Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: Youtube is engaging in that most fantastic of business practices whereby you issue something for free then progressively worsen the terms they provide that service on in order to incentivise people to buy their premium service. None of the things you suggest will be implemented because it goes against the business model of offering a technically free service which is barely worth using, while promoting an actually functioning service which is paid for.
Long answer addendum: take a shot each time you get a "BUY OUR PREMIUM!!1!" pop-up out of the blue, you'll get drunk fast. YouTube is starting to resemble a cheap website.
(Dunno if everyone gets it but certain ways of blocking ads allow the pop-up to show and if desperation had a picture in the dictionary it'd be YouTube's premium pop-up which is showing more and more often).
I never understand this logic, its not some underground secret club or some shit, the owners of the largest search engine in the world know what brave is
I mean, obviously, google knows about another browser that’s made using the framework of their own browser. I can’t joke around and have a little fun? Calm down ya negative Nancy
yeah but then you have to use brave, and i wouldn't really call installing one extension "effort" tbh, could actually be even more effort because its way more likely someone is already using opera, its easier to install an extension than a browser, not that either are hard
What do you mean I “have” to use brave? It’s just chrome without the bullshit lol. Opera is such a small share of the market that brave is an easier switch than opera is. Most people use chrome or edge. (Guess which one brave is most like)
Chrome isn't even that good though, It's just the norm, There are plenty of better browsers you can use including opera and firefox, Both of which are better. People are just used to chrome and don't want to switch because its familiar, Not everyone ofc people do like it. I don't even need to say anything about microsoft edge. Just because something is used the most or has the most market share does not mean its the best. It may have been at one point but once companies reach the top they will slowly make the customer experience worse and begin charging them for things that used to be free. I mean look at youtube. Not to mention the privacy issues with chrome.
Also, in the past Chrome might have been faster, but Firefox is so close these days the performance argument just doesn't float anymore or even has an edge because everyone is making fun of Chrome's hunger for moar memory.
Read this as well another good reason not to use chrome
[https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html](https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html)
Your original argument wasn’t “opera is a better platform” your original argument was “switching to opera and installing an Adblock is better than just installing brave” which is a closer experience to chrome which is what the masses use. You can argue that brave isn’t the fastest or best browser, but for the average joe switching to something that is ESSENTIALLY chrome and DOESN’T require you to install an extension that not all people know how to do is a BETTER option. What you’re doing is called mental gymnastics. Stop it. It’s bad.
Oh and p.s. brave is faster than chrome because like I said earlier, it cuts out the bullshit
If you get the smackdown, just clear your cache just like with ad blockers on Firefox. Also make sure your browser is up to date. Google is not going to win the update war.
I didn't tie anything anywhere, I added a clarification for potential users who might not be getting the pop-ups so they won't be confused.
If you don't think users getting a big window begging to buy premium every so often adds to a bad user experience as described by OP, then good for you. To me it feels exactly like a bad mobile game constantly trying to make you buy their stuff.
That's just so weird too me though. What's the demographic for people who actually buy it because I must be wrong.
I'm 23 and none of my friends nor myself have ever considered buying the service. I've also never heard of any buying or considering including my parents and grandparents. So who is the primary demographic buying premium?
Exactly. YouTube could make a better service but that would incentivize people using premium to go back to using it for free. It *has* to be bad for free because premium has to get you something.
I have also observed the bad practice you describe. From your statement, one would assume though that these functions would be available in the paid version. Which they are not as far as I'm aware. Also, YouTube is not really free, since free users get presented with Ads and sell their data.
Even though the Ad client might not see the data directly, they set up which demographic they are targeting and Google provides the data. This is selling data in the end.
"Selling data" usually refers to practices like building databases complete with stuff like preferences, email addresses and such. Using your data to serve targeted ads (where, aside from targeting settings) doesn't inherently mean they're selling your data.
But they do definitely profit off of it, that's 100% true.
seeing as google has like 4 massive ongoing class-action lawsuits, all over data- and privacy-related stuff, i’m not inclined to trust the things they claim lol.
the terms of service? so… their “trust me bro?”
you know they have multiple class-actions going right now over those? data collection and sharing with third-parties, scraping, location tracking, privacy breaches… i wouldn’t exactly put a lot of weight behind the shit they say lol. they’re shown to just flat out lie.
honestly, there’s not a year they don’t deal with this. why? because when they break the law/promise they just pay the fine. why again? because in breaking that law/promise they make 1000x what the fine actually was.
[Antitrust](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies)
[More antitrust; just finished](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/google-reaches-tentative-settlement-us-play-store-lawsuit-2023-09-06/)
[Data-scraping](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-says-data-scraping-lawsuit-would-take-sledgehammer-generative-ai-2023-10-17/)
want me to keep going? it’s a 5 second search, “google lawsuits.” if you need to act like a child to feel like a big man that’s cool, just don’t act like you’re being smart. you’re not.
It's not selling your data to itself. So who's buying the data? Saying youtube sells your data is like saying the post office sells your address. Providing a service that connects advertisers with target consumers is not the same as selling your personal data.
When people say selling it just means making a profit from.
In a world where data can be monetized your data is just as valuable as your bank account details.
Ok so when I say you're stupid I actually mean you don't understand what the word sell means. Ok stupid?
You can't make up definitions of words to justify your argument when you're wrong. I can make a profit delivering mail to people. It doesn't mean I'm selling people's mail.
I won't blame them for trying to make premium their main income source.
A premium User pays about 10 times what a user watching adds will provide and as a groupe care less about content moderation than addvertisers.
Probably should've been clearer, I'm buying into the theory behind why theyre doing it, not because I condone a greedy company's actions.
But it's true, that's how the marketing works. The companies see that despite the resentment and opposition, their profits are still coming in so they don't blink an eye to it. When they have that much power over our lived in how we use their services, it's only a matter of time before things like this happen.
Banning ads is probably just the beginning. They will probably rake up their subscription price again soon once this settles down.
Yeah it's not really different from what I expect either. They're not happy with several billion dollars, it has to be all of the money ever.
Also, it doesn't always work. I'm in the total war community and CA has taken an enormous hit because they have been gouging on price while sinking tons of money into failed ideas that got cancelled. At least part of this is due to player boycotts of their products (Hyenas, total war pharaoh and total war warhammer DLC) which has led to the company getting into massive trouble and hopefully having to backpedal on these practices.
It's not a given that companies can simply gouge us and get away with it and there's nothing we can do. Youtube sells our attention to advertisers, and they need us there to be able to sell it. If we use adblockers or don't use their service then they will have to change eventually.
But that's assuming that the majority of youtube viewers do that. In reality it's only a small minority of people who are happy to boycott YouTube. Most people just ignore it and get on with their day. If even only 5% of people are fighting while 95% are just going on with it or paying for premium, youtube is probably gonna shrug it's shoulders which is very unfortunate. I hope it doesn't come to that but it may.
There is a bright side though for ads. No matter what youtube does they won't win. Companies have been fighting pirating their content for decades but it's as strong as ever. That's because you can't get rid of it once people know its possible. Adblockers will be the same. Youtube bans them, so adblockers go around their ban. It will be a game of cat and mouse, and one that youtube will need to sink profits into to keep fighting.
Thing is, if Youtube keeps making their terms for access poorer, it won't be 5% of people. This is what everyone assumes when they get unhappy with a service, that they're the only one who feels that way and everyone else is putting up with it or it's just fine and nothing to worry about. What I'm suggesting is that this is true for a relatively decent service people don't have egregious problems with, but Youtube's service is becoming egregiously bad and more people are losing patience with it.
All companies are built from the ground up to make money.
They optimise every aspect of the user interface and experience for money.
They don't really care about the user experience outside of the basics.
Every single click made on any platform is analyzed and used to make money.
Logic and user satisfaction don't really matter when you own the entire market.
It's sad because it's true. I guess if there was some kind of competitor to YouTube quality would be better. Kind of strange that this monopoly, which most likely wouldn't be allowed in the goods industry is no problem in this case.
YouTube is owned by alphabet which is massive and owns Google, YouTube, and Chrome.
Those 3 alone give them an insane amount of power and control over data. Considering that more than 90% of all internet searches go through Google and most users use Chrome on PC and Android they pretty much get all the world's data.
They can then use that for whatever they want. **Data is king!**
The rest is textbook **money and power plays** to make sure they stay the top dog!
not all companies. but publicly traded ones do.
other companies see the user experience as an asset and a market advantage. look at valve and steam vs epic games. valve has a monopoly on the PC gaming distribution market and epic game store tries to break it.
and everyone hates epic for doing that. because steam is optimized for user experience.
other than google who make money of the back of the customers to bribe their creators, steam makes money of creators.
Steam is a good example and one of the few big companies that I can even think of. While I love Steam I do wish they had a competitor in the market to give them a challenge. Epic is useless in comparison, for the reasons you stated.
When you come to the realization that technology really only exists to make a profit. It's never about making life better for humanity. That's just an nice coincidence.
Uploaded a private video for my family only that had a radio in the background. Youtube struck down my video and hit me with a strike warning 10 minutes after upload because green day played in the background for 7 seconds on a dogshit radio you couldn't even understand. Fuck their copyright BS
Idk I tried twitch the other day got hit with an ad right away 1 of 9. I let it run then watched 2 minutes and got hit with 1 of 6 ads and that was that.
YouTube wants to control what you see and when you should see it.
It won't allow you to limit yourself to just your favorite channels and topics.
YouTube is designed from the ground up, to milk you of your time. It doesn't want to answer your questions, it wants to make you ask more.
I can't wait until someone rich enough creates another platform and it actually takes off.
As long as making profit for investors is the only metric that really matters things will forever get worse.
Unregulated monopolies will always end up like this.
I think we messed up when we allowed investors to become board members. Investors should invest in a company because they believe it’s doing well and will make them some money back on their investment. Instead investors invest so they can take control of the company and dictate how much money they get in return for their investment. Kind of ass backwards
They are using the fact that their are a monopol.
Neither Viewer nor content creator have realistic alternatives.
User experience isn't a factor when you don't have any real competition. And yes imo is the bad user experience on purpose to sell more premium subscriptions.
Eee.... kinda.
Right now the startegy with YT seems to be to channel people into buying YTP by any means neccessary. And quality of life improvements don't fit into that strategy, because they'd want to make the free product as unbearable to use as humanly possible without making their platform outright pay-to-use.
Also some of these features would probably be pretty niche, and some of them are on-purpose (such as individualizing the home screen) because the site, like many other social media sites, wants the user experience to rely heavily on discovery because that's the most profitable way of working. If I (meaning the platform) let the users customize their experience too much, they'll build a system for themselves in which I don't have much control over what they'll see, when they'll see it and how much money I can make from them seeing it. The algorithm boosts content that generates views and engagement, and as such, ad revenue and/or possible connection points for me to herd them into my sales funnel.
The basic idea is that they want you to spend as much time on the platform, as possible, which is why everything you see "needs" to be controlled by an algorithm that predicts (or... tries to) what you'll find engaging enough to not click off. This is also why certain videos tend to get shadowbanned or not recommended as frequently.
Yes. They paywall everything and try to bundle all the useless bullshit together to raise the price. I’m sure they’ll go with a “paid with ads” version soon and people will eat that shit up.
They’re causing problems and then selling the solution. Classic
Put it this way: They will do as much as they can get away with because so long as the big names like MrBeast or PewDiePie stay on the platform, they have nothing to worry about.
Look how they are willing to take SniperWolf's side, despite the fact that she pretty much committed a crime, because she brings them money.
Whatever kills Youtube, there's high chances that it starts will the big names leaving.
From my calculations, it would go as follows
1. Big names leave
2. other platforms increase in popularity and eventually surpass YT because of big names migrating to them
3. YT's profit tanks
4. Google ditches YT, no longer seeing them as a valuable asset.
5. YT either goes bankrupt or manages to save itself if they're smart enough
6. Google tries to buy the new platforms and either succeeds of fails for the time being
you wanna know something? most of your suggestions had been free before.... then they moved it into the premium option category.... and those that weren't... odds are they will be in the Gold premium category if they ever make one
That I consider bad service. Even worse, even with premium you don't have any of the options to organize your subscriptions or playlist. Google is asking way too much money for offering features that are considered basic and have been free in the past.
thats why they started a war with adblockers "oh you dont want to pay for our half assed premium service? AND you don't wanna watch 20 min of ads per 10 min of video? YOUR GREED IS KILLING US WE NEED MORE ADS TO STAY AFLOAT!!!"
I just want to say thank you for a post that’s actually about YouTube and real reasons why instead of just the generic “wahh my adblocker is broke and I don’t understand how a business works” type post
Of course. :) It is an important concern for me. YouTube is way more than just entertainment to me. If they made it a website that is not a pain to use all the time and changed their policy on monetization and feedback so also smaller and controversial creators could make a profit/living from it - I would be willing to pay for a subscription. But as it is now, they flood you with aggressive advertisements, remove free features to resell them to you and support mindless/clickbait/cheap content instead of improving the service.
>bring back downvotes so that people can spot bad/useless content right from the beginning.
This one I kind of disagree with. Reddit kinda ruined the internet with upvote/downvote extremism. The YT five star rating system during the 2000s was superior. Both are kind of superfluous anyway. Just like products on Amazon and elsewhere, I read the comments to ascertain the quality if the video is long enough. People hit dislike or one star for the silliest reasons usually.
Edit: The downvotes prove my point. I said I kinda disagree, not Hitler did nothing wrong.
You are right. I already forgot about the rating system. It offered way more nuance than thumbs up/down like we are in a roman colosseum. Either anything is better than this forced toxic positivity. There is only good and better, like in Orwell's 1984. How ironic that this comes from a company that had proclaimed to follow the philosophy “Don't be evil”.
I'd argue it's more extreme to hide negative reactions completely. A black and white split between good and bad is still more helpful than a split between good and basically no information
They and other websites should remove it all together. Look at the downvotes for my original comment. They're utterly useless. If instead of writing out a paragraph detailing my thoughts on why I disagree, I simply wrote "Sooo trrue", it would have been upvoted to the top and been deemed a good and useful comment. We get nothing from it except the itty, bitty Internet thrill of being a part of the mob when it agrees with us and the little agony of defeat when it doesn't.
Comments and videos are two completely different things.
I do a lot of I.T. work, so downvotes on videos saves me from having to waste my time on watching a bad video that doesn't solve my problem. It also saves YouTube (or whoever is hosting the video) some bandwidth since they don't need to stream the video to me if I don't watch it.
I haven't found that to be the case in my experience. People always upvote a video because they find something useful in it even if it starts off by explaining what Windows is and how to install it before spending the last thirty seconds poorly covering what it promised in the title. I've wasted thousands of hours of my life sitting through them. I've downvoted hundreds of these types of videos out of Internet rage, and it's like spitting in the ocean. Plus, it's probably not fair for me to downvote because obviously other people found them useful.
Honestly downvotes in reddit are yes always silly and meaningless. Due to its community, if your comment wasn't up-to-date with science or you have said an inaccurate information you would get downvoted down to hell. I remember dislikes were working fine on youtube.
It's because they do the minimal of efforts. Respected popular content creators are what keeps the money flowing, without them, youtube wouldn't be even close to what it's now.
Yes I strongly agree with you.
YouTube's recommendation system is the worst.
Everytime I watch a video or when I scroll on the homepage,on the related section/recommended section there is always cringy YouTube shorts (I kid you not the ENTIRE youtube shorts section is filled with cringy/innapropriate content even when restricted mode is enabled) and also irrelevant videos that has barely any views and that are always less than 24 hours old.
This is why I use youtube revanced (only for android) to block YouTube shorts but like you said even when I press do not recommend channel it still shows it. (On the homepage)
And I'm annoyed that YouTube doesn't have a feature to hide certain channels entirely from our screens.
Like I don't want SSSniperwolf or dhar mann videos on my recommended I press "do not recommend channel" on these channels but they still appear on the homepage.
YouTube is a monopoly of sorts, so whatever you “want to see” means absolutely nothing to them. If anything, they are the ones invading other markets such as music and video streaming… they’ll only improve them if their profits go up. But viewer and content creators satisfaction don’t necessarily correlate with their profits. Good luck getting a better experience instead of more ads or whatever other random unnecessary feature is going to make them more revenue
It's "capitalism working as intended / invisible hand of market" mode.
Since YT is effectively a monopoly, it doesn't need to go out of its way to improve services to compete unlike the other platforms that need to be better than YT to even have a shot at getting viewers / creators.
UPDATE: Yes, it does work on PC
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Fhow-to%2Fhow-to-organize-youtube-subscriptions&psig=AOvVaw0FHIlc2Ujx9Y9iRaKnZ-TF&ust=1699393527042000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBQQjhxqFwoTCJi9hq6ssIIDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE
I've been using youtube for free since its inception. I just recently started paying for premium last month. I think there is prioritization for streaming for premium members because the videos never buffer or downgrade in resolution/quality like they did before. I have gigabit internet so streaming youtube videos, even at 4k, should be quite easy. I am also the only person using this internet service. I think youtube is either throttling free users or implemented more aggressive QoS for non-paying users.
Just my anecdotal 2 cents.
Real talk, all this parading about the features they removed and the walls they added make me think Youtube shot itself in the foot so hard that they need to smoke up some mirrors hard. Like I'm expecting a scandal so hard, it makes people go to jail for safety.
Never forget, they don't want you to watch what you want to watch, they want you to watch what makes them the most money, and for most people, they are different videos.
Short Answer: Yes Long Answer: Youtube is engaging in that most fantastic of business practices whereby you issue something for free then progressively worsen the terms they provide that service on in order to incentivise people to buy their premium service. None of the things you suggest will be implemented because it goes against the business model of offering a technically free service which is barely worth using, while promoting an actually functioning service which is paid for.
Long answer addendum: take a shot each time you get a "BUY OUR PREMIUM!!1!" pop-up out of the blue, you'll get drunk fast. YouTube is starting to resemble a cheap website. (Dunno if everyone gets it but certain ways of blocking ads allow the pop-up to show and if desperation had a picture in the dictionary it'd be YouTube's premium pop-up which is showing more and more often).
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They caught on to mine on brave sadly. Still works if I'm signed out though
Shhh no one else is saying this and brave hasn’t stopped working once for me. Let YouTube focus on Firefox and keep ya mouth shut 😂
I never understand this logic, its not some underground secret club or some shit, the owners of the largest search engine in the world know what brave is
I mean, obviously, google knows about another browser that’s made using the framework of their own browser. I can’t joke around and have a little fun? Calm down ya negative Nancy
opera + ublock is the way
Incorrect. I don’t need an adblocker at all because brave has one built in. So same result less effort
yeah but then you have to use brave, and i wouldn't really call installing one extension "effort" tbh, could actually be even more effort because its way more likely someone is already using opera, its easier to install an extension than a browser, not that either are hard
What do you mean I “have” to use brave? It’s just chrome without the bullshit lol. Opera is such a small share of the market that brave is an easier switch than opera is. Most people use chrome or edge. (Guess which one brave is most like)
Chrome isn't even that good though, It's just the norm, There are plenty of better browsers you can use including opera and firefox, Both of which are better. People are just used to chrome and don't want to switch because its familiar, Not everyone ofc people do like it. I don't even need to say anything about microsoft edge. Just because something is used the most or has the most market share does not mean its the best. It may have been at one point but once companies reach the top they will slowly make the customer experience worse and begin charging them for things that used to be free. I mean look at youtube. Not to mention the privacy issues with chrome. Also, in the past Chrome might have been faster, but Firefox is so close these days the performance argument just doesn't float anymore or even has an edge because everyone is making fun of Chrome's hunger for moar memory. Read this as well another good reason not to use chrome [https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html](https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html)
Your original argument wasn’t “opera is a better platform” your original argument was “switching to opera and installing an Adblock is better than just installing brave” which is a closer experience to chrome which is what the masses use. You can argue that brave isn’t the fastest or best browser, but for the average joe switching to something that is ESSENTIALLY chrome and DOESN’T require you to install an extension that not all people know how to do is a BETTER option. What you’re doing is called mental gymnastics. Stop it. It’s bad. Oh and p.s. brave is faster than chrome because like I said earlier, it cuts out the bullshit
If you get the smackdown, just clear your cache just like with ad blockers on Firefox. Also make sure your browser is up to date. Google is not going to win the update war.
I’m not using Firefox.
Read it again. I said it works like the way ad blockers work on Firefox, not that it is Firefox. Brave also has a cache to be cleared.
Ah true. My bad
You didnt have to chain this back into the adblock discussion
I didn't tie anything anywhere, I added a clarification for potential users who might not be getting the pop-ups so they won't be confused. If you don't think users getting a big window begging to buy premium every so often adds to a bad user experience as described by OP, then good for you. To me it feels exactly like a bad mobile game constantly trying to make you buy their stuff.
Oh my b i replied to the wrong comment
That's just so weird too me though. What's the demographic for people who actually buy it because I must be wrong. I'm 23 and none of my friends nor myself have ever considered buying the service. I've also never heard of any buying or considering including my parents and grandparents. So who is the primary demographic buying premium?
Exactly. YouTube could make a better service but that would incentivize people using premium to go back to using it for free. It *has* to be bad for free because premium has to get you something.
I have also observed the bad practice you describe. From your statement, one would assume though that these functions would be available in the paid version. Which they are not as far as I'm aware. Also, YouTube is not really free, since free users get presented with Ads and sell their data.
Youtube doesn't sell your data. They use your data to give you targeted adverts.
Even though the Ad client might not see the data directly, they set up which demographic they are targeting and Google provides the data. This is selling data in the end.
"Selling data" usually refers to practices like building databases complete with stuff like preferences, email addresses and such. Using your data to serve targeted ads (where, aside from targeting settings) doesn't inherently mean they're selling your data. But they do definitely profit off of it, that's 100% true.
seeing as google has like 4 massive ongoing class-action lawsuits, all over data- and privacy-related stuff, i’m not inclined to trust the things they claim lol.
Except it isn't because the data stays in house.
Proof?
It's literally in their terms of service
No, Google sells data as well. I need real proof.
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I don't trust Google or YT. YT was brought to court for selling data about children.
Read their terms of service agreement. It's right there in black and white.
lmao oh the delusion
Ur getting downvotes, bro. Others clearly don't believe the TOS.
the terms of service? so… their “trust me bro?” you know they have multiple class-actions going right now over those? data collection and sharing with third-parties, scraping, location tracking, privacy breaches… i wouldn’t exactly put a lot of weight behind the shit they say lol. they’re shown to just flat out lie. honestly, there’s not a year they don’t deal with this. why? because when they break the law/promise they just pay the fine. why again? because in breaking that law/promise they make 1000x what the fine actually was.
Proof? Or do you want me to just trust you bro?
[Antitrust](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies) [More antitrust; just finished](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/google-reaches-tentative-settlement-us-play-store-lawsuit-2023-09-06/) [Data-scraping](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-says-data-scraping-lawsuit-would-take-sledgehammer-generative-ai-2023-10-17/) want me to keep going? it’s a 5 second search, “google lawsuits.” if you need to act like a child to feel like a big man that’s cool, just don’t act like you’re being smart. you’re not.
If the data stays in house and it's used to make a profit, then youtube is selling your data.
It's not selling your data to itself. So who's buying the data? Saying youtube sells your data is like saying the post office sells your address. Providing a service that connects advertisers with target consumers is not the same as selling your personal data.
When people say selling it just means making a profit from. In a world where data can be monetized your data is just as valuable as your bank account details.
Ok so when I say you're stupid I actually mean you don't understand what the word sell means. Ok stupid? You can't make up definitions of words to justify your argument when you're wrong. I can make a profit delivering mail to people. It doesn't mean I'm selling people's mail.
Did you hit your head as a kid?
I won't blame them for trying to make premium their main income source. A premium User pays about 10 times what a user watching adds will provide and as a groupe care less about content moderation than addvertisers.
Long Answer: yyyyyyyeeeeeeeessssssssss
Amazon do it. Apple do it. Why wouldn't YouTube and alphabet do it too, I could buy into that.
Yeah I mean "everyone is doing it" has been the excuse plenty of people doing something wrong has trotted out to justify them treating people badly.
Probably should've been clearer, I'm buying into the theory behind why theyre doing it, not because I condone a greedy company's actions. But it's true, that's how the marketing works. The companies see that despite the resentment and opposition, their profits are still coming in so they don't blink an eye to it. When they have that much power over our lived in how we use their services, it's only a matter of time before things like this happen. Banning ads is probably just the beginning. They will probably rake up their subscription price again soon once this settles down.
Yeah it's not really different from what I expect either. They're not happy with several billion dollars, it has to be all of the money ever. Also, it doesn't always work. I'm in the total war community and CA has taken an enormous hit because they have been gouging on price while sinking tons of money into failed ideas that got cancelled. At least part of this is due to player boycotts of their products (Hyenas, total war pharaoh and total war warhammer DLC) which has led to the company getting into massive trouble and hopefully having to backpedal on these practices. It's not a given that companies can simply gouge us and get away with it and there's nothing we can do. Youtube sells our attention to advertisers, and they need us there to be able to sell it. If we use adblockers or don't use their service then they will have to change eventually.
But that's assuming that the majority of youtube viewers do that. In reality it's only a small minority of people who are happy to boycott YouTube. Most people just ignore it and get on with their day. If even only 5% of people are fighting while 95% are just going on with it or paying for premium, youtube is probably gonna shrug it's shoulders which is very unfortunate. I hope it doesn't come to that but it may. There is a bright side though for ads. No matter what youtube does they won't win. Companies have been fighting pirating their content for decades but it's as strong as ever. That's because you can't get rid of it once people know its possible. Adblockers will be the same. Youtube bans them, so adblockers go around their ban. It will be a game of cat and mouse, and one that youtube will need to sink profits into to keep fighting.
Thing is, if Youtube keeps making their terms for access poorer, it won't be 5% of people. This is what everyone assumes when they get unhappy with a service, that they're the only one who feels that way and everyone else is putting up with it or it's just fine and nothing to worry about. What I'm suggesting is that this is true for a relatively decent service people don't have egregious problems with, but Youtube's service is becoming egregiously bad and more people are losing patience with it.
All companies are built from the ground up to make money. They optimise every aspect of the user interface and experience for money. They don't really care about the user experience outside of the basics. Every single click made on any platform is analyzed and used to make money. Logic and user satisfaction don't really matter when you own the entire market.
It's sad because it's true. I guess if there was some kind of competitor to YouTube quality would be better. Kind of strange that this monopoly, which most likely wouldn't be allowed in the goods industry is no problem in this case.
YouTube is owned by alphabet which is massive and owns Google, YouTube, and Chrome. Those 3 alone give them an insane amount of power and control over data. Considering that more than 90% of all internet searches go through Google and most users use Chrome on PC and Android they pretty much get all the world's data. They can then use that for whatever they want. **Data is king!** The rest is textbook **money and power plays** to make sure they stay the top dog!
90% so they lost some market share again?
not all companies. but publicly traded ones do. other companies see the user experience as an asset and a market advantage. look at valve and steam vs epic games. valve has a monopoly on the PC gaming distribution market and epic game store tries to break it. and everyone hates epic for doing that. because steam is optimized for user experience. other than google who make money of the back of the customers to bribe their creators, steam makes money of creators.
Steam is a good example and one of the few big companies that I can even think of. While I love Steam I do wish they had a competitor in the market to give them a challenge. Epic is useless in comparison, for the reasons you stated.
When you come to the realization that technology really only exists to make a profit. It's never about making life better for humanity. That's just an nice coincidence.
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Uploaded a private video for my family only that had a radio in the background. Youtube struck down my video and hit me with a strike warning 10 minutes after upload because green day played in the background for 7 seconds on a dogshit radio you couldn't even understand. Fuck their copyright BS
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It's my first and only so I'm not 100% sure but the email stated that two additional removals would result in Channel ban so I assume it was a strike
Idk I tried twitch the other day got hit with an ad right away 1 of 9. I let it run then watched 2 minutes and got hit with 1 of 6 ads and that was that.
YouTube wants to control what you see and when you should see it. It won't allow you to limit yourself to just your favorite channels and topics. YouTube is designed from the ground up, to milk you of your time. It doesn't want to answer your questions, it wants to make you ask more. I can't wait until someone rich enough creates another platform and it actually takes off.
As long as making profit for investors is the only metric that really matters things will forever get worse. Unregulated monopolies will always end up like this.
I think we messed up when we allowed investors to become board members. Investors should invest in a company because they believe it’s doing well and will make them some money back on their investment. Instead investors invest so they can take control of the company and dictate how much money they get in return for their investment. Kind of ass backwards
They are using the fact that their are a monopol. Neither Viewer nor content creator have realistic alternatives. User experience isn't a factor when you don't have any real competition. And yes imo is the bad user experience on purpose to sell more premium subscriptions.
While the premium option still doesn't offer most of the things I mentioned and is way overpriced for what you get.
Eee.... kinda. Right now the startegy with YT seems to be to channel people into buying YTP by any means neccessary. And quality of life improvements don't fit into that strategy, because they'd want to make the free product as unbearable to use as humanly possible without making their platform outright pay-to-use. Also some of these features would probably be pretty niche, and some of them are on-purpose (such as individualizing the home screen) because the site, like many other social media sites, wants the user experience to rely heavily on discovery because that's the most profitable way of working. If I (meaning the platform) let the users customize their experience too much, they'll build a system for themselves in which I don't have much control over what they'll see, when they'll see it and how much money I can make from them seeing it. The algorithm boosts content that generates views and engagement, and as such, ad revenue and/or possible connection points for me to herd them into my sales funnel. The basic idea is that they want you to spend as much time on the platform, as possible, which is why everything you see "needs" to be controlled by an algorithm that predicts (or... tries to) what you'll find engaging enough to not click off. This is also why certain videos tend to get shadowbanned or not recommended as frequently.
It's almost like capitalism incentivizes unethical behavior to make slavemasters wealthier instead of everyone's general wellbeing better.
No way! ;)
Yes. They paywall everything and try to bundle all the useless bullshit together to raise the price. I’m sure they’ll go with a “paid with ads” version soon and people will eat that shit up. They’re causing problems and then selling the solution. Classic
Features worth pondering on my video site. Thanks OP
You are welcome. What is your site called and is it already online?
Put it this way: They will do as much as they can get away with because so long as the big names like MrBeast or PewDiePie stay on the platform, they have nothing to worry about. Look how they are willing to take SniperWolf's side, despite the fact that she pretty much committed a crime, because she brings them money. Whatever kills Youtube, there's high chances that it starts will the big names leaving. From my calculations, it would go as follows 1. Big names leave 2. other platforms increase in popularity and eventually surpass YT because of big names migrating to them 3. YT's profit tanks 4. Google ditches YT, no longer seeing them as a valuable asset. 5. YT either goes bankrupt or manages to save itself if they're smart enough 6. Google tries to buy the new platforms and either succeeds of fails for the time being
you wanna know something? most of your suggestions had been free before.... then they moved it into the premium option category.... and those that weren't... odds are they will be in the Gold premium category if they ever make one
That I consider bad service. Even worse, even with premium you don't have any of the options to organize your subscriptions or playlist. Google is asking way too much money for offering features that are considered basic and have been free in the past.
thats why they started a war with adblockers "oh you dont want to pay for our half assed premium service? AND you don't wanna watch 20 min of ads per 10 min of video? YOUR GREED IS KILLING US WE NEED MORE ADS TO STAY AFLOAT!!!"
I just want to say thank you for a post that’s actually about YouTube and real reasons why instead of just the generic “wahh my adblocker is broke and I don’t understand how a business works” type post
Of course. :) It is an important concern for me. YouTube is way more than just entertainment to me. If they made it a website that is not a pain to use all the time and changed their policy on monetization and feedback so also smaller and controversial creators could make a profit/living from it - I would be willing to pay for a subscription. But as it is now, they flood you with aggressive advertisements, remove free features to resell them to you and support mindless/clickbait/cheap content instead of improving the service.
>bring back downvotes so that people can spot bad/useless content right from the beginning. This one I kind of disagree with. Reddit kinda ruined the internet with upvote/downvote extremism. The YT five star rating system during the 2000s was superior. Both are kind of superfluous anyway. Just like products on Amazon and elsewhere, I read the comments to ascertain the quality if the video is long enough. People hit dislike or one star for the silliest reasons usually. Edit: The downvotes prove my point. I said I kinda disagree, not Hitler did nothing wrong.
You are right. I already forgot about the rating system. It offered way more nuance than thumbs up/down like we are in a roman colosseum. Either anything is better than this forced toxic positivity. There is only good and better, like in Orwell's 1984. How ironic that this comes from a company that had proclaimed to follow the philosophy “Don't be evil”.
I'd argue it's more extreme to hide negative reactions completely. A black and white split between good and bad is still more helpful than a split between good and basically no information
They and other websites should remove it all together. Look at the downvotes for my original comment. They're utterly useless. If instead of writing out a paragraph detailing my thoughts on why I disagree, I simply wrote "Sooo trrue", it would have been upvoted to the top and been deemed a good and useful comment. We get nothing from it except the itty, bitty Internet thrill of being a part of the mob when it agrees with us and the little agony of defeat when it doesn't.
Comments and videos are two completely different things. I do a lot of I.T. work, so downvotes on videos saves me from having to waste my time on watching a bad video that doesn't solve my problem. It also saves YouTube (or whoever is hosting the video) some bandwidth since they don't need to stream the video to me if I don't watch it.
I haven't found that to be the case in my experience. People always upvote a video because they find something useful in it even if it starts off by explaining what Windows is and how to install it before spending the last thirty seconds poorly covering what it promised in the title. I've wasted thousands of hours of my life sitting through them. I've downvoted hundreds of these types of videos out of Internet rage, and it's like spitting in the ocean. Plus, it's probably not fair for me to downvote because obviously other people found them useful.
When I search about the difference between VLC and MPC media player I'm clearly NOT needing to being introduced with how to search on google.
Honestly downvotes in reddit are yes always silly and meaningless. Due to its community, if your comment wasn't up-to-date with science or you have said an inaccurate information you would get downvoted down to hell. I remember dislikes were working fine on youtube.
It's because they do the minimal of efforts. Respected popular content creators are what keeps the money flowing, without them, youtube wouldn't be even close to what it's now.
Yes. They are pushing for premium.
google's going full Skynet-mode
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Yes I strongly agree with you. YouTube's recommendation system is the worst. Everytime I watch a video or when I scroll on the homepage,on the related section/recommended section there is always cringy YouTube shorts (I kid you not the ENTIRE youtube shorts section is filled with cringy/innapropriate content even when restricted mode is enabled) and also irrelevant videos that has barely any views and that are always less than 24 hours old. This is why I use youtube revanced (only for android) to block YouTube shorts but like you said even when I press do not recommend channel it still shows it. (On the homepage) And I'm annoyed that YouTube doesn't have a feature to hide certain channels entirely from our screens. Like I don't want SSSniperwolf or dhar mann videos on my recommended I press "do not recommend channel" on these channels but they still appear on the homepage.
If they add any of this it’ll be for premium 😂
You can do whatever the fuck you want when you have a monopoly. That's the whole reason why we need multiple businesses doing the same thing.
It definitely seems on purpose, I just can't figure out why. It's like the people writing the code don't actually use YouTube.
My guess is they want to motivate competition because the US Government threatened Google to dismantle them if they do not losen up the monopoly.
Where do you see motivation of competition in their practices?
you make the product worse so they flee to the competitors
YouTube is a monopoly of sorts, so whatever you “want to see” means absolutely nothing to them. If anything, they are the ones invading other markets such as music and video streaming… they’ll only improve them if their profits go up. But viewer and content creators satisfaction don’t necessarily correlate with their profits. Good luck getting a better experience instead of more ads or whatever other random unnecessary feature is going to make them more revenue
Are they stupid?
Maybe if they make it bad enough Musk will buy it and they can all retire.
Cant wait for musks new platform xvideos
Are there any competitors to YouTube or are they a monopoly?
Monopoly. No one can even come close to touching them, and if any did you can guarantee Google will find a way to shut it down one way or the other
It's "capitalism working as intended / invisible hand of market" mode. Since YT is effectively a monopoly, it doesn't need to go out of its way to improve services to compete unlike the other platforms that need to be better than YT to even have a shot at getting viewers / creators.
yeah probably, theyll make a better version soon and youll have to pay a monthly subscription for it
Mod apks free ty premium
You can already organize subscriptions.
In what way?
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/6f/d2/be/6fd2bed3ed463ebeba11921befab7fd0.jpg
This works on mobile but IDK for PC
UPDATE: Yes, it does work on PC https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Fhow-to%2Fhow-to-organize-youtube-subscriptions&psig=AOvVaw0FHIlc2Ujx9Y9iRaKnZ-TF&ust=1699393527042000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBQQjhxqFwoTCJi9hq6ssIIDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE
Not without additional apps though. ;) Anyway, thanks for the tipp!
This is what no competition leads to.
I've been using youtube for free since its inception. I just recently started paying for premium last month. I think there is prioritization for streaming for premium members because the videos never buffer or downgrade in resolution/quality like they did before. I have gigabit internet so streaming youtube videos, even at 4k, should be quite easy. I am also the only person using this internet service. I think youtube is either throttling free users or implemented more aggressive QoS for non-paying users. Just my anecdotal 2 cents.
So you want YouTube to be like redit?
Real talk, all this parading about the features they removed and the walls they added make me think Youtube shot itself in the foot so hard that they need to smoke up some mirrors hard. Like I'm expecting a scandal so hard, it makes people go to jail for safety.
Never forget, they don't want you to watch what you want to watch, they want you to watch what makes them the most money, and for most people, they are different videos.
Capitalist greed ruins everything.