- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
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Blows my mind that to this day, companies don’t realize it’s a service issue. Like it’s straight up regressed. Adobe and Microsoft used to encourage piracy to help their bottom line. Now you have stupid PMs who realize they can get a good performance review by talking about how much money they’ll make/save from doing stuff like this
Its funny how we cant use VPNs but companies will go to the country with the lowest wages to get workers.
Companies are free to use labor from anywhere, but make sure we can’t get their products from anywhere.
I mean no one is stopping you from moving to another country.
Oooo, lies
I’d rather not use youtube than give them money for it or even sit through their intrusive ads. There are infinite ways to entertain myself.
I mean… that is the point.
Pay for premium, watch ads, or don’t watch at all. You and Google are both in agreement.
Yeah, I’m not sure I agree that YouTube wants their platform to shrink. Even if you don’t watch ads you are still giving them your data which they can monetize.
Personally I would be willing to pay for YouTube premium but not under the current terms. 1. If I’m paying for the service they should no longer collect and sell my data. 2. Allow me to have a YouTube-only account not connected to other Google services and 3. The current pricing is a bit high.
They can offer these terms or I’ll continue to use them logged out with Adblock. Or they can continue to enshitify and eventually their platform will start to shrink which will make the data they sell to advertisers less valuable.
Their platform won’t shrink. You and I may care enough to stop using it (very skeptical personally tbh) but 99.9999999999999999999999 percent of people don’t give a flying fuck and there’s more users being born every day.
I was actually offered by Google to separate my Google Services and their associated data from each other. I immediately took that offer, of course. Might just be an EU thing tho, idk.
Google should have thought of that before trying to paywall the zeitgeist.
If there’s a bouncer holding culture hostage, I’m going to sneak in the backdoor.
That’d be well and good if they didn’t have a monopoly.
It’s not a pure monopoly by choice. While it’s true Youtube has a monopoly in terms of number of creators, viewers and content, it’s still not a profitable venture. I heard it was burning through money to keep up with the sheer amount of content they have to deal with. Youtube is doing all this monetization now because they have ran out of VC money and upper management decided that it needs to be self-sustaining. Even the obscene amount of data Alphabet is gathering from Youtube does not create enough revenue to generate profit. But it’s a “too-big-to-fail” product now so Alphabet will continue to invest. Competitors saw all of this and just noped out.
Other commercial video services, like Nebula, have popped up but they are subscription-oriented right from the get-go, like Netflix. This means they have a very small audience and it will take years to build up an audience like Youtube. So I don’t see them growing, at least in the near future.
This very much feels like disloyal competition. If you burn through your money in the hopes of sweeping out the competitors, and then you have to dial back on your competitor’s practices, it’s a dead giveaway you’ve done something fishy
Yup, but that is quite literally the name of the game in Silicon Valley.
it’s still not a profitable venture
Source? My understanding is that Google doesn’t publish Youtube’s expenses directly but that Youtube has been responsible for 10% of Google’s revenue for the past few years (on the order of $31.5 Billion in 2023) and that it’s more likely than not profitable when looked at in isolation.
I specified intrusive ads. They could have non-intrusive ads, like a little banner or something. Instead they put up multiple video ads before and during videos. No thanks.
Don’t forget after! Man I hate that when I have to sit through an ad if I don’t realize the video is all the way over yet, or I don’t change it in time
I mean, it is great that you have very specific rules in terms of what kind of ads you will tolerate. You should write a letter to John Google about that.
But also? We have been through all this before. Back in the day, ads on websites were incredibly unobtrusive. A small png at the top of the page that everyone skimmed past. But people still wanted to block those because only the evil sites were sellouts who needed to pay for hosting and blah blah blah. Which more or less started the ad war we have going to today. First they were simple jpegs. Then they were animated gifs. Then they were annoying animated gifs. Then they became flash ads. Then they became flash ads about how this shitty age of empires ripoff totally has boobs. And so forth.
Because if people aren’t looking at ads? The people who buy ads know that. So we get ads that are harder to look away from. Until they are ads we can’t look away from because they are embedded in the videos themselves.
And, until we live in a post scarcity society where energy is infinite, it is going to cost money/resources to host web content. Ads are still the closest thing to an “effective” way to pay for a lot of that. And that means a war to have ads that get past ad blockers and ensure eyes get on them.
What really started the ad war was the endless drive for greater profits. Let’s say I accept youtube’s terms and sign up for premium. Sooner or later they will introduce ads into premium as well. We’ve seen this process happen with many other services before. I didn’t start using an ad blocker until quite a bit after pop-ups were rampant and malware-infested ads became an issue. There’s a point where it becomes too much and people will seek out alternatives. An entire generation grew up with convenient streaming services and they’re generally less knowledgeable about piracy than the generation before them. That will likely change as those streaming services continue to jack up prices while making the experience worse all in the name of profit.
Again, there is an endless supply of entertainment these days. If companies think they can endlessly jack up prices and/or worsen the experience, they’re contending with practically infinite supply, the consequences of which are obvious in when it comes to supply vs demand.
Were the ad companies interested in increased profits? Of course they were. But they also aren’t a charity. And when they are buying ad space for a web comic but having zero impressions, they are going to be pissed. They aren’t running a charity (well… some actually ARE but that is a different mess).
Again, this has been going on well before subscription models were even a thing.
That said, I do agree that it is a generational “problem”. Youtube has been around for almost 20 years and, arguably, in its current form for almost 10. Significant parts of the internet have no memory of anything else. Like, my niece and nephew literally throw tantrums when they see tv commercials when their father is watching a football game. Whereas my sister and I remember the fights over who got to use the downstairs bathroom during the second commercial break in The Simpsons that week.
But… I am an old. I remember heartfelt blog posts from some of my favorite webcomics and gaming news sites that were basically “Look. Hosting costs money. Especially as we are getting a lot more popular. I go out of my way to curate what ads we run on this site and have an inbox set up in case a company sneaks a bad one in. Please whitelist me in your ad blocker so I can keep doing this in the evenings”.
And… I dunno. It is just REALLY frustrating to watch people pretend they care about… anything all while dicking over “the little guys”. Because Google is going to get their cut. The pewdiepies of youtube will also get their cuts because they have literally been doing this for years in the form of sponsored videos. But the low/mid tier creators? They aren’t getting the massive sponsor deals (unless they want to do raid shadow legends or better help) AND are going to not be getting their ad revenue or youtube premium money because no ads were run.
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Not quite. Google doesn’t want competition or content creators to be elsewhere.
There is nowhere else. The only other companies that can consider a YouTube scale product already noped out.
There are free alternatives like odysee, but creators have no incentive to move there
A decentralized apporch: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube
Yeah…
How often do images “not load” when browsing lemmy? How often do sites get hugged to death even now? And that is kilobytes of data.
Video is a mother fucker. It always has been. Those of us who are old enough to remember will understand WHY youtube was such a revelation (or why so many porn sites still have a huge thumbnail archive…).
And it is why the various “youtube alternatives” like Nebula or (sex pest adjacent) floatplane don’t have free video. EVERYTHING is paywalled because free video would make their hosting costs increase exponentially.
And yes, in theory, distributed hosting can lessen that burden. Anyone who has played a listen server heavy online game will already understand why that is a pipe dream.
What types of games are listen heavy?
A lot of smaller multiplayer games and older live games. Also a not insignificant number of fighting games.
If you ever noticed rubber banding or games straight up being broken if the wrong player is the host: That is your friendly reminder of how shitty most people’s internet setup actually is. People piggy backing off the starbucks on the first floor is a meme for a reason.
I feel like the true decentralised approach to video that may work… Are torrents. Don’t know if PeerTube works that way, but if you’re allowing people to eat your bandwidth with direct streaming, you’re gonna run into problems sooner or later.
Have you ever tried to torrent something less popular? One seed with shit upload getting ganged up on by ten leeches. Five of which disconnect the second they hit 100%.
Regardless, a torrent-like approach would work for large creators like Michael Reeves where thousands of people are going to be willing to act as seeds indefinitely. Someone like Matt Yuan might be lucky to have enough seeds for the latest two videos.
And it also doesn’t work for anything live. And becomes a huge mess for premiers where people need to wait for the upload to propagate. MAYBE the latter could be handled with pre-seeding with an unlock coming at the release time but… it is a matter of minutes until a kick level creator nopes out by uploading CSAM “for the lolz”
I’ve never seen a company SO devoted to get me to not use their service. $2-$3 a month is worth not seeing ads in my mind. They’ve made their website SO user hostile and their prices are just too damned high to justify paying them - I can just go without.
If I could get Youtube Premium for $2-3, I’d probably pay. I don’t use it enough to justify spending $10 or whatever it is these days, so I block ads. If that stops working, I’ll stop watching Youtube.
I would even pay the 11,99€, in fact I did in the past. Youtube’s algorithms made me stop.
Spotify for example caters to my preferences. It took a bit to train it, but the weekly selection is spot on with lots of a variety, and they don’t try to shove pop music or other mainstream stuff into my face.
YouTube tries to suckme into a shit hole of craziness at every turn. It tries to make people dumber.
How did you manage to make Spotify not a steaming pile of garbage?
It was hard work, but a general rule is to like only songs that you could listen every day to, make playlists for everything else.
That’s definitely what I’ve done, but it recommends country daily despite my immense hatred for it.
You can use NewPipe or Tubular for Android
Also there is https://piped.video/trending for watching in browser and Revanced on Android
And for anyone using YouTube Music there is Desktop app for Linux,MacOS and Windows https://github.com/th-ch/youtube-music
LibreTube is also a good one. Basically an app for piped
NewPipe, no problems.
Is there an automated bot to archive channels from YouTube and upload them to Peertube?
If one does that, be prepared to defend yourself against the copyright infringement lawsuit that’s coming your way eventually.
Read my comment on doing it over TOR. If you have a trusty VPS, encrypt your LVM with LUKS and use that for scratch storage.
There are repos on GitHub that pull the videos and metadata, not sure about posting to Peerhub, though if that’s possible to post via an api you could probably script it easily enough. Likely a risk of other “issues” doing so, but I’m sure some datahoarders could chime in.
I’d run this on a VPS if I could do it over the TOR network (don’t want to get caught with my CC on the line), but there’s the problem of needless duplication if this happens, so it’s likely the best if relevant authors do it themselves
What about renting a VPS itself over Tor using Monero, and then letting the VPS do its work normally in the clear?
Very expensive
BitLaunch lets you rent a VPS with crypto currency
I’d prefer XMR
kycnot.me lists a bunch of providers that accept XMR directly.
Same, but you can always use Trocador to convert your XMR to other coins. Alternatively there are some ways to anonymously acquire BTC.
Had never heard of it, thanks. I prefer DEXes for crypto (XMR only now)
It’s not perfect, there are some conversion fees, but it should be ok. I use it from time to time to pay for my seedbox.
Not that I know of but I could create something. I would feel icky if I didn’t get the creators approval first however.
Man I knew something like this was going to happen. Just be glad Google doesn’t block your access to all their services or just outright delete your account. On the bright side, you’d be set free.
I’d have expected this to happen years ago.
Makes sense and probably all companies that do regional pricing have a rule for this, Steam explicitly states to not do this as well
You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to order or purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account.
Thinking how this affects the people living in those countries is the best solution
So a person is not allowed to be part of their home country and get service and then move? What if their job stays the same and they don’t make any extra? Evil google.
They are perfectly free to do that. They just have to resubscribe from their new home country at the new rate. Just like with telephone service or cable tv. It’s not like they will get in trouble or would be prevented from moving.
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I realize they charge what people are willing to pay, but can someone explain to me why YouTube costs just a couple USD a month in some countries and almost $20 a month in the US?
Are operating costs cheaper in those countries? Are they taking a loss in those counties? Or are they just price gouging in the US?
If they raise the prices in those countries they would make less money because volume of subscribers would go down enough for total income to decrease.
If they lowered the price in the US, they would make less money because the subscribers they would gain would not be enough to offset the reduced income from each.
That’s it, it has nothing to do with operating costs or fairness, it’s just a question of what price point they believe will make them the most money in a given market.
Thanks. That’s something I hadn’t thought of.
I’m sort of more moderate when it comes to paying Google to access YouTube. I’m happy to pay for products that I use. I want Google and creators to be rewarded for services rendered, but the prices are double what they should be.
I’m one of the people who used the VPN to get Premium at an affordable rate even though I have Ublock and know about other options.
My Premium account did get canceled. I was able to sign back up via another location, but if they push me out again, I would just revert to adblockers.
I suspect other users who signed up with a VPN are like me. We are the few who know how to get around the ads but want to pay, if we can. Just a guess though.
In theory the service operating costs could be spread across region differences such that in other areas it was at a loss to build and preserve market share and in richer areas it was making up for that.
But yes, in reality it’s just exploitative “what we think we can get away with” pricing to “maximize shareholder value” (which is largely BS as the vast holders of shares are very small clusters of the population but people with a handful of shares in their 401k think that statement is talking about them).
Well they are charging a premium for the service everywhere and more so in certain countries which can afford it but a big part is that in some countries people may only earn a few USD a day so they would not be able to afford it otherwise. I can’t speak on whether or not they are taking a loss in those countries, but i can’t imagine that they have a problem due to existing infrastructure from google all across the world.
Okay? Just shoot yourself in the foot then.
If you pay for YouTube premium, you’re a clown and you’re only fueling the enshittification.
Ads are bad (I agree).
Paying for things is bad.
Then what’s left? YouTube should somehow be ad free and free of cost for the user forever and ever? Who’s gonna pay for the enormous costs of operating the service?
People are going to start yelling at me about capitalism and enshitiffication. Both of which cause problems, but what do you propose here? Magic?
I propose YouTube make a MUCH better premium product and price it correctly. Paying for things is fine. Paying for things to get crappier? Na
How is YouTube getting crappier for me as a paying customer? I feel like it hasn’t really changed in years.
Glad you enjoy it. Keep doing your thing. But are you seriously deaf to the rising chorus of complaints about YouTube? This thread contains many examples of youtube’s enshitification over the few couple years. Your question feels disingenuous at best to me
Name one complaint, other than blocking people with ad blockers. How has the actual product changed?
Price increases
Inability to remove shorts from homescreen (decision reversed due to consumer outcry)
The death of Google music
Inability to purchase only YouTube music
The worsening of recommendations/algorithm pointing to more crap content
Increased family plan sharing restrictions
4k premium only (decision reversed due to consumer outcry)
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I’m not opposed to paying for online services in general, I’m just not going to pay them to make the site worse with every update. (Plus I kinda categorically refuse to give Google money at this point.)
I’ll still call someone a clown for paying even if I’m able to acknowledge that someone has to hold the bag. Just ain’t gonna me or hopefully anyone I care about.
Youtube might be the literal most valuable site in my life, up there with Wikipedia and search engines.
A large part of my payment also goes to the channels I view.
Really? I watch very little Youtube, so I’d rather not use it than pay $10+ for it. I’m currently able to block ads, so I’ll watch as long as that’s an option.
Yeah, it has news, educational, and entertaining content. It’s a lot of value for me.
Unpopular opinion, but I also use YouTube almost exclusively.
It has my podcasts, my political livestreamers, late night shows, and multiple channels that I follow.
I also enjoy YouTube music as well.
I bought a full year, which lowers the price a little.
If you watch ads instead of paying a modest fee to remove them then you’re a clown. Companies do need to make money for the services they provide, I just disagree with the amount.
“Modest?” $14 a month? $5 would be modest. I literally pay less for whole as streaming services.
I’d probably pay $5, and I’d certainly pay $2-3. But I don’t watch enough to justify $10+/month.
If you watch enough youtube per month to see an hour of ads and you can’t block ads for some reason, you may actually be losing time/money by not paying the subscription. That said, there are ad blockers for almost every platform so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find one that works.
I pay less than 5usd for a family plan, I just subscribed through a developing nation with a VPN.
Which, as the article states, they are starting to end that practice.
That was my comment about the amount that should be charged. I’ll happily pay $5/mo, but not $15. I’m happy to pay for services, just not the amount that many want to charge.
Less reason to subscribe then!
If you have an iPhone or iPad you don’t even need to use a VPN to get cheap Premium. Just make an new Apple ID with an Indian address, top it up by buying a digital Apple Card on Amazon.in and redeeming it to your Indian account in iTunes on a computer. Then on your iPad or iPhone go to your Apple ID in the settings, log out of Media and Purchases and login with the Indian account. Then you can buy Premium in the YouTube app with your Rupees, you don’t even need to change your YouTube account.
I can do even better. I can hook you up with a free lifetime account, but I’m having a problem with my bank account this week. But I’ll send you $6000 dollars if you just send me $5000 back. Yeah I know it sounds weird but I’m really not hard up for cash I just can’t get my cash out of the bank at this moment so I need your help. Hit me up and we’ll figure something out, and I’ll get you that free lifetime subscription.
/s missing
