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I haven’t watched live tv in almost 20 years because I refuse to sit through ads, and I definitely won’t sit through them on YouTube. If it was a banner or some thing on the page or the side of video that would be more acceptable, but sitting through ads to watch a YouTube video….there’s just no way.
You could subscribe
I basically don't subscribe to any streaming services, but we got the family plan years ago and share it with a few friends and family that chip in a couple bucks each.
It's so affordable and the content on YouTube is second to none.
I'm so happy to help content creators earn a living content I genuinely care about rather than studios led by c-suite committees.
Oh you sweet summer child
Lemmy users only want to use foss and not pay a single penny. How dare you suggest they pay a tiny amount to help pay for servers and the creators they're watching!
Some of us are legitimately broke (or on a very limited income). I get that some folk believe it's the capitalist way to force us to starve or succumb to the elements to demonstrate to others that humans have no value other than their productive worth to some plutocrat.
Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!
Ya I know. I'm living pay cheque to pay cheque. If I can't afford something, I watch ads. It's simple.
Why do you expect everything free?
Actually I expect some day the benefits that allow me to survive will end and I'll be another statistic.
But for now, the United States feels that I'm better off alive, though destitute, and unable to actually afford rent in California.
In the meantime, the millennials and zoomers I know don't expect to own anything ever. They eat whatever cheap food they can afford and pay rent and utilities and have a handful of trappings, and people write articles about how they're not into diamonds or owning real estate, or keeping a savings account. And one by one, they too are slipping through the cracks, usually when they slip down the stairs or get injured at work or catch a cold and don't have the strength to go into their job when their boss calls them desperate for a filler.
So regardless of what I expect, our establishment companies don't want to give anyone anything. They reward hard workers by working them harder.
I don't watch ads because they're antagonistic. I tend to avoid anything that features dark patterns because I'm susceptible to them, and they signal the product has been contaminated by its manufacturers with malicious intent.
If I can’t afford something, I watch ads
I can't afford to pay 20€ per month--that's more than my whole monthly phone bill with something like 50 or 100 GB of data. Cost of living is high enough as it is.
I also lack the most valuable currency there is in one's life, one that you simply can't get more of. Time. So I block ads, which cost a lot of time, with extreme prejudice.
Ads are also bad for my mental health, they just irritate me, rack up stress and easily swing me into bad mood.
Lastly, I don't give a fuck about costing money to some multi-billion corporation. I don't care about them as much as they don't care about me; the corpos see me just as a resource to exploit as much as possible then move on to another one when there's nothing more to exploit, and I see the corpos exactly the same way. Call it mutual parasitism. Yes, I'm a parasite. And parasites are the most successful lifeforms on Earth.
It feels like a culture war between corporations and the OG user base. They reeled us in and monopolized the market with the idea of "free". Now that competitors are few and far between, they want to change the game and reel in literal billions. I have absolutely no sympathy for their "lost profits". They are making enough as-is, and I have no problems saying that out loud.