• kamen@lemmy.world
    161·
    7 days ago

    Ads aside, what’s been infuriating me lately is that YouTube seems to have degraded the quality of existing videos and locked the previously available quality behind the “1080p Enhanced Bitrate”; I have no way of confirming this since I obviously don’t have Premium, but I’m fairly sure that the regular 1080p of old videos that I rewatch from time to time (uploaded 2-3 years ago or earlier) is now worse than it was. If it was about new uploads with something previously unavailable, it would’ve been somewhat understandable. Something also tells me that the paid tier is also going to get ads eventually.

    • lastweakness@lemmy.world
      51·
      7 days ago

      From everything I’ve read, it seems they didn’t actually reduce quality and it’s just placebo from the introduction of the premium bitrate option.

      • kamen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Could be, I don’t know. I doubt that video creators would go through all of these old videos just to update them to a slightly higher bitrate; the other possibility is that YouTube kept the original uploads or higher bitrate variants without previously showing them (and only showed them now), but that seems like a huge waste of storage, so it seems unlikely to me. Again, we’re talking about old uploads (2-3 or up to 10 years ago), not new ones.

        The one thing I’ve seen that makes sense is updating old videos that were previously available at up to 480p and bringing them up to 720p or 1080p (with the idea of keeping the original published video with the views, comments and so on instead of uploading a new one).

    • qaz@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      I’m guessing they’re going to use the classic method of increasing the subscription price and then later creating a new lite subscription that does have some ads.

  • Epzillon@lemmy.ml
    20·
    8 days ago

    Can anyone tell me why my “purge cache” button is missing? I thought i was crazy

  • Powerbomb@lemmy.ml
    9·
    7 days ago

    I was so happy to find this post, and was saddened again to see that I didn’t have this button available when I needed it hahahaha

  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
    3851·
    8 days ago

    YouTube Premium is the only media subscription I pay for because it’s the only one I consider worth it. I watch an unhealthy amount of YT, listen to tons of music, and even use YT as a kind of cloud storage for thousands of hours of recorded video.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      662·
      8 days ago

      I’d probably be paying for YouTube, if it were run by a normal media company instead of the world’s largest spy network and personal data broker. There’s no way in hell I’m giving them my credit card information.

      • Grapho@lemmy.ml
        232·
        8 days ago

        Yeah I don’t really care about value when it comes to giving money to the guys who work with the NSA and CIA to find ways to more thoroughly spy on every user 24/7, and turned every search into “You asked for x, here’s a dozen pages of what the State Department thinks you should have searched for instead”

        Not to mention their genocide profiteering: https://www.mintpressnews.com/project-nimbus-billion-google-amazon-partners-israel/280087/

      • BigDiction@lemmy.world
        2·
        7 days ago

        Data gathering/brokering and payment information security are not really connected. PCI compliance standards are well standardized and fairly strict.

        I would trust Google to handle payment information securely over any ‘media’ company.

        If personal data was regulated at even the fraction of what payment data goes through we would all be better off.

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
          6·
          8 days ago

          They quite literally don’t have my credit card information. What are you even trying to say here?

            • comfy@lemmy.ml
              1·
              8 days ago

              I exaggerated for effect, in the way that 99% sure might as well be a fact in this case:

              I have never given them to YouTube, and they have no financial incentive to acquire them AFAIK - holding that kind of PI is a liability so if anything they wouldn’t want it without having a need for it. YouTube can’t even know what countries I live in, my digital identity from the POV of their servers is too fluid and non-unique for my viewing habits to meaningfully correlate; I blend in with many other people also trying to stay hidden from them.

              As for other Alphabet companies, like those engaged in surveillance capitalism who want to scoop up all of the datas, it’s theoretically possible they’ve illegally acquired them from third parties and found a use for it, but there’s just no feasible way they could associate that with most of my online activities, say, this account I’m using. The only people who have a chance at that are certain state intelligence agencies who are eavesdropping the wires, and they have much bigger problems they’re paid to worry about. Hell, unless things have gotten better for them since Snowden, even they might struggle - most of their super cool hacker shit is only really useful if someone’s worth active targeting.

    • TheTetrapod@lemmy.world
      184·
      7 days ago

      Sorry for the down votes, you’re 100% valid. YouTube Premium benefits me and the content creators I watch. Sure, it’s more complicated than that, but everything is, and sometimes you just have to make choices that make your life a little easier.

    • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      I used to pay for it, for the same reasons. They stopped taking my money, i don’t know why, and I noticed zero change in the quality of the service.

      I’m paying for other google services, so I don’t know why youtube specifically stopped. Oh well.

    • DogWater@lemmy.world
      1111·
      8 days ago

      Yup.

      Family plan is 22$ for ad free yt and music subscription for 5 or 6 people

      I get that Google bad an all that, but it’s a good deal

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
        141·
        8 days ago

        Personally, considering I can get it for free, and that Google bad, $22 is a bad deal for me. I’d rather donate $20 to the groups helping us get around it, and spend the other $2 on jawbreakers!

        • DogWater@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 days ago

          Yeah but my aging parents can’t, it’s about effort. Of course I could set up something that gets around all of it but then I still have to pay for their music streaming on their phone. And the second something breaks I’m not with them to fix it.