this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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You will never get the sympathy for YouTube that you’re looking for. Not as long as the ads keep being so blatantly offensive and irrelevant, and while they continue to dangle their power over the users and content creators, who ultimately make them what they are.
No one cares about their hosting fees. You’re right that it’s expensive to keep the necessary servers and bandwidth, but you’re wrong that people will care because of the lack of care YouTube has shown. On the other hand, paying for something like HBO Max, for example, is a thousand times more justifiable. Look at the novel content they actually create. They also host that content, but that’s not why people pay.
I think people go to the ends of the earth to block ads that are offensive or irrelevant. Some people block any ad because of the history of offensiveness and irrelevance that ads from the majority of services have been. Ads can be those things for lots of reasons. Too many, too long, too often repeated, actually offensive, annoying, distracting, insulting to your intelligence, conflict of interest, against the grain of the content they infest, just to name a few… But instead of advancing that front, services like YouTube would rather just cram them down your throat, and then block you if you object. Ultimately YouTube needs users. Nothing works without the users. The ads only even make money because of the users…
They should be giving us massages and making our stay as pleasant as possible… instead they are power-tripping because they think we need their bullshit, but we don’t.
You're right, people won't care.
But i'm not being sympathetic, i'm being realistic. I just know the end-point is going to be bad and leave everyone disappointed. Google isn't going to try less, and none of the alternative sites popping up are remotely able to keep up. Many existed in youtube's time and either died out or they're still around and nobody cares.
I'm sure one day youtube will go away and take all the videos of 20 years with it, as well as leave people with nowhere to go just rubbing their heads trying to figure out where their content can go.
I will say though: Youtube needs users. Google doesn't need users. They can go to any of their other products if they ever determine youtube isn't worth it.