[leetharris]

Why don't people just pay the $10/month if you consume enough for ads to annoy you?

I really don't get the extreme amount of effort people put into adblocking for services that have a paid alternative. People have this expectation of all these internet services being free which is wild to me. It costs an enormous amount of bandwidth to run Twitch.

It is still not profitable because it's such a hard business model to run and yet people think they shouldn't have to pay anything for it, even when they use the service for dozens to hundreds of hours a month.

[ktosobcy]

Not everyone lives in the US (so 10$ can be quite high). Not everyone likes the service but there are no alternatives to the service and quite often we live in monopolies... like for vide YT has virtual monopoly and I prefer to support content creators directly but not google itself (let's be honest, YT is monopoly only because of shady google practices… and G itself bought YT because they couldn't compete with it... and it should have never been allowed in the first place…)

[wnevets]

> Why don't people just pay the $10/month if you consume enough for ads to annoy you?

Avid twitch users are generally already spending considerably more than $10 a month with subscriptions to multiple streamers, gifted subscriptions, bits, etc.

[TechSquidTV]

People are entitled and constantly fed rhetoric online that it is morally acceptable to steal by blocking ads. As a YouTube content creator, who makes educational tech videos, I have seen my share of complaints because I dare to take a sponsorship. People simply do not assign value to digital goods, they are seen as free by default.

[bm3719]

I do this because I have to protect my brain from marketers that are working against my financial interests, time management goals, and general mental hygiene. If I'm searching for, like in your case, tech info, it's because I want a solution to a problem that has nothing to do with getting sold crappy VPN services or mobile games.

We could have a decentralized and open medium for global information exchange. Instead, the web is a cesspool, and a large part of why is because we've commercialized everything.

[koube]

Sundar has made the case before which I think is pretty good point: The open web is basically an ads driven model. Without ads the open web would be very different.

(Opinions are my own.)

The alternative is paywalls everywhere, or existing on donations. Try reading the Atlantic/NYT today and see you like the ad free model. Or try lemmy if you want to see the donation model.

Hacker news is based around tech and entrepreneurship still yes? What is the current audience that drives the upvote consensus that everything needs to be free AND ad-free?

[raspyberr]

They are free by default. Digital goods don't follow regular economics. A carpenter who makes a table can make ONE sale from that table. How many sales of a digital good can you have? What entitles you to potentially unlimited money from a set amount of work? Any attempt to turn limit digital goods to the way physical goods work, introduces friction and extra work only for the legitimate customers. Donation is the only ethical for of payment for digital goods.

[grayhatter]

Nice strawman you got there, would be a shame if someone had a different reason.

10 USD is too much to charge for ad free twitch. I don't WANT to support twitch, their reputation and brand isn't stellar.

They're probably one of the least awful, but I have better places to spend my money. Like the content creators on twitch. I begrudgingly pay twitch to support the streamers I watch and care about. but 10$ so streamers can get none of that... pass, if I care about the streamer, I'll unmute the small window, if I don't I'll close twitch.

Until adtech companies start acting more ethically as a rule. They deserve no consideration. Bad behavior might not excuse bad behavior, but it obviously encourages it.

[gyudin]

I’m already paying for a bunch of subscriptions on Twitch. Why am I expected to pay another $10 to block ads. Bittorent created a p2p streaming technology like 5 years ago.

[atomicUpdate]

> Why am I expected to pay another $10 to block ads.

You aren't.

Twitch Turbo costs $12/month. If you're spending more than that on multiple subscriptions then you're better off getting Twitch Turbo and not getting ads on any stream, rather than just those you subscribe to.

[hkwerf]

> Why don't people just pay the $10/month if you consume enough for ads to annoy you?

What if you believe that ads are even unacceptable once if you watch twitch rarely?

[TechSquidTV]

Then you do not use the service, as that is the terms of the agreement.

[hkwerf]

Is it? Maybe twitch could make the terms more easier to understand. As it stands, it's a wall of text, almost nobody will consider. At first glance, I don't see any clause similar to what you suggest.

[aendruk]

It’s clearly the intended exchange. It doesn’t have to be literally in the legal “terms” to affect your assessment of fairness.

I don’t tolerate ads; I don’t choose ad-supported services.

[hkwerf]

Yes, you are of course right. The comment was maybe a bit too passive aggressive. Sorry about that. There are more things to consider than just the terms of service and a moral or implied obligation of course extends past twitch and amazon to the content creators.

I wanted to point a bit toward the moral failings of the service providers themselves, which are many, in regards to ads and, in particular, tracking.

[ben_jones]

Because eventually premium users will get ads too as we are seeing with many other streaming services.

First it’s pay, no ads. Then it’s higher tier for no ads. Then it’s higher tier no ads but watch a trailer at the beginning. Then it’s higher tier and ads.

[koube]

You're refusing to pay for a product today based on what they might do in the future? Does the future possibility degrade today's product? Can't you just cancel your subscription if ads start showing up?

[Zambyte]

> Does the future possibility degrade today's product?

In some cases, yes. I specifically don't use Spotify in part because I can possibly lose access to my playlists and music I listen to in the future. Building a music collection is a big part of listening to music for me, so the future possibilities of the service actually degrade todays product.

I don't watch streams so I don't have any input on Twitch, but I could imagine someone having a similar outlook.

[koube]

I don't use my twitch account ever anymore but I don't think there is really the same concept in twitch. I think most people probably watch 1-2 of their favorite streamers since watching streams is already such an incredibly time intensive activity. The most active someone can get is probably clipping short videos and curating clips.

I don't think you lose access to any of this when you unsubscribe, I think you just start seeing ads again when watching the live stream.

[mariusor]

Frankly they already did it once. If you had a subscription you used to not get any ads on any streams, since about a year they reneged on that, and a subscription grants you no ads *only on the subscribed channel.

[ben_jones]

“Vote with your wallet”

[hkwerf]

That's exactly what keeps me from even considering many subscriptions. As long as they're not clearly ad-free I don not care to even try them to check whether they are.

I'll happily pay for things like LWN, though, even though I'd get everything ad-free two weeks later anyhow.

[RajT88]

/\----- This.

[cess11]

Every ad annoys me and they are a threat vector, and I don't watch enough Twitch that I think it's a good idea to give them my payment information.

Setting up a proxy for ad filtering is a one-time investment I can share with my friends that feel the same.

[krageon]

I'd pay a fifth of that, maybe. That's what it's worth to me.

[cortesoft]

If it's not worth the cost, shouldn't you not be using it then?

[carlosjobim]

Then your time is not worth much.

[seanvelasco]

for developing countries where the minimum wage is $10 per day (not hour), $11.99 each month is simply too expensive - money that could otherwise be spent on services that offer more than simply being ad-free. if it's $1 or $3 per month, that'd be reasonable.

if the ad-free subscription is bundled with Prime, def worth it.

[guipsp]

> Why don't people just pay the $10/month if you consume enough for ads to annoy you?

No such option exists

[ffsm8]

https://www.twitch.tv/turbo?no-mobile-redirect=true

I feel like that was close enough for their point to stand

[SadWebDeveloper]

Yes but their primary target audience is... Teens and young adults and maybe some p.dos looking for "ASMR sutff" if you now what i mean.

What that target audience have in common... tons on times and low to zero income, so since they have time to spend trying to not pay because they don't have money to begin with, then it will happen.

Twitch is betting on having a "YouTube moment", when those teens and young adults become adults with real money, they would love to avoid the hassle of going ad-free for 10 bucks a month because they love the content that is there, so for them would be at max 1 hour of their total income, meanwhile it has to stuck taking the loses till that moment happen.

[Miner49er]

Their ad-free is $11.99/month.

[yuck39]

It used to be $8.99/month. I was a pretty casual twitch viewer and I paid for it then. When they announced the move to 11.99/month I didn't re-up it and I just don't watch twitch now.

Funny how that $3/month was just enough for me to decide it was no longer worth it.

[lemoncookiechip]

Because the plan is $11.99/Month for something I could get for free. All the other benefits (Chat Badge, Custom Username, More Emotes...) are irrelevant for me personally. I'd maybe pay $4.99/Month for no ads, but I'm not paying $12.

If Discord can offer me a Nitro and Nitro Basic, where the Basic plan pretty much has all the features I need for less than half the price 2.99 vs 9.99, so can they offer me a plan for just ad blocking, which is the main feature people want in the first place, either that, or they offer me something else that justifies me having to pay a premium for something I can get for free.

Not to mention that like many other people, I'm already indirectly supporting them through other means such as donations to specific streamers which they take a high cut of.

TL:DR: $12 is a lot of money for what they offer when I already support the people I watch and they siphon from that.