[baxtr]

There is a big sentiment in the comments that ads are per se a bad thing. I want to make a counter argument: ads drive innovation because they make expensive services possible for the masses. I have watched endless YouTube videos and learned a great many things. I haven’t paid a dime for it yet. Newspaper adoption in mass was achieved by the same mechanism. Ads drove the price for newspaper significantly down so the general could afford buying them. Ads are not evil. People are.

[AnthonyMouse]

> ads drive innovation because they make expensive services possible for the masses.

The flaw is the assumption that this is not possible without them. Consider what happens in the alternative.

The services would still exist, but they would charge a ridiculous amount of money, even more so because charging money means most people won't pay, but if only a minority of people are paying the prices have to be even higher.

So then a hobbyist starts their own free one, and it's terrible, because it's the effort of one person on a weekend instead of a full-time staff. But free-as-in-beer. So everyone who can't afford the pay service uses that one instead.

It ends up with many users, because it's free. And the users want it to be better, so they make improvements and submit patches, or donate money etc. You end up with Linux, BitTorrent, OpenStreetMap. Somebody tell me why you couldn't build a YouTube based on BitTorrent.

You could, over time, if you could get people to use it while it's still terrible and therefore improve it. Which you could do if it was the free one when all the others cost money, but you can't do when the existing YouTube is better funded and proprietary yet still doesn't require the user to pay money to use.

And then the dominant platforms become controlled by individual companies instead of being federated open standards, which suppresses innovation by creating a monoculture that only one entity has the ability to modify.

[qwertox]

Sure, ads are good and not a problem. But you need to differentiate them from the personal data mining industry, which not only gathers the data for targeted advertising, but also to sell it to hedge funds and whoever is willing to pay enough for it.

You don't need personal data in order to provide targeted advertising. The proper context of where the ad will be embedded is mostly enough for good targeting.

[nbzso]

Let me be honest with you, as a painter I have a lot of knowledge about composition, colour, mediums and anatomy all gained trough experience with yers of experimentation and lots of invested time and money. Do you think that I will give all of this for 2 or may be less than 2 dollars per 1000 views? Do you understand that ad revenue is attached to types of content also? On youtube I will show you some time lapse footage and if you want to learn the craft you must pay for full video course. Yes there are people that give good knowledge on youtube, but full structured courses from professionals on high value topics are rare.

[higerordermap]

I mean, I don't mind contextual ads.

I am somewhat sensitive to data mining but I guess not as much as other people on HN, given I am almost anonymized on the internet.

The worst thing about ads is security, and that's why I block ads even if I am browsing with significantly anonymous profile. Performance is a nice bonus.

I don't think data-mining based ads work well in practice. User_analyze.py can't tell whether I have already purchased the product I searched an hour ago, or lost interest in it. I have yet to see a good recommendation system based on data collection. Blame the big data / machine learning hype.

[freediver]

Ads are not evil per se, overdoing them is.

Do you think youtube algorithms optimize for you learning and becoming a better human or to maximize ad revenue? Based on the answer the knowledge you gained is on average either deep and meaningful or shallow, bordering entertainment value.

That is not to say you can’t find deep structured knowledge on youtube, but the proper way to support its creation is to directly pay for it. Next best thing is paying for youtube premium.

Imagine two youtubes, one ran by ads only and one exclusively for paid subscribers. Which one of these is more likely to have funny cat videos and which one deep, meaningful knowledge and why? In which case the interest of the platform is aligned with the interest of the user?

When overdone, ad business models incentivize mass creation of low quality entertainment which is what most of internet including news has become. In no way ads help democratize the access to valuable information.

[didericis]

What is the root cause of those incentives? Is it the platform, or the predominate audience on the platform?

I’d argue the only reason subscription based platforms have a higher probability of offering quality is that the pay barrier creates a more filtered user base that prefers quality.

If a platform dependent on ad revenue had some other barrier to entry, like content only accessible to an audience that preferred that type of high quality content to low quality content, I don’t see ads having a negative effect.

[mdifrgechd]

I think there is also an element of short term vs long term reward. Things that are more likely to be worth paying for often are harder and longer term in some way (like university or even reading a novel) while ad delivered content generally is optimized to be easy to consume, and almost consequentially is very shallow. Because the goal is to keep attention, not to be comprehensive or useful.

So I think there is an argument that ad support, and attention focused platforms in general, do have a negative effect on the content.

[higerordermap]

> What is the root cause of those incentives?

Belief that collecting more data gives them an edge in targetting customers, with an assumption that user_analyze.py can think like humans and optimally target users.

[jasode]

>That is not to say you can’t find deep structured knowledge on youtube, but the proper way to support its creation is to directly pay for it. Next best thing is paying for youtube premium.

Of course, I also don't like ads but of the choices of : Youtube ads - vs - Youtube Premium - vs -subscription/Patreon/Paypal/bitcoin/etc ... I prefer the ads. The other options of paid subscription are more anti-consumer to me personally.

I follow about ~30 Youtube channels but the churn rate is high so I'd rather not manage ~30 separate subscriptions/Patreons and then cancelling ~30 paid subscriptions when the quality goes down or I'm not interested anymore.

>Imagine two youtubes, one ran by ads only and one exclusively for paid subscribers. [...] In which case the interest of the platform is aligned with the interest of the user?

Netflix/HBO/Disney+ are subscriptions but they don't have any videos I'm interested in. (I'm not interested in tv shows.)

Instead, I need quick hits of topical information to learn from and Youtube videos with ads happens to be more aligned with me than the subscription services. I also don't bother with paying extra for Youtube Premium to avoid ads. I just manually skip them if they're not relevant.

>In no way ads help democratize the access to valuable information.

I disagree on this. For me, ads work better because I mostly engage with random topic first more so than a particular person. When a new Youtuber with no reputation creates brand new content, an ad-driven model (with algorithmic recommendations) can put that in front of me to consume. Subscription makes no sense in this case because I have no idea if this new person is worth subscribing to. Ads are less friction and thus, more consumer friendly.

E.g. My Samsung clothes dryer broke and I needed to replace a heating element. Instead of paying $300 for service, I just went to Youtube and several people happen to upload videos of how to disassemble the dryer and fix it. It was a timely topic that I needed and ads were the best way for me to "pay" for that content. I'm not interested in subscribing to anything! I just wanted some visual guidance to help me fix my dryer. Thanks Youtube for the ads and helping me save $300.

Another circumstance that reinforced my preference for ad-supported content creation was dealing with a family tragedy in my life. I had stopped watching Youtube for months and when I finally came back, I noticed I didn't have to "suspend" any paid subscriptions while I was gone. Again, I don't want to watch ads but I have to admit that the ad-supported business model is what gives me flexibility to dip in and out of Youtube without a lot of commitment.

To summarize...

Subscriptions/Patreon: more aligned with supporting particular creators

ads : more aligned with consumers to support a wide variety of topics that can come from any creators, especially unknown ones

[a_imho]

What exactly is the difference between ads and spam? Disregarding the $T business that tells me they are not the same, as far as I am concerned they are both unsolicited messages.