Corporations are not your Friends: A Story in Two Parts
Corporations are not your Friends: A Story in Two Parts
The moment I get ads in my Youtube Premium, it's done with Youtube Premium, and done with Youtube.
...or else it gets the hose again???
Nah, that'd be a waste of water. Not a lot of skin on Youtube, no lotion needed either.
I don't think I specifically posted about it on lemmy but yeah, I also concluded youtube would be going further 'pay to win' around this time 2 years ago.
Twitch will keep getting more and more monetized / ad heavy as well, until it just gets shutdown.
I'll be amazed if it still exists by the end of 2026.
The guy who took this screenshot and posted it to Reddit likely has Premium Lite, which still shows ads on music videos. The title of the video is probably cut out to hide it.
Premium Lite is hilarious branding. "Oh, it's high quality, but like, less. Quality Lite"
It's like when they sell a medium pizza but no small. Bitch, you can't have "medium" if you don't have a small and large to compare it to!
Actually I don't know if it's like that at all...
"All animals are born equal, but some are born more equal than others"
Worse experience than with just ublock origin AND you get to pay for it. Imagine being this much of a sucker
Basically the point is that you don't have to pay for the music side of Premium if you already have a different music subscription, which I think is nice. The branding is a little silly though.
Oh, it’s high quality, but like, less. Quality Lite
Please sir, may I have some quality less?
I think you are right. And the OP look like they are in Germany where they are testing these plans. https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/17/24272930/youtube-cheaper-premium-lite-subscription-limited-ads
You could also recreate this by using revanced to change the banner to yt premium but forgetting to apply the ad block patch
Alright where are all the YouTube premium apologetics that keep appearing everytime someone discusses any sort of Ad-blocker?! What do you guys have to say now?!
No ads so far here but I definitely will cancel Premium if I start seeing ads. That’s literally the only thing I’m paying for.
Same. No ads yet but will cancel and delete if they start showing up.
Been slowly moving over to Nebula anyway.
These are screenshots and don’t prove anything.
I'm continuing apologising for premium exclusively because it pays creators more, and more consistently. I never go on the internet without all the adblocks possible, the sight of an add makes me irrationally angry. I'm still paying for premium
okay the adderall is kicking in so, sorry if this is a massive wall of text, but since you asked, adblockers are great, I never use the web without one when I can, but ads are only one part of why i pay for YouTube.
here are all my reasons:
- easy adless YouTube on non-android smart TV
- YouTube music (dont have to pay for Spotify)
- auto background video downloading to save on mobile data when I leave the house
- supports more creators (albeit in smaller amounts) than I could ever afford to support via patreon or merch (and supports them directly proportionally to how much I watch thier content, so I never risk paying a creator that ive lost interest in or forgetting to add a creator's patreon)
I would never try to convince someone else to pay for YouTube, it's defintily not for everyone, especially when a decent adblocker will satisfy most people. But for some people like me, it just makes sense, and I don't understand why some people get so mad to learn I'm paying for it.
Google is a gross company for sure, hell except for YouTube ive pretty much completly degoogled my life. I can use Plex for movies and shows, Proton for mail and calandar, magic earth for GPS, Firefox and DDG for search, etc. but there isnt a good replacement for YouTube especially since its one of my main hobbies. peertube and other video hosting sites really just dont compare for my usecase
ofc I think its shitty that theyre trialing showing ads to premium users in Germany, but honestly that would barely affect me if it was happening where I live. I use adblockers everywhere except my TV, so most of the time it'd be impossible for me to see an ad whether YouTube tried to serve me one or not.
if you were genuinly asking what people who pay for YouTube have to say about this, I hope that answered your question
I appreciate your nuanced answer. That's something a lot of "why not just pay for YouTube premium" guys don't
You raised good points and if you're happy to pay for the convenience, I'm not going to fight you on that.
While I don't fully agree with paying for a service that doesn't listen to their customers(bring back dislikes), I can still see where you're coming from.
I have a youtube premium account. Used to just use u-block but my computer is non-functional and I now primarily consume media on my ipad so I got a subscription. So far I have not had any ads. Working on getting a new pc and coming back to the light
You can download Firefox and install Ublock on the mobile app, then just go to YouTube.com. That's how I usually do it on my android phone anyway; I assume it works for iOS too
I have yt premium because my view counts as 1000x an ad supported view does.
I still end up using yt-dlp because playback in firefox is ass.
Uhh I don't care who doesn't pay for YTP or just blocks them, seems like an odd thing to care about?
I do have grandfathered $7/mo GPM (YTM) which comes with free YTP and I've yet to see ads at all. I don't even get ads on my linked gaming YT account. This kinda seems like misinformation?
If you think paying $10+ for Spotify instead of $7 YTM+YTP then yes, you are a fucking idiot.
Premium+ coming in 2026 for truly ad-free experience. Premium++ coming in 2028 for truly truly ad-free experience. Premium+++ coming in 2030 for truly truly truly ad-free experience.
I heard tell from a Gen Xer who said cable TV used to not have ads.
You're lying. I can't imagine this so it must be false!
Our national tv channel is lawfully barred from running commercials.
They just changed the definition of ads they run to "messages of commercial importance" or some dumb shit like that. And just like that, ads on the national channel are suddenly a-ok
PBS here has ads. They are short, but there are ads nonetheless. This is over and above the ads for their own shows that will be on the channel at a later date.
And some people argue against the death penalty. Argh.
Mixed truth. They carried broadcast networks that always had ads. Fox, NBC, ABC all had ads.
Comcast would even overwrite one or two of the network ads with their own ads. A commercial break would start, some life insurance BS would start playing audio compressed all to hell so it's twice as loud, at the end, you'd catch 5 seconds of some toy commercial and then one or two other regular network commercials.Premium channels like HBO didn't have 'ads,' but they did have station identification and self-promotion for what's coming to the platform in the near future. They wouldn't break the movies up, though, only in between. A few standouts didn't start with ads like Nickelodeon, but eventually got them.
Saturday cartoons on USA and TNT certainly had ads from day one.
Talk about looking at the past with distorting rose-colored glasses!
Fuckingcapitalists
A story in three parts: get an adblocker, problem solved
The third part is youtube keeps implementing more sophisticated ad blocking to the point you can't block ads..
Idk I’m still blocking ads no problem.
I think its the opposite, the more they tighten the noose the more innovative our solutions are for getting around them. I got so pissed off at seeing half my video watching time go to ads that I found a youtube alternative that goes right on my firestick (smarttube). I wouldnt have bothered doing all that if they had not pushed it too far, which they obviously have.
What the heck is this "Youtube Premium"?
All I ever know was uBlock Origin.
🏴☠️
It's convenient timing that Google Chrome is removing support for ad blocking plugins like uBlock right as Premium sneaks ads back in... 🙄
We are just one step away from YouTube being a paid only service.
I think that would be the death of the platform
I'm even wondering how people can use it as it is without ad blockers or clients like newpipe
Every time I use it on not-my-device I'm losing my nerves, because I have to watch at least 2 ads for a 1min video, when I want to show someone something
It would be a tragedy if youtube collapsed. There are so many useful and important videos on there. I passed the second year of my engineering bachelor almost exclusively by studying from youtube (the lectures at my college are useless), the vast breadth of content available on that platform simply does not exist anywhere else, and archiving all of it would be a monumental task. With youtube being a net loss for google for multiple years in a row, it's not outside the realm of possibility that if they can't make it profitable, they might just... shut it down like they did with Plus.
The same way people watched cable TV for decades. The slow ramp up of ads has a portion of the population prepped to be slightly frustrated, but willing to deal with it.
But yeah having been spoiled with no ads for years now, I have to mute my parents TV every time I go over. Even muted, there's still something about lots of ads that draws my eye more than whatever the actual show is. Drives me nuts.
I'm even wondering how people can use it as it is without ad blockers or clients like newpipe
I tend to use my TV and don't have a PiHole. I usually watch 20-45 minute long videos and, for some reason, YouTube actually puts fewer ads on longer videos. Get like maybe two, 30 second ad blocks in a ~25 minute video. But then I'll get three, 90 second unskippable ad blocks in a 1:30 video. 🤦♂️
IDK why they don't just have it only show an ad every X minutes, regardless of it being the same video or not. Or what about ads on Shorts? I haven't seen a single ad the few times I've been binging shorts.
There are also videos and entire channels that aren't monetized at all that never get ads on them. Like when people put a pirated film on there it doesn't get taken down, it just has no ads.
There's still the step where Youtube has Spotify level ads. Whatever the visual equivalent of
bait-and-switch-fav-song/LISTENTOMYPODCAST/oh-god-are-those-sirens-behind-meis.
At what point do content creators stop creating content for this?
When they stop getting paid.
From what I understand, they're already getting paid pennies by youtube, which is why many of them constantly shill for patreon/nebula/curiositystream/whatever on top of sponsored content. So youtube is shit for the creators, shit for the consumers, and a net loss for google. It's the same non-business model as food delivery apps: nobody profits, yet it still somehow keeps going because modern economics is make-believe.
When there is a viable alternative
There are alternatives for the people who make money off the YouTube.
The Youtubers who do get paid enough to make a living from YouTube also make production quality content and have great gear and staff. They might as well sell their production to any other streaming service.
Something like Veritasium might as well be on Netflix as YouTube. Mr.Beast would fit in on Mtv..
Me on my home lab Invidious instance: What are “ads”?
I've had some hideous collection of ABP, ublock, and some extension that hides all shorts all on chrome and I've somehow completely dodged all the drama in the past year. I've never had to manually update or fiddle with any settings. I've seen all the crap everyone else is getting, and I constantly think its right around the corner,, but nothing. Sometimes the page loads funny and just shows a black rectangle, and i think welp they finally got to me, but an immediate refresh always fixes it. Maybe one day I'll have to deal with it
I've dodged nearly everything with only Firefox + Ublock + Ghostery. The most I ever got was maybe one warning page on YouTube and never seen anything about it again.
Me on my home lab Invidious instance: What are “ads”?
Me on my firestick with smarttube: What are “ads”?
People who use premium should organize to vow to publicly shame and boycott any company putting adds in their premium plan.
Like anti commercials.
Yeah, the daymy I see an ad is the day I cancel my subscription
Premium doesn't mean private
Yeah, anyone who didn't see this coming hasn't been paying attention.
paying attention.
They couldn't afford to after paying for yootoob premium.
To be fair google could have one of those days since workplace accident boards but for bad youtube decisions.
I'd be surprised if it hit 3 digits.
Floating point digits, sure.
Fun thing, I don't want to get YouTube Premium because YouTube has a huge bunch of bugs and glitches and crap UI design and since they're the only service in the niche there's been no indication they'll ever fix their shit.
I didn't care about YouTube Music, so losing ads on stock YouTube apps was literally the only reason I was even considering getting Premium.
But if it doesn't even do the one job...?
VPN to a country with a lower cost, and sign up there. It used to be Turkey and India, where you could get a Family Plan for like $2/mo - but they’ve cracked down a bit on it.
We use YT for so much in our ‘household’ that it made sense to pool together and get Premium, and honestly it feels good having ~5 people who consume a tonne of content ad-free for nearly no cost while still supporting our preferred content creators.
Third party clients have entered the chat
That’s fine, at least they just increased the family plan pricing by 60%. Oh, wait.
Yeah, 20€ instead of 13 for me
Part 1: All of history from corporations becoming a thing to present day.
Part 2: The results of heartless corporate policy for the foreseeable future.
All of history from corporations becoming a thing to present day.
Corporations are people. The problem is that people are selfish greedy assholes.
They are diversifying their plans to enhance user experience or some bullshit
A year before they start serving ads then a year later to the month they start serving ads. Either that's a lucky guess which happens or he's got insider info lol