tabular , 12 days ago

YouTube doesn't want your money.

wreckedcarzz , 12 days ago

and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself

tabular , 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

They want you to pay a higher price but since you have a choice of paying nothing then the message seems clear to me. You can see comedians on there for free, they tell real jokes.

wreckedcarzz , 12 days ago

...whoosh

tabular , 12 days ago

no u

OsrsNeedsF2P , 12 days ago

Blows my mind that to this day, companies don't realize it's a service issue. Like it's straight up regressed. Adobe and Microsoft used to encourage piracy to help their bottom line. Now you have stupid PMs who realize they can get a good performance review by talking about how much money they'll make/save from doing stuff like this

SnotFlickerman , 12 days ago

They realize it's a service issue, they're trying to corner the market so that they don't have to care that it's a service issue.

YouTube pretty much has that market cornered. It would take a lot of capital to start up a viable competitor, especially one that didn't resort to ads and had some other kind of monetization scheme to support the sites existence and pay for all the storage servers.

Dark_Arc , 12 days ago

This really is not a service issue. This is not a privacy issue.

YouTube as a service is ... actually a great service, it pays creators well, it's fast, it has decades of content, and it has tons of features.

It's monetized with ads, you either watch those ads or you pay them. Using a VPN to get a lower price on the subscription is not a service issue, that's abuse of regional pricing, and no company would accept that.

OsrsNeedsF2P , 12 days ago

no company would accept that.

Except for a company that understands going after these people won't benefit them?

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

Literally read about regional pricing and how important it is. It's incredibly ignorant to be against regional pricing.

The alternative to regional pricing is people just don't have access at all.

Jericho_One , 12 days ago

You're getting down voted, but you are mostly correct.

I feel like the amount of ads and/or length is a little excess these days, though.

The thing is, Google isn't dumb. They've user tested this strategy and they know it results in higher revenue.

And the enshitification continues...for those that don't pay

jabjoe , 12 days ago

You can pay to have less ad, but you're still also paying with your data. Bet pretty soon it will be pay and have ads, or pay more again. They have a captive market. They can extract and extract.

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

I feel like the amount of ads and/or length is a little excess these days, though.

I do agree but their costs have also skyrocketed because the resolution and frame rate of videos has skyrocketed.

Linus Tech Tips did a video about this ... which agree with his conclusions or not, he paints a clear picture about how YouTube is more expensive to run than it used to be https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI

Google also isn't in the business of "running things at a loss in hopes of future profit" anymore ... so they need YouTube to be profitable. Maybe it's "too profitable", maybe they could cut down on the amount of advertising they use ... but you're absolutely right that they do test this stuff and find the threshold between "annoying but profitable" and "annoying but we're losing users."

More competition is always good ... but Google isn't stopping competition from showing up, just like Valve isn't stopping competition from showing up, they're just providing a better service that creators keep coming back to (because it's ultimately good for those same creators to get their content out there and monetize it).

xavier666 , 12 days ago

Using a VPN to get a lower price on the subscription is not a service issue, that’s abuse of regional pricing, and no company would accept that.

The internet's most beloved company, Steam, also bans people for abusing the store using VPNs. So as much as I hate Google, i find nothing wrong with this.

RmDebArc_5 , 12 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

My main concern is that they sometimes serve ads that redirect to porn, even if you aren’t signed in, and that’s not the type of ad I want to see, especially if I’m watching a video about cooking. By this alone I wouldn’t want to use YouTube, but as they practically have a monopoly on video streaming it’s not really viable to boycott them without giving up on user generated videos

henfredemars , 12 days ago

Man I knew something like this was going to happen. Just be glad Google doesn’t block your access to all their services or just outright delete your account. On the bright side, you’d be set free.

stoly , 12 days ago

I’d have expected this to happen years ago.

ThePantser , 12 days ago

So a person is not allowed to be part of their home country and get service and then move? What if their job stays the same and they don't make any extra? Evil google.

chiisana , 12 days ago

Operation costs differently in different regions. Advertising spend differs in different regions. You’ve moved from a region with cheap operating expenses and no ad spend to another region with more expensive operating expenses and higher ad spend. Congratulations on your move, now the cost to provide you service is different, and you’d need to pay more to cover the operating expenses + expected margin.

Alternatively, procure a local credit card (I.e. the same one you used back home), billing address (i.e the last place back home), and always do everything through a VPN back home. Then you’re at least using services from where the operating expense reflects the pricing.

This is just business, and should be expected. Food is dirt cheap back in Asia, they’re more expensive here in North America. Like it or not, if I’m living here, I need to pay the prices here. If I don’t want to pay the prices here, I can move back to Asia.

Badeendje , 12 days ago

Except food is a physical good that needs to be transported, while the service is still provided by low wage workers from across the globe.

If a corporation gets to provide the service from where it's cheaper, they can't be mad people buy it from where it's cheaper.

catloaf , 12 days ago

Internet isn't free. It takes copper or fiber cable, switching and routing equipment, labor to operate and install them, and electricity to run it all. Those costs are also lower in other countries.

So if you subscribe in a low-cost country, does it make sense for them to let you use the high-cost infrastructure?

Badeendje , 12 days ago

It is just some Telcos that price for data usage and put in usage caps. But this is only a way to price gauge customers. In the EU most ISPs operate without datacaps and are much cheaper month to month than in the US (my 1gb symmetric fiber connection without datacaps costs around 30 euro per month).

Sure a data connection in a datacenter is more expensive, but is either shared across datacenter customers or a customer gets their own. And again, global players have framework contracts with other global players.. so maybe Orange Business Services provides the internet connection for their DC operation globally.

The cost for the things they have to source locally is highly overestimated. Usually budgets they spend locally on stuff like advertising are much higher.

chiisana , 12 days ago

Service provider must acquire hardwares for the data centre at local vendor pricing.

Service provider must hire someone local to work in your local data centre.

Service providers need to pay local electricity and bandwidth rates.

List goes on. Just because you don’t interface with the local aspects of business doesn’t mean they don’t exist and add extra costs.

If you want to pay lower rate, as I stated earlier, make your narrative work: use local payment methods, billing address and use the service locally to the locality you’re paying in. Then they’ve got nothing to argue against you as you’re using services in that lower cost region.

Badeendje , 12 days ago

Except the hardware is purchased using a global framework contract that uses the volume as a reason for deep discounts.
It gets put in a rack by a local guy and then remotely provisioned by some person from a low cost country.
Electricity in datacenters is purchased at wholesale prices and muchuch cheaper than what consumers pay...
The list goes on and on.

The higher prices in countries has only very marginally to do with the higher costs.

Money grabbing corporations will charge what the market will bare.

chiisana , 11 days ago

Without violating my NDA with media companies (YouTube being one of them, incidentally), all I can tell you is you’re wrong about these. I’ve been in this exact sector for over a decade and the operating expenses are much higher comparatively speaking, and the objectives are different depending on region.

If you’re so inclined to pay the discounted rate, make the narrative work so they have no way of flagging you. Otherwise don’t be surprised if you’re asked to pay local rates.

Badeendje , 11 days ago

So, where does it differ? Cost of hosting the machine and the data?

chiisana , 11 days ago

On purchasing servers; I don’t know about Google specifically, but most media partners I’ve worked with doesn’t have global acquisition as an option for hardwares — not because they don’t have the purchase power/volume, but rather the vendors have region specific distributors with their own sales teams and pricing. Even if you have the personal contacts of VPs high up the chain, someone from IBM China cannot even sell to companies in Canada, and vice versa, for example.

On people side of things… With YouTube specifically, you’re also not only dealing with their own DC but getting their hardware into local ISPs centres. Logistics around that is not something cheap remote labor can arrange, need actual boots on the ground to facilitate.

Ad sales is also something that’s kind of localized. YouTube has American teams selling American creator inventories for example. Not something that’s outsourced out.

So yea… Although from the outset it’s all just “YouTube.com”, there’s actually a lot of localized touch points that creates different costs to provide service in different regions.

Badeendje , 11 days ago

When I did it before, our company bought the hardware in bulk. We prep it, provision it and have it good to go. Then ship it off to wherever. PM has the local DC staff (if they provide that service, else a local IT company install the box and bring it online. The moment it is online everything is managed remotely. The local install costs is usually a few 100, once, just like the shipping.

We even shipped full racks (assembly required) with a complete connection diagram. All it needed was power and 2 internet cables everything else was done already.

If companies like google expand, this will surely be similar. But then at even larger scale. I cannot imagine them going around trying to find equipment everytime. You just have a contract with dell/HP/IBM/NetApp/Oracle and ask your account manager to ship you x number of type A server.

BradleyUffner , 12 days ago

They are perfectly free to do that. They just have to resubscribe from their new home country at the new rate. Just like with telephone service or cable tv. It's not like they will get in trouble or would be prevented from moving.

Eggyhead , 12 days ago

I keep saying it. Privacy invasive, targeted advertising has got to be barely worth the cost of maintaining it. Why else is Google trying to put more ads in places, kill ad blockers on chrome, force expats out of subscriptions, and experiment with unskippable ads if not to try and invent some kind of additional value to advertisers out of nothing.

deweydecibel , 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

Because the investors/stockholders in the tech industry started tightening the belt and demanding profitability from these huge tech companies. What's happening at Google is happening everywhere: the avenues for extracting more profit from their apps or services are being scoured and taken advantage of. Prices going up, advertising increasing, free features removed, etc. Different strategies all around, but the pattern is clear.

YouTube has never been profitable, but Google was ok with letting the rest of the profits from its other divisions subsidize YouTube's losses so it could remain free. They did that to choke the market; no other company could handle the sheer scale of it while offering it for free. As long as Google ran YouTube for free with relatively few ads, no competition could ever possibly come to exist.

But because the shareholders are demanding profit now, and because Google itself is struggling on multiple fronts, the time to force YouTube into a profitable enterprise has come at last.

And this is what it looks like.

As for risking competition, at this point, I don't think they care anymore. Competition in the web service and software space seems to be a thing of the past. Users are intransigent, algorithms favor the oldest and most popular services, and content creators seem to be incapable of separating themselves from their abusive platforms.

I also have a theory that Google is using YouTube as a way of rallying all platforms and services to combat ad blockers more fiercely. If they can beat them on YouTube, other sites will dig their heels in. There's a long-term strategy here to nuke ad blocking permanently. That's what that web environment integrity shit was about, and you better believe that will be back with a new name.

YarHarSuperstar , 12 days ago

Enshittification

xavier666 , 12 days ago

I have a very sinking feeling that websites will be streamed in the future (SHTTPS) and it will be pioneered by Google :'(

hark , 12 days ago

I'd rather not use youtube than give them money for it or even sit through their intrusive ads. There are infinite ways to entertain myself.

NuXCOM_90Percent , 12 days ago

I mean... that is the point.

Pay for premium, watch ads, or don't watch at all. You and Google are both in agreement.

interdimensionalmeme , 12 days ago

Google should have thought of that before trying to paywall the zeitgeist.

If there's a bouncer holding culture hostage, I'm going to sneak in the backdoor.

SailorMoss , 12 days ago

Yeah, I’m not sure I agree that YouTube wants their platform to shrink. Even if you don’t watch ads you are still giving them your data which they can monetize.

Personally I would be willing to pay for YouTube premium but not under the current terms. 1. If I’m paying for the service they should no longer collect and sell my data. 2. Allow me to have a YouTube-only account not connected to other Google services and 3. The current pricing is a bit high.

They can offer these terms or I’ll continue to use them logged out with Adblock. Or they can continue to enshitify and eventually their platform will start to shrink which will make the data they sell to advertisers less valuable.

BigFatNips , 12 days ago

Their platform won't shrink. You and I may care enough to stop using it (very skeptical personally tbh) but 99.9999999999999999999999 percent of people don't give a flying fuck and there's more users being born every day.

TheDarksteel94 , 12 days ago

I was actually offered by Google to separate my Google Services and their associated data from each other. I immediately took that offer, of course. Might just be an EU thing tho, idk.

tabular , 12 days ago

Not quite. Google doesn't want competition or content creators to be elsewhere.

NuXCOM_90Percent , 12 days ago

There is nowhere else. The only other companies that can consider a YouTube scale product already noped out.

pkmkdz , 12 days ago

There are free alternatives like odysee, but creators have no incentive to move there

tabular , 12 days ago

A decentralized apporch: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

NuXCOM_90Percent , 12 days ago

Yeah...

How often do images "not load" when browsing lemmy? How often do sites get hugged to death even now? And that is kilobytes of data.

Video is a mother fucker. It always has been. Those of us who are old enough to remember will understand WHY youtube was such a revelation (or why so many porn sites still have a huge thumbnail archive...).

And it is why the various "youtube alternatives" like Nebula or (sex pest adjacent) floatplane don't have free video. EVERYTHING is paywalled because free video would make their hosting costs increase exponentially.

And yes, in theory, distributed hosting can lessen that burden. Anyone who has played a listen server heavy online game will already understand why that is a pipe dream.

tabular , 11 days ago

What types of games are listen heavy?

NuXCOM_90Percent , 11 days ago

A lot of smaller multiplayer games and older live games. Also a not insignificant number of fighting games.

If you ever noticed rubber banding or games straight up being broken if the wrong player is the host: That is your friendly reminder of how shitty most people's internet setup actually is. People piggy backing off the starbucks on the first floor is a meme for a reason.

GTG3000 , 11 days ago

I feel like the true decentralised approach to video that may work... Are torrents. Don't know if PeerTube works that way, but if you're allowing people to eat your bandwidth with direct streaming, you're gonna run into problems sooner or later.

NuXCOM_90Percent , 10 days ago

Have you ever tried to torrent something less popular? One seed with shit upload getting ganged up on by ten leeches. Five of which disconnect the second they hit 100%.

Regardless, a torrent-like approach would work for large creators like Michael Reeves where thousands of people are going to be willing to act as seeds indefinitely. Someone like Matt Yuan might be lucky to have enough seeds for the latest two videos.

And it also doesn't work for anything live. And becomes a huge mess for premiers where people need to wait for the upload to propagate. MAYBE the latter could be handled with pre-seeding with an unlock coming at the release time but... it is a matter of minutes until a kick level creator nopes out by uploading CSAM "for the lolz"

GTG3000 , 10 days ago

Oh, I know the experience pretty well. The fun fun fun of having something stuck at 98% for a week or more :D

I was thinking, if the creator themselves would seed their stuff it could work - although I admit it'd have to have some kind of seed schedule and maybe some heuristic to see which videos were still available or not. There'd be problems with bandwidth, but I think it would at least allow a decentralised video network to exist, even if it would feel a bit more like watching anime in year 2010.

And yeah, fair point. I don't really do live streams so I didn't think about them. Honestly don't know what a solution for that even could be, in terms of "everyone hosts a little bit to spread the load and price".

Don't really think it'd be that big of a mess for premiers, but then again I don't see a big issue in waiting a day to get good content. Y'all are spoiled with cdns and social media /s :D! In my experience torrents propagate pretty quickly so it could still work. Think the bigger issue would be the fact that people have preference for different resolutions, so you'd end up with massive torrent downloads that have 4k, 2k, 1080p, 720p, etc. Or multiple torrent files for different resolution. The worst outcome would of course be "creator just dumps 8k 60fps content on the network and tells you good luck".

Either way, I won't pretend like torrent net could match the service of youtube right now - but I do think it could actually make a video network actually work, without prohibitive costs for the hosters and subscriptions for the basic users. It'd still be nice to support creators and the trackers but those aren't as big of an ask as "host hundreds of 4k videos per creator forever".

[edit] as a last minute thought - I think I know another reason why torrents may not work so well. You'd have to have an app or a browser extension to use them, which limits the accessibility compared to "open url and watch".

hark , 12 days ago

I specified intrusive ads. They could have non-intrusive ads, like a little banner or something. Instead they put up multiple video ads before and during videos. No thanks.

YarHarSuperstar , 12 days ago

Don't forget after! Man I hate that when I have to sit through an ad if I don't realize the video is all the way over yet, or I don't change it in time

NuXCOM_90Percent , 12 days ago

I mean, it is great that you have very specific rules in terms of what kind of ads you will tolerate. You should write a letter to John Google about that.

But also? We have been through all this before. Back in the day, ads on websites were incredibly unobtrusive. A small png at the top of the page that everyone skimmed past. But people still wanted to block those because only the evil sites were sellouts who needed to pay for hosting and blah blah blah. Which more or less started the ad war we have going to today. First they were simple jpegs. Then they were animated gifs. Then they were annoying animated gifs. Then they became flash ads. Then they became flash ads about how this shitty age of empires ripoff totally has boobs. And so forth.

Because if people aren't looking at ads? The people who buy ads know that. So we get ads that are harder to look away from. Until they are ads we can't look away from because they are embedded in the videos themselves.

And, until we live in a post scarcity society where energy is infinite, it is going to cost money/resources to host web content. Ads are still the closest thing to an "effective" way to pay for a lot of that. And that means a war to have ads that get past ad blockers and ensure eyes get on them.

hark , 11 days ago

What really started the ad war was the endless drive for greater profits. Let's say I accept youtube's terms and sign up for premium. Sooner or later they will introduce ads into premium as well. We've seen this process happen with many other services before. I didn't start using an ad blocker until quite a bit after pop-ups were rampant and malware-infested ads became an issue. There's a point where it becomes too much and people will seek out alternatives. An entire generation grew up with convenient streaming services and they're generally less knowledgeable about piracy than the generation before them. That will likely change as those streaming services continue to jack up prices while making the experience worse all in the name of profit.

Again, there is an endless supply of entertainment these days. If companies think they can endlessly jack up prices and/or worsen the experience, they're contending with practically infinite supply, the consequences of which are obvious in when it comes to supply vs demand.

NuXCOM_90Percent , 11 days ago

Were the ad companies interested in increased profits? Of course they were. But they also aren't a charity. And when they are buying ad space for a web comic but having zero impressions, they are going to be pissed. They aren't running a charity (well... some actually ARE but that is a different mess).

Again, this has been going on well before subscription models were even a thing.

That said, I do agree that it is a generational "problem". Youtube has been around for almost 20 years and, arguably, in its current form for almost 10. Significant parts of the internet have no memory of anything else. Like, my niece and nephew literally throw tantrums when they see tv commercials when their father is watching a football game. Whereas my sister and I remember the fights over who got to use the downstairs bathroom during the second commercial break in The Simpsons that week.

But... I am an old. I remember heartfelt blog posts from some of my favorite webcomics and gaming news sites that were basically "Look. Hosting costs money. Especially as we are getting a lot more popular. I go out of my way to curate what ads we run on this site and have an inbox set up in case a company sneaks a bad one in. Please whitelist me in your ad blocker so I can keep doing this in the evenings".

And... I dunno. It is just REALLY frustrating to watch people pretend they care about... anything all while dicking over "the little guys". Because Google is going to get their cut. The pewdiepies of youtube will also get their cuts because they have literally been doing this for years in the form of sponsored videos. But the low/mid tier creators? They aren't getting the massive sponsor deals (unless they want to do raid shadow legends or better help) AND are going to not be getting their ad revenue or youtube premium money because no ads were run.

Olgratin_Magmatoe , 12 days ago

That'd be well and good if they didn't have a monopoly.

xavier666 , 12 days ago

It's not a pure monopoly by choice. While it's true Youtube has a monopoly in terms of number of creators, viewers and content, it's still not a profitable venture. I heard it was burning through money to keep up with the sheer amount of content they have to deal with. Youtube is doing all this monetization now because they have ran out of VC money and upper management decided that it needs to be self-sustaining. Even the obscene amount of data Alphabet is gathering from Youtube does not create enough revenue to generate profit. But it's a "too-big-to-fail" product now so Alphabet will continue to invest. Competitors saw all of this and just noped out.

Other commercial video services, like Nebula, have popped up but they are subscription-oriented right from the get-go, like Netflix. This means they have a very small audience and it will take years to build up an audience like Youtube. So I don't see them growing, at least in the near future.

Brickardo , 12 days ago

This very much feels like disloyal competition. If you burn through your money in the hopes of sweeping out the competitors, and then you have to dial back on your competitor's practices, it's a dead giveaway you've done something fishy

foggenbooty , 11 days ago

Yup, but that is quite literally the name of the game in Silicon Valley.

hedgehog , 11 days ago

it's still not a profitable venture

Source? My understanding is that Google doesn’t publish Youtube’s expenses directly but that Youtube has been responsible for 10% of Google’s revenue for the past few years (on the order of $31.5 Billion in 2023) and that it’s more likely than not profitable when looked at in isolation.

ealoe , 11 days ago

I guess, no one NEEDS a video streaming platform. It's not like a transportation or a food or power company monopoly, it's one specific form of entertainment. Try going outside?

Olgratin_Magmatoe , 11 days ago

I guess, no one NEEDS a video streaming platform.

Nobody NEEDS social media, but when a social media does something harmful, they need to be regulated.

pastermil , 12 days ago

Less reason to subscribe then!

Maggoty , 12 days ago

Okay? Just shoot yourself in the foot then.

rob200 , 12 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

I use to care, but then I just use Peertube.
Oh but there's not as much content on Peertube. Put the type of content you like on Peertube make a channel it is free. Another tip is, look for specific types of content, and not specific content creators. and if you happened to find a creator you know or knew, follow them on Peertube!

I have plenty of tech Peertube channels that keep me up to date on Peertube, and it's a type of platform that will never have ads or go a direction I don''t want it to as a whole in terms of federation of servers and being an opensource video platform.

Server can surely make some unwelcomed decisions, and I can just change servers easily. Better then Youtube no ads, and your experience does not get throttled.

Piece_Maker , 12 days ago

Peertube is a crazy impressive piece of tech. Just like Lemmy and Mastodon, it needs something to happen to push users over to it (or something like it). YouTube keeps doing stupid things like this, so one day users will be pushed away from it and the creators will have to follow or die.

Etterra , 12 days ago

NewPipe, no problems.

SomethingBurger , 12 days ago

Tubular is better. It's a fork of NewPipe with SponsorBlock built-in.

LittleBorat2 , 11 days ago

That's how it's called now?

Andromxda , 11 days ago

Yes. The NewPipe x SponsorBlock repo is archived and there's a message in the README saying:

Development Has Stopped

This fork is old and no longer maintained. See Tubular, a new fork of NewPipe.

Incogknighto , 11 days ago

Is there a difference between tubular and pipepipe? Which one is better if so?

MigratingtoLemmy , 12 days ago

Is there an automated bot to archive channels from YouTube and upload them to Peertube?

aramova , 12 days ago

There are repos on GitHub that pull the videos and metadata, not sure about posting to Peerhub, though if that's possible to post via an api you could probably script it easily enough. Likely a risk of other "issues" doing so, but I'm sure some datahoarders could chime in.

MigratingtoLemmy , 12 days ago

I'd run this on a VPS if I could do it over the TOR network (don't want to get caught with my CC on the line), but there's the problem of needless duplication if this happens, so it's likely the best if relevant authors do it themselves

EngineerGaming , 12 days ago

What about renting a VPS itself over Tor using Monero, and then letting the VPS do its work normally in the clear?

MigratingtoLemmy , 12 days ago

Very expensive

Andromxda , 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

BitLaunch lets you rent a VPS with crypto currency

MigratingtoLemmy , 11 days ago

I'd prefer XMR

Andromxda , 11 days ago

Same, but you can always use Trocador to convert your XMR to other coins. Alternatively there are some ways to anonymously acquire BTC.

MigratingtoLemmy , 11 days ago

Had never heard of it, thanks. I prefer DEXes for crypto (XMR only now)

Andromxda , 11 days ago

It's not perfect, there are some conversion fees, but it should be ok. I use it from time to time to pay for my seedbox.

MigratingtoLemmy , 11 days ago

Whom did you buy your seedbox from?

Andromxda , 11 days ago

RapidSeedbox they accept multiple crypto currencies but unfortunately no XMR, so I had to use Trocador to convert to BTC.

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

kycnot.me lists a bunch of providers that accept XMR directly.

Takios , 12 days ago

If one does that, be prepared to defend yourself against the copyright infringement lawsuit that's coming your way eventually.

MigratingtoLemmy , 12 days ago

Read my comment on doing it over TOR. If you have a trusty VPS, encrypt your LVM with LUKS and use that for scratch storage.

zer0squar3d , 11 days ago

Not that I know of but I could create something. I would feel icky if I didn't get the creators approval first however.

Orfeluh , 12 days ago

You can use NewPipe or Tubular for Android

Also there is https://piped.video/trending for watching in browser and Revanced on Android

And for anyone using YouTube Music there is Desktop app for Linux,MacOS and Windows
https://github.com/th-ch/youtube-music

VerPoilu , 12 days ago

LibreTube is also a good one. Basically an app for piped

Lucidlethargy , 11 days ago

If you pay for YouTube premium, you're a clown and you're only fueling the enshittification.

macrocephalic , 11 days ago

If you watch ads instead of paying a modest fee to remove them then you're a clown. Companies do need to make money for the services they provide, I just disagree with the amount.

InternetUser2012 , 11 days ago

They make enough off of all my data they collect. I'm not paying them a cent for anything and I'm not watching a single ad. If you want to watch ads for shareholders, you are most definitely a clown.

derf82 , 11 days ago

“Modest?” $14 a month? $5 would be modest. I literally pay less for whole as streaming services.

sugar_in_your_tea , 11 days ago

I'd probably pay $5, and I'd certainly pay $2-3. But I don't watch enough to justify $10+/month.

fatalError , 11 days ago

If you watch enough youtube per month to see an hour of ads and you can't block ads for some reason, you may actually be losing time/money by not paying the subscription. That said, there are ad blockers for almost every platform so it shouldn't be too difficult to find one that works.

macrocephalic , 11 days ago

I pay less than 5usd for a family plan, I just subscribed through a developing nation with a VPN.

derf82 , 11 days ago

Which, as the article states, they are starting to end that practice.

macrocephalic , 9 days ago

That was my comment about the amount that should be charged. I'll happily pay $5/mo, but not $15. I'm happy to pay for services, just not the amount that many want to charge.

AProfessional , 11 days ago

Youtube might be the literal most valuable site in my life, up there with Wikipedia and search engines.

A large part of my payment also goes to the channels I view.

sugar_in_your_tea , 11 days ago

Really? I watch very little Youtube, so I'd rather not use it than pay $10+ for it. I'm currently able to block ads, so I'll watch as long as that's an option.

AProfessional , 11 days ago

Yeah, it has news, educational, and entertaining content. It’s a lot of value for me.

Veneroso , 11 days ago

Unpopular opinion, but I also use YouTube almost exclusively.

It has my podcasts, my political livestreamers, late night shows, and multiple channels that I follow.

I also enjoy YouTube music as well.

I bought a full year, which lowers the price a little.

slimarev92 , 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

Ads are bad (I agree).

Paying for things is bad.

Then what's left? YouTube should somehow be ad free and free of cost for the user forever and ever? Who's gonna pay for the enormous costs of operating the service?

People are going to start yelling at me about capitalism and enshitiffication. Both of which cause problems, but what do you propose here? Magic?

MentorKitten , 11 days ago

I'll still call someone a clown for paying even if I'm able to acknowledge that someone has to hold the bag. Just ain't gonna me or hopefully anyone I care about.

troglodytis , 10 days ago

I propose YouTube make a MUCH better premium product and price it correctly. Paying for things is fine. Paying for things to get crappier? Na

slimarev92 , 10 days ago

How is YouTube getting crappier for me as a paying customer? I feel like it hasn't really changed in years.

troglodytis , 10 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

Glad you enjoy it. Keep doing your thing. But are you seriously deaf to the rising chorus of complaints about YouTube? This thread contains many examples of youtube's enshitification over the few couple years. Your question feels disingenuous at best to me

slimarev92 , 9 days ago

Name one complaint, other than blocking people with ad blockers. How has the actual product changed?

troglodytis , 9 days ago

The worsening of recommendations/algorithm pointing to more crap content

troglodytis , 9 days ago

Price increases

troglodytis , 9 days ago

The death of Google music

troglodytis , 9 days ago

Inability to purchase only YouTube music

troglodytis , 9 days ago

4k premium only (decision reversed due to consumer outcry)

troglodytis , 9 days ago

Inability to remove shorts from homescreen (decision reversed due to consumer outcry)

troglodytis , 9 days ago

Increased family plan sharing restrictions

2xsaiko , 10 days ago

I'm not opposed to paying for online services in general, I'm just not going to pay them to make the site worse with every update. (Plus I kinda categorically refuse to give Google money at this point.)

SkunkWorkz , 11 days ago

If you have an iPhone or iPad you don’t even need to use a VPN to get cheap Premium. Just make an new Apple ID with an Indian address, top it up by buying a digital Apple Card on Amazon.in and redeeming it to your Indian account in iTunes on a computer. Then on your iPad or iPhone go to your Apple ID in the settings, log out of Media and Purchases and login with the Indian account. Then you can buy Premium in the YouTube app with your Rupees, you don’t even need to change your YouTube account.

recapitated , 11 days ago

I can do even better. I can hook you up with a free lifetime account, but I'm having a problem with my bank account this week. But I'll send you $6000 dollars if you just send me $5000 back. Yeah I know it sounds weird but I'm really not hard up for cash I just can't get my cash out of the bank at this moment so I need your help. Hit me up and we'll figure something out, and I'll get you that free lifetime subscription.

supercriticalcheese , 11 days ago

/s missing

w3dd1e , 11 days ago

I realize they charge what people are willing to pay, but can someone explain to me why YouTube costs just a couple USD a month in some countries and almost $20 a month in the US?

Are operating costs cheaper in those countries? Are they taking a loss in those counties? Or are they just price gouging in the US?

Crow , 11 days ago

Well they are charging a premium for the service everywhere and more so in certain countries which can afford it but a big part is that in some countries people may only earn a few USD a day so they would not be able to afford it otherwise. I can’t speak on whether or not they are taking a loss in those countries, but i can’t imagine that they have a problem due to existing infrastructure from google all across the world.

Mnemnosyne , 11 days ago

If they raise the prices in those countries they would make less money because volume of subscribers would go down enough for total income to decrease.

If they lowered the price in the US, they would make less money because the subscribers they would gain would not be enough to offset the reduced income from each.

That's it, it has nothing to do with operating costs or fairness, it's just a question of what price point they believe will make them the most money in a given market.

Natanael , 11 days ago

Some media companies called it piracy even if you're doing it to get paid access content they aren't offering in your country 🤷

kromem , 11 days ago

In theory the service operating costs could be spread across region differences such that in other areas it was at a loss to build and preserve market share and in richer areas it was making up for that.

But yes, in reality it's just exploitative "what we think we can get away with" pricing to "maximize shareholder value" (which is largely BS as the vast holders of shares are very small clusters of the population but people with a handful of shares in their 401k think that statement is talking about them).

w3dd1e , 11 days ago

Thanks. That’s something I hadn’t thought of.

I’m sort of more moderate when it comes to paying Google to access YouTube. I’m happy to pay for products that I use. I want Google and creators to be rewarded for services rendered, but the prices are double what they should be.

I’m one of the people who used the VPN to get Premium at an affordable rate even though I have Ublock and know about other options.

My Premium account did get canceled. I was able to sign back up via another location, but if they push me out again, I would just revert to adblockers.

I suspect other users who signed up with a VPN are like me. We are the few who know how to get around the ads but want to pay, if we can. Just a guess though.