Yeah… I pay for premium and I’m not proud of it…
They’re especially greedy when you consider they are not only the most profitable of all their competitors (Netflix/Disney Plus/Hulu/etc), but that they’re unique in that they’re the only one who doesn’t fund creating any content at all.
At least the other companies put tons of money producing content alongside their other stuff. YouTube just lets others do that for them and then takes all the profit.
So how does YouTube really justify their costs for premium with zero production costs and the largest profit margin?
Most other companies can be selective in what they host / stream. YouTube will host/stream anything users upload and that’s actually quite insane. Current statistics say that YouTubers upload 30.000 hours of video… per hour.
Aside from the streaming/processing, only the disk space that would need is already frightening. Most of those videos will never be seen, and no ads will be played on them. The setup needed for this is massively more impressive to me than services like Netflix.
Do you perhaps have a source for those profit margins? I really wonder if they’re already running break even.
From a technical perspective, I wonder what they do with those seldom viewed videos. Do they get stored somewhere in slower, deep storage, only to be eventually transferred out and cached when they’re actively receiving views? I imagine you wouldn’t want to waste faster, more expensive storage on something that’ll likely rarely to be retrieved.
I don’t know about YouTube exactly, but when I was still using Telegram I noticed the following: When you’re scrolling back in your chat history long enough, you’ll get to a point where loading them a message takes 1–2 minutes. This indicates to me that these were stored on magnetic tape somewhere.
Don’t worry about YouTube - according to alphabets filings they account for ~10% of Googles ad revenue. Google is posting record profits every quarter, so they should manage.
I was paying for it until it got to like $16.99 on iOS. As much of an annoyance to use a work around like AD Guard. I can now afford it but refuse to give those greedy mofos a dime.
That is because you are paying for the premium of signing up through ios; apple takes a cut so to make money they raise the rates. It’s extremely common signing up to any service through ios, that you will be charged higher than if you went to the website on your browser and sign up for it there. First link has link to Hank Green who does a great break down and investigation but provided many more examples.
https://www.devicemag.com/youtube-premium-cost-iphone/
https://lifehacker.com/dont-sign-up-for-subscriptions-in-the-app-1850298355
https://umatechnology.org/psa-subscriptions-cost-more-when-bought-on-an-iphone/
deleted by creator
My screen shows you having one single downvote. I wouldn’t worry about a single techfruit loyalist.
One downvote and you start complaining about downvotes? Have another. Maybe it’ll help thicken your skin.
Is that why I am getting about one ad for every 90 seconds of video ?
Is that how bad it is? Fuck…
Just recently it has gotten worse. The good thing is that I don’t watch TV at all any longer because I used youtube. Now I’m watching less youtube AND no TV so win win for my free time.
deleted by creator
Creators have a say in how many ads they want to roll. Maybe try another channel.
deleted by creator
YouTube premium is one of the subscriptions I most often feel thankful for having. I watch enough YouTube videos that avoiding all those ads is really worthwhile, I hope that my view is worth more to the channels I watch, and YouTube music let me cancel Spotify.
I understand being pissed at YouTube and Google, but at the end of the day, of all the things I have to rage at, YouTube isn’t worth it. I like it, there are creators that use it that I like, and I understand that it costs real money to run the platform.
You used to be able to play videos in the background but they removed that feature specifically to lock it behind a paywall. YouTube will never see a dime from me because of this.
Charging for new features? Sure I guess. Removing features to charge for them later? Get fucked.
You can get around this by running YouTube in the web browser on Android at least
Or use NewPipe
You’ll have ads and be paying soon enough
More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I’m like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫
But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That’s apparently enough to throw the money away.
It’s okay to pay for a service that you use daily.
I don’t, but I disagree it’s “to throw money away”.
Especially if you can finagle a subscription out of one of the cheaper countries, too!
Does that still work? Thought to have read here and there that Google is cracking down on that loophole? Maybe not (yet) if you are an existing ‘foreign’ sub.
Finally gave in to a 2 month free trial of YouTube premium this week. Not planning on buying into it however when the trial expires. But with the holidays thought it was a good time to accept the trial for two full months.
They are getting stricter, but there are still ways around it - and it only gets easier if you have friends/family (or are willing to make friends) in said countries; the internet is a global community, after all.
Look into getting SmartTube for the TV. Works pretty great for me
we still get ads on our smart LG TV
That’s when I hit the mute button, hold the remote with my finger on the OK button ready to skip, and use the remote to block my view of anything but the bottom right corner of the screen. Then when I see the skip button appear, I can click it.
Recently I have discovered that I can just use the “why this ad?” menu and select “return to video”. That way you can skip any ad before the timer runs out.
We csncelled all streaming and use plex but we watch too much YouTube and am tired of having to keep up with versions of pirate apps every time they break. I already deal with having to keep patching the newest youtube apk with vanced on my phone. Not gonna bother for all the other devices.
Exact same story. It’s frustrating.
I’d try it if they finally offered us a one year subscription period here in europe. they don’t. their loss 🤷♂️
My girlfriend said the same thing about Korea. Google keeps getting in their own way of selling a good service
Cancelled YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Netflix this month. Prime is up next. Will keep Spotify unless they decide to jack rates up again soon.
Spotify is an evil company. They’ve started adding fake songs in to pay themselves instead of paying royalties to real artists.
Yeah, I agree about them being evil. Unfortunately, I got outvoted on which services to keep.
deleted by creator
Two rate hikes in the past year, or close to it. It’s the one streaming service my family all want. Will keep it for now.
Don’t assume Google et al. will ever consider enough people buy their subscription. There’s never enough money for these people.
A company isn’t successful in hyper capitalism unless they are accelerating the growth of their profits every year. They have to sell more products to existing users, acquire new paid users, charge more for their existing products, or they’re considered unsuccessful. The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth of the human race where success can only be achieved if every human alive is paying for every product offering possible, buying every upsell and microtransaction, freely giving their data to be sold so that more useless products can be created at minimum cost and sold at maximum price. But also hyper capitalism lobbies for less benefits, lower pay, etc. It inevitably collapses into neo-feudalism or just slavery
The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth
Cancer. Capitalism models cancer.
Google asking me for €13 a month? Their empire is built upon selling user data. Fuckers should be paying us.
And if you’re a content creator, you can opt in to allow your content to be used by AI… Without compensation. 🤡
At least that’s opt-in, unlike them using your Wi-Fi SSID to fine tune their location settings. Not only was that opt-out but you had to change your router settings (either change your SSID, which isn’t hard but shouldn’t be required, or hide your network, which alienated guests when mobile data wasn’t so ever present). I don’t even know if there’s still a (simple) way out.
But yes. The option you describe is clearly ridiculous.
The funny thing is, I’m nearly certain that it’s opt-in for their benefit (i.e. legal reasons) and not because it benefits the content creator, because it really doesn’t benefit the content creator at all! “Here’s my work. Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about paying.”.
I suspect any time Google gives you a choice about anything, especially anything regarding data, it’s not for your benefit. With that in mind, you’re likely right.
I thought it was based around BSSID which cannot be changed on most devices. Changing SSID helps?
Well, last time I looked was many years ago, so it might no longer be true. However, supposedly, adding
_NOMAPor something like that would prevent your network from being recorded. As I said, though, that was a long time ago and, of course, trusting Google to not record anything at your request was always a fool’s game.Yes, it’s bssid (the wifi mac address) which is collected by streetview cars as they pass by.
Back when I researched this (which, as mentioned previously, was a long time ago), it was just the SSID. Possibly (probably) they were also collecting the BSSID but I don’t think they were publicly admitting it at that time.
I was happy to pay for youtube as a service until they broke the shit out of their algorithms and started shoving ads to my face in premium. Did a chargeback and got my money back. Fuck these monkeys.
Search is also completely broken on YouTube. It’s become useless.
Search for a video using the exact title? Sorry, no match. Here is 5 videos that are loosley related to a word in your search, before the completely unrelated algorithm feed begins.
Use the exact video title in quotation marks? Best i can do is two videos of the five i already showed you…
I’m frankly offended by he shittiness of youtube search.
I get hit by dumb influencers before actually seeing what I was looking for.
That’s a nice way to lose access to all Google products, including your email account.
So far so good. The fuckers at youtube support acknowledged serving ads to me even with my premium membership, so they can suck a big fat dick.
Assuming they use Gmail in the first place
I got the 2 month free trial recently and have yet to see an ad with it. Don’t plan on continuing the service if I do see one.
Watch out for the “video suggestions” in your home feed with the title “introducing ….” These are product placements they make even with the premium subscription. I HATE ads so I pulled the plug.
I don’t care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click “advanced resolution settings” to access this even for premium users on mobile.
ReVanced :)
Grayjay.app :)
NewPipe :)
PipePipe :)
SmartTube :)
And even if you select high resolution preferred in settings, they will absolutely serve that shit at a low resolution forcing you to manually select the resolution every damn time.
Yes YouTube my connection is absolutely fast enough to watch at the max resolution you can serve, don’t pretend it’s my connection to cover for your intentional bumping down in resolution.
The speed at which you are connected to the internet via your ISP is only part of the path to youtube’s content servers. You could easily have a fast connection to an ISP with a congested uplink, you could be located a long way from the nearest google CDN, or that CDN could be overloaded.
You aren’t wrong in the bigger picture, but the fact that I can change to the highest resolution and I get essentially 0 buffer time and it just automatically starts playing at the higher resolution tells me that the bandwidth is there between my device and whatever server I end up connected to that is hosting the data. Otherwise I would likely have a slight delay of a few seconds for it to buffer as it pulls down the data.
People can’t afford yet another monthly bill.
It’s like walking in Trador Joes for snacks. Oh, hey, this is only $3! And look, this is only $5! Get to checkout: $130 please.
Seriously, that’s how this nickel and dime subscription crap works.
More like $126, if you know what I mean
They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.
It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!
God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.
You could try SmartTube
It’s a great product. It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer who is constantly fighting Youtube changes to break it. If you do use it and like it, and you can afford it, please consider a few bucks a month via patreon to keep it alive.
It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer
A lot of these services are just passion projects by odd individual developers who create something for themselves and then share it with the rest of the world.
Github is great for this kind of spontaneous innovation. But it doesn’t do a good job of organizing communities at large. Why have six different “YouTube cleanup service” alternatives when you could have a single collaborative team working towards the same end-goal? Why are people constantly trying to “fix” YouTube when what we really seem to want is an alternative media host?
I am seriously thinking of cobbling together a cheap pc just to plug into my TV to watch things like YouTube without the ads.
I know right. I have Apple TV because it’s awesome and doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
I’m thinking an android tablet with revanced or similar and casting to the tv…
doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
yet.
I’m not sure if it counts as an AD but seems like an AD, many many moons ago (I think when Apple TV+ was introduced), they changed the “home screen” with the apps in your Apple TV to an Apple TV+ one with their content (and some linked from other platforms).
The apps view still exists but now the “home” button gets you to the Apple TV+ one unless you click it again from there (unless you accidentally scrolled a bit and the button) or double click it to open the menu with the recently opened apps.
You can change the home button behaviour in the settings to take you to the app view.
I’ve got smartube on my fire TV
Casting on ReVanced will still have ads, because the ads are baked into the cast feature. The ad removal only works for the app itself.
Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
It’s crazy on both ends of the pipeline. Like, if I’m an advertiser, I want my content to be relatively exclusive. I don’t want to be the twelfth ad you see in an hour. If I’m a consumer, I want a continuous uninterrupted stream of media. I don’t want a service that repeatedly cuts out, spams me with some volume-adjusted bullshit, and then cuts back in again seemingly at random.
Yeah I honestly don’t mind a short ad in between videos like the old days. But this shit right now is horrible, forcing people on to premium. YouTube don’t care about the creators they just want subs.
You can usually pay a radom guy in any latin American country who makes a business sharing family accounts for netflix etc. or just get ublock origin.
Try Invidious
I’ve heard there’s too many issues and they have to keep one step ahead of YouTube all the time and it’s getting difficult. Plus, can’t use that on TV
Any good instances? All I’ve tried are dead
It’s the world’s medium length video platform. If there’s an indie creator that’s good he’s there. Of course we like the whole world’s content that’s fed to us by an incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
