[toastercat]

Every HN thread about YouTube and ads, we see the same ads/tracking/Google apologist fallacies:

1. Equivocating adblock with stealing

2. Using adblock deprives content creators of funds

3. Users of adblock are entitled whiners who just want free stuff

4. Without ads, YouTube cannot exist

It is getting tiring.

[izacus]

Just as tiring as everyone pretending that YouTube doesn't offer a directly paid solution to the ads problem.

[danShumway]

Youtube actually got rid of their directly paid solution to the ads problem and now forces it to be bundled with other services, because (and I can not stress this enough) Google does not want you to pay directly for content.

Youtube Premium exists so that Google has something to point to when it wants to say that paid services aren't viable. That's why they charge way more than creators get out of ads, that's why they force it to be bundled with other services, that's why they introduce restrictions like simultaneous viewing limits and login requirements and app restrictions that make the service tangibly worse than the experience of anonymously blocking ads.

Youtube does not want you to pay for content. It wants to monetize your data and serve you ads. It wants your consumption to be a passive habit, it does not want you to be actively engaged with funding the creators you care about.

Youtube doesn't offer a paid alternative to ads. It offers ad-free viewing as a side-perk when you buy other significantly more expensive Google services.

[spiderice]

There are a lot of claims in there with pretty much nothing to back them up. From my perspective, Youtube Premium is the shining example of a "streaming service" done right. One tier, all the features. They aren't upcharging you to a second paid tier to remove ads, 4k streaming, unlock more videos, etc.. like a lot of the other streaming services do.

If I had to cancel all of my streaming services except one, Youtube Premium would be the one I keep. And that's say a lot given that it's the only one that makes all of its content "free" (with caveats of ads, tracking, etc..) for unpaid users.

[Brian_K_White]

Shining Example???? Holy shit...

I have paid for premium for years and my youtube experience is still utter garbage.

I still see ads because they are baked in every video now as well, not to mention I can't always use my account (other people's devices), not to mention my expensive Premium home screen is now blank because I don't subscribe to channels and I turned off history (neither of which are needed to be able to populate a feed of non-random stuff, since they were already doing it fine for years), and when it wasn't blank, it was utter shit the last few years showing me the same 11 videos I already saw every day), but somehow, only the last few years, somehow, before that, it was able to do at least reasonable feed of new stuff with no subscriptions and no history. And Then we have their capricious censoring and dmca strikes which impoverishes my landscape by deleting half of the actually interesting content and stunts all the rest into avoiding any possible topic that might get their livlihoods killed, because practically anything could possibly be painted as either dangerous or someone else's copyright. But the trashiest of the trash stuff, but which sells ads, that shit flows never ending. Half of my favorite creators have Kafkaesque stories like Fran Blanches. That's what I get for my Premium dollars, infuriating stories about how the people I just paid fucked someone nice and terrorized everyone else they haven't fucked yet.

The value of Youtube premium is exactly this: It's pulling out 8 of your fingernails instead of 10.

[danShumway]

> One tier, all the features.

That is literally my complaint with it, that's exactly what I said. You can not pay Youtube specifically to remove ads.

What do you want me to back up here, you're agreeing with me about what the product is: it's a music/video streaming service that contains ad-free viewing on the side. Do you want evidence that ad-free viewing through Youtube premium is worse than with adblockers? That's pretty straightforward to provide; just look at the experience of Youtube's official apps vs NewPipe, interruptions between computers, lack of anonymous viewing -- it straightforwardly factually supports fewer viewing options than adblockers do.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be happy with the service if you like it, I'm saying that if a company is bundling a Spotify alternative with their ad-free option and requiring you to pay for both, then they're not offering an ad-free option on its own.

And that's especially the case if the company did offer an ad-free option in the past and then stopped offering it. I think it's extremely reasonable to theorize about why a company might make that decision.

[squeaky-clean]

> is bundling a Spotify alternative with their ad-free option and requiring you to pay for both

It's literally just youtube without the video component. You can find everything song ever on youtube as a video. This is just saving you bandwidth and battery. It would be more expensive for them to offer ad-free youtube without the music-only component, because people would still use it to listen to music, but now with video attached to every song.

> lack of anonymous viewing

How is anonymous viewing possible with paid accounts? They need to know if you're a subscriber or not. Even services that aim for anonymity like Mullvad require you to login with your user id to use it. Should there be a "trust me, I'm a paid subscriber" button? You can just delete watched videos from your history.

[danShumway]

> This is just saving you bandwidth and battery. It would be more expensive for them to offer ad-free youtube without the music-only component, because people would still use it to listen to music, but now with video attached to every song.

I think you're oversimplifying Youtube Music (and ignoring that Youtube Premium does include exclusive content), but assuming it is just Youtube without a video stream -- does it strike you as odd at all that the inclusion of a cost-saving feature would cause an increase in the price of the service for customers? Does that make you doubt at all whether or not this product is priced around the actual cost of ad-free content?

> How is anonymous viewing possible with paid accounts?

There are ways to do this using things like blinded tokens, but to fair they're complicated and Google is unlikely to pursue them. It does get at the inherent tradeoff here -- the way Google has structured Youtube Premium it is impossible to use it in a privacy preserving way.

And I think even ignoring the other problems with Youtube Premium and even ignoring the bundling issues, there is a little bit of a disingenuous nature to these arguments of "don't like ads, just pay" when everyone understands that by the very nature of the product, paying does not remove many of the negative aspects of Google advertising that people are trying to avoid.

In a way, I'm being overly charitable here; Google bundles ad-free viewing as part of an extended package, but the other problem that I didn't complain about is that buying that package literally doesn't get rid of entire problem and in fact requires you to use Youtube in a way that makes the problem worse, because at least when you're signed out your data isn't getting quite so explicitly linked to you as an individual.

[riddley]

I recently ended my YouTube premium sub because they started...... showing ads.

[amrocha]

I think this is the long play that most people aren't seeing, or are willfully ignoring.

Just like Netflix did, eventually youtube will jack up the price of the ad free option and introduce ads to the basic subscription.

Enshittification ad infinitum.

[jasonlotito]

YouTube Premium is the ad-free offering that they keep adding stuff to. I've been on it since it was Red, and I've enjoyed it the entire time. The price has gone up from the original $9.99, but not dramatically so. YouTube Red originally launched with music, so that's not new, and Premium has other nice features beyond ads, like video downloads and what not. So, I'm not sure what "bundled services" were added to YouTube premium that you are talking about.

Oh wait, I can watch some movies for free, on YouTube.

Oh wait, I can share my membership with my family for less than the original cost of YouTube Red... the horror.

Those all seem related to watching YouTube videos, and not other services, so not entirely sure what you mean.

I don't know, honestly, it feels like you don't want to pay for the ad-free experience at the price point they set. And that's fine. They have a price point, and you don't want it cheaper. 100% fine, but that's all there is to it.

[danShumway]

I subscribed to Youtube Premium when it came out, back when it was still called Youtube Red. I've written a couple of times in the past about why I eventually gave up on the service. I can dig some of those comments up if you want me to but the short version is: not only am I willing to pay for content, I have subscribed and paid for content through the exact option you describe and it wasn't the cost that drove me away.

I will also point out, Youtube Premium is not primarily an ad-free Youtube service (and neither was Youtube Red, it also came bundled with Google Play Music). It is a paid video service and music service that happens to also contain ad-free viewing. Youtube Premium Lite did exist as an ad-free Youtube service. Google axed it.

They axed it because Google doesn't want that -- it does not want to have a service that is priced around specifically the cost of removing ads from Youtube. Of course they axed Youtube Premium Lite, because Google wants to have a cable package, and then to be able to point to that cable package and say "see how expensive ad-free viewing is?"

It would be a long conversation to talk about why that bundling is problematic, both from a competitive standpoint (see Amazon Prime) and from a "support creators" standpoint (the amount of money going back to creators is much lower than they'll get from direct support). But I'm going to keep going back to -- there is no option to pay specifically to remove ads from Youtube; Google killed that service and it's now only available as part of a bundling system with other services.

[joombaga]

I'd like to pay less money and not get music. Just no ads. YouTube Red launched with Google Play Music, which I enjoyed. But that's gone now, and I'm paying for YouTube Music which I do not use.

[toastercat]

It doesn't solve the tracking problem, which is something adblock does.

uBlock Origin unironically provides a better value and experience than YouTube Premium does.

[PJDK]

Would anyone be condemning people who paid for youtube premium and also blocked tracking with ublock?

[danShumway]

I actually did this for a while (not condemn people :) -- I paid for Youtube and then never signed in and continued to use 3rd-party apps and uBlock Origin).

One big issue is that your payment then is basically just to Youtube -- and it's kind of impossible to avoid because the point is to stop Youtube from obsessively tracking everything you view and do, but in the process you stop Youtube from knowing which videos you're watching, so the creators are no longer getting their piece of that pie.

It's a tricky problem, I'm not sure how to solve it using Youtube Premium's model (that's not true I can think of ways to solve this using some kind of anonymous token system, but Youtube's never going to do that).

It's part of why I advocate now for supporting creators directly (and by extension not caring about Google's profits, although that's secondary). But you could still buy Youtube Premium on the side if you specifically want to support Youtube; it's just if you're using 3rd-party clients I don't think that gets rid of the obligation to help the creators themselves.

[toastercat]

That is a good question. I would hope not, but I suppose an argument could and would be made that you are still violating the TOS by blocking trackers, and by blocking them, you are depriving YouTube (and its creators) from another means of compensation by stifling the effectiveness of adverts.

[realusername]

Youtube Premium is a joke, it's priced at probably 50 times the revenue that Google gets for the average user.

I'm even wondering if they feel like it's a real option internally and not just a small gimmick to capture the most paying customers.

[bluescrn]

They killed their most reasonably-priced ad-free option (without bundled music service):

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23889917/youtube-premium-...

[tjarrett]

Of course you also have to pay for Youtube Music which is inferior to Apple Music and Spotify.

If they'd bust YouTube Premium apart from YouTube Music it'd be cheaper and a more inviting proposition.

[drcongo]

YouTube Music is hilariously bad. I doubt there's a person alive who is using that out of choice.

[nerdjon]

here is the thing, I have yet to see any proof that by paying to removing ads from YouTube that they are removing the main problem and that is the constant tracking.

If the root of the problem exists its not fixing the problem and its just fixing it for non technical people, since most don't understand the real problem or how it works.

[astronads]

And it costs more than the amount of revenue my viewing of ads generate them.

[scbzzzzz]

true, but they bundle with youtube music and other services that i don't use. I don't see value paying for everything. there is no option to buy just youtube - ads(atleast where I live). it is a manipulative tactic. you are gaslighted for not seeing ads on internet (public space) and when you want to buy the service, they bundle it with other services.

[bongobingo1]

Premium is $24/m here!

Maybe I am dumb, but it does seem that if they offered a dirt cheap "just no ads" plan for like 2-5$/m they could probably get a higher conversion rate, maybe the actual 10x they'd "need" to match the current price.

I think a lot of people watch youtube as a "second screen" thing like people historically left the TV on for some kind of connection, or when going to sleep, etc. That kind of content is probably not worth 24/m to most, but 2$?

[jasonlotito]

Where is 'here'? It's $22 here in the US, but that is for the family plan (6 people, so just under $4 per person).

> but 2$?

Yeah, I highly doubt that covers the cost of serving up videos ad-free while also being able to provide anything of substance to the creators (which earn more per user from premium viewers than from ads).

[bongobingo1]

Au, 15usd/m.

> but 2$?

>> Yeah, I highly doubt that covers the cost of serving up videos ad-free while also being able to provide anything of substance to the creators (which earn more per user from premium viewers than from ads).

Well if 2$/m with a 12x conversion rate doesn't cover, then neither does $24/m at a 1x conversion rate, so the current wouldn't be sustainable either?

[redserk]

In fairness, there’s also the misguided assumption that services cost nothing to host and ad revenue cannot possibly offset the costs.

[scbzzzzz]

Yes ad-revenue offsets , I want to point out, premise it self is wrong. their business model itself is not sustainable (as per my understanding)with present free +ads/paid model. you are just subsidizing their bad decisions forgoing your privacy/time/money.

even with ads, hosting free video content is not sustainable. just look at the trajectory, internet users are stagnating, time of a day is limited. which means all users watch-time is constant. it is profitable now, but not forever(if above premise is true)

but youtube has to host all the data since its inception, and new content is added everyday. (maintenance cost increases day by day + but income is stagnated)

only way out is to charge/limit content creators. or else it will be (never ending increase of number of ads/price increase).

[cat_theorist]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

YouTube us very profitable. It’s just that they want even more and they believe forcing users to turn off their adblockers will get them there. Smells monopolistic to me.

[jsnell]

Your link says nothing about the profitability of YouTube, just about the revenue.

[cat_theorist]

They don’t publish that number, but you know it’s in the billions.

Here’s alphabet’s gross income (155b USD): https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/GOOG/financials/annua...

And here’s an estimate of YT’s profit margin: https://mannhowie.com/youtube-valuation#youtube-profit-margi...

My point wasn’t about the specific number, it was a qualitative one: people in this thread claim that YT needs to kill Adblockers to pay for the service and survive. They don’t. They’re already making billions without crippling web browsers to disable Adblockers.

[jsnell]

I certainly don't know that their profit is in the billions. Neither do you, unless you're a high level Google executive.

The source you have for estimating the profit margin is just total guesswork. It's estimating the costs purely by taking the operating costs of other companies with different business as a percentage of their revenue, and then applying that same percentage to YouTube. That's an absurd methodology. You could just apply it to any business and show they're profitable.

(As an example, for years AWS was profitable and GCP wasn't. But applying the methodology from your link would have resulted in the belief that GCP was wildly profitable. And those business were far more similar to each other than Netflix and YouTube are!)

Also, you are making a point about a specific number: You are claiming the profit is greater than 0. It could be true! It could also not be true. We just don't know.

[Goronmon]

In fairness, there’s also the misguided assumption that services cost nothing to host and ad revenue cannot possibly offset the costs.

No see, you can't bring that up because they already called that reason "tiring". Thus it is invalid now and you need to come up with a different one.

[toastercat]

Disregarding your sarcasm, I did not call it tiring, and I've also never seen anyone make that misguided assumption.

[the_sleaze9]

4. Without ads, YouTube cannot exist

In my view, you did call it tiring and were thereby stating that you had seen someone make that assumption.

[toastercat]

Saying "without ads, YouTube cannot exist" is not the same thing as saying "services cost nothing to host" at least in my view.

[bluescrn]

Google aren't exactly a struggling small business

[toastercat]

I have never met anyone (or seen a comment on HN) that has purported that. Sorry, but this seems like a strawman.

[redserk]

> Every HN thread about YouTube and ads, we see the same ads/tracking/Google apologist fallacies:

If I'm understanding your comment in good faith, it appears to be dismissing a number of viewpoints that don't advocate for adblocking and labeling them as "apologist".

The intent of my comment is to call out that there are a number of viewpoints that do not consider the costs of running services and equate adblock as a binary "good" vs "evil".

[toastercat]

My intention wasn't to dismiss viewpoints, my intention was to highlight what I view as fallacious arguments.

I can agree that there are those who do not consider the costs of running services, but I have never seen someone suggest that services "cost nothing to host".

[Goronmon]

What's tiring is trying to figure out why people just don't use sites/services that show them ads. It's extremely simple and from my experience pretty effective at avoiding the ads those sites/services display.

[nix0n]

> don't use sites/services that show them ads

Cable TV shows ads. Spotify Premium shows ads. Paramount Plus shows ads.

Roads have ads (billboards), but so do the subways.

Even paperback books often have an ad in the back for the next book in the series.

If you think it is possible to avoid ads, it is because you are so surrounded by ads that you are tuning them out.

[Goronmon]

Cable TV shows ads. Spotify Premium shows ads. Paramount Plus shows ads.

I don't use those services. Problem solved. See how simple that is?

Roads have ads (billboards), but so do the subways.

Sure, that is a problem. But I don't consider a roadside billboard to be a "website or service" as I mentioned in my original post. So, I don't see how that comparison applies.

If you think it is possible to avoid ads...

I didn't say it was possible to avoid all ads, I asked why are you using a service if you don't like the service itself? Just don't use it. You haven't stated why you feel that's so difficult to do.

[Draiken]

Because they're a monopoly. Finding creators without using YouTube is very hard, at least for me. It's hard even inside YT.

But most creators are exclusively on YT because that's the only choice that matters.

There is Nebula now that does have some nice content, but they're orders of magnitude smaller (plus their UX is very rough) so it's hard to even call them a competitor.

That's why monopolies - capitalism's inevitable end goal - destroy everything they touch. In order to argue "you can choose to not do X" requires the choice part to be true. Sure, we can argue people can completely forego X. But that's basically a nuclear option that even if they wanted to do, will be hard. People will still send you YouTube links.

One example of this is WhatsApp. I hate it and don't want to support Meta, but 100% of my peers use it so I have to use it.

Having said all that, when YouTube starts to price hike subscriptions and/or showing ads even for paying users (inevitable because of profits), I'll force myself to stop using it.

[nix0n]

> why people just don't use sites/services that show them ads

The point I'm trying to make is that everything shows ads.

Most content is only available on services that show ads.

How do you consume media?

[toastercat]

Who says people who use adblock don't do that? I certainly avoid those sites, that's also why I self-host Invidious and often use youtube-dl.

But no, people have a problem with those things too, because at its core, they disagree with allowing users being able to choose what their browsers download.

[Goronmon]

Who says people who use adblock don't do that? I certainly avoid those sites, that's also why I self-host Invidious and often use youtube-dl.

If you are using a different front end for a service, you aren't avoiding using that service...

Why can't you just choose to use a different video sharing platform if you don't like what Youtube offers? Why bother using Invidious and youtube-dl?

[toastercat]

Yeah, I kind of anticipated that argument hence the second half of my comment.

I would use a different streaming platform (and I do for some creators like Louis Rossman). But at this point, and you may already know this, YouTube has a monopoly on the video sharing/streaming market and mindshare. You simply can't avoid YouTube in 2023, else you forfeit watching 98% of all video content produced on the internet.

The maintainers of frontends like Nitter/NewPipe/Invidious/Scribe.rip know this. And I'd bet most of them wish their applications had no reason to exist. If YouTube or Twitter were simply good, privacy-respecting and performant products, there would be no reason to use these (or adblock).

[haspok]

Or just use an ad blocker. Also extremely simple.

[carlosjobim]

How simple is it for a normal person to use an ad blocker on their TV, where they want to watch YouTube?

And don't "just pihole" me, mister!

[toastercat]

At least for Roku, I recently found and had good luck with https://github.com/iBicha/playlet

[carlosjobim]

Very cool!

[herbst]

Smarttube is one of several apps that work just like YouTube but without ads.

Also skips sponsor Blocks

[scoofy]

Terms of Service can be rejected by not using the service.

Everyone in here wants to have their cake and eat it to. The proper channels are political, but half the folks here want to have laissez faire government and also the free to violate contracts they don’t like.

I get it, but it’s not actually a sensible way to run a society.

It’s not something I’m going to fall on my sword over, because I’m actually very sympathetic to privacy concerns, it just rings a bit hollow when we’re talk about the convenience of YouTube verses more open alternatives with less content.