[dredmorbius]

For those not familiar with it, yewtu.be is an Invididous instance, where Invidious is an alternate front-end to YouTube, similar in spirit to Nitter (Twitter), Teddit (Reddit), the late Bibliogram (InstagramProxiTok, and more. Another YouTube front-end is Piped. It's possible to use public instances of many of these, or to self-host your own.

There are browser extensions such as LibRedirect which will automatically, well, redirect requests to these alternatives, with extensive configurability by the user.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/>

YewTu.be went offline last week amidst news that Google were cracking down on YouTube viewers employing adblocking.

As to benefits of Invidious and Piped front-ends:

- No subscription required.

- Less data exposure to YouTube /Google itself.

- Lighter website / improved UI/UX.

- One small way of registering dissatisfaction to YouTube for dark patterns / user-hostile site practices.

Invidious: <https://invidious.io/> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidious>

Piped: <https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped>

[twicetwice]

Yup, for me I cancelled my YouTube Premium subscription—which I had been happy to pay—because of YouTube shorts. They were constantly pushing them in the mobile app, and sometimes I would succumb and click on one, and then often lose several hours to scrolling. Skill issue, I know, but when I went looking for a way to disable them in the UI I found there isn't one. I ended up feeling like it was a adversarial relationship—they're using dark patterns to hijack my attention to increase their engagement metrics, to my loss—so why would I pay them? I installed NewPipe and subscribed to the creators I watch regularly on Patreon and I'm very happy with this setup.

[tastysandwich]

Couldn't agree more.

I don't use social media because I think it's a net negative in my life. However YouTube I've always justified by following lots of educational content. I've learned a lot of cool things and gained new hobbies just by watching YouTube. One day, leather-working videos popped up on my feed. Soon I was making my own stuff with leather - it was a heap of fun!

I've noticed over the past few years though, that no matter how much I try to tweak the algorithm, I'm just getting mindless junk. And shorts are the worst of it! They're deliberately designed to hook you in, so they're very hard to ignore.

And so YouTube, I have to admit, has become a net negative. Another place for mindless dopamine hits, zombifying us all. I'm so sad about it!

[PragmaticPulp]

As a counterpoint, my YouTube feed is great these days. When I open it up, I get more of what I want to watch. The hardest part is choosing which video to watch in my limited time.

I think the key is that I subscribe to channels I want to watch and I use the like button on videos I want to see more of.

> I've noticed over the past few years though, that no matter how much I try to tweak the algorithm, I'm just getting mindless junk. And shorts are the worst of it! They're deliberately designed to hook you in, so they're very hard to ignore.

If you're actually clicking the shorts ("very hard to ignore") then you're going to get more of them, period. I get an occasional shorts line in my feed but I scroll right past it.

[light_hue_1]

I curate the list of channels that I'm willing to watch. Mostly science, math, engineering, etc. Like that I'm free from the algorithm. YouTube is still the best most educational and interesting media out there.

But yes. YouTube shorts are a massive net negative. I wish I could remove them completely.

[simlevesque]

If you use Revanced[1] you can patch Youtube Mobile on Android to completely remove Shorts.

[1] https://github.com/revanced

https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches/

[fencepost]

Just the thought of installing an app with permissions to patch other applications on my system makes me twitchy. I'd consider it on a dedicated media consumption device with limited shared account information, but on a daily driver I use for authentication, purchasing, etc? No thanks.

Nothing against the developers of it, but it's a tool available for use by others and I'm not going to jump on it any more than I'll install random unsigned browser extensions.

[lewispollard]

It patches an apk that you supply it - it has no ability to patch installed applications.

[userbinator]

It sounds like you've already been brainwashed by the corporatocracy.

Contrary to what they want you to think, there's an entire world beyond them where trust is not dictated by them.

[fencepost]

Sure yep brainwashed. Still not running third party firmwares compiled by pseudonymous folks somewhere in the world, and still not running sideloaded modified APKs or sideloaded much of anything.

Hell, I'm not even running the assorted very functional "photo scan to pdf" apps that I purchased Pro versions of over the years because while there are some very skilled developers in Moscow and St Petersburg I have no way of checking on whose behalf they use those skills.

[ripdog]

Revanced is just an app with no special permission. It's not a firmware. It's open source. It can only patch an apk which you provide to it with standard android file-picker APIs.

[Stephen304]

I love revanced, the main thing I miss though is the ability to cast to chromecast through the patched app. So for now I keep both apps installed and switch if I need to cast.

[BLKNSLVR]

Vanced still works great for me, it can be found on various APK download sites.

I'm sure it has a rapidly approaching expiry date, however.

[teruakohatu]

Does this require root?

I nearly cancelled premium over shorts. They are aweful.

[alwayslikethis]

Nope. It can also block sponsors.

[simlevesque]

It doesn't !

[TechBro8615]

I've pressed the "X" on those damn things like a dozen times, and even said "yes" to the modal asking me if I was sure I wanted to hide them. Yet they still appear. The default selection also uses the most transparently sexualized thumbnails with BOOBS! just begging me to click. Admittedly, I sometimes do - not for the boobs, but for the comments which inevitably make jokes about the boobs in the thumbnail.

[Aerroon]

I find that shorts pretty regularly suggest content I would like and it seems to largely depend on what I watch even outside of shorts. Ie when I watch a lot of dancing videos I get a lot of Shorts feed containing that, same with Korean or Japanese content.

[TechBro8615]

That's definitely not the case for me, unfortunately. It seems like the selection of Shorts presented to me on the homepage has never evolved past its default content recommendations. Maybe I opted out of something at some point and they can't use my watch history for Shorts suggestions.

[Forgeties79]

>skill issue

Anyone who says that and actually believes it is fooling themselves if they think they’re immune to strategies developed by an entire industry over the course of decades to the tune of billions of dollars.

[Aerbil313]

> Skill issue, I know,

Not a skill issue. Just the way our brains are biologically wired and people exploiting it for ad money.

[reflexco]

I feel the same with Twitter. Recently, no matter how hard I try to train its algorithm, it always finds new crappy short videos or click-bait threads to push on my timeline. Feels like a naive "crank the engagement up" lever has been pushed. It's fine as a business strategy in itself, clearly it's been working fine for many companies, but it just doesn't align with a Premium subscription model.

People don't voluntarily pay to be treated as semi-intelligent scrolling cattle, we fall into endless scrolling unconsciously and pay with our eyeball-time, but we don't go "oh I'm gonna shell out $8 for the privilege of browsing an inferior TikTok". He's got to chose one strategy and commit to it.

[gmerc]

It’s because the algorithm is designed to meet the relevant teams PSC metrics not your wants.

[cubefox]

I believe the "following" timeline doesn't use a recommendation algorithm.

[dangus]

When you're in the Subscriptions tab of the YouTube app, there is only one horizontal line dedicated to shorts. In the Home tab, only two horizontal lines are dedicated to Shorts. After that, as you continue scrolling, they never come up again.

I think it's a bit dramatic to jump to words like "dark pattern" just because YouTube dared to suggest some content in one place in the interface.

If anything, YouTube's Subscriptions tab is one of the most user-respecting pieces of social media out there. It only shows you your subscriptions, and it is chronological.

[Brian_K_White]

And you can't use any fancy extensions to hide shorts on a Roku or other tv yt app.

I'm currently still paying for premium but now it's like my cable bill. I sorta have to, but I don't feel like it's a voluntary transaction where I'm paying to get something I want. Now I'm paying to reduce about 50% of what I don't want and there is no option to get what I want at any price.

[JohnFen]

> I cancelled my YouTube Premium subscription—which I had been happy to pay—because of YouTube shorts.

Fascinating -- I've been seriously considering cancelling mine as well, for the exact same reason.

Those shorts are a thorn in my side.

[totallywrong]

They're so desperate to push Shorts they made Vanced stop working for normal videos but shorts still play fine to this day. I'm using Revanced now which saves me from that crap.

[gymbeaux]

It’s cute that Google thinks we’re all going to pay for YouTube Premium/TV instead of just not watching YouTube. That’s where I’m at. I don’t watch anything on YouTube anymore, and like when Reddit got “smart” and drove me away, I’ve noticed my mental health improve.

[jjallen]

Damn. YouTube is my favorite consumer product in existence. It has massively changed my life for the better (like learning about health and wellness topics that have actually transformed my life). I watch about fifty hours a month in mostly pure bliss. And it costs $12 or almost nothing. I will never understand how people can be reluctant to part with a few bucks a month for an amazing product.

If you come from a third world country I get it, but many of us here do not. $12 is less than half an hour of work for even middle class Americans and Europeans.

I guess if you don’t even watch YouTube I don’t understand why you are even in this thread.

[manquer]

The pricing is lesser in other countries I have seen $2-3 a month, so it is not necessary to qualify Americans/Europeans it is priced similarly across the globe .

—-

It is not just $12/month for YouTube that is the problem most people have to budget for all their content consumption between streaming services, sports subscriptions , music subs, newspapers you can easily spend upwards of $300/month , that is not including other productivity tools Saas you could end paying for like o365 , Dropbox and so on .

YT would be the one easiest to cut because you won’t loose access just have to put up with some ads unlike everything else .

For many not seeing ads is not worth $12 a month , for some like you the value is enormous so you see it as worth paying .

—-

I personally stopped paying for YT premium because I get most of the content from Nebula what I used YT for, at 1/10th the cost.

Also there is no way to disable Shorts and they won’t improve the by design poorer implementation on Firefox; both these make my experience using the platform poor even if I pay for it so I don’t bother.

[jjallen]

We subscribe to almost every reasonable content provider and we pay about $60 or so IN SWITZERLAND, where we pay a swiss tax just because we have more money I guess. If someone is truly paying $300 they should cancel their cable subscription and subscribe to a handful of streaming services and YT for $<100. All the content you could ever watch.

[manquer]

A typical household with say couple of newspapers and magazines, music and audio platforms, 2-3 sports and major streaming platforms in the U.S will be in the 300 range (see below)

I have only reasonably included couple of options in each category, you could mix and match preferences and use different providers or may get deals and it is part of combo with some other plan , however you will still be in this range.

- Streaming: ($121) (Prime, Apple have other uses bundled, Disney is undroppable if you have kids)

    - Disney+ (ESPN, Hulu, Disney) - $20 
    - Netflix - $16 
    - Paramount+ - $12 
    - Max (HBO) - $20 
    - Peacock (NBC) - $10 
    - Apple Tv+ (via Apple One ) - $23 
    - Nebula - $5
    - Amazon Prime $15

- Sports: ($33) ( or any other 2 sports )

   - MLS - $13
   - NBA - $20

- Music/Podcasts: ($50)

  - Spotify(podcasts,list: $10
  - YT music: $15
  - Audible: 15

- Newspapers/ Magazines: ($65)

  - NYTimes ( or main newspaper) : $16
  - Bloomberg/FT ( or business daily): $25
  - Economist/New Yorker (or other long form magazines): $20

Total: $269

On top you could be paying for

   - any game network subscriptions like PlayStation Plus maybe $20-40
   - one time purchases for movies/ games etc in addition to Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+ plans when they not included perhaps another $100 every month
   - cable/internet/Mobile plans which are another ~ $200 easily
   - Patreon/ podcasts or other creator specific subscriptions 
   - other personal productivity apps you may pay for (o365, Dropbox, email etc) maybe another $100

Final total: $700 / month on just subscriptions and licenses

[jvidalv]

Holy, I just pay HBO and Apple Music.

Is this really the middle class U.S family reality?

[Barrin92]

12 bucks is enough to get you access to entire streaming catalogs full of exclusive content on other platforms. Merely not showing you ads on a site that's largely full of non exclusive user generated videos doesn't seem enticing. Wellness videos are everywhere, people will just watch them on TikTok instead of paying for a full premium subscription.

It's a strange argument anyway, nobody buys something simply because it's only an hour of work. The internet offers me a hundred subscriptions every day, if I buy them all because they're just 10 bucks I'm broke. Whatsapp cost 1$ once and they even dropped that because although it's great value, what matters is that none of it is exclusive.

[unshavedyak]

I would love to buy it, if i liked it. I happily pay Spotify, Kagi, ChagGPT, etcetc - but while i do watch a fair amount of Youtube.. i'm not sure i get that much from it.

More over, i'm constantly of the defensive with it. If i click on an impulse video -- aka one i watch guiltily but would rather not make a habit out of it -- Youtube disregards other videos i'd much rather watch and now gives me repeated videos of that one thing. I open a fair bit of stuff in Incognito just to avoid Youtube polluting my feed.

I think i'd happily pay $3/m for what i get. But generally it's not close to $12/m for me, especially when i don't feel like it's working for me.

[mozman]

I'll never pay for YT because when it first started it was about people sharing information because they wanted to give to others. Now, people want money and fame. That's fine, but it's not my money they will get.

[midasuni]

In the U.K. YouTube is £16 a month — that’s $20 a month.

I use YouTube far less than Netflix, Disney, Amazon, bbc, all of which are cheaper. Many YouTube videos come with burnt in adverts too.

[dan1234]

It’s £11.99/month if you subscribe via the website, instead of an iOS subscription.

[gymbeaux]

yeah I'm done with Linus Tech Tips videos for that reason. Knowing them, their Floatplane (YouTube/Twitch competitor) platform has the "after this segue... from our sponsor!" bits edited out. Like even they know YouTube is dying.

[no_carrier]

> Like even they know YouTube is dying

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. Of course Floatplane subscribers get the sponsorships edited out, that's the benefit of being a sponsor.

LTT was worried about their Youtube dependence, so created Floatplane. The fact of the matter is they wouldn't be in existence without Youtube and would probably die, even with Floatplane now existing.

There's no evidence anywhere that Youtube is dying.

[gymbeaux]

The advent of competitors isn’t evidence? Why would they spend millions to build an entire YouTube competitor?

I’m not sure how you can say “YouTube isn’t dying” and “LTT is worried about relying on YouTube” in the same breath. Linus was always complaining about YouTube from a creator’s POV.

[moonchrome]

Yeah basically every time I see these threads I don't understand do these people think that running YouTube costs no money ?

~15€/mo and my family doesn't have to watch ads, we get YouTube music (not missing Spotify at all TBH) - that's well worth the money.

If you're a student or working low paid job I can understand - but on a site mostly for software professionals and startups ?

[Brian_K_White]

I don't understand paying ten cents for something that does what it wants instead of what I want.

I currently pay for premium to avoid ads myself, so you don't get to call me any freeloader names while I complain that despite paying I still have to suffer shorts and utter shit suggestions and embedded sponsor ads and having to answer a ridiculous 2fa prompt on my phone every single time just because I use firefox in medium private mode , and annoying things like hiding downvotes, and serious things like censoring and invalid dmca takedowns and algorithmic promiting/hiding, etc.

[lxgr]

I’d definitely pay 2-3$/month for Youtube if I could unbundle it from Youtube Music. I’m paying for Spotify and have no intention to change that (and I’ve given Youtube Music many chances).

[gymbeaux]

Spotify Family is taking about $20/month from me, but everyone else offers a subpar experience (especially Apple Music).

[w-ll]

I dont know if its changed, but you can only watch 1 thing on youtube at a time with the premium account, like not even with ads. it straight up stops the other video.

[moonchrome]

15€ is the family plan

[detuur]

Youtube certainly costs money to run. It doesn't cost as much as they're asking. Besides, Google has mercilessly injected itself in many more parts of my daily life, and they're making good money off of me. They're not paying me for that. So I'll consider it a debt paid to block all of their ads.

Now, if Youtube was an independent company, that'd be a different story. But it isn't, so µBlock it is.

[pitaj]

A good chunk of that YTP money goes to creators.

[Dylan16807]

That actually furthers the argument of "it doesn't cost that much", since creators get about ten times as much money from YTP viewers.

[gymbeaux]

man I hate to pull the "get a real job" quip but I would bet my life that most of those "creators" are going to end up getting a "real" job in the next few years. My sister makes a couple TikToks a month to review stuff and these companies pay her stupid amounts of money because of the number of followers she has. She lives in the West Village where she regularly hangs out with Malcolm Gladwell and David Blaine. She does something with art. Spain's bureau of tourism (I'm sure they have another name for it) paid to fly her and a couple of other "influencers" to Spain for a several-day tour of places Salvador Dali either lived or created something for. It's fantasy land, where company execs think things like that are a good use of money. MrBeast and Legal Eagle will be alright whether YouTube dies or not, but everyone else is screwed.

[qingcharles]

YouTube Music on its own is $10/mo, so if you were going to subscribe to that then YouTube Premium is really only $2/mo extra, which is a bargain in my eyes.

[collinvandyck76]

Yes, my feelings are similar. It's one of the monthly costs I would not consider putting on the chopping block unless I were in dire circumstances.

[gymbeaux]

Gatekeeping a thread about YouTube/subscription services because I don't watch YouTube is asinine.

I suppose ultimately I am arguing that $12/month isn't "cheap" because it's really "$12/month and whatever time you spend on it". I used to dump so much free time into things like TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, and I am grateful their leadership answers to greedy millionaire/billionaire venture capitalists who can barely tell a mouse and keyboard apart.

[silisili]

You watch 50 hours a month. I watch maybe 30 minutes. So it makes a lot more sense and a better value to you, obviously. Would you still be keen to pay if it were say, charge by the hour? I'd probably sign up for something like that, as either my cost would be negligible, or yours would skyrocket.

[eek2121]

I'd pay $3-$5/mo. I watch maybe 8 hours a month.

[inferiorhuman]

Paying $12 a month to get health advice from Youtube sure seems like a problem that'll sort itself out in short order.

[tinus_hn]

Unfortunately paying does mean there is no way to escape tracking, that’s even worse than the expenditure.

[londons_explore]

They'd prefer you stop watching. Bandwidth costs them a lot, and they have pretty much the cheapest bandwidth of any tech player. If 1% of users are freeloading like you and I, and they can block us and save 1% on their infrastructure bill, that's still a huge amount of money saved, and could easily turn the whole effort from a loss to a profit.

[dskrepps]

I think our best bet to make a difference is to cause network effects to drive other users to take the same steps we do. In the long run that will help shrink their monopoly, and/or bring a tipping point closer to reality.

Similar to voting. Yeah, I could vote for a third party candidate, but the real power I have is in how many other people I can convince to vote for someone.

[rtpg]

I don't understand this. What is your principled stand? Don't charge me money and also don't put in ads?

Youtube is one of the few platforms where people making content can actually survive off of it. It's not everything but it's more than ~anything else.

It would be nice for there to be more platforms but personally I'm exhausted of platforms trying to race to the bottom and ultimiately squeezing people who are actually doing the "hard work".

(My one big complaint is that youtube doesn't charge people for bandwidth, meaning that services like Vimeo are ... kind of DOA. I don't know how you do that and have viral stuff for normal people, but it does feel like something should be in place)

[wcarss]

YouTube could play ads and let me play videos while my phone screen is locked. They could play ads like they used to: a small popup. They could play ads like they did after that: one 5 second pre-roll. Or like after that, a pre-roll with a skip call to action.

But at some point it got into the ballpark of two 10-15 second ads every 5 minutes even on the channels of people who explicitly asked not to turn on monetization because they're making educational content, often for kids and schools. The mobile app nags me with a "try premium" / "skip trial" popup 5 times per week. There are consistently small bugs in the user experience of the app.

Oh, and they're rich as God because they're also the people who own the operating system, browser, app store, and search engine I used to find all this stuff -- plus my email and my productivity software, all of which they will leverage to _squeeze_ every last bit the juice out of me as a user. They own all my data already. They own everything.

So, what is the "principled stand"? Enough is a goddamned enough! If they were just going to show some ads, it would be fine, but like every single parasitic horror show out there, they promised they'd be good and they cannot stop getting worse.

At the very least, I can choose not to pay them $12/month for the privilege.

[rtpg]

Yeah I agree that you can totally just be like "not for me". I just think the using of language of protesting and voting for "the video experience as a free user is not fun" adds a moral valence to something that honestly has a pretty good extant solution. Pay for the sub!

Pay money, get no ads. It's not that complicated. It's totally reasonable to whine about the increased ads and not wanting to pay ofc. But at least we can pay to not have ads!

[gymbeaux]

It boggles my mind how technology has been advancing consistently through time until the last few years. Now we have feature flags in databases dictate whether we can use technology. There's no reason to block YouTube videos from playing when my screen is off, except to get more money out of people.

[gymbeaux]

It's colloquial knowledge at this point that companies suck as much from consumers as possible, just look at the "inflation" narrative. Company had to raise prices due to "supply chain constraints/inflation" but then goes on to report record revenue. To an extent it's just supply and demand, and I want to respect that, but most of these same companies got government handouts from PPP while the everyday consumer has to choose between one $10/month subscription service or another. Fuck. How about charge me money, don't put in ads, but charge enough that you make money, it's just not hand-over-fist because you've created a monopoly?

[wpietri]

Do we know that bandwidth costs YouTube a lot?

[londons_explore]

Bandwidth costs all video sites a lot.

Thats why cloudflare won't host sites with lots of video. It's why twitter doesn't do HD video. Thats why there are no startups trying to make video hosting sites.

If you hosted a youtube clone on AWS with their cloudfront CDN, you'd be paying $0.085 per GB out to the internet. A youtube ad view earns perhaps $0.004. HD video is ~6GB/hour, so a 3 minute video costs $0.0255 to host (before compute and storage costs, profit and engineer time).

Earning $0.004 for something that costs you $0.025 is never going to work out...

[dijit]

I don't like this reasoning because I've seen the inside of google. Their bandwidth is very cheap.

What costs is having a CDN, a bunch of very fast servers that exist in every point-of-presence, given the load they endure CDN cache servers fail quickly when compared to others. -- along with the upkeep of their networking equipment, which is cheap but not free.

But Google itself has invested wisely in how it connects to the internet, they are dark fibre all the way with many hundreds of gigabits between sites and pops. It's a huge upfront investment (the kind SV startups seem to hate) but the long tail makes bandwidth essentially free.

The only cost they have is hardware and peering, and given their size I can't convince myself if they are or are not being shafted financially by big ISPs for peering - even if they are though, it's marginal compared to what GCP/AWS/etc; charge us, even Colo datacenters will charge significantly more than what it costs Google.

[wpietri]

Thanks, this is exactly what I was wondering about. I would expect Google's marginal cost of bandwidth to be approximately zero. What are networks going to do, not connect to Google?

[ddorian43]

What is google's cost for PB of bandwidth in EU/USA?

[jamespo]

Even despite that, they still have no interest in encouraging "freeloading"

[kbutler]

Key words are "would cost _you_". The providers get much better cost per GB at scale, then sell to you at a profit.

For example, transfer out from S3 gets down to $0.05 at just 150TB, including the AWS markup.

(Note that CloudFront data out is not directly comparable to S3 data out!)

[bsder]

> Thats why there are no startups trying to make video hosting sites.

No, there are no startups in video for the same reason there were no startups in office apps or operating systems in the 2000s, a subsidized 500lb gorilla in the space.

The problem with a video startup is that you have to charge for your content. And some jerk will download your video, post it to YouTube, and distribute it for free.

If YouTube were forced to stand on its own instead of being subsidized by the Google advertising maw, we'd see innovation in the space.

Until YouTube gets broken out from Google by anti-trust action, the video startup space will continue to remain dead.

[Dylan16807]

The big cloud providers all charge ridiculous amounts for their bandwidth. It makes your numbers completely invalid for any bandwidth-focused operation.

Also youtube's bitrate usually far below that amount.

[vetinari]

Not to distract from your point, but

> It's why twitter doesn't do HD video.

Twitter does HD video. I don't know whether it is generally available or not, but for example, Tucker Carlson's videos are 1080p.

[fomine3]

Interesting description: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpAOeoZWAAM-iHV?format=png&name=...

[no_wizard]

Though Cloudflare does have a separate product for streaming Video, it definitely doesn’t fall under the generic CDN serving files model

[wpietri]

Yes, I get that I have to pay a lot for bandwidth. And that you have to pay a lot for bandwidth.

My question is specifically about YouTube.

[psnehanshu]

This looks to me like a sane comment. No idea why this was downvoted.

[wpietri]

Because it doesn't answer the question. I was asking about YouTube, which, being part of Google, occupies a radically different position. They aren't using AWS to host their video, so the numbers are irrelevant.

[gymbeaux]

Then I don't want to hear about dwindling YouTube revenue on their next earnings call...

[logifail]

> when Reddit got “smart” and drove me away, I’ve noticed my mental health improve

We had a "showdown" moment with our kids some time ago due to inability to manage device usage. Ended up with me changing the wifi password and all the kids devices permanently lost internet access at home.

The kids have been playing together - and outside! - and generally much happier ever since. Mental health definitely better. Who'd have thought it?

[gymbeaux]

They aren't missing anything either. Subconciously I thought that I needed to stay on top of things like the news, how the stock market is doing, whatever the latest tech hardware releases are, etc. but now, most of the time I forget those are even things.

I watched a lot of the History Channel, TLC and Discovery Channel growing up. I've seen all manner of documentary about all manner of thing. I'd say plop your kids in front of that every now and then, but these days it's just Pawn Stars and Hoarders and Deadliest Catch.

[BizarroLand]

Might be worth checking with your local library to see if they offer a Kanopy.com subscription.

The monthly show checkouts are somewhat limited (I think 10 a month) but their offerings are pretty large and generally family friendly or education based, even though they do have some more modern or topical movies or shows from time to time.

[willsoon]

Yes! And the shorts are very entertaining too! And, can you believe it, my wife watches them for recipes!

[psnehanshu]

I watch a lot of YouTube and I have premium subscription. I believe it is worth it for me. Yes I can use adblockers, but the premium experience is just better. It also comes with YouTube music which is much better than Spotify and others. There are other benefits like watch queue, background play on phone.

[error503]

I'm never going to be one to buy merch, and there are a lot of creators whose content I occasionally enjoy but don't want to pay directly via e.g. Patreon. Premium views pay more to them, so you're also doing a bit more to support the creators you watch as well.

[isaacremuant]

Premium subscription is just an antipattern of them removing options. The experience is not better than before premium was a thing.

YouTube music is in no way better than Spotify. I actually had to leave Google play music (and YouTube music) for Spotify because the product was so subpar.

The only benefit was that some random thing on YouTube might be there but, other than that, just part of the Google poor support of their paying users.

The benefits you site are possible without their premium, using other apps and, again, they worsened the experience to push you to premium which is extremely shady.

[psnehanshu]

> Premium subscription is just an antipattern of them removing options.

It makes sense only if you believe everything on the internet should be free.

> YouTube music is in no way better than Spotify.

I don't disagree. It's highly subjective.

> The benefits you site are possible without their premium, using other apps

Piracy is always an option. But if you choose not to do it, buying premium makes sense.

[isaacremuant]

>> Premium subscription is just an antipattern of them removing options.

> It makes sense only if you believe everything on the internet should be free.

I wish HN readers would try and stay away from strawmen and address what others say.

If a product offers something and suddenly makes it product progressively inferior as a means to make a distinction of "this is premium", then it's an anti pattern. It feels scummy since it didn't start with "first X are free" and shows a lack of upfront monetization strategy.

>> YouTube music is in no way better than Spotify.

> I don't disagree. It's highly subjective.

It's highly objective if you actually use arguments, which you don't.

>> The benefits you site are possible without their premium, using other apps

> Piracy is always an option. But if you choose not to do it, buying premium makes sense.

Using the term piracy here is playing into the game of anti competitive companies who continually lobby governments to get their way over the actual desires of citizens.

You haven't really supported your quasi marketing campaign claims about the YouTube experience.

Truth is: They had a product that was good. Made it shitty and told you to pay if you want what you had. You pay and laud it.

I mean, you do you but it's an unconvicing sell.

[psnehanshu]

> If a product offers something and suddenly makes it product progressively inferior...

The inferior experience in terms of YouTube is the increase in ads. I like to think of it as a price increase due to inflation.

> It feels scummy since it didn't start with "first X are free" and shows a lack of upfront monetization strategy.

That's a standard practice actually. I have seen new restaurants offer food for free on the day of opening to attract customers and then charge from next day onwards. They will also gradually keep increasing their prices to cope up with inflation and/or other reasons.

> It's highly objective if you actually use arguments, which you don't.

Treating your preference as objective just shows how much disconnected you are from the reality. In my country, YouTube is the goto choice for music. Moreover, YouTube ads are skipable, but Spotify ads aren't.

> Using the term piracy here is playing into the game of anti competitive companies who continually lobby governments to get their way over the actual desires of citizens.

Desires of citizens like you is to get everything for free. That's what I have understood.

> You haven't really supported your quasi marketing campaign claims about the YouTube experience.

Your happy customers are your best marketers.

> Truth is: They had a product that was good. Made it shitty and told you to pay if you want what you had. You pay and laud it.

I agree, they did make the product shitty for free users. But that won't make me and many others stop using it.

[DropInIn]

Interestingly came to this because I googled it after having essentially the exact same thought....

[cvak]

Same here, it's the only subscription I pay for, worth it imo.

[pohuing]

Tbh I mostly pay because I hate the modern ad and behaviour tracking financed Internet. If your service has a paid option I'll pay for it. I think had we all gone down the freemium road decades ago the Internet would be in much better shape today :/

[Brian_K_White]

Missing part of the terrible is not the same as good.

The premium experience still absolutely sucks, merely the free is even worse.

[qwertox]

Lately I've been watching `MIT 8.04 Quantum Physics I, Spring 2016` [0], also at night before I fall asleep.

And during the day I occasionally leave the live stream of a stork nest running. One of them learned to fly just two days ago, and it was fun watching them getting to learn how their wings work, while they don't have much space to train [1], which makes me ask how many such livestreams exist which normally would be volatile data. I'm not sure if these live streams do get stored, but it would be a huge amount of bandwidth for almost no added value.

Then there are fun mathematics videos which show you how to solve mathematical problems [2], daring you to solve them.

Basically there's so much of value, like `the native web`, `ServeTheHome`, `Jeff Gerling`, `No Boilerplate`, `Code to the Moon`, James Briggs`, gliding, mtb-riding, windsurfing, so much quality content which is hard for a TV station to deliver.

I don't see it comparable to Reddit.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60cspQn3N9d...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhvFd0i5nIo

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@MathemaTrick/videos

[gymbeaux]

Eventually all three of those channels will wise up and move to another platform, if they haven't already.

[andrepd]

I don't lump in YouTube with other types of social media. While undoubtedly the vast majority of content on YouTube (either by count or by number of views) is utter garbage there is still more quality content than I will ever be able to watch in a lifetime. Documentaries, talks, lectures, concerts, content creators on all kinds of interesting things, from retro computers to history or science.

I would buy YouTube premium but I don't really want to remunerate Google for their anticompetitive business practices or their mistreatment of content creators. So I just go for patreon of channels I like.

[lacrimacida]

In the same boat here. But they couldn’t care less, the masses is what they’re after. I came to and been using invidio.us to listen to lectures without any video, a feture that works on Iphones with the screen turned off. Not sure whether apple or google are the ones who don’t allow for that.

[squeaky-clean]

Screen off only works for premium subscriptions. I hate it, but someone has made a good point to me once that advertisers are probably not okay paying the same amount and not having video show for their ads. So Google would either have to build support for a separate category of audio-only ads, and those ads would pay out less. Instead, they just only offer the feature to ad-free subscribers.

[cmgbhm]

Google. It’s not a problem with the default video element. The engineer that into the app and mobile then that’s the primary pitch for premium

[gymbeaux]

Just like BMW tying the heated seats to a monthly subscription.

[ZoomerCretin]

YouTube isn't targeting the hacker news demographic. Users who can't or won't be served ads are an acceptable loss on the path to profitability.

[dredmorbius]

The HN demographic is all the more likely to find, develop, and/or promote alternatives to YouTube.

I didn't mention those in my comment above as the main issue was alternative front ends to mainstream services, but another obvious option is alternative services.

The key stumbling points for that seem to be discoverability and monetisation.

[AnthonyMouse]

Kind of surprised nobody is making a strong effort at solving monetization through P2P (lowering costs).

Historically the problem was you had to get people to install an app instead of visiting a website, but now everybody's trying to get people to do that on mobile anyway.

In theory P2P isn't great on mobile devices because they run on battery and have limited cellular data, but devices also allow apps to tell if the device is connected to a charger and unmetered WiFi. And if you only upload from devices that are, that's probably still enough bandwidth to give you a significant cost advantage. Then add in anyone you can get to install the app desktops and TVs, many of which are always on and have fast unmetered connections.

Then offer streaming on the website, but only if you subscribe. The paywall on the website links to the app installer, which is free (with ads).

[ThatPlayer]

It's an interesting idea, but I think it actually parallels a lot of problems of residential solar.

How much are you paying for someone hosting? If you're paying them the same as your costs (high), then why not just pay for more servers which will be more reliable? Especially because of the difference between how much bandwidth during peak demand hours, which is probably going to be when there are the most devices on battery, and when you'll need the most servers anyways. The same way peak electricity demand in some areas is after peak solar.

So even if you do 1:1 view time credits, now you're losing money if they upload at night, and watch that same amount during peak hours. Probably what most people are doing. This is what happened with California new solar NEM3 plan that changed the export rates from 1:1. You only get something like 20% credit for the power you're putting in. So can you pay hosters enough to want to host, but not enough that you're better off paying for your own servers?

This doesn't even go into storage costs yet.

There's a cryptocurrency for P2P storage and transfer, Storj. Looks like they even have an S3 compatible gateway, but they don't look that much cheaper than object storage on DigitalOcean or CloudFlare.

[AnthonyMouse]

The idea isn't to pay them. Nobody gets paid for using BitTorrent, but it still works, because there are people who have "free" bandwidth (i.e. they weren't using it, and if they don't use it, it's lost, so they don't care).

You often hear the argument that people aren't going to "use" their bandwidth and watch ads, but that's dumb. The ads are to pay for development of the app or the content. The bandwidth is to offset what you downloaded yourself. It's two different things. And if you have unmetered bandwidth you're not using anyway, don't be a miser.

But if you really want to give people something as an incentive to upload, show them fewer ads, and give more credits during peak hours. Now, if you want to see no ads, you have to upload something like 10x what you download, and correspondingly up to 10% of users can get that deal. But if 10% of users take that deal, you eliminate your bandwidth costs and still have 90% of the ad revenue. And if more are willing to take it, it means you can give fewer credits until it balances, or vice versa.

[AnthonyMouse]

Incidentally, residential solar isn't really a problem because you already have non-uniform demand throughout the day. The longstanding solution is to have "peaker plants" that only come online during peak hours. It's only a problem if you want to replace 100% of generation capacity with solar and have no storage solution. But that doesn't stop you from replacing e.g. 50% of generation with solar, and then running other plants less often and paying the fuel savings to the solar generators.

There are also ways to shift demand around, namely through pricing. Make electricity cheaper during sunlight hours and more expensive between sunset and 8PM and suddenly tons of people are doing laundry midday on a weekend instead of in the evening during peak hours. Which also makes it more economical for people who can't avoid peak hour usage to buy an energy storage system so they can run on stored energy when the power company is charging high rates and then charge it back up when power is cheaper.

[bosch_mind]

Same here! The UX is so bad on both I just can’t use either. Not hard to quit when usability sucks and I find other things to do… like read or go outside.

[afavour]

If they achieve even a 1% conversion rate into subscribers it’ll be a net positive for them. I imagine they’re OK with you leaving the service since you cost more than they make from you.

[LeoPanthera]

I happily pay for YouTube Premium, and I get more value out of it than literally any other subscription service I'm paying for.

YouTube is an endless goldmine of quality videos made by people who actually give a shit about the topic they're talking about, rather then people who are just trying to make "content" to monetize.

I also appreciate that at least some of my monthly payment goes to the people making the videos I'm watching.

I'm honestly surprised to hear such a cynical take on it.

[maksimur]

Another benefit is watching NSFW content.

[j634674]

I'm creating https://nsfwseek.com which finds you random NSFW content. I could add YouTube NSFW content as well, is there really that much?

[agumonkey]

i enjoy the lighter ui, and spamfree ux