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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.