sustainable solution. Hosting Billions of Gigabytes of on-demand content is SUPER expensive. Like, it actually costs money. Other, wayyy smaller indie creator on-demand video platforms charge 5 bucks a month, but i'ts okay if they do it, because they aren't big bad Alphabet.
If that's your view, you don't have a problem with pricing, you have a problem with morals. And if you still do voluntarily consume YouTube content in private, with or without ads in any which way, you inarguably have a huge problem with your own morals.
YouTube premium is a good deal. It's priced very well compared with competition, it actually does pay indie creators and it let's you access to features that many users really do use.
BUTBUT THEY ARTIFICIALLY LIMIT FEATURES FOR NO REASON WITHOUT PREMIUM. I mean, it's subscription software and streaming, what else would they do? Every for profit subscription software provider and their mother does this. I develop hospital software and we literally do exactly this. If hospital A has feature x and hospital B also wants that, we don't just hand that out for free even when we just have to add it to their system in like 10 minutes... what did you expect? They already use our software (like you use YouTube), we don't have a huge incentive to just randomly add features if nobody paid for it. If we do, be happy about it, send me a gift card, if we or they don't, that's just business.
5 bucks? If only.. It's 12 euros per month here, which is simply too expensive for the kind of content I watch on YT. Especially considering the amount of baked in product placement (VPN, diet plans, that kind of crap) that I come across, I'm not paying that kind of money just to still get hammered with commercials. Sorry, but YouTube Premium is a bad deal here.
Why would I pay YouTube that when I can give it directly to the creators though. I'll just adblock and not put money in the hands of Google, while helping the creators more.
Without the content delivery system, creators don't really have a way to share their creations with you.
5 bucks? I am in. But it’s 16 swiss francs. That’s just too much for me as I don’t need Youtube Music.
The problem is that they actually don't mean that. And truthfully I don't mind the idea of paying for video hosting, that shit's expensive, but YouTube is going about it in the worst way possible.
slowing my buffer down is not how you get me to turn of my adblocker. no thanks.
No no, we mean it, at least at that price. I'd be willing to kick YouTube a few bucks a month. I'm not going to pay them more per month than most MMOs. They're trying to charge streaming service prices for content they don't produce.
YT Premium is the single most valuable subscription service on the net right now. Don't regret mine a bit. I listen to hours and hours of YT Music a day, and I watch probably a few hours of YT content a night as well.
You say that today. Give it a couple years. I'm pretty sure that by 2030, the cost will be ~100 dollars/euros/whatever per month and you'll see 2 minutes of ads for every single minute of content you watch. (Okay, maybe the number of ads is an exaggeration, but I don't think the monthly cost is.)
Don't pay the Danegeld. It never makes them go away.
Paying a business to provide a service you use is not ransom.
"They might raise prices later" is an idiotic reason not to pay for something.
If I compare the usage of Netflix vs Youtube
Last 7 days (from right now): 24h 30min
Last time I used Netflix in a high volume: Probably <12h. At absolute highest maybe 18-20h in total.
But: YT usage is consistant. Netflix/service of choice is at best a seasonal happening if a show is very good and you binge it.
So to me it's worth it enough to keep. But I'd want to have an option to remove music as I prefer Spotify, have optionally Jellyfin and dont need yt music.
I pay for YouTube Premium. I didn't really want that, I just wanted YouTube Music, but it didn't make sense to just pay for YT Music. I don't want Spotify and Amazon Music kinda sucks so YT music worked best.
1 Ad - Fine. 2 Ads - Ok. 3 Ads - Closed YouTube.
I read everyone bitching about the ads but I don't get them, and I have access to an awesome music streaming service too.. you know, cause I have premium..
They should include sponsorblock with youtube premium, I won't pay 12€ per month to watch more ads than on free tv. Youtube doesn't even make their own content. 5€ max for youtube would be okay with no ads.
Absolutely. 5$,sponsor block, no ads and no music premium bullshit. I don't want it.
Edit: I forgot! Give me the fucking downvote count back so I can quickly know which videos are bullshit you assholes!
Haha yea, shame on them for trying to transition to a business model that's actually a great value for the customer compared to other music and video playforms, no longer relies on datamining customers to maximize ad-effectiveness, and brings in more income for creators than ads ever did...
It's a totally stupid idea, YT should just eat the costs and be subsidized by Google search revenue forever.
Why can't we just keep taking from the platform while its expenses are covered by some shrinking group of shmucks who don't know about ad-blockers yet, drowning in commercials?
/S
I don't understand this outlook. Like, sure, you can use adblock. One person stealing a mars bar isn't gonna hurt Walmart... But if literally everyone just took their shopping cart home, never once paying, Walmart would just... Cease to exist.
What makes people think that math is any different for online services?
no longer relies on data mining customers to maximize ad effectiveness
You're an idiot if you believe they won't do that anyway.
YouTube premium has millions of users and it makes them literally billions of dollars. There is no boulder.
I had YouTube when it was YouTube red and I was a part of a family plan with my friend for a couple years. I split the family plan with a few people and ended up paying $3 a month. Eventually he moved across country and YouTube said that since we didn't have the same IP address that I could not be a part of the family plan so I ended up signing up for my own account. At some point I was trying to pay off my debt so I cancelled all my subscription services. YouTube premium included. I started watching YouTube and then I saw it. An ad. Something I hadn't seen in years. It was the most annoying thing ever. I couldn't believe that people put up with that. I was so annoyed by the ads that I looked at how to obtain YouTube and YouTube music for free without ads because I needed to save the money and the ads were so intrusive that this was what I was going to do and that is what I still do to this day.
I would be fine paying for a YouTube premium account if I could get one for like $3-4 that just removes the ads. I don't want their music service.
But then you have to pay $5 for every funkin service, I use dozens of platforms, that's going to be $100 a month for all of it. It simply isn't feasible, and frankly, this is a systemic capitalist issue, and we need to revolt and tear it down.
Paying for spy-ware,
how dense do they think we are?!
Let Google rot :)
Google really is the king of "you don't REALLY mean 'no'. Try again."
Time to switch to private invidious/piped instances been using it myself with Yattee app on iOS
I would pay if it were more a more affordable price.
I haven’t browsed apps in ages so idk if it’s still common, but I remember lots of apps having a lite version and a paid version. Lite version has ads and a sometimes couple less features. Full version ad-free and potential extra features.
I liked that. Let me decide if I enjoyed the app enough to pay for the better version.
Before Reddit went down in a fire, I paid premium even though I already had adblocker and no need for the premium features. And I would do the same for YouTube now, if it wasn’t so high priced.
I am consciously learning now what I think I subconsciously already knew. If I value something enough, pay for it. And I DO value YouTube’s videos. The current cost is just a bit uncomfortably steep for a monthly subscription fee.
