Well, it is a tough message, but my personal answer to the question posed at the end of the post is: Then I guess their videos should not exist. Sorry, but I will not give an evil behemoth like...
Well, it is a tough message, but my personal answer to the question posed at the end of the post is:
All of this is to say: if you suggest that content creators should not use YouTube, you're effectively saying that their videos should not exist, because there is no YouTube competitor to switch to. It's a monopoly.
Then I guess their videos should not exist.
Sorry, but I will not give an evil behemoth like Youtube even one inch of room. I thoroughly despise everything that is infected with ads, opaque algorithms and now AI. I try to do my part, by paying for Nebula and sponsoring a couple of creators on Patreon, but I will not for one second turn off my ad blocker.
If that means that fewer videos will be made, then so be it. There already is far too much media to consume anyway. Subjecting yourself to Youtube's antics is not the solution.
A while back I posted some thoughts tangential to this, and they didn't seem to be well-received, but I'll try again. My fundamental problem with YouTube is what the profit motive does to content....
A while back I posted some thoughts tangential to this, and they didn't seem to be well-received, but I'll try again.
My fundamental problem with YouTube is what the profit motive does to content. I don't believe you can prioritize profit and content at the same time. Once you've built your livelihood off of your content, it's now a matter of survival. When the YouTube algorithm fails to surface high quality content, and instead surfaces high engagement content, you're now faced with the dilemma: do you chase the algorithm so that you income stream continues, or change jobs?
In that way, the YouTube algorithm is basically your boss. If it says "stop making long form content, we want shorts now", then your choice is to do that or find a new job. Many people will do what the boss demands.
Anyhow, my proposal is the streaming platform equivalent of public access TV of yore. Every citizen gets X GB of streaming space that they can use however they like. More importantly, morning is monetized. No ads, no algorithms, just good old fashioned sorting and searching to find content.
The pushback I got is that nobody would use it, but I'm not sure. I think quality content exists on YouTube in spite of how it's run, not because of it, and every month brings new ways YouTube wants to dictate how content is allowed to survive in modern media.
I'd use it. I'd post boring informative shit and never look at viewership numbers. I wouldn't be competing with anyone because there's no profit incentive.
I can do this today on YouTube, but YouTube will constantly use suggestions and algorithms to try and pull my viewers away and into garbage. It's predatory and not a good place for learning. Imagine crack dealers at your library and having to teach your children to say no in between every book.
I'm exaggerating but... Am I? Just recently I showed my little one chef Amaury on YouTube. It's great content, and his channel is full of choices to watch. So why, then, does every single video end with a suggestion for three unrelated videos from three unrelated channels? Predatory, and the predator doesn't distinguish adults from children.
It's never been easier for anyone in the world to create content, but we don't have a single content platform that is devoid of profit incentive. That's a problem, because the profit incentive will always come first.
I have multiple YouTube accounts and honestly I've found that the algorithm "feeds* me what I show I want. If I'm watching chess videos it sends them my way, same for tng videos, etc etc. despite...
I have multiple YouTube accounts and honestly I've found that the algorithm "feeds* me what I show I want. If I'm watching chess videos it sends them my way, same for tng videos, etc etc. despite all that I really only watch videos from my subscription feed though. I think people would get accustomed to whatever they get from social media, be it your idea or something different.
I like this suggestion, and I think it would pair well with another modification. Decouple the content hosting from the content delivery. I think the best example of this is the streaming music...
I like this suggestion, and I think it would pair well with another modification.
Decouple the content hosting from the content delivery.
I think the best example of this is the streaming music industry. For the most part, the music library isn’t different between Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube music. This forces those platforms to actually compete. If you want lossless quality, freedom to use third party front ends, and ability to add your own music, you get Apple Music. If you want podcasts to infiltrate your music app (why would anyone want this?), you get Spotify. If you want the worst music app, you get YouTube music. (I may have some strong opinions about music services.)
Let’s say we had two separate services, YouTube backend and YouTube front end. YouTube backend would have to compete with services like Vimeo, nebula, floatplane, and others to be good content hosts for creators. From what I hear, YouTube studio is actually quite good, but I am sure some competition could improve it. Then we have YouTube frontend, which is the website and apps. Those could play content from any of the backend services, not just YouTube backend. If you want an ad infested nightmare (or to have useless services like YT music bundled with your premium), stick with YouTube. If you don’t want that, use a custom front end like greyjay or the many competitors that would certainly pop up. These competitors would still be able to access the content from YouTube backend, nebula, floatplane, etc. But now they have to actually compete for users.
This can be combined pretty easily with a government run video backend with limited options. For a prolific uploader, it makes sense for them to use the private backends. But for occasional uploaders, a simple and low usage government platform would be perfect.
I actually really like this and agree with it in many ways and could see it working and people using it. People share tools and borrow things from their neighbors, or share information freely, and...
I actually really like this and agree with it in many ways and could see it working and people using it. People share tools and borrow things from their neighbors, or share information freely, and whatnot, and I could see this being an extension of that idea
I think unfortunately one of the underlying things here is the problem of some types of financial structures of societies (one might shorthand "capitalism" here, but I want it to sound broader than that) causing the incentive of the profit motive to always bloom out of anything, often even initially good things and ideas.
I do think in spite of this, neat things can exist that go a different direction (some open-source software, maybe libraries?, communal spaces, etc), but I feel like all of them will always have a pull on them, and some may fold or feel almost forced into some profit motive eventually. Anything that survives without giving in, does so with probably great difficulty
Maybe it's an ideal we never reach but I wish we could all be making and sharing things with one another all the time, without feeling like we need to commodify it or sell it or whatever. But when we need to constantly pay to survive another day on this earth, that poisons the well of so much of what we do
I'm not all economist, and probably naive, but my answer is usually socialism. Or socialization of things that are a benefit to most of society. I'd fund this service with taxes. Same.... Same......
I'm not all economist, and probably naive, but my answer is usually socialism. Or socialization of things that are a benefit to most of society. I'd fund this service with taxes.
I wish we could all be making and sharing things with one another all the time, without feeling like we need to commodify it or sell it or whatever
Same.... Same... I think a lot about how many people never get to explore their potential because the things they might be great at aren't marketable, or are too competitive as a career path.
I agree with a large portion of commenters here: YouTubers aren’t entitled to a source of income simply for making videos. They earn an income because Google pays them. Stop and ask yourself why....
I agree with a large portion of commenters here: YouTubers aren’t entitled to a source of income simply for making videos. They earn an income because Google pays them.
YouTube allows you to make a living by uploading videos (for free!), and no other platform has managed to achieve that.
Stop and ask yourself why. It’s because Google extracts people’s personal data from across the web and uses that data to make profitable deals with advertisers. Over time, Google has effectively become one of very few ways to advertise on the Internet, so businesses are almost required to pay a “Google tax” in order to do business.
YouTube is simply another tool for their data machine. If Google Ads didn’t exist, I guarantee YouTube wouldn’t either. Platforms with a paid subscription model would. I think the world would be a better place if the video platforming and advertising were separate, even if that does compromise a source of income for the creators.
idk what this website is trying to do, but when I get to the bottom and it loads the comments under the article, it tries to download a file. Not a fan of that...
idk what this website is trying to do, but when I get to the bottom and it loads the comments under the article, it tries to download a file. Not a fan of that...
Alright, I briefly looked into it. Didn't spend that much time digging around, but: The file it downloads is a 0 byte file, containing nothing The 0-byte file does not indicate any suspicious...
Alright, I briefly looked into it. Didn't spend that much time digging around, but:
The file it downloads is a 0 byte file, containing nothing
The 0-byte file does not indicate any suspicious patterns (name/suffix-wise)
The file is downloaded when it tries to query the URL <their website>/ghost/auth-frame
Found this post at a great time where I’m slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because “youtube is evil” but I’m starting to appreciate the beauty...
Found this post at a great time where I’m slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because “youtube is evil” but I’m starting to appreciate the beauty and minimalism of just written articles and blog posts. I enjoy going through them at my own pace and I don’t need to look at a guy for him to read what could have been a blog post to me or watch those stock clips while he reads it. This is especially true for code content. Obviously I’m talking about a small subset of all videos on youtube (tech/news content ish).
I was actually a long term subscriber to youtube premium but I cancelled maybe a month ago. I was hesitant for a long time because I thought the value I got from it was so great that it was worth paying, especially since youtube splits the premium revenue 40/60 or 50/50 with creators. On top of that I also had youtube music. It felt wrong to do all these mental gymnastics and go the adblock route because of the creators. The author in the post touches on this point.
But as I started getting into Lemmy and reading blog posts more and more (also started reading a book), I understood that a lot of that perceived value was because that’s the only thing I used and knew. There’s a whole world out there and since then I’ve slowly started minimizing my time on it. Again, not because it’s bad but just because I feel for a lot of content there are other things out there. It’s a choice. Learning to enjoy reading a light book vs watching Youtube before bed, for example.
I do think there’s some dishonesty and delusion going on in a lot of people’s minds when it comes to adblockers. They use adblock and think they’re somehow doing the right thing and they’re so righteous about it, yet they continue watching Youtube and never donate to any creators. I have a few friends like that.
Since I don’t spend that much time on it anymore, honestly I just watch the ads. Not as big of a deal as I once thought, and they make me want to spend even less time on the platform. I used to also use it for white noise or background music. Now I just use mynoise.net -great platform, would recommend.
Just a random stream of thoughts on my youtube experience.
I don't really think this is a fair assessment. In my opinion, the first incorrect assumption is that content creators are owed income because they have created and shared something. I don't...
I don't really think this is a fair assessment.
In my opinion, the first incorrect assumption is that content creators are owed income because they have created and shared something. I don't believe this is the case. Don't get me wrong, I think YouTube is work, and that many YouTubers work hard. But how hard they work realistically has nothing to do with how much money they make. A mass production slop channel (e.g. 5 minute crafts) can churn out absolute trash and generate buckets of income. I could spend 40 hours a week generating heartfelt content for a year and end up with less than minimum wage, if I received any money at all. YouTube, and any associated career is a Celebrity competition. How popular are you? How much do people like you? How lucky have you been?
Now here is the part you may disagree with me, but it is why I used adblock with no reservation. I firmly believe that Celebrity is a privilege and not a right. For many, YouTube is the vehicle that makes them Celebrities. But it is the people that are what make them 'valuable'. Not YouTube, not advertising, and not their income. This opposes other jobs, say for example, being a waiter, where your (economic) value is defined by the work that you do. On YouTube, your (economic) value is defined by how many people like you.
With this in mind, I do not believe YouTubers are 'owed' anything. This is an industry where the terms and conditions are clear: your labour does not define your income. People do.
Perhaps we can compare the job of a Youtuber to that of a busker. It's nice that a busker is playing music in a public space for me to hear. They are sharing their talent with the world. Perhaps I will stay a while and listen to them play. It would be nice, if I did so, to throw a few pennies into their guitar case, maybe even expected. But I don't have to. While their music is playing publicly and freely available, the terms and conditions of payment are on me. They could work their ass off, play 40 hours a week, and I still wouldn't be obligated to donate. Or maybe they're playing 80 hours a week in the middle of a desert, where nobody can hear them. You still owe them nothing. They are doing this because they want to do this.
This is the nature of a YouTubers job, and they know this. Because of this, many have found ways to secure additional income. Pateron, Nebula, merch, tours, etc.
In the same way, a busker might decide that in order to earn some guaranteed income, they might sell CDs of their musicor they might hire a venue for a show. And even if they have a concert show that evening, if they decide to busk that morning, I still don't owe them anything for listening in on them. This is the nature of the industry. Just as musicians are only valuable if people want to give to their art, YouTubers are only valuable if people want to watch them. To be a celebrity in this situation is a great privilege.
Some YouTubers, for example, Khadija Mbowe I believe, may decide to move off YouTube entirely and produce content to a paying audience only. This is entirely their prerogative. Most do not, and this is because content creators are aware that they need YouTube to build and grow their audience, to build and grow the share of fans who like their content enough to pay for it. Many people won't, and will stop consuming content if it is placed behind a paywall. But these non payers are still valuable to YouTube, and YouTube knows it. Last year, YouTube proved it had the capacity to ban users who were using adblock. Yet mysteriously, they still haven't done this. Alternatively, YouTube could paywall it's entirely service, as Netflix have done. But they haven't. Because non paying users are still valuable to them (likely though data harvesting). In this sense, all people watching YouTube, adblock or not, are paying customers.
I suppose the last point to address is this. While I earlier compared the job of a YouTuber to the job of a busker, I don't think this is an exact 1:1 comparison. While buskers play in public, YouTubers kinda don't. They play on YouTube, which might be considered YouTube's privately owned land.
But here is the important question. Are consumers obligated to view adverts? I firmly believe the answer is no, and to say yes is horrificly dystopian (for further reading see 10,000 Merits). Just as if I listen to a busker playing in Times Square I am not obligated to view the ads on the building around me, if I watch a YouTuber, I am not obligated to view the ads around them. Adverts are not valid currency. If I can close my eyes and plug my ears when an ad comes on my TV at home, I should also be able ask a machine to help me with this. When viewed in this context, almost all of us can agree that advertisements are not, and should not be required viewing. If YouTube wants to stop me viewing their content if I refuse to view their ads, this is their right. If YouTube wants to put a fence around the busker on their land, this is their right. But they haven't. And until they do, I will continue to proudly use adblock. If or when YouTube kick me off their platform for this, I will humbly bow out. But as discussed earlier, I think this is unlikely to happen, because if it was going to it would have happened already.
Edit: Just an addendum to say, if you want to support your favourite YouTubers, please do! Your support will allow them to create content. If you don't support them, they might not be able to create content. If you choose not to support them, that's fine. But be aware that they may no longer make the art that you love. If they go bust, you'll only have yourself to blame.
Ultimately I find that I value my time, attention, privacy, security, and so on more than I value any perceived social contract re: revenue between me and a platform or its creators, to watch...
Ultimately I find that I value my time, attention, privacy, security, and so on more than I value any perceived social contract re: revenue between me and a platform or its creators, to watch advertising in exchange for its content.
I am under no obligation to uphold this revenue model, just as any platform is under no obligation to provide its content to me free of charge or in a way that allows me to tailor it to myself (via a browser extension that prevents its advertising). If you don't want me to be able to view your content without advertising, don't provide it in a way that allows me to do so.
I find advertising, and the industry that upholds it, so ethically void itself that I find what some perceive as a "lack of ethics" in blocking ads to pale in comparison, and outweighed by the benefits every time. If one wishes to consider this a moral failure on my part, it is a moral failure of such little significance and such important benefit that I cannot be brought to care.
That said, I do what I can where I can afford it to act in a way that supports creators to some extent. When it is reasonable for me I'll do what I can to pay to avoid advertising completely on certain platforms. That said, for plenty of other times, I will consume content while blocking its ads- and not feel one bit bad about it.
It's the unfortunate reality of the internet- if tons of content can no longer survive due to ads being blocked and there has to be a reckoning about revenue models used online, then so be it.
I can think of ways that advertising can be done that largely mitigate many of its harms, but that kind of advertising paradigm is so restrictive that it's not something ad companies would ever do or be comfortable with anymore, and if they did, it would pay so little as to be useless. The ad industry made their bed and they can sleep in it for all I care
Edit to add a final note: If I were to go to the extreme, which I feel sometimes, some days I would say I feel like advertising as a whole I find unsavory and undesirable, even in its least harmful forms- I find it to be a unconsented-to attack on our time and attention, period, and we should rid ourselves of it and find alternatives for discovery (directories, catalogs, "designated spaces" for it to exist in an opt-in manner) and never look at it again as a revenue model for anything
Market success in capitalism generally doesn't correlate with effort, quality, or social value - it correlates with meeting market demand, timing, luck, and positioning. What you said about...
Market success in capitalism generally doesn't correlate with effort, quality, or social value - it correlates with meeting market demand, timing, luck, and positioning. What you said about youtubers can be applied to all businesses also. Do you also think businesses aren't "owed" payment for their products because success is based on popularity / demand, not effort?
A busker in Times Square isn't using infrastructure owned by the billboard companies. They are using Youtube's infrastructure. The relationship is a three-way commercial arrangement. Youtube provides infrastructure, creators provide content and viewer attention (to ads) or money (premium). By using adblock you only accept 2/3 of the arrangement.
You are speculating that youtube values data harvesting in the same way as ad revenue. But if that was true, they wouldn't have pushed so much against ad-blockers as they recently did. It wouldn't be too far fetched to assume if everyone used adblock the platform would not sustain itself just through the value of your data and would collapse. Furthermore ,perhaps they didn't go all the way because there are people that actually pay / don't use adblock and they are enough to offset your free-riding ?
To me a lot of these arguments that I just read (from you and others) still look like crazy mental gymnastics.
Ultimately there's a fundamental problem : You cannot simultaneously believe creators don't deserve payment AND that their content is worth your time to consume.
You're trying to moralize about a market, which is not how people truly value things. People would often like to have knitted things, but nobody is willing to pay the cost of the time and...
You cannot simultaneously believe creators don't deserve payment AND that their content is worth your time to consume.
You're trying to moralize about a market, which is not how people truly value things.
People would often like to have knitted things, but nobody is willing to pay the cost of the time and materials for the product (paying minimum wage for the hours to make a knitted scarf would be wildly expensive). But people knit, because they want to...and there is where the lack of value comes from. A great many people knit things, and we live in a world where such an item isn't an essential, so it's easy to pass on.
The value of a good ≠ the cost to produce the good or a reflection of how much effort went into it. It never has been and never will. The value is a function of the demand and the supply, and we live in a world with vast amounts of video content that would take many lifetimes to watch and countless people who want to make it. They're all fighting over your finite attention. Thus, the value of an extremely high supply and a very limited demand trends to zero.
Similarly, it takes a lot of effort to dig holes, but we're going to pay someone the absolute minimum to do it, because plenty of people can. But we pay people an exceptionally large amount of money to do heart surgery, because very few people have the knowledge, practice and physical ability.
The funny thing is...a large part of what we appreciate about art is the skill and effort that went into making it. But that doesn't mean we feel like handing money over for it. Plenty of now-famous painters died poor, but their works now have value because they're very finite in supply and comparatively more people with wealth would like to own one.
YouTube is certainly well down the Enshittification road at this point. I still watch content on it, and I still add to my own channel which is my little creative area on Electronics, but I do...
YouTube is certainly well down the Enshittification road at this point. I still watch content on it, and I still add to my own channel which is my little creative area on Electronics, but I do note that I have had to go through progressively more effort to render the experience of using / watching YouTube to make it, well... usable and tolerable.
Ublock Origin, custom DNS with constantly updating adaptive IP filtering (basically the same concept as running a Pi Hole), etc...
Mirroring my YouTube channel to Odysee is on my to-do list, and maybe now that I finally got access to health insurance and through that ADHD meds I'll be able to actually... DO THINGS ON MY TO-DO LIST. I'm hoping that works out in general, I'm only on the second day but preliminary experience is positive.
A number of the creators I know and enjoy have already duplicated their channel to Odysee (Dave of EEVBlog and Louis Rossmann for example). That kind of progress is slow, but in my experience it's the kind of thing that builds momentum and at a certain point you tend to see a shift of rapidly spreading adoption.
YouTube making their experience ever more shit with you WILL have all these ads shoved down your throat is certainly helping the process along.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm not going to blame anyone for trying to make a living. When people call for boycotts I'm often skeptical. Google is an enormous company that does...
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm not going to blame anyone for trying to make a living. When people call for boycotts I'm often skeptical. Google is an enormous company that does many good things and many bad things, but overall I think they do more good than bad. (But I'm biased. I still own a lot of Google stock, so I have a conflict of interest on that.)
On the other hand, I have personal reasons to limit how I use YouTube. I only watch music videos or the occasional movie. I've decided to never watch talking-head videos because already have an Internet addiction and I don't want to make it worse. When Sarah Taber complains that people comment on BlueSky without watching her videos, I'm like, sorry but I am never going to watch your videos.
So, this article comes across like a complaint from the owner of a BBQ restaurant that some people are vegetarians. Some people just aren't into what you sell, and that's okay. I don't blame you for trying, but there's no moral obligation to buy your product.
On the other hand, I think this guy is doing it right by having a blog as a way to communicate with people who don't watch videos. Since this article is a blog entry instead of a video, I can read it and comment on it. He also has a subscribe button for his blog, which seems like a good idea; people can pay him outside of YouTube. (Although, he missed a chance to get people interested in his videos by linking to a page that explains what they're about.)
I thought this might’ve been a hot take but I’ve seen some people here with a similar sentiment. Maybe they should just… not use YT for profit? Youtube in general shouldn’t have went for profit....
I thought this might’ve been a hot take but I’ve seen some people here with a similar sentiment.
Maybe they should just… not use YT for profit? Youtube in general shouldn’t have went for profit.
How could they make money? They had YT music, YT Red exclusives, but instead they are barking about adblockers.
I’m using YT less and less, sucks that Odysee and Peertube aren’t as big, but YT got enshittified l over time from hobbyist/or weirdoes making videos to a place full of ads and commercials.
I haven't read the article. I'm reacting purely on my own experience and on the headline. I will not use Youtube. Not for uploading vudeos (I don't do that anyway), nor watching them there. I use...
I haven't read the article. I'm reacting purely on my own experience and on the headline.
I will not use Youtube. Not for uploading vudeos (I don't do that anyway), nor watching them there. I use Grayjay to watch Youtube videos without ads.
I still like video over text, especially if some of my favorite creators does it - Steve Mould, Veritasium, SmarterEveryDay, Technology Connections, JerryRigEverything, Louis Rossmann, you name them...
My friend rides a motorbike on longer journeys and shotots, cuts and uploads videos of it. His videos got taken down because of him using songs in them here and there (which is bad, he knows it). He moved to other platform since then - Vimeo at first and Odysse right now. The latter seems to be the most open platform that is somehow known at least a bit today. It doesn't make money for creators (from ads), but at the very least it is usable from the other point - you can watch videos uninterrupted by ads. And support the creators in another way, ie. Patreon, buy merch or donate.
Youtube is the biggest but it's becoming evil rather fast.
Interesting take; I find this write up (without having read the post either, though I will before hitting submit and then comment my thoughts at the end) a better insight as to why YT has become...
Interesting take; I find this write up (without having read the post either, though I will before hitting submit and then comment my thoughts at the end) a better insight as to why YT has become the monster it is.
[I feel the following ramble is going to really paint me in a bad light, but that's life.]
I use it for all the "wrong" reasons (from today's standpoint) - I generally want to listen to music without logging in, without recommendations, and rarely want to check out additional/related content. Thus, I use adblockers, since these are typically not content creators. Additionally (and key point here), I feel that influencers/content creators are akin to social media and have created a whole genre of "bad influence / online social stuff" vibes overall. There are exceptions, but that's my general feeling and experience.
Additionally, a lot of my YT intake is due to me trying to find an answer or explanation online, but I cannot find it in text which generally I prefer, though in some rarer cases it is better to see a model or demonstration.
But in saying I use it for the "wrong" reasons, I believe you have pointed out the reasons that I hadn't realized was my mental reasoning.
After having read the article: That was difficult to read, as I did not relate to the majority of it. I find there were two main points on which it doesn't really appeal or apply to me.
It addresses my personal reasoning for using YT as previously mentioned, and doesn't really touch on much that is applicable. I have been noticing issues with adblocking (mostly due to my VPN, not my Firefox usage). As I previously mentioned, the arguments for content creators is like water off a duck's back for me. The internet is so inundated with talented people that YT (and other platforms) are trying to eke their own profits out of and it's just a sad, disgusting setup. "I don't want to be rich and famous. I want to make a living out of this" comes across to me as a demand without considering the realistic facts. I likely am going to piss off a lot of people who make this type of living or are trying to, and I don't want to discourage or hate on them (and I'm not), but sorry that's how life is. And I'm going to keep using adblockers (as I do not typically care to view created content as the author is making, though I do occasionally kick some money at patreon when I do utilize someone's content), because I [still] have the power to prevent myself from being the commodity.
The quote, again to bring up my thoughts on people attempting to live off of this type of lifestyle: "PeerTube allows you to upload videos ... and share them. YouTube allows you to make a living by uploading videos" is going to push me, as a "consumer" to PeerTube (which I hadn't heard of, though I doubt it will typically have what I'm looking for). Not because I don't want people making money off their content, but because that isn't what I'm looking for in searching for videos.
So I guess in conclusion, sorry for rambling on, but your (@milkywayflyinginsect) post really helped shift my thought process on how people view creators like the author. Ironically, it has not really changed my thoughts on YT.
Well, it is a tough message, but my personal answer to the question posed at the end of the post is:
Then I guess their videos should not exist.
Sorry, but I will not give an evil behemoth like Youtube even one inch of room. I thoroughly despise everything that is infected with ads, opaque algorithms and now AI. I try to do my part, by paying for Nebula and sponsoring a couple of creators on Patreon, but I will not for one second turn off my ad blocker.
If that means that fewer videos will be made, then so be it. There already is far too much media to consume anyway. Subjecting yourself to Youtube's antics is not the solution.
A while back I posted some thoughts tangential to this, and they didn't seem to be well-received, but I'll try again.
My fundamental problem with YouTube is what the profit motive does to content. I don't believe you can prioritize profit and content at the same time. Once you've built your livelihood off of your content, it's now a matter of survival. When the YouTube algorithm fails to surface high quality content, and instead surfaces high engagement content, you're now faced with the dilemma: do you chase the algorithm so that you income stream continues, or change jobs?
In that way, the YouTube algorithm is basically your boss. If it says "stop making long form content, we want shorts now", then your choice is to do that or find a new job. Many people will do what the boss demands.
Anyhow, my proposal is the streaming platform equivalent of public access TV of yore. Every citizen gets X GB of streaming space that they can use however they like. More importantly, morning is monetized. No ads, no algorithms, just good old fashioned sorting and searching to find content.
The pushback I got is that nobody would use it, but I'm not sure. I think quality content exists on YouTube in spite of how it's run, not because of it, and every month brings new ways YouTube wants to dictate how content is allowed to survive in modern media.
I'd use it. I'd post boring informative shit and never look at viewership numbers. I wouldn't be competing with anyone because there's no profit incentive.
I can do this today on YouTube, but YouTube will constantly use suggestions and algorithms to try and pull my viewers away and into garbage. It's predatory and not a good place for learning. Imagine crack dealers at your library and having to teach your children to say no in between every book.
I'm exaggerating but... Am I? Just recently I showed my little one chef Amaury on YouTube. It's great content, and his channel is full of choices to watch. So why, then, does every single video end with a suggestion for three unrelated videos from three unrelated channels? Predatory, and the predator doesn't distinguish adults from children.
It's never been easier for anyone in the world to create content, but we don't have a single content platform that is devoid of profit incentive. That's a problem, because the profit incentive will always come first.
I have multiple YouTube accounts and honestly I've found that the algorithm "feeds* me what I show I want. If I'm watching chess videos it sends them my way, same for tng videos, etc etc. despite all that I really only watch videos from my subscription feed though. I think people would get accustomed to whatever they get from social media, be it your idea or something different.
I like this suggestion, and I think it would pair well with another modification.
Decouple the content hosting from the content delivery.
I think the best example of this is the streaming music industry. For the most part, the music library isn’t different between Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube music. This forces those platforms to actually compete. If you want lossless quality, freedom to use third party front ends, and ability to add your own music, you get Apple Music. If you want podcasts to infiltrate your music app (why would anyone want this?), you get Spotify. If you want the worst music app, you get YouTube music. (I may have some strong opinions about music services.)
Let’s say we had two separate services, YouTube backend and YouTube front end. YouTube backend would have to compete with services like Vimeo, nebula, floatplane, and others to be good content hosts for creators. From what I hear, YouTube studio is actually quite good, but I am sure some competition could improve it. Then we have YouTube frontend, which is the website and apps. Those could play content from any of the backend services, not just YouTube backend. If you want an ad infested nightmare (or to have useless services like YT music bundled with your premium), stick with YouTube. If you don’t want that, use a custom front end like greyjay or the many competitors that would certainly pop up. These competitors would still be able to access the content from YouTube backend, nebula, floatplane, etc. But now they have to actually compete for users.
This can be combined pretty easily with a government run video backend with limited options. For a prolific uploader, it makes sense for them to use the private backends. But for occasional uploaders, a simple and low usage government platform would be perfect.
Heard!
I think splitting the backend from how it's delivered is a really good idea and would go a long way towards improving competition.
I actually really like this and agree with it in many ways and could see it working and people using it. People share tools and borrow things from their neighbors, or share information freely, and whatnot, and I could see this being an extension of that idea
I think unfortunately one of the underlying things here is the problem of some types of financial structures of societies (one might shorthand "capitalism" here, but I want it to sound broader than that) causing the incentive of the profit motive to always bloom out of anything, often even initially good things and ideas.
I do think in spite of this, neat things can exist that go a different direction (some open-source software, maybe libraries?, communal spaces, etc), but I feel like all of them will always have a pull on them, and some may fold or feel almost forced into some profit motive eventually. Anything that survives without giving in, does so with probably great difficulty
Maybe it's an ideal we never reach but I wish we could all be making and sharing things with one another all the time, without feeling like we need to commodify it or sell it or whatever. But when we need to constantly pay to survive another day on this earth, that poisons the well of so much of what we do
I'm not all economist, and probably naive, but my answer is usually socialism. Or socialization of things that are a benefit to most of society. I'd fund this service with taxes.
Same.... Same... I think a lot about how many people never get to explore their potential because the things they might be great at aren't marketable, or are too competitive as a career path.
I agree with a large portion of commenters here: YouTubers aren’t entitled to a source of income simply for making videos. They earn an income because Google pays them.
Stop and ask yourself why. It’s because Google extracts people’s personal data from across the web and uses that data to make profitable deals with advertisers. Over time, Google has effectively become one of very few ways to advertise on the Internet, so businesses are almost required to pay a “Google tax” in order to do business.
YouTube is simply another tool for their data machine. If Google Ads didn’t exist, I guarantee YouTube wouldn’t either. Platforms with a paid subscription model would. I think the world would be a better place if the video platforming and advertising were separate, even if that does compromise a source of income for the creators.
idk what this website is trying to do, but when I get to the bottom and it loads the comments under the article, it tries to download a file. Not a fan of that...
You're right, it does do that, that's strange. Perhaps some sort of bug ? I doubt this site in particular would do anything shady.
Gonna analyse that in a virtual machine. Give me a moment.
Alright, I briefly looked into it. Didn't spend that much time digging around, but:
Seems more like a bug/misconfiguration
Found this post at a great time where I’m slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because “youtube is evil” but I’m starting to appreciate the beauty and minimalism of just written articles and blog posts. I enjoy going through them at my own pace and I don’t need to look at a guy for him to read what could have been a blog post to me or watch those stock clips while he reads it. This is especially true for code content. Obviously I’m talking about a small subset of all videos on youtube (tech/news content ish).
I was actually a long term subscriber to youtube premium but I cancelled maybe a month ago. I was hesitant for a long time because I thought the value I got from it was so great that it was worth paying, especially since youtube splits the premium revenue 40/60 or 50/50 with creators. On top of that I also had youtube music. It felt wrong to do all these mental gymnastics and go the adblock route because of the creators. The author in the post touches on this point.
But as I started getting into Lemmy and reading blog posts more and more (also started reading a book), I understood that a lot of that perceived value was because that’s the only thing I used and knew. There’s a whole world out there and since then I’ve slowly started minimizing my time on it. Again, not because it’s bad but just because I feel for a lot of content there are other things out there. It’s a choice. Learning to enjoy reading a light book vs watching Youtube before bed, for example.
I do think there’s some dishonesty and delusion going on in a lot of people’s minds when it comes to adblockers. They use adblock and think they’re somehow doing the right thing and they’re so righteous about it, yet they continue watching Youtube and never donate to any creators. I have a few friends like that.
Since I don’t spend that much time on it anymore, honestly I just watch the ads. Not as big of a deal as I once thought, and they make me want to spend even less time on the platform. I used to also use it for white noise or background music. Now I just use mynoise.net -great platform, would recommend.
Just a random stream of thoughts on my youtube experience.
I don't really think this is a fair assessment.
In my opinion, the first incorrect assumption is that content creators are owed income because they have created and shared something. I don't believe this is the case. Don't get me wrong, I think YouTube is work, and that many YouTubers work hard. But how hard they work realistically has nothing to do with how much money they make. A mass production slop channel (e.g. 5 minute crafts) can churn out absolute trash and generate buckets of income. I could spend 40 hours a week generating heartfelt content for a year and end up with less than minimum wage, if I received any money at all. YouTube, and any associated career is a Celebrity competition. How popular are you? How much do people like you? How lucky have you been?
Now here is the part you may disagree with me, but it is why I used adblock with no reservation. I firmly believe that Celebrity is a privilege and not a right. For many, YouTube is the vehicle that makes them Celebrities. But it is the people that are what make them 'valuable'. Not YouTube, not advertising, and not their income. This opposes other jobs, say for example, being a waiter, where your (economic) value is defined by the work that you do. On YouTube, your (economic) value is defined by how many people like you.
With this in mind, I do not believe YouTubers are 'owed' anything. This is an industry where the terms and conditions are clear: your labour does not define your income. People do.
Perhaps we can compare the job of a Youtuber to that of a busker. It's nice that a busker is playing music in a public space for me to hear. They are sharing their talent with the world. Perhaps I will stay a while and listen to them play. It would be nice, if I did so, to throw a few pennies into their guitar case, maybe even expected. But I don't have to. While their music is playing publicly and freely available, the terms and conditions of payment are on me. They could work their ass off, play 40 hours a week, and I still wouldn't be obligated to donate. Or maybe they're playing 80 hours a week in the middle of a desert, where nobody can hear them. You still owe them nothing. They are doing this because they want to do this.
This is the nature of a YouTubers job, and they know this. Because of this, many have found ways to secure additional income. Pateron, Nebula, merch, tours, etc.
In the same way, a busker might decide that in order to earn some guaranteed income, they might sell CDs of their musicor they might hire a venue for a show. And even if they have a concert show that evening, if they decide to busk that morning, I still don't owe them anything for listening in on them. This is the nature of the industry. Just as musicians are only valuable if people want to give to their art, YouTubers are only valuable if people want to watch them. To be a celebrity in this situation is a great privilege.
Some YouTubers, for example, Khadija Mbowe I believe, may decide to move off YouTube entirely and produce content to a paying audience only. This is entirely their prerogative. Most do not, and this is because content creators are aware that they need YouTube to build and grow their audience, to build and grow the share of fans who like their content enough to pay for it. Many people won't, and will stop consuming content if it is placed behind a paywall. But these non payers are still valuable to YouTube, and YouTube knows it. Last year, YouTube proved it had the capacity to ban users who were using adblock. Yet mysteriously, they still haven't done this. Alternatively, YouTube could paywall it's entirely service, as Netflix have done. But they haven't. Because non paying users are still valuable to them (likely though data harvesting). In this sense, all people watching YouTube, adblock or not, are paying customers.
I suppose the last point to address is this. While I earlier compared the job of a YouTuber to the job of a busker, I don't think this is an exact 1:1 comparison. While buskers play in public, YouTubers kinda don't. They play on YouTube, which might be considered YouTube's privately owned land.
But here is the important question. Are consumers obligated to view adverts? I firmly believe the answer is no, and to say yes is horrificly dystopian (for further reading see 10,000 Merits). Just as if I listen to a busker playing in Times Square I am not obligated to view the ads on the building around me, if I watch a YouTuber, I am not obligated to view the ads around them. Adverts are not valid currency. If I can close my eyes and plug my ears when an ad comes on my TV at home, I should also be able ask a machine to help me with this. When viewed in this context, almost all of us can agree that advertisements are not, and should not be required viewing. If YouTube wants to stop me viewing their content if I refuse to view their ads, this is their right. If YouTube wants to put a fence around the busker on their land, this is their right. But they haven't. And until they do, I will continue to proudly use adblock. If or when YouTube kick me off their platform for this, I will humbly bow out. But as discussed earlier, I think this is unlikely to happen, because if it was going to it would have happened already.
Edit: Just an addendum to say, if you want to support your favourite YouTubers, please do! Your support will allow them to create content. If you don't support them, they might not be able to create content. If you choose not to support them, that's fine. But be aware that they may no longer make the art that you love. If they go bust, you'll only have yourself to blame.
Ultimately I find that I value my time, attention, privacy, security, and so on more than I value any perceived social contract re: revenue between me and a platform or its creators, to watch advertising in exchange for its content.
I am under no obligation to uphold this revenue model, just as any platform is under no obligation to provide its content to me free of charge or in a way that allows me to tailor it to myself (via a browser extension that prevents its advertising). If you don't want me to be able to view your content without advertising, don't provide it in a way that allows me to do so.
I find advertising, and the industry that upholds it, so ethically void itself that I find what some perceive as a "lack of ethics" in blocking ads to pale in comparison, and outweighed by the benefits every time. If one wishes to consider this a moral failure on my part, it is a moral failure of such little significance and such important benefit that I cannot be brought to care.
That said, I do what I can where I can afford it to act in a way that supports creators to some extent. When it is reasonable for me I'll do what I can to pay to avoid advertising completely on certain platforms. That said, for plenty of other times, I will consume content while blocking its ads- and not feel one bit bad about it.
It's the unfortunate reality of the internet- if tons of content can no longer survive due to ads being blocked and there has to be a reckoning about revenue models used online, then so be it.
I can think of ways that advertising can be done that largely mitigate many of its harms, but that kind of advertising paradigm is so restrictive that it's not something ad companies would ever do or be comfortable with anymore, and if they did, it would pay so little as to be useless. The ad industry made their bed and they can sleep in it for all I care
Edit to add a final note: If I were to go to the extreme, which I feel sometimes, some days I would say I feel like advertising as a whole I find unsavory and undesirable, even in its least harmful forms- I find it to be a unconsented-to attack on our time and attention, period, and we should rid ourselves of it and find alternatives for discovery (directories, catalogs, "designated spaces" for it to exist in an opt-in manner) and never look at it again as a revenue model for anything
To me a lot of these arguments that I just read (from you and others) still look like crazy mental gymnastics.
Ultimately there's a fundamental problem : You cannot simultaneously believe creators don't deserve payment AND that their content is worth your time to consume.
You're trying to moralize about a market, which is not how people truly value things.
People would often like to have knitted things, but nobody is willing to pay the cost of the time and materials for the product (paying minimum wage for the hours to make a knitted scarf would be wildly expensive). But people knit, because they want to...and there is where the lack of value comes from. A great many people knit things, and we live in a world where such an item isn't an essential, so it's easy to pass on.
The value of a good ≠ the cost to produce the good or a reflection of how much effort went into it. It never has been and never will. The value is a function of the demand and the supply, and we live in a world with vast amounts of video content that would take many lifetimes to watch and countless people who want to make it. They're all fighting over your finite attention. Thus, the value of an extremely high supply and a very limited demand trends to zero.
Similarly, it takes a lot of effort to dig holes, but we're going to pay someone the absolute minimum to do it, because plenty of people can. But we pay people an exceptionally large amount of money to do heart surgery, because very few people have the knowledge, practice and physical ability.
The funny thing is...a large part of what we appreciate about art is the skill and effort that went into making it. But that doesn't mean we feel like handing money over for it. Plenty of now-famous painters died poor, but their works now have value because they're very finite in supply and comparatively more people with wealth would like to own one.
YouTube is certainly well down the Enshittification road at this point. I still watch content on it, and I still add to my own channel which is my little creative area on Electronics, but I do note that I have had to go through progressively more effort to render the experience of using / watching YouTube to make it, well... usable and tolerable.
Ublock Origin, custom DNS with constantly updating adaptive IP filtering (basically the same concept as running a Pi Hole), etc...
Mirroring my YouTube channel to Odysee is on my to-do list, and maybe now that I finally got access to health insurance and through that ADHD meds I'll be able to actually... DO THINGS ON MY TO-DO LIST. I'm hoping that works out in general, I'm only on the second day but preliminary experience is positive.
A number of the creators I know and enjoy have already duplicated their channel to Odysee (Dave of EEVBlog and Louis Rossmann for example). That kind of progress is slow, but in my experience it's the kind of thing that builds momentum and at a certain point you tend to see a shift of rapidly spreading adoption.
YouTube making their experience ever more shit with you WILL have all these ads shoved down your throat is certainly helping the process along.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm not going to blame anyone for trying to make a living. When people call for boycotts I'm often skeptical. Google is an enormous company that does many good things and many bad things, but overall I think they do more good than bad. (But I'm biased. I still own a lot of Google stock, so I have a conflict of interest on that.)
On the other hand, I have personal reasons to limit how I use YouTube. I only watch music videos or the occasional movie. I've decided to never watch talking-head videos because already have an Internet addiction and I don't want to make it worse. When Sarah Taber complains that people comment on BlueSky without watching her videos, I'm like, sorry but I am never going to watch your videos.
So, this article comes across like a complaint from the owner of a BBQ restaurant that some people are vegetarians. Some people just aren't into what you sell, and that's okay. I don't blame you for trying, but there's no moral obligation to buy your product.
On the other hand, I think this guy is doing it right by having a blog as a way to communicate with people who don't watch videos. Since this article is a blog entry instead of a video, I can read it and comment on it. He also has a subscribe button for his blog, which seems like a good idea; people can pay him outside of YouTube. (Although, he missed a chance to get people interested in his videos by linking to a page that explains what they're about.)
I thought this might’ve been a hot take but I’ve seen some people here with a similar sentiment.
Maybe they should just… not use YT for profit? Youtube in general shouldn’t have went for profit.
How could they make money? They had YT music, YT Red exclusives, but instead they are barking about adblockers.
I’m using YT less and less, sucks that Odysee and Peertube aren’t as big, but YT got enshittified l over time from hobbyist/or weirdoes making videos to a place full of ads and commercials.
I haven't read the article. I'm reacting purely on my own experience and on the headline.
I will not use Youtube. Not for uploading vudeos (I don't do that anyway), nor watching them there. I use Grayjay to watch Youtube videos without ads.
I still like video over text, especially if some of my favorite creators does it - Steve Mould, Veritasium, SmarterEveryDay, Technology Connections, JerryRigEverything, Louis Rossmann, you name them...
My friend rides a motorbike on longer journeys and shotots, cuts and uploads videos of it. His videos got taken down because of him using songs in them here and there (which is bad, he knows it). He moved to other platform since then - Vimeo at first and Odysse right now. The latter seems to be the most open platform that is somehow known at least a bit today. It doesn't make money for creators (from ads), but at the very least it is usable from the other point - you can watch videos uninterrupted by ads. And support the creators in another way, ie. Patreon, buy merch or donate.
Youtube is the biggest but it's becoming evil rather fast.
Huh somehow never came across Odyssee. I know Vimeo is used more as a video hosting service for businesses rather than a "youtube alternative".
Interesting take; I find this write up (without having read the post either, though I will before hitting submit and then comment my thoughts at the end) a better insight as to why YT has become the monster it is.
[I feel the following ramble is going to really paint me in a bad light, but that's life.]
I use it for all the "wrong" reasons (from today's standpoint) - I generally want to listen to music without logging in, without recommendations, and rarely want to check out additional/related content. Thus, I use adblockers, since these are typically not content creators. Additionally (and key point here), I feel that influencers/content creators are akin to social media and have created a whole genre of "bad influence / online social stuff" vibes overall. There are exceptions, but that's my general feeling and experience.
Additionally, a lot of my YT intake is due to me trying to find an answer or explanation online, but I cannot find it in text which generally I prefer, though in some rarer cases it is better to see a model or demonstration.
But in saying I use it for the "wrong" reasons, I believe you have pointed out the reasons that I hadn't realized was my mental reasoning.
After having read the article: That was difficult to read, as I did not relate to the majority of it. I find there were two main points on which it doesn't really appeal or apply to me.
So I guess in conclusion, sorry for rambling on, but your (@milkywayflyinginsect) post really helped shift my thought process on how people view creators like the author. Ironically, it has not really changed my thoughts on YT.
Reading this reminded me of the saying,
Their site seems to be down at the moment (or maybe it is/was just me) so here's an archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20251224104725/https://thelibre.news/youtube-is-awful-please-use-youtube-though/