YouTube

It's like streaming services, not everyone has the money to buy every single streaming service offered and some of those streaming services are a bit too expensive for anyone to buy.

Then you either don't use them or watch ads. This isn't hard.

Or use a free adblocker

Indeed, but that does inconvenience the creators' revenue. One other option is to have an adblocker, but commit a pledge or monetary subscription to creators you care deeply about (usually via Patreon or Ko-Fi). They usually include membership perks to sweeten the deal.

Before this goes back into the usual flame-war, I'd like to mention a Youtube change that happened around a few weeks ago: On one's sidebar all the playlists one may have had are now relegated into the "Playlists" category, so you'd have to click on that to view whatever playlists you've saved for yourself. I understand the change but it is mildly inconvenient to have to click one additional time to resume whatever playlist I want to resume watching/listening when I return to the home page.

Edited by RainingMetal on Apr 20th 2024 at 7:27:23 AM

I stopped caring about YT policies regarding paying creators with ad money when its demonetizing videos policies that forced out a lot of creators, removed a lot of content and created stupid self censorship in order to keep ad revenue, on top of YT still shoving ads on videos that are demonetized. Besides, YT has now a subscription model, so you can still support them by having a paid subscription to their channel.

And I've also found that a lot of websites I visit are practically packed with ad clutter whenever I turn off my ad-blocker.

Remember, Google gets 30 percent of your memberships, too. Patreon gets between 5 and 12 percent. There's no way to cut out the corpos completely. You just have to pick your poison.

• YouTube Premium lets you skip the ads but still give the equivalent support of an ad view to every creator whose videos you watch.
• Memberships, Super Chats, and Super Thanks let you support specific creators, but don't get rid of ads unless you also have a Premium subscription.
• Ad blockers cut everybody out entirely. You're a freeloader.

I genuinely don't care about the "ads are shit, therefore I'm entitled to block them" mentality. It doesn't solve any problems besides one's own personal inconvenience. The ads won't get better; Google will just get more aggressive about stopping the blockers, and less revenue will go to creators.

It's not a winnable fight.

Website ads... it's tough. Some sites are all but unusable, eating CPU, redirecting me, trying to download malware. I would take a principled stand but it's such a toxic minefield that I can't really blame anybody for running a blocker. That said, if you use a site enough, consider giving it a subscription in exchange for ad-free viewing. At least compensate the people who run it and didn't ask to be here any more than you did.

Also, just stay off clickbait sites. Don't engage them at all.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 20th 2024 at 9:29:57 AM

There's no way to cut out the corpos completely. You just have to pick your poison.

You could mail them cash in an envelope, if they have a PO Box.

That assumes you're in the same country. There's rules and laws about mailing money abroad that varies from place to place to say nothing of the postage.

Also plenty of creators rightfully don't set up a PO box coz it can be used for harassment amongst other things. To say nothing about the fact that unless you go out of your way to set a PO box that's _far_ from your residence (and thus a pain in the ass to check) you run a big risk of doxxing yourself.

Edited by Ghilz on Apr 20th 2024 at 9:43:06 AM

For the way each company runs things, I'd much prefer Patreon taking their cut of my pledges than Google. For me, it's less about the money than it is trust and practices. Hell, I've signed up for a membership on TV Tropes because I can trust its higher-ups to do the right thing.

I've had my Youtube like this for longer than a few weeks.

One of my most harrowing experiences was seeing a Jessica Nigri fanmail video where more than half her bedroom was made up of shit her fans sent her. She had nice chairs, clothes, anime paraphernalia, toys. I remember specifically she tried on an outfit somebody got her.

I was like "why on earth does she trust all of this what if somebody sent something dangerous" and then "how the hell do this many horny guys figure she is going to accept these things." This was 5-10 years ago and she makes considerably more money now so she's probably not doing these fanmail videos anymore (that and she's been an attractive woman on the internet for a minute), but I don't think the amount of fans sending her free stuff stopped so who knows how big her collection is now.

And this wasn't for charity or because she's an exceptionally generous person - guys just decided to spend money and send her stuff, and hope she featured it in a video.

There's some ASMR content creators who get free equipment just by asking their fans to pitch in. I'm talking expensive microphones and recording equipment, stuff you wouldn't get for a birthday gift for someone you didn't know well.

Some creators get harassed and some just get a lot of free stuff.

Honestly given the generosity people show when they're in parasocial relationships more creators probably should open a PO box. I doubt the number of incidents is high. If anything, you hear more about Youtube creators taking advantage of their fans and getting outed by some other Youtuber than Youtubers who had to shut down a PO box due to misuse.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 20th 2024 at 2:34:48 PM

Whatever happened to that animator Telepurte? They haven't been active lately.

Patreon itself already is under fire with many of them cutting out livelyhood of people because of banks.

I'm only using Premium because it's a hassle to install Freetube on TV and I might as well use Youtube Music.

Either stopped using YT because his content could get easily flagged or moved to another platform.

Telepurte is fairly active in Twitter.

He did upload two months ago, but I wouldn't be shocked if he became less active on the platform for that reason.

Have you guys heard of Watcher making a decision to move from You Tube to their own streaming services? I heard this made fans angry.

I have heard many people talking about how bad an idea it was. I hadn't even heard of them before this to be honest (as Watcher, I was aware of some of their work with Buzzfeed). Some people have compared it to Dropout, but many have also pointed out how that had better odds and was far from a guaranteed success.

They actually redacted that a couple hours ago, actually.

Sorry but what do you mean by they redirected?

Edited by Bubblepig on Apr 22nd 2024 at 1:03:39 AM

It's explained in their response video that they posted today:

Huh, didn't know they responded to the backlash today. It's good that they backtracking.

YouTube puts third-party clients on notice: Show ads or get blocked: Google would really like it if everyone just paid for YouTube Premium instead.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 22nd 2024 at 11:02:16 AM

Fix harmful or invasive ads first then. Im not buying premium

Not to mention the FBI has openly declared adblockers should be used by people when on websites, so if Google doesn’t fix harmful ads on their end, people have no reason to do what they want.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 22nd 2024 at 2:12:47 AM

I don't think Google realizes this might also make them legally liable for any sketchy ads they run. So this could hugely bite them in the ass.