Edit: Since you guys are downvoting my post, I’ll assume my post does not belong here, because I represent a POPULAR opinion. Remember “ah yes, this is unpopular = upvote” “wait no, everyone likes nutella with butter, popular opinion = downvote”
YouTube Premium is a good deal for most regular YouTube users.
I don’t think there’s much of a debate here, yet most people seem to disagree with me
Pricing: Absolutely fair IMO. Think about other streaming services. Netflix is more expesive, even music streaming services are barely cheaper. If you can’t afford the single pricing, get a family plan, share with whoever you trust enough. How many videos do you watch in one month? How many minutes of ads is that? Likely quite a few minutes.
Who gets the money?: What did you expect? A lot of it goes to YouTube -> Alphabet/Google. Of course it does. Hosting a seemingly unlimited amount of on demand fullHD or even 4k videos and streams for a MASSIVE userbase is not cheap. Still, content creators do report that YouTube premium earnings per viewer are way more valuable than YouTube free earnings per viewer. So, I fail to see the problem.
Financially supporting Alphabet/Google: I mean, yeah, they aren’t the greatest company, I’m with you on that. If you have a problem with supporting such a company, don’t use their services. If you don’t pay for them with money, you pay with time by watching ads. If you do neither, you’re basically commiting petty theft. The victim being a “bad” company doesn’t make that better.
Using AdBlock: Like I just said, that’s petty theft and it’s not okay just because you’re doing it to a big bad company. Running YouTube costs money, if more people use it, it costs more. If nobody pays for it, it’s dead. Additionally, if nobody pays, no content creator earns money. That’s a secondary effect, as you could still pay creators directly.
Paying creators directly: If you do that, good on you, good on the creators. If everyone uses AdBlock with that, say bye to YouTube. Creators will use another hosting platform, either like YouTube (rinse and repeat) or selfhosted.
Content creators host their own content: That would be so so bad. The overlap of “content creator”, “able to selfhost” and “willing to selfhost” is small. Anyway, even if everyone pulled it off, most would go out of business for sure. Also, have fun browsing videos if everyone selfhosts. We’d need a global platform for browsing now:)
YT premium paywalls features: Yes. So? Heard of Bitwarden? People love that company for their generous services. Even they paywall features like TOTP and emergency contacts. Paywalling features is normal. In fact, it’s to be expected. Just because something was free once doesn’t mean it should still be free. Just because a part of it is free doesn’t mean everything about it should be free.
The YouTube App sucks / YT Music sucks: Nobody forces you to use it. But if you do, clearly you see some value there. Pay for it in some way if they request you do so.
Tell me why I’m wrong.
Explain how it isn’t. If you’re happy about removing mid to longform video content from the internet, yeah, whatever mate. I don’t think I have an argument to disarm this attack, other than the fact that you stamd with a very small group of people.
If creators decide to use another platform, the other platform will also only exist aslong as people either consume ads or pay money, which, in your argument, wouldn’t happen.
If creators decide to create individual small group platforms, have fun in border gore. People will not find nearly as many interesting videos with just curious browsing. Plus, I don’t see many creators surciving that. Plus, I don’t see many small creators rising in that economy.
PeerTube already exists.
You literally posted this on a platform which demonstrates how multiple small platforms can cooprate to allow discovery of content everywhere.
As of now, Lemmy is still quite niche. People wouldn’t generate a high, stable income on Lemmy sized platforms. It’s fine if it’s just for fun, but it’s not really viable as a full business.
Streaming platforms that compete with YT conform to most exactly the same conditions. They need some form of income.
Great. I’d love if people shared videos for fun instead of making it a business. Like in the good old days.
There’s still people doing that. In fact, that’s like 90% I’d say.
Then what’s the problem with non-commercial platforms again?