[francislavoie]

Premium actually gives more money to creators you watch on YouTube than ads do. It's win-win IMO. Save yourself time, give them more money. Also comes with YouTube Music which is quite good (arguably worse than Google Play Music was but eh)

[twothreeone]

If someone on the internet says they want money to hand it to individuals in need I believe them. Especially when it is a global, for-profit, money-printing monopoly power like Google, who have repeatedly demonstrated through their actions as an organization that they are nothing but honest, upstanding, and true to their word, fully deserving of our trust (and money).

[huytersd]

This but unironically.

[NietTim]

How much do creators actually get from premium subscriptions? All you're doing is repeating some empty marketing mumbo jumbo. I've never heard a creator say anything about the "youtube premium" income they've gotten, pretty sure it's not even broken down that way for them and google being able to bundle in a music streaming service just further affirms to me that they do not need my money. I'd much rather directly support creators that deserve it trough patreon or ko-fi and pay for spotify premium instead of giving google any of my money

[kccqzy]

> pretty sure it's not even broken down that way

That's false.

I'm not a creator but a while ago there was this creator who was widely applauded on HN for their transparency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34225192 Scroll down a bit and you can see Google shows that they made $27,099.86 from YouTube premium.

[toastercat]

Creators get even more money if you instead donate to their Patreon or click the big "Thanks" button under the video to contribute to their channel directly. Best part is you don't have to turn off your adblock!

[paddim8]

Good luck donating to every single person you watch.

[toastercat]

Thanks, but I don't need luck since I mainly watch videos from the same channels. Throwing each some spare change now and then is not hard.

I reckon you don't subscribe to premium because you think every random channel of every random video you happen to watch deserves your money? I certainly don't feel bad when my adblock prevents me from wasting any more of my time when I click on a clickbait-ty Linus Tech Tips video.

[Gloomily3819]

My problem with it it's that demonetized channels don't get money from premium viewers. If a creator gets demonetized because of advertisers guideline, why go out of your way to punish him by removing premium monetization as well?

[hh3k0]

How about I don't watch ads and don't buy premium?

[alsodumb]

How about you stop using YouTube? Getting annoyed by ads is understandable, but server space isn't free.

[askiiart]

While I understand your point, I still wouldn't give money to a company with such privacy violations. If YouTube had a subscription option where YouTube only used my watch history to improve my suggestions, then I'd gladly pay a subscription for it. But in its current form, I either give money to Alphabet while they continue to track me and sell my data to advertisers, or I just block the ads myself to avoid giving them money. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay for the product and be the product.

It's sad that the creators have to get caught in the middle of this, of course, but they can be supported through other platforms, like Patreon, ko-fi, etc., which kinda solves the issue. Or better yet, a YouTube replacement, like Nebula.

[kccqzy]

Google doesn't sell your data to advertisers.

[inetknght]

Maybe not today. Go prove it in court. Until it's proven in court, it's just heresay.

What certainly is being proven in multiple courts, though, is Google's malfeasance and manipulation to create and abuse an advertising monopoly.

[kccqzy]

Okay great idea! Why don't you start by suing Google? I'd love to follow your court case and see what comes of it.

[askiiart]

Ahhh right, my bad. It seems I had a bit of a brain fart there :P

Still, I think you see my point.

[beezle]

If YouTube wants to block me from viewing a video that has ads because I use an adblocker, fine. But if they start blocking me from all videos then they best start paying everyone who has ever uploaded a video that has a single view. Let's not forget that nobody is going to YouTube because of Googles content.

[toastercat]

How about you stop using ad block/popup blockers altogether? Getting annoyed by ads is understandable, but server space isn't free on any website.

In fact, how about we all rally together and start encouraging addings ads on HackerNews to help pay for the servers?

[alsodumb]

I mean sure, I am fine with any service I am actively using either charge me money via subscription or monetize is some other form. If I don't want that to happen, I'd not use that service.

If the costs of managing HackerNews is so high, sure let them sell ads or offer a subscription service. But if you are comparing HackerNews hosting costs to YouTube, you need a reality check. HackerNews probably costs less than 1000$ a month to host, everything included. I am sure YouTube spends more than that every second buying new storage servers.

I don't think most people realize the scale of YouTube - it's offering anyone on this planet to upload as many videos as they want, in resolution as high as 8K, while also offering the ability to monetize their content for creators. I think that is pretty damn impressive. I use YouTube often, and I am totally fine with them making money off my data via ads (when I am not paying for YouTube premium).

[toastercat]

> I mean sure, I am fine with any service I am actively using either charge me money via subscription or monetize is some other form. If I don't want that to happen, I'd not use that service.

Same. Unfortunately, YouTube is a dopamine slot machine that makes money off ads shown on (often inappropriate) videos that keep kids addicted to their phones. It's also a site that constantly invades their users privacy. It also boosts often irrevelant and trashy channels to the front page. It's also a total CPU/RAM hog, its app is constantly getting slower, and generally a piss poor experience all around. Using Invidious/Newpipe/Youtube-DL makes all of this painfully obvious. If YouTube were a service that cost $5 a month, had no invasive tracking, and wasn't 95% garbage videos by "influencers" trying to hit the algorithm jackpot, I'd pay for it.

> If the costs of managing HackerNews is so high, sure let them sell ads or offer a subscription service. But if you are comparing HackerNews hosting costs to YouTube, you need a reality check. HackerNews probably costs less than 1000$ a month to host, everything included. I am sure YouTube spends more than that every second buying new storage servers.

My point is, none of us really know what it costs to host Hackernews, YouTube, or any website on the internet, and we don't know if any of these sites are struggling financially or need our financial support.

> I don't think most people realize the scale of YouTube - it's offering anyone on this planet to upload as many videos as they want, in resolution as high as 8K, while also offering the ability to monetize their content for creators.

Yes. Unfortunately, they don't do that for creators or users. They do that so they can sell more ads.

> I am totally fine with them making money off my data via ads (when I am not paying for YouTube premium).

I am glad you are fine with it. I just wish you were fine with people being able to choose what data their browsers download.

[Dylan16807]

HN is on one server, isn't it? I think we can estimate the hosting cost pretty well.

For youtube, we don't even have good estimates for how much data they're dealing with.