also one should always be skeptical about the extent they believe they are not influenced by ads. that runs pretty deep. you say you instinctively don't trust it. but when the time comes to buy something, you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product that you have never heard before just because you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them showing up when you do research creates influence.

Now, huge companies do run focus groups and such to ensure their brand advertising has the right (psychological) effects. But it is inherently difficult to measure. And I've seen many mid-sized companies not do that at all, they run these ads based on what they believe might work.

Mind you, this is experience from 4 years ago, but I did find the ad industry, as obsessed with tracking as it is, to be surprisingly gut-driven. For a lot of it, it's hard to tell if it works.

I do fully agree that for people who know what they're doing, advertising absolutely works, in ways that are sometimes unintuitive to consumers.

Top of funnel advertising is definitely conversion oriented, just on a longer timescale.

The whole business is teeming with waste and fraud, but it's a necessary evil so it stays.

Such a belief purports that the effect of all advertising is measurable. It clearly is not. For example, someone sees your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they decide to never interact with your company. It's not possible to measure this. Anyone claiming it is holds what amounts to a religious belief.

The "generates negative returns" is the next myth in this. Whether or not advertising generates positive returns is not relevant. You can't measure the return of advertising in the first place. Even if you could measure it, you should be comparing it to the opportunity cost of not doing something more productive with that money. Which you also can't measure. No one rationally proposes that someone spends a hundred dollars on advertising to generate $100.10 in revenue is somehow a good use of money.

YouTube in-video sponsorships are a different beast admittedly; however there is still some basic tracking through use of promo codes (Use code JOHN15 for 15% off). They can see a report of how much they spent on ads that mention JOHN15 and how many sales included that promo code -- if sales vs ad spend are significantly positive, it becomes simple math to determine how much more to spend on ads, or to discontinue them.

I suppose your point though was that it's not possible to track the negative sentiment generated by the ads (people who get annoyed and decide to avoid your company at all costs). That is true, but companies who rather go down the path of something trackable than an unknown shot in the dark.

Marketing, whether they are external firms or internal teams, have their own incentives, just like anyone else.

But… Personally I like good marketing and I‘m drawn to services and products who do so.

For example tech and games sometimes do very good marketing by providing educational resources, transparency through blogs/vlogs etc.

Some products are focused on a high quality, sustainable niche, and they do very pronounced, sometimes humorous over the top ads.

I „mistrust“ marketing if it wants to sell cheap crap in a disingenuous way. But I‘m glad to see ads for interesting, quality products.

Another 'trick' I employ (always with Firefox) is that I open links not to a "New Tab", but instead I use "Open in Reader View" add-on, so I "Open in Reader View" (it does exactly what it says on the tin), so I only get the clean text and the relevant images. That works for almost every website.

I've never intentionally clicked on an ad. It's either been an accidental drive by click or deception.

Every company you listed is bad.

NordVPN wasn't caught yet, but it's to good to be true and ALWAYS having 73% off is illegal marketing.

Betterhelp sold data to facebook to retarget you with ads.

SquareSpace had a security issue were entering the email of an old, not yet migrated account, was instant account takeover... how does this slip through security reviews?

Everything that needs my favorite minecraft youtuber to advertise it, is scam. It wouldn't sell without influencer marketing.

Using a VPN doesn't expose the domain names you're viewing (via SNI) or the IP addresses you're connecting to to your ISP. It also (therefore) doesn't expose to the ISP the volume of traffic you're sending to a particular site, when you connect to it, or how long you stay there.

Whether your ISP is part of the threat model you're interested in mitigating is up to you personally, but this is how, depending on that model, a VPN can be more secure than HTTPS.

But if you're using it for mildly illegal things like having the Netflix catalogue from another place it's probably good enough.

Just don't install their app, configure it yourself, don't use it full time, and don't expect protection from anything other than low level law enforcement from your country. Expect your connection to be monitored when you're using it, as much as can be (so not breaking encryption, but all the rest for sure).

I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than the fact that it's been a high visibility service for very long, which makes me think it would have already been taken down a while ago if it was actually effective at protecting high value targets

Square space is one provider that commonly does these kinds of placements and I can confirm that it’s an excellent product (albeit expensive).

Where do you think your friend found out about onshape?

I've asked them but they may be asleep

It's not a conscious decision, your mind is familiar with some of the brands more than others, for whatever reason, and that tricks you into trust. Sure, you still might look into reviews and stuff, but your mind has already been primed to some extent in what brands you even consider.

Thus the ad industry term "impressions" ? One gets the impression (heh) that they're just trying to beat logos and catchphrases into your reptile brain.

"Familiarity breeds contempt"... but ubiquitous superficiality does not, I guess.

What first comes to your mind when you are in need of a website builder? Squarespace. Want to make some PCBs? JLCPCB

I now sort of want to see a video about PCB etching sponsored by either of those because it would make me laugh from the contradiction

/s… at least I think :-)

Advertising works on you. You’re just, at best, describing a scenario where you aren’t being advertised things that you currently find appealing.

You’re currently on a social network that’s basically just YC’s advertising board.

> You’re currently on a social network that’s basically just YC’s advertising board.

If that's the sum of your proof, your thesis is a joke. I am not the customer of any YC company, nor have I ever applied for a job at one, nor have I ever or will I ever apply to YC itself. Your attempt to cold read me was pathetic.

Said that, if i see that thing everywhere i can probably find a cheaper thing with the same quality because the marketing budget must be HUGE and these 10% discount codes give 10% to you and 10%the the creator so i can find a code 20% somewhere.

"Sponsored segments" on youtube are nothing but normal advertising, they just permanently hardcoded the ads into the video instead. I don't like that they use the word "sponsors" for that. Sponsorships can be an ethical way to make money. Think Patreon, GitHub Sponsors.

Edit: actually, I think that phrasing arose in the early days of radio!

The majority of people, however, are extremely responsive to advertising & marketing, or it would not exist.

My business used to be ecommerce platform development and consultancy, and I ended up seeing a lot of how the sausage is made - advertising is a bigger spend than product for most successful retailers, and it’s all about figuring out where to chop off the tail. You’ve got your core 15% who you can send an email to saying “buy this”, and they will, 95% of the time - then segments step down in terms of convertibility until you’re down to 0.01%, at which point you’re usually going to get more people irritated by the marketing than you will sales.

The marginal cost of most marketing is very low - that’s to say, to reach 10,000,000 eyeballs doesn’t cost much more than to reach 10,000 - unless you’re doing paper catalogues, which is a whole other thing, most of your cost is up front, artwork, direction, whatever - so it makes sense to shoot for a bigger basket and get some bycatch.

Me - I resolutely refused to do any marketing for our business. Mistake, bluntly, as I let my emotions get in the way of rationality. Had anyone other than a clique of medium-large UK merchants ever heard of us, the business might have gone somewhere - instead after a decade we were trundling along in a comfortable rut and I ejected.

So, you hate it, I hate it, it’s misleading, it’s annoying, it’s a negative signal to us - but it works on most people.

[1] https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

Honestly, these are ads that actually support the content I watch. So that's why I keep the adroll by default. AFAIK Google isn't getting any cut of it and that makes me feel good.

Remember in all advertising funded models that you are always the product. The market is for "high quality" (i.e. profitable) viewers, not high quality videos.

If you indiscriminately watch or block that is a signal. Watch communicates potentially more because there's a secondary effect of some of those people buy the product. But by indiscriminately watching or not watching, we provide information about an interpolation along what was binary before. It is more complex to read, but now we can communicate that we don't dislike this add more than our willingness to support the channel. And on top of that, again our conversion rate. In a way, the discriminating information tells us something about the likely conversion rate. This is just more information, though that doesn't mean we are good at measuring it.

  > The market is for "high quality" (i.e. profitable) viewers, not high quality videos.

To make it clearer, there are in fact ads that I do enjoy. This is true for all of us because an ad is so vaguely defined. During a political campaign I appreciate some ads because I want to know the candidates positions, when they are debating, and so on. Too much of it pisses me off, but that's different.

I also like ads that make me aware of certain things that provide utility to my life, but maybe not yours and this can be based on timing.

So stop rejecting this and recognize that these are all attempts at communicating these other factors. It's another variable in a system of equations.

There's no bigger waste of bandwidth than ads, by the way. Ads are noise that's deliberately added to the signal just because it makes somebody somewhere money. These are actually the most charitable words I can use to describe ads.

Google has probably already well overextended it's reach and made thousands off data without my consent. And will probably make more without my consent from Gemini. They have so many cash glows that I couldn't care less about plugging one of the holes up. They've long burned their good will points.

Meanwhile, I am an aspiring indie dev and I've overtime gotten rough ideas of how and what other creators on YT are paid. I honestly feel bad knowing some of these people arguably work 5 times harder than I do selling their brands while making maybe half (if they are a really established creator, maybe 500k+ subs) of what I make just walking to my computer and typing into a codepad. Some can barely afford their rent despite this hard work, and potentially hundred of hours of entertainment given to me. And those are "big" (but not Huge) creators. Someone with 50-100k subs may still not be able to do their work full time, or they do it on the very edge of viability.

I can't do much. I subscribe to some crowd funds, but not all. being able to at least watch their ad rolls is some form of appreciation in my mind. So call it guilt or call it an odd emotional attachment.

I just want to try and pay it forward, knowing I may be on that seat one day.

Attention is not a valid currency or payment method. Their service is literally free of charge. They did it that way hoping we would look at the ads. We're not obligated to do so. They have only themselves to blame for their risky business model that gambles on the idea that people might look at irrelevant content they didn't ask for.

They need to charge us up front if they want us to pay. If they send us ads, we'll delete them before they're shown. Nothing they can do about it. And we won't lose a second of sleep over it.

>You're just watching your favourite creator say how much they love ExpressVPN through gritted teeth.

Which one of us likes every aspect of our job? Or every order/request of a customer? Gotta do what you gotta do.

But I'm subbed to 30 channels and probably "watch every video but am not subbed" to 10-15 others. I'm not quite at a point where I can support everyone I want to support.

I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and it’ll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that’s never really sat right with me personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile storm brewing).

On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of “the usual suspect” sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos and it’s a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.

That said, SponsorBlock has been around for years. I've been using it for as long as I can remember. Basically any decent-sized channel's videos already have the sponsored segment skipped. I'm not sure why someone just posted it but we're well beyond SponsorBlock "taking off".

it's reminiscent of NASCAR. Or, like being a kid forced to watch advertising during TV breaks, wondering why the TV screen istrying to sell me cigarettes.

It's maybe a bit social-media-toxic to say that some youtubers are my "favorite people" in that i look forward to their takes on the topics they cover. I lose interest though when that youtuber presents to me an unprompted ad for my testicular health.

I have no solution for creators consumers or google :(

It's not like there are many viable competitors, at least for long form videos.

really? There are entire posts dedicated to how many features Youtube cut removed, or messed up over the years. as a old school forum boomer I still hate that they changed from a nested comments section to "twitter feed of loose chains" over a decade ago.

I won't go on a whole rant on every little feature, but the service has definitely gotten worse. It just so happens that the tech core still works fine enough (smoothly watching videos on nearly any platform), and the business core is powered by user-generated content which is as good as you choose.

P.S. I sure do wish we got Youtube Premium Lite wasn't cancelled. I do just mostly want ad-free browsing. I can manage around offline/offscreen videos and no YT Music (also miss Google Play Music btw).

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

> Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Removing features is absolutely part of enshittification.

The various creators I used to follow on Nebula have no ads at all in the videos published in Nebula, compared to those they post on Youtube. Not sure if its applicable for all creators on Nebula though.

Are we, though? Regular ad blockers are still only used by a minority of web browser users. I would be surprised if SponsorBlock has larger market share than that.

I was gonna post a similar comment but with the opposite conclusion: SponsorBlock has been around for years, and the people who are really annoyed by sponsors are mostly already using it. Most of the rest of the population either doesn't mind sponsor segments (me) or isn't willing to go to the trouble of installing addons. Of course, there's always going to be people who become aware of it due to threads like this and start using it, but I'd venture that that's too small a number for worries about this suddenly "taking off".

There is no perfect solution because the interests are diametrically opposed. Many CC's don't WANT to be a business, but if you want to work full time you need to be. Businesses' main incentive is to get max customers or max revenue, while a concumer's incentive is to get as much as possible for as little money as possible.

Ironically enough, the RAID SHADOW LEGENDS (since we're talking about the "usual suspects) financial model may be the best of both worlds, at the expense of some well off people (and some unfortunate addicts): have whales bankroll 80% of the game and subsize the free players. But that probably can't happen with 99.99% of video creators.

Not paying for shit like that, only because they put a clause in the TOS that says ad free only means ad free music.

I have no qualms using any ad blocking option available. And I am happily paying for creators using patreon or other means they provide.

First of all it is not just the VPNs. Briliants, RSLs etc. that annoy, it is all sponsor reads. Even those channels that try to be creative with it, there's only so many times you can be funny about it, and then it turns into just another piece of formulaic slop.

But another reason why sponsor reads annoy me is that it breaks the youtube premium deal. I pay YT for an ad free experience. YT pays you more for my view than a 'free' watcher, and then you shove in ads anyway. Now I do get your argument that "it's not enough", but that does not change my end of the deal.

Idealy ad reads would be autoskipped for premium subscribers. If that meant premium being a bit more expensive, I would be fine with that personally.

Coffee influencers selling me NordVPN on a video about grinder particle size distribution does not.

They halfway do this. The numbers are opaque but part of your premium is given to creators you watch, and that cut is based on your watch time, among other factors.

ofc I dobut we'd ever get that granular a control on CC's. As said in another reply, memberships are sort of that solution.

Sure, it's not quite the same, but at some point of similar-enough the number of people who actually use each feature becomes vanishingly small and/or the cost of managing the extra option outpaces the income, and it's just not worth it.

I totally get that, and I feel the same way when I see yet another read as a viewer and premium subscriber.

I don’t really have an answer (and if I did, I’d be doing it already), but I will say that my (subjective, based on my ad placement strategy and viewer profile) experience is that premium views are worth less than non-premium - although YouTube cleverly don’t actually give me enough data to _know_ that as a fact (and it would go against their stated position, which I guess they would never do).

They also said it isn't variable in the same way for what ads can get assigned to your content, or for "limited monetization" content (which apparently pretty much sets the ad income to zero).

That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.

Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.

Typical income flows for streamers include:

1. Passive advertising from video and stream platforms (which many adblockers do block)

2. Active advertising via sponsorships (which SponsorBlock wants to block)

3. Live stream donations

4. Video/stream-independent donations, most usually via Patreon

5. Paid "premium" or behind-the-scene programmes (partly overlaps with video/stream-independent donations due to their obvious weaknesses)

6. Merchandises

And not all streamers can do them at once. Live stream donations only work for some genres of streaming and it is easy to stress audiences. Usual donations may or may not work, but it is usually thought to be weaker than live stream donations due to its passiveness (unless you come up with very different perks, but then your income is completely independent from streaming).

Many high-profile channels rely greatly on merchandises because it does have significant margins if you can keep launching enough of them, but they are especially risky when your channel and/or stream is not large enough. So smaller channels have traditionally relied on passive advertising, but its flaws are well known and discussed to the death by now. (If you need a list though, higher processing fees, prevalence of adblocking, generally too low income to be sustainable, extreme platform dependence etc.) This leaves active advertising as a compelling option for smaller streamers, at least for now.

While I do loathe most kind of advertising, active advertising like this is something I can (barely) tolerate because it is meant to be performed by streamers themselves, unlike passive advertising which rarely relates to the streamer or content itself. And I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be any other viable option remaining. I can always skip an ad portion of a video if I do find it annoying anyway.

However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.

Again, not that your content isn't likely appreciated by your audience and valuable. I just miss the days of youtube just being a fun video platform instead of another TV channel.

The end game of ad blocking tech is to make ads a non viable source of revenue so creators will move on to ethical platforms like LBRY or peertube where creators are in charge again and users can pay them directly with no corrupt middle-men .

I would suggest being an early adopter on alternative platforms building a direct relationship with a more independent donation-motivated audience before everyone else does.

A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.

I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world.

If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization.

That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.

You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements?

What a baaad world that would be...

Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video.

in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.

And while YT is a lot about casual nonsense, there are other big tech walled gardens, where content fights against some corporate-controlled algorithms, but the content is our entire public discourse nowadays. :( And people still do not want to understand what a terribly bad idea that is...

Or they have to accept that what they do is not a full time job but rather a hobby and they need to find other ways to earn a living.

Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.

>Writing is no longer viable for many. I don’t see why YouTube should be this special case.

because Youtube is owned by a trillion dollar corporation but mostly powered by content creators. Substack isn't.

It's really that simple. most wringing isn't viable because there's no money in it, literally. There still is money in video ads.

It's not a very fun answer. Google gets a lot of ads to pay then to shove ads down the consumer's throats, and they can do this with no risk of users migrating. They "should" get more money because they more effectly do this than news websites, which have failed to appeal to advertisers effectively enough.

I don't really know what to do with that answer, though. Accept I'm the minority that will subscribe to paid avenues to support creators (or even care about other creator's well beings?) and move on?

The original post I was replying to said:

> However as I mentioned in another reply in this thread, removing routes to monetisation and devaluing content in general (by making it be effectively a loss-leader for value-add sponsorships or memberships) will only have the effect of making YouTube non-viable for many, and especially those who necessarily have higher production values to make better quality (I’m thinking more thoroughly-researched, more interesting, that sort of thing) content.

And my answer was that this is no different than any other type of creator online.

I don't know who's "we" here. But that's simply psychological. You will look at [person who make lots of money] differently from [person who can barely cover rent], if only because the latter may need more help you may be able to give.

There's no "should" here. And influencers aren't limited to YouTube. all my answers come down to "because they are backed by a trillion dollar corporation"

>And my answer was that this is no different than any other type of creator online.

Maybe instead of "but no one else makes money" to drag down, we should change the lens to "let's reward other mediums for being high quality and throrougly researched" to boost up other mediums of creation.

Especially in a time where we are already getting so much slop and misinformation (and we're not even close to the worst of the storm). I'm sure you seen enough of the internet to know most people will just accept the slop and at best take years of introspection before they realize why quality matters (others never do).

Because most YouTube creators (even the hobbyists) are at least partially motivated by money, and if you take away all the money they will likely make less content or stop altogether. I understand that it’s fun to get things for free, but that’s usually not sustainable.

UBI would bring out more passionate people and not force the passionate but disheartened to drop out. meanwhile, the passionate who do stick it will optimize for money. So they can pay rent. Or worse, the unpassionate marketers take over and the discipline is reduced to slop (we've probably been here for ~10 years now).

Maybe this could all be YouTube, but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other models.

The current situation with YouTubers asking people to subscribe to their Patreon or whatever is so weird, since often they have to distribute patron perks outside of YouTube, or via unlisted links, or whatever. I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear of anti-trust regulation, but an integrated solution like that would likely be better for both creators and viewers.

There are plenty of alternative video hosting sites if you seek that. So, why are you still on Youtube?

>but creators decide on a per-video basis whether they're uploading publicly or only to paid viewers. I dunno, there are so many other models.

Sure, works for Onlyfans. they even blend in both subscriptions AND PPV behind the sub. And we know how quality that content is (no offense to the models there. but come on, I've seen $100 for 2 pictures, behind a $20/month subscription. You're not 2000's Brittany Spears).

> I assume Google hasn't built in paid subscriptions option for fear of anti-trust regulation

They do. CC's can enable Memberships and upload videos specific to that.

The issue is that

1. the memberships are small for many right now. Conseuqnces of being late to the party.

2. what's offered isn't necessarily going to be even higher quality than a public video.

3. ad rev from non-subbed views is still signifigant. Making a paid subscription for certain videos can mean brining in less money.

4. That lower view count affects your algorithm for growing.

It's complex. And sadly, outside of the OF model most people simply don't want to pay for content. They get bored and they move to Tiktok and that's the real endgame should YT fall.

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7636690

- Slow website/video host? Great now they need to pay for a better host or pay a web dev to optimize their site.

- Not responive? now that dev/service needs more money.

- pay is too much (meanwhile they still can't even make minimum wage)? Well, their fault for valuing themselves over a McDonalds' employee

- they pivot to premium teaching and now are a "scam"? Why am I here, I can google and learn this for free on Youtube

You can't win with some people.

- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)

- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)

- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google

- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)

HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble

It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted.

>People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible

No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.

I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out, people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.

Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable. Because giving all your content away for rent isn't financially viable. But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire thing collapses.

>No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead.

It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking point for many (past the ones who complain about every price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).

>Piracy is usually a service problem

Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless, as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.

We know how the rest ends from there.

I think this proves my point, that it's a service problem. Put everything together in a single, easy-to-use service for a low price (like Netflix in 2012), and only the true die-hards will still bother with piracy. Ask them to subscribe to a whole bunch of services (with a high total cost) or try to figure out how to save money by strategically subscribing and unsubscribing to see the stuff they want, and have to deal with shows suddenly disappearing or moving to a competing service when they're half-finished watching them, and many will simply go back to torrenting because it's honestly easier than all that BS. But instead you think people are "lazy"... A lazy person doesn't do torrenting; it's really not that easy.

>Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.

Back then, 1) there weren't many alternatives. At the beginning of cable TV's reign, videotapes weren't even commonly available. And 2) back then, people had more disposable income because the cost-of-living was much, much lower (particularly housing). Technology is much better now too, so people expect to pay less.

>Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable.

Citation needed. Last I checked, Netflix is doing quite well, and even better after cracking down on the password-sharing.

>It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices.

Some people raged, but Netflix's subscriber count has increased and profits are up, so obviously those people either got over it, or were a small minority.

The current deal gives me no value, it just distributes more money to promote quantity crap over quality.

Someone needs to figures out how to take my money and distribute them to people working on actually valuable stuff.

why do you need a financial advisor to donate to Patreon or even Youtube memberships now? The models are about as easy to (un)subscribe from as you can get, while allowing granular control.

Do you really want some "index fund" where you trust someone else to use your money to fund "good creators"? That sounds like a capitalist's wet dreams. And a consumer hellscape.

Yes, I have a limited amount of time so I use curators (or algorithms) to narrow down what I might most like. For example, people used to pay HBO and other TV networks, or these days, Apple/Netflix/Amazon/Disney/etc.

The problem is the people willing to pay for premium likely much more valuable customers for sponsorships to target.

We need direct microtransactions on the per-video/content-item level.

This leaves the only realistic way for a channel to make reasonable money to be via ads and sponsored segments targeting the majority of non paying users at the expense of the rest.

I pay for YouTube Premium, though I have no idea how much (if any) of that goes toward creators. If a YouTube channel I enjoy has a Patreon, I'll subscribe.

Advertising is psychological manipulation. I get that there aren't many ways for independent creators to get paid for their work, only a selection of sub-optimal choices, but ads are gross.

It's possible there's something to the Nostr model (https://nostr.com/) that could be of use here. A key part of Nostr is the "zap" system. In addition to allowing users to just merely upvote posts, users can also choose to zap a post, which is just a method of sending Bitcoin to the poster's wallet.

Think of it like a tip system, as it directly and concretely rewards users for good content, by exchanging a token of direct value (money).

With a system like this, advertising is something you do to get recognized, while the zaps are something you receive as a reward for valuable work (by whatever metric your audience appreciates).

I'm curious what it is about the Patreon model that doesn't sit right with you? To me it seems like it's both the most respectful monetization strategy to viewers, and provides the creator with a much more stable income than YT ads, YTP shares, or sponsors.

If you can't make enough money to be satisfied with the Patreon model, and that makes you want to create less, maybe that's the correct outcome.

instead of having a "sponsored" segment where you talk about some product (basically an ad) you could just make the whole video about that product, and thus sponsorblock wouldnt really be used - i mean, sorta like product reviews

One of the nice things about sponsor segments is that they don’t involve YouTube, so the creator gets more benefit from the deal, but of course done badly (and I assume this must be the case with many of the generic irrelevant VPN ads for example) they will harm retention and thus limit reach.

Your “whole video” suggestion is really “advertise smarter” IMO, which I completely agree with. Personally I’ve never done a “reading a 30-second script about how great product X is” type segment, but I have done videos where I try out “product X” in some way that’s relevant to my audience. It’s more product placement than direct advertising, but I guess even that is unpalatable to some.

I did not click the video to waste time hearing about corpo sponsors you have been paid to shill. At most I will listen to information of non profit causes to donate to.

Use the sponsor segments to tell users how to donate to you. Sponsor block categorizes these differently and leaves them by default.

I agree. But to add, if youtube went all out and made ad blocking sufficiently difficult I probably would pay for it.

I fixed my dryer some time back. Watching a youtube video on how to probably saved me multiple hours then figuring it out all on my own. I use it to fix cars.

I don't think I've ever purchased a product that I have seen advertised by a creator on YT that I hadn't already purchased before seeing it in a sponsored ad. That last bit I added because I used to use ExpressVPN and now I'm seeing some sponsored ads for it.

The deal has been made between the creator and the company already, it's been added to their video, so there should not need to be any noticeable affect from running sponsor block for people like myself who don't jump to buy advertised products when seeing them advertised by a creator I follow. Unless there is some kind of feedback that YT is giving the companies about who is viewing their sponsored ads, I guess, but I doubt that's happening. So my use of sponsor block (which I don't actually use - the right arrow button exists) shouldn't have any affect on sponsor finances that I can see.

I'm not against creators making money, but I don't want to see ads in videos placed by YT and I don't want to see them in videos by creators, but I understand they would like to make some money. I've given through Patreon to some creators, but I'm not going to do that for all of the dozens of creators I follow. If I could just press a button and tip a small amount to the creator when watching a video I really liked, using a payment method I've already set up, I'd start doing that in a heartbeat. But I don't know if such an animal exists.

Patreon is people explicitly and knowingly agreeing to give you money in exchange for a service they want. Why does forcing people to watch ads preferable to that? Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean when you say it doesn't sit right with you, because that sounds like you don't like the concept. I can understand if it doesn't bring in enough, but it is by far the most honest transaction between you and your viewers. Whereas with ads, you make the viewer the product and that doesn't sit right with me.

For advertisers masquerading as creators. Not all creators turn their hobby into a hustle and not all that do use abusive methods to extract money out of their viewers.

I do support some patreons and have also donated directly to projects I like but I would also be more than happy if payment opportunities for "creators" dried up entirely and we went back to an internet with more genuine content instead of crap designed to be profitable.

I have many issues with advertising in general, but put simply, it breaks the basic transactional nature of business. When the people benefiting from someone else's work product aren't the ones paying for it, then both the producer and consumer end up being taken advantage of for someone else's profit.

The way I see it, tools like Patreon that allow consumers to directly support people they benefit from are just what are needed.

This is of course a valid suggestion, and there are many, many creators that do this. However I think the world would be a poorer place if we lost all the creators that do need to make _some_ money for their channels to survive, which IMHO is the natural endgame if we remove or block all routes to passive monetisation.

I do get the issue with premium, as a premium subscriber myself I too find it annoying to be interrupted by yet another 30-second (or increasingly, more) read for some shady VPN or whatever.

Channel memberships, like patreon etc., are an option, but have a vanishingly small rate of uptake, and people expect some sort of value-add in return (early access to videos, a discord, and so on). Without other routes to revenue this just devalues the content itself, which I feel may be part of the problem here - we no longer value attach value to quality content. Rick Beato made a great video on the effects of this (in the music industry) recently, and it’s not great - but it does feel like all media is going a similar way.

For creators making certain kinds of content the “uncensored” and “non-ad-friendly” topics are a great argument for direct sponsorship etc, I definitely agree.

Supporters get access via paid LBRY views or access to unlisted or privately hosted videos right away, and they are published a month later for free on public platforms.

I think paywalled bonus content has the most value. A creator has a lot of control in that sense: if they are not making enough money, they can shift more of their free content behind the paywall. Certainly there's a point where viewers will get mad and leave, and/or what's available for free won't be enough to attract new paid subscribers, but there's still wiggle room.

I feel you're not recognising the issue and what Patreon solves, and why relying on YouTube for revenue is simply not an option for anybody.

I really do recognise the issue, being in it myself. I do have patreon (and others) for other projects and it’s another revenue stream, which is great. But for my YouTube main channel I believe the content itself has value, and having to pour time and resources into building a value-add package devalues it - both in the immediate (since I would now have less time to devote to content creation) and longer term (since it makes it essentially a leader for my value add packages).

(Some larger creators I know do manage to carve out some revenue on patreon etc without any “perk package” but I think for that to work it becomes even more of a numbers game, and won’t help small creators just getting started. I’m also putting aside the recent announcements ref. The App Store etc since they’re not directly relevant here).

You, presumably, wouldn't work for free, why do you insist that artists should entertain you for free?

You didn't understand my post. I don't insist that artists entertain for free. I was responding to the parent who said "don't make videos for money". I am in fact a full-time content creator.

I think most advertisers track how their ads are doing by looking at how much the personal discount code gets used, or tracking links in the description. I won't ever use any of that, so no advertiser will ever know I didn't have to suffer through the ad read about their product.

Your per-video ad revenue is probably under 1c/video, right? If so, I don't think that many consumers would bat an eye at directly paying that cent (or more), assuming a sufficiently well-designed wallet UI (clear indicator of balance, easy refund system (with anti-refund-abuse countermeasures), current spend amount per session and spend rate prominently displayed, one-click content purchase with low latency, etc.). Does that sound plausible, or am I missing something?

One thing I've always wondered is do sponsors request watchtime data for their sponsored segments? I'm under the impression that they don't, which is wild to me.

At the other end of the spectrum, we got paid content and sponsored gear. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It turns the issue to a balancing act where too much sponsored content will likely ruin the viewer ship (and artistic freedom/integrity/happiness/extra), but in turn it provide an income. SponsorBlock has no effect here, but naturally users may not click on paid content if they feel like it too much like an advertisement. The channel Linus Tech Tips have a few videos on this, and its a fairly common topic on their wan show.

I use FreeTube to block all ads and sponsor segments and I teach everyone I know to do the same.

The ad model results in creators being restricted in order to be advertised friendly, and encourages mass spying, of which the data is often irresponsibly managed and leaked putting people in danger.

This model is fundamentally unethical to participate in from either side.

Make some merch, and provide a mix of accessible and anonymous ways to donate to you.

Normally if you don't agree to the price of something, you don't pay for it and you don't get it. With content people feel okay with both getting the content for free _and_ denying the creator any income.

Then when the creators dare to bring it up, there's invariably a comment like this downplaying their contribution.

It's truly adding insult to injury.

This is the free market at work. If you don’t make the videos for free, someone else will, unless they can’t because the production value is too high.

Kind of like sneaking into a meeting room to eat the cupcakes, then leaving before the meeting begins.

If you decided not to watch ad-supported content, it would be the free market at work. In this case you're just stiffing creators.

Even that pizzazz is risky though. Sometimes videos get delayed simply because the sponsor comes in last minute and needs to debate the segment.

But yes, I sympathize. youtubers aren't google, and this will just mean sponsors will push only on the biggest youtubers, wheras the small-medium sized ones need the money the most (where sponsor blocks can be half or more of their income).

It won't. Honestly, most people use the official apps on their phones/TVs. Desktops and laptops are in a minority now, sadlyu, but good for stuff like this. Some know about ublock origin, but that's still a small % compared to the population.

I just stopped viewing people that use too many ads. Simple as that

maybe the YTers you watch are different, but that's not the case for me at all. Barely anyone promotes things which relates to their channel in the videos i watch. Hello Fresh, Manscaped, Squarespace, RAID: Shadow Legends, World of Tanks are the sponsor segments i mostly see, none of them relate to the video which they're in.

honorable exception is Miniminuteman who sometimes sells handmade jewellery made by a different creator and the jewellery even relates to the content of the videos.

I personally couldn't use YouTube without Sponsorblock as a matter of principle, I hate ads. Doesn't matter how many times you try to categorize and dress them up.

I am too greedy to pay for premium tbh and as long as µblock works with the normal ads, I'm fine. If it stops working one day, I'll probably rather stop using youtube instead of paying for premium

If you "skip" 10 seconds on a sponsored segment a "skip to next part button" will appear on screen to the end of the sponsored segment (it does not use chapters and it does not appear 100% of times)

And he can choose which content creators he watches based on how obtrusive their monetization strategies are, that is also very much part of capitalism.

SponsorBlock is significantly more useful but you still see the same kind of annoying people there too. There's a channel called "11foot8" that puts out videos of the local 11'8" (+ 8" after they raised it semi-recently) where trucks disobey the height warning and get destroyed. Most of the videos are around 1 minute long yet there are people picking "highlight" moments in SponsorBlock to skip to the relevant portion. These are mostly videos about a minute long so it baffles me the kind of people whose attention span is that short to want to skip 10 whole seconds to get to the "action". These are the kind of annoying people that rule DeArrow. I didn't want to deal with that anymore

For those that haven't watched the demo video: for videos that don't have community thumbnails or titles it has options allowing it to automatically pick a random (non-sponsor segment) screenshot and automatically clean up the title (remove emoji, fix capitalization).

Its also very helpfull for determining the quality of the video itself. Usually from that one picture I can tell that even if the video is about a topic I'd like to know more about, I definetly dont want to learn in that specific video. Removing this signal made me waste way more time in videos that seemed good from the tittle alone.

I'm using one that just decapitalizes and uses a random frame thumbnail from the middle, which is okay.

"DeArrow is an open source browser extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait.

...

There are currently 64,634 users who have submitted 230,432 titles and 107,027 thumbnails."

Youtube is not usable without adblocker and annoying without sponsorblock

I used to watch LMG all the time, then it felt like the content turned to infomercials.

Then that whole drama thing went on and the fact that (in a leaked video) they had a manager say "you gonna get up on that table and dance for me" at the end of a HR meeting with zero reactions aside from laughing led me to fully block all of their channels.

To me it's clear they have an internal culture problem that came along with the money.

Also their merch … this is so overpriced. A screwdriver for 70 dollar, when nearly the same product costs 20.

But there are enough people that buy that stuff.