[judge2020]

> Those ads are so bad Google makes money from people paying to remove them.

Arguably those ads have to be that annoying if people want to use YouTube for free, at least in its current state - it’s a globally free service that receives 500 hours of content every minute[0]. Less annoying ads drive less clicks and thus generate less revenue. Paying to remove them is a sign that you actually value YT for how much it costs to run.

0: https://blog.youtube/press/

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

I don't value YT for how much it costs to run I value it for the videos that people choose to upload for free. I am not sure that it matters much to me that I am downloading videos from an enormous site with massive traffic. Some of the best videos I get from YT have very few views and the uploaders are not looking to financially profit from sharing them. These videos could easily be served from smaller sites with less traffic that do not cost much to run. I get reliable downloads from all over the internet, not just Google servers. I would not complain about YT because I never see any ads, and downloads are relatively easy, but I do think it's a bit myopic to imagine that YT is the only way we could ever have accesss to so much video. I think that was/is inevitable. The internet allows people to share stuff.

[judge2020]

I don’t disagree with you but there’s a reason those creators chose YouTube and aren’t purchasing video hosting for $x/mo and linking people to their website - YT provides free uploading and discovery to everyone, so those creators are available to you just as a million other small creators are available to all 2+ billion YouTube viewers who have their own niches and interests. YouTube’s free-ness and discovery is only possible at this scale, with ads (and the subset of users who convert to paying customers via those ads or purchase YT premium) subsidizing the rest of us with our OSS ad blockers turned on. If google can’t continue to get people to pay for YT premium or show ads that lead to conversions, they won’t turn a profit and won’t be able to provide this global service in its current form.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"... us with our OSS ad blockers turned on."

That's great, but personally I do not use an ad blocker because I do not need to use a browser to search, download or watch video. Nor do I need python or youtube-dl. I download videos with something like

   curl -4o 1.mp4 $(curl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1234567890a|sed  "s/\\u0026/\&/g"|grep  -o "https://r[0-9]\{1,2\}--[^\"]*"|sed -n /itag=22/p)

except I do not use curl.

I play videos with ffmpeg-based players. I do not need to be online to play video.

Tech companies that rely on advertising to generate revenue (and thus need "scale") want others to believe advertising is necessary for there to be free stuff shared via the internet.

I know that's not true because I have been downloading free stuff via the internet, including video, since before YouTube or Google existed. I also know that peer-to-peer is the most efficient way to share stuff, not server-client. Middlemen selling ads are not necessary.

People are going to share stuff for free as long as the internet exists, regardless of whether Google or anyone makes money from advertising. That's what makes the internet interesting, not middlemen like Google or people using the internet for commercial gain.

"That's all I know."

[kyawzazaw]

You are the extreme outlier. Creators will continue to be on Youtube, and ads will continue to be there.