• conorab@lemmy.conorab.com
    2·
    6 months ago

    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.
  • jimbo@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    I would be fine paying for a YouTube premium account if I could get one for like $3-4 that just removes the ads. I don’t want their music service.

      • jimbo@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        I don’t get what you think that “realization” changes. I occasionally watch videos on YouTube and I’d be willing to pay a certain amount to watch to those videos without ads. Since they don’t offer that, I’m not paying them any money. For the record, they did offer such a plan called “YouTube Premium Lite” not that long ago and they axed it.

    • Gladaed@feddit.de
      0·
      6 months ago

      I am pretty sure that yt music doesnt increase the price by 9 Bucks. Lets not push the blame on that.

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    Im not holding my breath for someone to start hosting petabytes of videos for free. I don’t like ads, so I’m just going to pay.

  • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    6 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.

      • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        Yes,

        But the software on it has been completely re-done to enhance it’s privacy and functionality.

        I’m running LineageOSforMicroG,
        with Magisk/LSPosed,
        to run things like AdAway/XPrivacyLua/Blocker.

        Additionally I replace everything I can with FOSS from F-Droid,
        and scan all apps from Aurora (Play Store) with ClassyShark3xodus, against well known trackers, to either look for better alternatives, or to block the spy-ware in them with Blocker.

        Further, a premium no-log VPN, which has been vetted (servers confiscated in the past, though 0 logs retrieved), configured as always-on + block connections without.

        • TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          6 months ago

          Yep, that might actually do it lol. Not even being sarcastic here 😅

          But to be fair, I don’t think most people are tech-literate enough to set up and use all of that properly. I think it would help if someone compiled a one-install package of all of that, but lots of people just don’t like change.

          • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            I don’t expect that average users will become android/privacy experts.

            I don’t even think of my own privacy being all that important.

            However systematic privacy,
            through laws that protect us all,
            that’s what the average joe should be made aware off and stand up for.

  • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
    1·
    6 months ago

    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.

  • BluesF@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    YouTube premium has millions of users and it makes them literally billions of dollars. There is no boulder.

  • Karu 🐲@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    Not to be rude, but I’m struggling to believe half the comments in this thread are legit. Do you really mean to tell me that Lemmy, a platform notoriously populated almost exclusively by anti-corporate tech people that really value FOSS and privacy –hence the reason why all of us are here instead of Reddit– has this many users thinking it is a remotely acceptable idea to pay for a Premium service for one of the most invasive companies online?

    I think most of us understand the many underhanded techniques used by Google to achieve an almost monopolistic control of some aspects of the internet, but when talking about YouTube, suddenly all the logic is reduced to “if you use a service, pay for it, or else let them show you ads”?? what??? Also, what’s with comparing adblocking to stealing???

    My own answer to the topic of this thread is that no, I won’t be paying for YouTube Premium anytime soon, possibly ever. Google has betrayed my trust many times in the past, and on top of that I don’t consider adverts as a legitimate source of income, so I will block any and all ads everywhere without paying an extra cent.

    “But if you keep using their service, so you need to give them some form of revenue! Otherwise you just want free stuff!” I only keep using their service because Google has spent many years dumping on other platforms so that YouTube is –almost– the only platform that still exists where all the good creators are, so I will begrudgingly watch them on YouTube because there aren’t any options. But I will resist Google’s many insidious attempts to monetize me to the best of my ability while doing so.

    That said, it’s really dishonest to claim that people who block ads on YouTube just want free stuff and don’t understand that services have a cost. Personally, I pay for Nebula because I do support the project and the creators involved. But YouTube won’t see a cent from me, not with my consent at least.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Not everyone is on Lemmy because they’re anti-corporate, FOSS enthusiasts. For example, I came here because Reddit became a dumpster fire of unreasonable policies and very restrictive accessibility to the site. I simply will not install their app. Everything I’ve seen and heard about it is revolting. I’m certain I will hate it and I’m not going to bother trying at this point. Since a nontrivial amount of my time on Reddit was via an app, and that app no longer works, I’m just not going to use the service.

      I like FOSS, and I support FOSS whenever I can, but I’m hardly anti corporate. The big G has tried and failed at getting monopoly status for most things. Arguably their most successful services are search, mail and YouTube.

      Me, personally, I pay for Google’s services and share those benefits with my family. We have extra Google drive storage, YouTube music/YouTube premium, and all the benefits that come with that (I don’t recall all of them right now). One payment takes care of my entire household. So for less than $20/month we all enjoy all the benefits of those subscriptions. It comes out to less than $5/person/month.

      I don’t blame anyone for not wanting those services. I certainly don’t hold that against them. I completely understand the viewpoint. YouTube is very aggressive about everyone having premium. I see ads on YouTube when I’m using it on my work PC for music or to look something up on there; because my personal Google account is not and will never be associated to my work PC. I see what it’s like “on the other side” so to speak. I can see how aggro their efforts are to get people to subscribe to premium. How invasive the ads have become, and how annoying it is to deal with all that. I get it.

      I also don’t really hate Google for it. They want people to buy their premium service and they have taken steps to try to encourage that. I understand, but I don’t necessarily agree with their choices.

      In my mind they’re not the most egregious offender for being anti consumer in their methodology. Good examples of anti-consumer behaviour is Netflix trying to put an end to account sharing, or Reddit’s API changes that basically kicked out a nontrivial number of its users for seemingly no good reason. There’s plenty more anti consumer actions from other companies that I can point to that are far worse than what YouTube is doing.

      In my mind, Google has supported FOSS more than most big tech companies. Android, at it’s core is FOSS, built on Linux. Chrome is based on chromium, which is FOSS as well. There’s numerous other examples of Google supporting FOSS. Sure, they have their own versions of that integrate Google services into the products and provide extra features on top of what the FOSS versions do. But I can’t think of any company that even comes close to the support of FOSS that Google has. In my mind they’re simply not the worst offender. They’re not innocent, but not the worst.

      That’s my opinion though and it’s just one of many possible opinions. Far be it for me to impose my opinion on anyone else. If you want to distrust Google and use FOSS things instead, that’s fine. It’s your choice. If you agree but still don’t want to pay them for premium, that’s okay too. Or if you want to drink the Kool-aid and pay for all of their services, that’s also your choice.

      Have a great day.