I just subscribe to YouTube Premium. From what I hear, views from Premium viewers are worth more to the creators than ad funded views, and I don’t need to deal with deciding which patreons to back, and spend 10x (or more) trying to pay for each individual.
Perhaps controversial, but I rather just have ads. Not that I do not think this is a preferable model, but rather, donates cost real money and ads cost nothing except time.
While time is finite and valuable, if I am already on YouTube, then I have already committed to choice of wasting that nebulous amount of time in the first place.
I’d absolutely rather give money. For me there’s a lot less friction in that even if technically it costs time all the same. With a job I have control over how I convert time into money; not so with watching ads.
As much as youtube can waste time, I also feel like I’ve been given genuine value by certain people on the site, so I wouldn’t say it’s simply wasting time.
I watch quite a large array of channels. I am not sure I could feasibly afford to donate a meaningful amount to all them. So then, I am forced into the dilemma of deciding which ones are more worthy than others, and that is not something I am particularly willing to do.
If one's patreon did have perks associated with it, then I would be more inclined to 'donate', as well.
I feel perfectly able to decide where to allocate money. For instance, one channel has functionally introduced me to modern philosophy and inspired me to start reading a ton. I took a class and read a bunch of books I otherwise wouldn’t have. Another channel makes funny ten minute joke videos once a month. I feel totally okay giving the former way more money; they’ve provided me more value by a long shot.
Patreon is also getting enshittified, grandfathering rates for the legacy people who give it a network effect, and then jacking them up on new creators to take advantage of their moat.
Unsurprising. I sort of feel this is just the natural cycle of the company structure, and that we have to hope any enshittifying service eventually gets bad enough to drive a large group to another platform earlier in its lifecycle. I’d support creators on any other platform if they offered to take money on it, but there’s only so much I can do as the person giving the money.