There's nothing quite like being forced to continuously pay someone money to solve a problem they're causing you. Well, there is something a bit like that, and it's called "racketeering". Paying youtube to solve the problem of youtube's obnoxious ads may not rise to the same level, but it's close enough that I find it extremely distasteful.
Don't reward companies for creating artificial problems just so that they can bill you for getting out of your way. Save your money for companies that offer solutions to problems they didn't invent.
YouTube is a private service funded by revenue that has to come from somewhere, we're not entitled to have it for free. How do you suppose they'll earn money without ads or subscriptions?
I've been paying Google with my data since long before youtube started. They've certainly been collecting it and profiting from it without writing checks to me. Maybe when youtube stops collecting data and they delete all they have they can start asking for money, but ultimately I'm not going to worry about how the trillion dollar multinational corporate giant which has been exploiting us since at least the 2000s is going to keep stuffing their pockets with cash. They've done pretty damn well for themselves so far, even though ad blockers have always existed. They'll figure it out.
The whole point is that there is no moral/ethical way to enter a “contract” with a party who has been knowingly siphoning (read “stealing”) your and everyone else’s data without being upfront about it since time immemorial. Oh you want to enter a contract with me? Send me an invoice at the end of every month about what data you collected from me and how you used it to pay for the services. Otherwise, there’s no way they won’t be double dipping.
Or they can drop the adtech business or spin it out as a separate company. But either way currently there is no way to fairly deal with ad tech companies with thinly veneered “free” services on top.
Somebody should tell that to the multi-billion dollar a year industry that sprung up over the buying and selling of the most mundane details of our lives. Or maybe they should ask why basically every company everywhere spends so much time and money collecting, storing, and managing far more data on their customers (and anyone else they can) than they actually need to conduct their business. Companies don't usually like spending a bunch of resources for zero reason. The idea that "your data isn't worth anything" is demonstrably false. Your data is so valuable that it's making companies money hand over fist, and most of it that is at your expense.
You have an extremely weird idea about the relationship between “how much something sells for in the market” and “how much something is worth”. Could you answer how you view this relationship for the following things?
1. Your kidneys, or heart, or any vital organ.
2. Weapons grade Plutonium.
3. Falcon heavy.
4. A single grain of rice, 100 million times.
What you are saying implies “we don’t have a good marketplace for user data”, which is pretty obvious. But I have no idea how “thus it is worth nothing” follows from there.
It isn't the user's responsibility to find a working business model for a corporation. The same principle applies whether it is a news web site or a free video hosting web site.
A business model based on taking away basic web browser functionality like being able to play videos in the background and removing unwanted content then selling it back to the user is a toxic business model. Anybody who pays for a blatant scam like Youtube "Premium" is part of the problem.
Nobody is asking you to find them a business model, just to be honest about what you’re doing. If you don’t like YouTube, stop going there - then Google doesn’t your data and you don’t have to care about their design decisions.
Surprise: you can like the content on YouTube (which is not their property in the first place) without liking YouTube. YouTube is practically holding an incredible amount of knowledge and information hostage to feed Google’s insatiable desire for profits.
You can like the content while hating the delivery mechanism and trying to fix it up to the best of your ability.
But you’re not fixing it up at all: only ripping off the people who made the content you like. Google still gets all of your data and they can share it however they want at that point.
Go watch my videos on YouTube. I won’t get a dime. I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe, if I get enough subscribers, Google will bless me with some portion of the money they get.
Why did you put them on YouTube? If it’s for free hosting, ease of use, or ease of discovery, well, that’s what they’re giving you even if you don’t generate enough activity to get a direct payment. Nobody is compelled to put content on YouTube, they’re doing it because they get something out of the deal – and that’s paid for by ads. You don’t have to like it but if you don’t, stop using it and start supporting creators elsewhere so you’re not reinforcing the idea that everything has to be on YouTube.
That’s kind of not the point. They ate the competition by offering free hosting, that was their entire point of existing. Now they are realizing why everyone else was charging for hosting… but charging the wrong person.
In reality, I once had monetized videos until one day they changed the rules to “number of subscribers” and none of my videos mentioned “subscribe” so I didn’t have enough. Oh well.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Most people will never see a dime of the money made from their videos. One-hit-wonders on YouTube are now pointless.
None of that sounds like a reason for you to spend your time reinforcing their market share, though. If you keep telling creators you’ll only watch them on YouTube you’re helping Google get closer to a real monopoly.
Yes, because YouTube is changing their stance between when a large part of the data was uploaded and now. If they chose to compete fairly from the beginning instead of using their search ad revenue to kill off all the competitors we might have had something resembling a remotely free market instead of the unthinking, unfeeling monolith we have right now.
> Yes, because YouTube is changing their stance between when a large part of the data was uploaded and now.
This is untrue. As there was significantly less users on Youtube early on, it's highly likely that most of their total content consists of recently uploaded videos. This becomes more and more true as time goes on.
>YouTube is a private service funded by revenue that has to come from somewhere, we're not entitled to have it for free.
On what basis?
I'd go to a competitor, but there isn't one, due to YouTube's VC-funding-fuelled anticompetitive practices. I literally wish that private service funding never existed; I don't owe YouTube here.
If they don't earn money then they'll go bankrupt and open up room for someone else, which is an outcome I'm perfectly happy with.
My only concern is preserving videos between when YouTube goes down and a competitor comes up, because a lot of them are liable to disappear.
In fact, a lot of Youtube videos disappear anyway, so we ought to back them up regardless.
Absolutely. I've got zero time for the argument that I should be paying one of the world's richest companies rent. Particularly when they're going about it this way.
I'm not signing up to their enshitification pathway.
Great work extension author, I look forward to checking this out.
Don't reward companies for creating artificial problems just so that they can bill you for getting out of your way. Save your money for companies that offer solutions to problems they didn't invent.