YouTube : memes

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 33 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Reasons not to buy premium:

Google having a history of all the videos you watch via your account.
Even if Google provided an option to opt out of tracking there would be no reason to trust then since they have lied about not tracking people in the past.
YouTube seems to redirect any Premium profits intended to creators to the entity which made a copyright claim on a video. This would be sensible if YouTube’s copyright claim system wasn’t so vulnerable to abuse. Normal (yellow) demonetisation will pay out from Premium though. https://youtu.be/PRQVzPEyldc?si=5-wFn2SqPZLdOlqa
Features are removed from YouTube to incentivise Premium such as playing videos while your phone screen is locked.
Similar to above, Google have been increasing the amount of ads particularly on phones where ad blockers are harder to use. I.E. pushing users to Premium not by making the service better, but by making non-Premium worse.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your utub link seems to contain a tracking Id.

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 4 points 10 months ago

Not particularly surprising. It was copied from the YouTube iOS app...

[–] unfnknblvbl 7 points 10 months ago

Google having a history of all the videos you watch via your account.

They already do this anyway. They also do it whether you have an account or not.

[–] Balthazar@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Point one: I'm pretty certain they already track that. With or without account. And you're on the internet, without a VPN there is no privacy. You are also able to remove that history any moment you want. Is it Ideal? No. But you should've acted 10-15 years prior if you wanted to stop this. It's still not ideal though.

Point two: I agree. There does need to be space for them to repent, but they aren't actively trying to, so don't trust them (see the next point as an example of that).

Point three That's a shame. They really need to fix that, though with how corpos do things nowadays, not sure that'll happen.

Point four: That's normal, expected and a reasonable business decision. Most of these features they likely added after premium, and they're meant as incentives. Why else would you want to but their premium, if not for the added features?

Point five: This is shitty and mostly inexcusable behaviour. It's god awful, and they really shouldn't do it. I do have to play devil's advocate a little. They are fully, 100% in their right to do this. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet (and time). If we stop using their services, they'll stop making it worse. They are still A-holes for doing it though.

[–] uzay@infosec.pub 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Point one: I'm pretty certain they already track that. With or without account. And you're on the internet, without a VPN there is no privacy. You are also able to remove that history any moment you want.

I mean sure, they could try combining the user agents my unofficial apps provide with my carrier's NAT IP to build a profile on me, but it would be highly inefficient and imprecise to the point where it's almost useless for them. With a Youtube Premium account they have an identity tied to an email address, full name, and payment info that they can relate every click in their apps and websites to. If I also use their other services with the same account, I would be paying them to spy on everything I do and sell my data, so other companies can sell me crap.

[–] Balthazar@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago

If you've already got that much of a set-up to guarantee privacy, it's a very good point. Most people aren't that dedicated to privacy (I think), but it's still a very valid point in your case

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would be very interested to know how good they are at tracking a user across brand new browser sessions. I have mine set to delete cookies, cache and history (minus a few trusted domains) on close but I'd imagine it would be easy to differentiate between me and others in my household by browser fingerprints alone. The only question then is whether those guesses are reliable enough for Google to essentially treat those sessions as 1 person, or throw it away since there are bound to be quite a lot of cases where 10s or 100s of people on the same IP have very similar browsing habits and configurations and trying to figure out who is who would be incredibly difficult (think offices where everybody could have exactly the same laptop and share similar browsing habits due to working for the same company). That's my cope anyway. The alternative is Youtube over Tor for which would be painful.

Points 4 and 5 on my end are essentially two sides to of the same coin. I should clarify, I don't have a problem with YouTube introducing a new feature and making that Premium-only.

[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 3 points 10 months ago

I would be very interested to know how good they are at tracking a user across brand new browser sessions

It's called fingerprinting

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What about the reasons to buy premium? Pretty much none right?

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, fair. The two big reasons are that your views are worth much more than normal viewers to creators, so it does mean you're helping support the content you watch. Further, the more people who pay for content the less influence advertisers have. All this said, I would assume that $5 a month to your favorite creators (Patreon, Paypal, Librepay, etc) would be worth more to them than a share of your YouTube Premium subscription fee.

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[–] TTimo@lemm.ee 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I pay for a premium account and I get more value out of it than Netflix or any other streaming service.

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 10 months ago

you're not putting the bar very high there

[–] MucherBucher@feddit.de 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

ITT: "it costs more than 5 bucks a month!" yeah, if you don't share with friends with family, it does. Also, music service included, deduct your spotify payment.

"You can just block ads" You can just miss the whole point.

"I rather support creators directly" I'm happy you do that. YouTube hosting is not free for Google/Alphabet, pay them too, or you'll have to teach each and every creator how to webhost + help em search a "real job" because selfhosted won't pay enough. Also, good fun browsing videos then.

IDK man, paying for YT Premium really isn't that bad. Assuming you already consume YouTube content, that is. And I'm pretty sure that's like 98% of first world population between 4 and 70.

Blocking ads on YouTube is no sustainable solution. Hosting Billions of Gigabytes of on-demand content is SUPER expensive. Like, it actually costs money. Other, wayyy smaller indie creator on-demand video platforms charge 5 bucks a month, but i'ts okay if they do it, because they aren't big bad Alphabet.

If that's your view, you don't have a problem with pricing, you have a problem with morals. And if you still do voluntarily consume YouTube content in private, with or without ads in any which way, you inarguably have a huge problem with your own morals.

YouTube premium is a good deal. It's priced very well compared with competition, it actually does pay indie creators and it let's you access to features that many users really do use.

BUTBUT THEY ARTIFICIALLY LIMIT FEATURES FOR NO REASON WITHOUT PREMIUM. I mean, it's subscription software and streaming, what else would they do? Every for profit subscription software provider and their mother does this. I develop hospital software and we literally do exactly this. If hospital A has feature x and hospital B also wants that, we don't just hand that out for free even when we just have to add it to their system in like 10 minutes... what did you expect? They already use our software (like you use YouTube), we don't have a huge incentive to just randomly add features if nobody paid for it. If we do, be happy about it, send me a gift card, if we or they don't, that's just business.

[–] SinAdjetivos 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's wild to me that this is so often called "just business" when, described this way, it's textbook racketeering.

[–] AndrasKrigare 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Could you explain to me how "if someone wants to use my work, they should pay me for it" could be perceived as racketeering, let alone "textbook?"

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[–] MucherBucher@feddit.de 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

The textbook this person owns:

service provider: "Hello, I'm a window cleaner, do you want me to clean your windows? I'll actually do it for free this time! Please recommend me to your peers"

customer: "yes please"

service provider: "all done! Want me to do it again in three months time?"

customer: "yes, I love free stuff!"

service provider: "actually, I'd have to charge for that, can't work for free all the time."

customer: "Racketeering!"

[–] ursakhiin 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

"Racketeering" is definitely the wrong word.

I'll put it like this. I think YouTube Premium is too expensive. I also think YouTube is too aggressive with it's ads.

I opt to send them that message by using an ad blocking service tailored to YouTube and paying the content creators in other ways.

If the family plan weren't 20 dollars a month to cover 2 accounts I would probably buy it. But they opted to offer only 1 or many never just 2.

I'm capable of affording it. I pay nearly every major streaming service monthly even when I am not using them, so long as their cost is reasonable.

YouTube Premium's cost is not reasonable. Especially when you consider they are still collecting and making money off of your data in the end.

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[–] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

YT Premium is the single most valuable subscription service on the net right now. Don't regret mine a bit. I listen to hours and hours of YT Music a day, and I watch probably a few hours of YT content a night as well.

[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You say that today. Give it a couple years. I'm pretty sure that by 2030, the cost will be ~100 dollars/euros/whatever per month and you'll see 2 minutes of ads for every single minute of content you watch. (Okay, maybe the number of ads is an exaggeration, but I don't think the monthly cost is.)

Don't pay the Danegeld. It never makes them go away.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Paying a business to provide a service you use is not ransom.

"They might raise prices later" is an idiotic reason not to pay for something.

[–] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, if they price it stupidly they'll lose paying customers (I don't buy into the free market ideology)

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[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 10 months ago

If I compare the usage of Netflix vs Youtube

Last 7 days (from right now): 24h 30min
Last time I used Netflix in a high volume: Probably <12h. At absolute highest maybe 18-20h in total.

But: YT usage is consistant. Netflix/service of choice is at best a seasonal happening if a show is very good and you binge it.

So to me it's worth it enough to keep. But I'd want to have an option to remove music as I prefer Spotify, have optionally Jellyfin and dont need yt music.

[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

I get you're saying its a great value because of what you get out of it, but I'm not comfortable pricing things in that way... I'd rather it be based on the actual cost. I know real prices don't tend to work that way (or at least not in many cases) but it just feels icky and exploitative still.

[–] phorq@lemmy.ml 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that they actually don't mean that. And truthfully I don't mind the idea of paying for video hosting, that shit's expensive, but YouTube is going about it in the worst way possible.

[–] yukichigai@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No no, we mean it, at least at that price. I'd be willing to kick YouTube a few bucks a month. I'm not going to pay them more per month than most MMOs. They're trying to charge streaming service prices for content they don't produce.

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[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

Right. Some people get stuck up about getting things for free that they think they should get for free.* But a lot of the problem is the obnoxious ways companies go about control and profit.

*There are important arguments to be had about freedom, still.

[–] JCreazy@midwest.social 16 points 10 months ago

I had YouTube when it was YouTube red and I was a part of a family plan with my friend for a couple years. I split the family plan with a few people and ended up paying $3 a month. Eventually he moved across country and YouTube said that since we didn't have the same IP address that I could not be a part of the family plan so I ended up signing up for my own account. At some point I was trying to pay off my debt so I cancelled all my subscription services. YouTube premium included. I started watching YouTube and then I saw it. An ad. Something I hadn't seen in years. It was the most annoying thing ever. I couldn't believe that people put up with that. I was so annoyed by the ads that I looked at how to obtain YouTube and YouTube music for free without ads because I needed to save the money and the ads were so intrusive that this was what I was going to do and that is what I still do to this day.

[–] itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I pay for YouTube Premium. I didn't really want that, I just wanted YouTube Music, but it didn't make sense to just pay for YT Music. I don't want Spotify and Amazon Music kinda sucks so YT music worked best.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Same for me but in reverse.
Remove music, deduct 2-3 € from the bill and I'd be happy enough with it.
Spotify suits my use case way better.

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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Haha yea, shame on them for trying to transition to a business model that's actually a great value for the customer compared to other music and video playforms, no longer relies on datamining customers to maximize ad-effectiveness, and brings in more income for creators than ads ever did...

It's a totally stupid idea, YT should just eat the costs and be subsidized by Google search revenue forever.

Why can't we just keep taking from the platform while its expenses are covered by some shrinking group of shmucks who don't know about ad-blockers yet, drowning in commercials?

/S

I don't understand this outlook. Like, sure, you can use adblock. One person stealing a mars bar isn't gonna hurt Walmart... But if literally everyone just took their shopping cart home, never once paying, Walmart would just... Cease to exist.

What makes people think that math is any different for online services?

[–] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

no longer relies on data mining customers to maximize ad effectiveness

You're an idiot if you believe they won't do that anyway.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You don't say. Everyone does it.

But it's a shit source of income that nets mere cents per user, and should be made illegal as soon as political will allows.

Hence, a good service should not rely on collecting user data as a sole revenue source.

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If google goes down someone else will fill the void. And I don’t give a shit about their numbers, if it’s not financially feasible to host everything without running a loss for years to extinguish competition and then to hike up the price, they should have thought of that before.

Aside from that, any Corp that goes down is a victory in my book.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 10 points 10 months ago

Then I hope YT gets legally enshrined and archived in some way.

Like it or not, it is the sole complete repository of a lot of video and audio records for recent human history.

It's become something that should not be under corporate control. Something which should be treated with care and reverence.

Yet it is, and isn't.

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Google doesn't deserve your money.
You don't pay a bully so that they bully you a little bit less

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[–] IHeartBadCode@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean YouTube's model is correct. The basic understanding we all need to have is pay people for their bread. Don't ever get more from someone that you aren't willing to pay back in some kind. 20% tip for waiting staff might suck for a person, but do not "NOT TIP". We tip till workers get fair wages or we don't go eat out, but don't go eat out and not tip. Same here. Don't head over to your creators on YouTube and deny them their fair share be it premium or ads.

YouTube takes a 45% cut on subscriptions. That's not fair share and they don't provide a means for creators to strike a balance. You can be angry at that. But don't ever be angry at that and not give some fair share to the creators. Additionally, with the whole Channel Membership, makes the whole YouTube Premium questionable. Why am I paying $14/mo for Premium and then $5/mo/channel I'm a member for? Why can YouTube not see that I've spent x% time here at so-and-so's channel and take x% of that Premium and send it to that creator (minus some off the top for infrastructure for themselves)?

This is ultimately what I dislike about YouTube Premium and what I like most about Patreon. In fact, the majority of what I once watched on YouTube has largely shifted there to Patreon. The things is, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask folks to be FAIR about what YouTube is giving, so you're right. But YouTube is a crap distribution platform that routinely robs creators of power over their media, exposure, and revenue and does so with impunity.

People shouldn't rob from YouTube to make a point. People should just leave to make a point. That's the fair thing to do. And if you do enjoy content from your favorite creators, always make sure you tell them so by putting money in their pocket. If we want fair wages for one, we need to remember we need to want fair wages for everyone. And more importantly, the folks running the show need to be more affable to listening to the folks tending to the fields. Be it employers need to listen to their waiters and pay them based on that or YouTube needs to listen to it's creators and address the various issues they bring up.

We're in an era where there's a whole lot of "I know better" in the workplace and really I think we just need more partnership between all involved. I think if we had more of that, we'd have a lot more of the other issues solved by proxy. That's ultimately what I have issues with YouTube, but just because I have issues doesn't mean I go stealing things from them. You are absolutely correct in that folks should play fair if they're heading to YouTube. We're all in this together folks, don't rob from each other even if you don't like the means by which they get the money.

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[–] EastSideRock@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

Time to switch to private invidious/piped instances been using it myself with Yattee app on iOS

[–] Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Paying for spy-ware,
how dense do they think we are?!

Let Google rot :)

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[–] soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lol if you think the adblock community represents a boulder that large. Remake this meme with a peasant throwing a pebble at a M1A2 abrams

[–] Titou@feddit.de 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

if adblock users were a minority, why are they trying to stop them ?

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[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 5 points 10 months ago

shows me 3 ads in a row

"oh, you don't want to see ads? too bad"

sounds kinda cynical

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)

[even bigger rock] "No, Youtube, I don't want to watch TF2 content. Stop recommending it to me"

It's like why even have an algorithm if it's just going to show you what it wants you to see rather than what you want to see.

[–] Hexagon@feddit.it 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because you are the product being sold, and advertisers are the customers

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[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yet people keep going back there... curious.

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[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 4 points 10 months ago

Man the astroturfing is wild in this thread. Didn't take long for them to follow us here from reddit.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

yep, and there's more problems:

we really gotta think what we do with our time. Spending in on youtube tends to have lower value nowadays.
most stuff on youtube is crap. It's there to make you addicted, to make you watch ads, to make you miserable. Long story short: "influencers" are a drug on society comparable in effects to Crystal Meth. It gives you a short high, but leaves you exhausted.
most "content creators" really just practice, how to manipulate many people into listening to them. There's a lot of makeup, but not much really to say. Best thing is to not listen to them.
"content creators" are waaaaay to often just people trying to make money. They're not trying to tell you something of importance. They're jus trying to squeeze money out of you.

Problems on Youtube's side:

it's a centralized system with platform lock-in. "Related videos" never takes you to other platforms. Search query is intransparent. They ask for waaaay too much money for what it costs them to maintain and develop their systems. I see nothing at all honorable at trying to squeeze money from users.

Youtube has grown into yet another one corpo-speak garbage companies. They used to be respectable, making interesting recommendations, with a clear mission to make knowledge accessible to everyone. Nowadays, they just try to make money.

[–] kureta@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree with all of your points, but I am learning a lot on a very diverse set of topics from YouTube. There are some amazing people making educational videos there. The most time consuming stuff I watch is "let's play" videos. I kind of let them play in the backgrounds sometimes to relax, like white noise.

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[–] makunamatata@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago

Well said on all bullets!

I’ve been getting around the addictive nature of it by doing the following:

First deleted YouTube app and bookmarked Invidious links, that way if I want to find some specific video I can just search for it and not be bothered by ads or algorithm suggestions that are made to keep me in the loop of doom.

Second I’ve loaded epub copy of books I am currently reading on kindle or on paper to my phone, and made the Books and Kindle apps prominent next to Invidious, so when I am tempted to look for videos I can instead replace with reading books I have on my list.

My video watching habit has reduced drastically, mostly down to searching for diy fixes.

[–] lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago

Last time I talked about YouTube here, people liked to throw their money to Google....

It seems to be easy to turn a free service into a subscription service... I should probably buy Alphabet shares to profit from that...

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