[PeterStuer]

I have a family Premium subscription. I'm sad this can not be the default YouTube experience for everybody as every time I see someone watching YT without a sub I do not understand how they can tolerate the barrage of advertising.

Surely this attention economy model must be a loss for humanity as a whole, no?

[irthomasthomas]

I just use ad blockers. I haven't a YouTube ad in years.

[s__s]

I couldn’t do that. There are some amazing content creators on YouTube, and to deny them of ad revenue for their hard work would feel very wrong.

[irthomasthomas]

That's not how revenue works on YouTube since about 10 years ago.

[s__s]

Interesting. Can you elaborate? Last I heard creator revenue is a direct result of total ad views. A quick google search would seem to confirm this is still the case.

[mrguyorama]

It's much less direct than it used to be. The raw revenue from advertising sharply declined, any of your videos will be "demonitized" by an opaque black box "algorithm" that seems to have no actual rules, and the other half of your advertising money gets rerouted to nintendo because you showed mario for ten seconds or to some weird fly by night company that claims to be the rightful copyright owner of white noise and actual silence.

Oh, and if you don't keep up with stupid recommendation algorithm updates, which change how things work seemingly on a whim, youtube will decide you don't have a competitive click through rate for your spammy, clickbaity thumbnails, and just stop showing your videos to people so that your viewership and revenue hits the floor.

[faller_slive]

I think he is talking about other revenue streams that most large creators use. Such as ads the creators place in their own videos, merchandise, and direct payments (Patreon, subscribe star, etc).

[s__s]

I think everyone is aware of those additional revenue streams. For the vast majority of content creators they’re a tiny drop in the bucket and the real money is still overwhelmingly in YouTube placed ads.

Op suggested advertising hasn’t been the revenue model for creators in 10 years which, upon further research is plainly false. He completely made up the claim in an effort to justify his use of ad block.

By blocking ads you’re harming content creators, it’s really that simple. Blocking ads on indie content is nothing short of theft as far as I’m concerned.

[lesuorac]

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7060016?hl=en

> If you're a YouTube Premium member, you won't see ads, so we share your monthly membership fee with creators.

[LocalH]

You'd probably do your favorite content creators better by directly donating to them, as opposed to relying on ad views.