[sulam]

Why do I pick up trash off the floor that I didn’t put there? Why do I tip for good service? Why do I bother responding to posts like this?

The answer is the same to all these questions: because I’d rather not live in a world where everyone is a taker.

[talldayo]

You're not picking up trash. You're paying for trash and encouraging the ad-littering business by even acknowledging it exists. If you consider advertising bad enough to pay money to get rid of it, why would you pay that money to the business putting up ads? Because you refuse to leave their client? Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

I see a lot of people say this, where they despise YouTube and it's advertisement scheme but somehow mentally justify it to themselves that Google deserves their $10/month. Before any of you ask "What's wrong with the world these days!?" again, reflect on what you're paying for and how these companies sucker you into buying it. The free market can pound sand, Google has you right where they want you.

[least]

> Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

You could choose something better by consuming media from sources that don't engage in the malpractices you're complaining about. There's plenty of media available for purchase without advertisements or subscriptions attached. There's also plenty of media on offer for free from the people who created it.

I'm not even anti-piracy, but your rationalization is just ridiculous. No, you're not sticking it to the man; you're being subsidized by people that are willing to pay for content they consume.

I've pirated a ton of content/software in my lifetime and I use adblockers. Countless mp3s, video games, applications, movies, tv shows, and articles online consumed by me without paying for it. Sometimes it was impossible for me to pay for it because of regional licensing, but a whole lot more of it was simply because I didn't want to pay for it or I couldn't afford it.

Now I pay for music and other media streaming services, including Youtube Premium. I pay for the games I play and I pay for a lot of software that I use. Does that balance things out? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm definitely not someone that is pretending I'm on some moral crusade against advertisements by circumventing them.

[talldayo]

I'm not pirating media people put on YouTube. When you upload content to YouTube, you are generally taking unlicensed (or provisionally legal derivative content) and sublicensing it to YouTube for distribution and monetization. You can argue that I'm pirating Google's copy of the content, but I'm not short-changing the original uploader by refusing Google's ads. I'm exclusively ensuring that Google's business model is less profitable.

> you're being subsidized by people that are willing to pay for content they consume.

Good! Those people hate YouTube too, otherwise would be perfectly satisfied with the default service. If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally create a better system of content ownership then humanity will be all the better for it. Google doesn't deserve this content, they are poor stewards of the service and deserve to be deposed for their lazy management of a shared resource. If we were talking about ad-free Facebook subscriptions HN would be wearing the shoe on the other foot, ripping people to shreds for supporting a demonstrably destructive business. But YouTube is different, because we all have some incentive to prop poor Google up.

I feel zero empathy contributing to "the problem" of ruining the service. This isn't the tragedy of the commons, it's the progression of corporate greed. Keep paying for YouTube Premium, tell me with any honesty your contributions are making the world better or providing a more complete user experience. You can't.

[johnnyanmac]

>but I'm not short-changing the original uploader by refusing Google's ads.

I'd be surprised if Google didn't take adblocked users into account when administering pay, because the pay scale isn't some flat "X money's per Y thousand views". So yes, you are indirectly short-changing them.

>If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally create a better system of content ownership then humanity will be all the better for it.

or we get a worse format like Tiktok taking over. The most popular reddit alternative during its "protests" was Discord. I don't consider that an obective net good for the free web.

That's not to say Reddit deserves to stay alive, just a consideration that this forced migration will not necessarily lead to a desired solution of "new website like X but without the bullshit"

[least]

> I'm not pirating media people put on YouTube. When you upload content to YouTube, you are generally taking unlicensed (or provisionally legal derivative content) and sublicensing it to YouTube for distribution and monetization. You can argue that I'm pirating Google's copy of the content, but I'm not short-changing the original uploader by refusing Google's ads. I'm exclusively ensuring that Google's business model is less profitable.

If I write a song and put it up on bandcamp for purchase and on youtube with the intention to monetize it through Youtube's monetization options, how do you arrive at the conclusion that you're not pirating my content when you're circumventing the medium through which that is monetized? Advertisers will pay Youtube for an advertisement on their platform -> Youtube places advertisements in front of my video -> Revenue from advertisements is determined by how many times an advertisement is viewed on my video. So circumventing advertisement reduces the view count and thus the revenue. This is making it both less profitable for Youtube and for me.

> Good! Those people hate YouTube too, otherwise would be perfectly satisfied with the default service.

The willingness to pay for no advertising is not equivalent to hating Youtube. If you hate Youtube, why do you use it?

You might say it's because the content is there. Why is the content there and not somewhere else? Because Youtube incentivizes people to upload their creations to it. If it is somewhere else, why not watch it there or pay for it there?

> If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally create a better system of content ownership then humanity will be all the better for it.

Why would Google killing off Youtube force any change to how content ownership works?

> Google doesn't deserve this content, they are poor stewards of the service and deserve to be deposed for their lazy management of a shared resource.

If they didn't deserve the content, then people wouldn't upload their content to Youtube. It is every creator's prerogative to choose how they distribute their content and there's a reason many do so on Youtube.

I could levy plenty of criticisms against Youtube just as many creators on the platform could but there's no coercion involved here. People want what Youtube has to offer.

> If we were talking about ad-free Facebook subscriptions HN would be wearing the shoe on the other foot, ripping people to shreds for supporting a demonstrably destructive business. But YouTube is different, because we all have some incentive to prop poor Google up.

What incentive are you speaking of? If ad-free Facebook subscriptions were tied into revenue-sharing with content creators on the platform, it'd be as reasonable as Youtube Premium.

> I feel zero empathy contributing to "the problem" of ruining the service. This isn't the tragedy of the commons, it's the progression of corporate greed.

I don't care that you're a selfish person acting in their own self interest; I'm no different. I dislike that you're trying to portray your behavior as righteous.

> Keep paying for YouTube Premium, tell me with any honesty your contributions are making the world better or providing a more complete user experience. You can't.

Paying for Youtube Premium supports the upkeep of the platform and directly contributes to creators through revenue sharing. Both the platform and its creators make for a better world. You could absolutely replace the platform, but there's undeniable value in one that allows basically anyone to share what they have to offer to the world and create mechanisms to monetize their content. The content speaks for itself. There's countless hours of educational and entertaining content. There's content for niche subjects and hobbies that would never have appeared in traditional media.

[msadirna]

> If they didn't deserve the content, then people wouldn't upload their content to Youtube. It is every creator's prerogative to choose how they distribute their content and there's a reason many do so on Youtube.

...and the reason is: they were the first. Now they are so huge that you can't go past them. If you want to have your video seen, you HAVE to go to YouTube. It's not an argument for them. It's just a quasi monopoly. Every Smart TV these days comes with an YouTube app pre-installed. It has it's app on most of the phones on this planet.

There is no real choice.

[least]

> ...and the reason is: they were the first. Now they are so huge that you can't go past them. If you want to have your video seen, you HAVE to go to YouTube.

I think you're understanding the value in the platform itself, then. It is pretty trivial for someone to share their video online but it's extremely difficult to get it to propagate.

> There is no real choice.

There is kind of a choice. You already added the primary condition for uploading it to Youtube and that condition isn't something that matters to everyone for everything. Traditional media is Youtube's competition for attention on long form content.

[presentation]

OK we get it you’re so cool for being cynical

I will proceed to live my life paying companies and creators that provide me value and you can continue feeling like a victim where every action you have the option to take is exploitation

[sulam]

First of all we are talking about YouTube here, not Google as a whole. Secondly, my argument is simple and basic physics. If everyone behaved like you, YouTube and services like it would not exist. Your straw man arguments aren’t needed for me to justify my decisions.

[johnnyanmac]

> You're paying for trash and encouraging the ad-littering business by even acknowledging it exists.

This feels like a "you participate in society" argument. Yes, it'd be better if all intrusive ads were banned or heavily regulated. But that's not reality and I can't simply withdraw from the internet in protest.

>If you consider advertising bad enough to pay money to get rid of it, why would you pay that money to the business putting up ads?

it's a calculus of "energy spent" from fighting vs value gained from "giving in". There's fortuntaely more value than "remove ads" so that's how I justify it.

>Because you refuse to leave their client?

because I can't leave the client. I've been de-googling for the past year or so and I realize the main two things I can't leave are

1. Youtube, because it basically has a monopoly on video content.

2. gmail, mostly because there'd be a huge burden ediing almost 20 years of accounts all through the web to leave. From random sites I visit once in a blue moon to my banks and bills. I'd have gmail haunting me for years even if I dropped it today.

If there's one thing that has a reckoning coming, it's Youtube.

>Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?

I do it all the time. There is always friction so I think it's a bit dishonest to phrase it as "choosing something better". Firefox still has quirks with translation and the occasional weird interaction with factors like video calls, even after days of researching tweaking settings and installing extensions. Picking up PC gaming still has tons of configuration issues and hardware considerations compared to popping in a disc into a console. There's simply a lot of intersting information I miss out on from not browsing reddit, things that the other 3 forum social media (including HN) just don't catch. It's never objectively better.

>reflect on what you're paying for and how these companies sucker you into buying it.

I suppose you can criticism any bill with that logic. Water is a natural resource, why am I paying for plumbing? video games are just code, all code should be free, why pay for video games? Why am I paying $100 for this art commission when someone in Venezuela would do it for a dime (disclaimer: this is probably a very wrong conversion)?

Some of these are societal (we're never going to escape taxes, some of these should hopefully be so you can support other workers instead of exploiting them. It's your call either way, but I won't fault someone (especially someone decently off) for choosing convinience of entertainment over some grand stand against "the free market".