[DogOnTheWeb]

Do you have a position on a better alternative business model, or do you feel that a service like YouTube shouldn't exist?

It seems to me that YouTube and many of the ad-supported services out there provide broad benefits to people, and I am swayed by OPs point that a regressively priced business model which restricts these benefits to the global rich is a greater disservice.

[nyczomg]

I disagree completely with the author's point that the ad model is not regressive. The author points out correctly that charging everyone some $ is regressive, because for some people that amount of money is a lot, and for others that is a little. Totally makes sense.

Then, we go on to ads. Ads charge everyone a similar amount of bandwidth, attention, etc. But you know what? Some people who have more resources or knowhow will understand how to block ads. And they probably won't be paying by the MB on a crappy cell phone plan such that they spend their money on bandwidth to load the ads, while the content they want to read languishes below the fold of the ads and they struggle to navigate to it on their crappy device struggling to render ads.

The costs are more abstract than when paying in actual dollars, but surely we can recognize that the cost of ad supported web pages is also not felt evenly by everyone. As a privileged software engineer, I can guarantee you that the impact of "paying" for things with ads is felt far less by me than many others. That is regressive in my opinion.

[bnralt]

> The costs are more abstract than when paying in actual dollars

Keep in mind people are still paying in actual dollars. Companies spend money on advertisement because they want something in return, and that comes from the people being targeted from the ads. I wouldn't be surprised if the poor end up paying much more than the rich in the end. It might even be more regressive than a subscription model.

Also worth noting that their are other negative externalities as well. Health for example - the poor tend to have a much worse diet that leads to bad health conditions, and there's likely a large connection between this and the advertisements for unhealthy products.

[andrepd]

> Do you have a position on a better alternative business model

Sure! Thanks for asking. One idea I like is this: you pay a small, fixed subscription on top of your internet bill. This amount is then given proportionally to the services you visit.

This is nice for several reasons: even a small amount (~3-5$) gives a similar or higher revenue for content creators than ads do (a very rough back-of-the-envelope estimate based on youtube CPM). Plus, there's no problem with the friction of paying for things: you pay the same, regardless of watching 1 or 1000 videos (the netflix model, the cable tv model, heck any subscription model). Plus of course: no ads :)

[edmundsauto]

I think the catch is the amount would be 10-20x what you're estimating. FB makes something like $10/user/month by itself.

[Datsundere]

Ads should not exist period. Youtube worked without ads before and it can work without ads. I don't need to be paying a premium to use a service.

Why are ads the way to generate revenue? Like I don't care about buying a coffee grinder. Ads not only help contribute to needless purchases but also directly affect the environment cause of that.

[nl]

YouTube never worked before ads.

Prior to Google's purchase they were running at a massive loss, burning investment money. That's not working by any normal definition.

[joshuamorton]

Youtube only existed without ads for around a year. It's not clear that a youtube post, say 2008, could exist without ads or a subscription fee.

[0]: You can see what those looked like here https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/youtube-website. Youtube added its first advertisements in mid 2007.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

youtube works without ads sure that means you the channel provider pays for the hosting and bandwidth.

tell me how you want to pay for 500h++ of video uploaded to a platform every minute

[nonameiguess]

Does YouTube need to exist? I think most of us were alive before 2007 and I don't remember it being some kind of apocalyptic hellhole in which I could never find information or entertainment.