[petree]

You can use NoScript to disable JS and see how well that works.

But more to the point, yes, a browser is a client, but without the economic incentive of either ads or direct monetization from users, many sites, YouTube included, would simply not work. Storage and bandwith costs money. Unless we decided to somehow fund all of this through some sort of additional tax through the ISPs or governments, ads or subscriptions are a necessary evil.

[tgv]

Storage and bandwidth cost money, but not $14/month. You can get a server for yourself for that kind of money, and I don't think YouTube has a server per user.

[marticode]

Producing content also cost money, and producers get a cut of the ads or the subscription.

[safety1st]

This kind of fantasy microeconomics debate is silly at best, disingenuous at worst. We are talking about a company with $280B in revenue per year and one of the highest profit margins in America. How they spend that money is not connected to what is fair or what makes some kind of logical sense in your head. It's connected to whatever will increase their profits further.

All you are doing is laying down cover fire to support further advances by an abusive monopolist. YouTube's financials don't HAVE to add up. Google owns advertising for the entire Internet! The entirety of YT could be a loss leader just to suppress the growth of streaming video businesses outside of their control, and the Google monopoly would carry on.

[petree]

Having a loss leader like this is exactly monopolistic behavior though. The fact that Google are trying to make money from it is expected and more fair to their competitors than just having it completely free, and not having ads either.

[safety1st]

No. Trying to make money is something that all businesses do, not just monopolies. Having loss leaders is also something that many businesses do.

Here are behaviors that are fairly unique to monopolies: raising prices while degrading their product. Many businesses try to do these, but monopolies, who have no significant competition, are more likely to succeed. Sure enough this monopolistic behavior is what Google has just exhibited: by banning people who use ad blockers, they have either degraded their product, or raised the price (from $0 to the cost of YouTube Premium for those users), depending on how you look at it.

They can do this because they are a monopoly.

[tgv]

Produces receive very, very little. And YT doesn't check content (nor content strikes, BTW), so there's a lot of illegal(ish) content which moves money from producer to leecher. It seems active channels get most of their income from 3rd parties as a result. So there's little reason to place ads as far as content production is concerned.

[petree]

Sure, it is definitely more expensive than I would like. But you still have the option to watch the ads if you don't like paying a sub. Expecting it to be completely free is unrealistic though.

[tgv]

Sure, but then the logical step would be to charge producers and get them to charge viewers, either directly or via ads. But we all know that will result in the demise of the platform, so that's a no-no for both youtube and producers.

Your subscription money doesn't go to the producers anyway, or only little of it, so the $14/mo is for a large part Google's profit.

[iamjackg]

I'm not sure I would say your $14 doesn't go to the creators: they get paid per minute watched when the user has Premium. A while ago Lon Seidman published a video discussing his YouTube earnings, and he mentioned that Premium is actually much more remunerative for creators compared to traditional ads.