I don't mind paying for YouTube Premium.

You like it now, just wait though. In another year "YouTube Premium" will probably split further into basic and premium plus tiers. Basic will cost exactly the same except you now have to watch "limited" ads again, while Premium Plus will cost twice as much and be basically the same thing you're paying for now plus some new bullshit feature no one cares about.
This is what YouTube has become. It's what all the corporate services that like to make you think they care about you do. As long as we all keep shelling out more money for less services they will all just keep pumping us for every dollar they can possibly get.
It's an unethical strategy called a "loss leader" where these companies offer a service they actually lose money on for a limited time until they get you to the point that you take it for granted. Then they make that same price point terrible and jack up the price for the good service you've come to expect.
- Same with all of them. Remember when Netflix was $8 and you got all of the features? People said back then that they didn't mind paying for it either.
  
  Same for Disney, it was $7 a month in 2019, it is now $16. That is an increase of over 40% in 5 years.
  
  I miss that :( my partner and I always talk about how that was such a nice time. I gave them my $8 every month and had access to all the shows I wanted to watch and it was great. I completely gave up on piracy, and I was more likely to rent/buy the occasional movie that wasn't on Netflix.
- Well as a counterpoint, that’s when you bounce. I had HBO MAX for years but their latest price hike was unjustifiable for me. I suppose I should prob shitcan Netflix too. And of course Amazon Prime went the exact direction you’re talking about.
  
  That's always an option sure, but since EVERY company does this now it means we all just stop watching TV basically. Maybe that would be the best thing after all though lol
  
  Similarly to the “just move” when people talk about home prices, this argument holds up as long as there are alternatives.
- I think now is the reference window op is describing

Upvoted for a truly unpopular (and valid) opinion.
In a vacuum, I agree with you. Had it started off as a paid service, or if the paid version was substantially better on its own merits, I'd consider it. But in order for them to incentivize people to pay for Premium, they intentionally made the "standard" experience worse. I just cannot bring myself to reward that behavior/business practice.
- I've been a youtube premium subscriber since like 2017, long before the enshitification went terminal. I have a family plan so my kids can watch videos on the TV or on the tablet for the older kid without being bombarded by ads. I get not wanting to encourage youtube's shitty behavior these days, but I've always gotten plenty of value out of my youtube subscription, more than I ever did out of hulu or even netflix or paramount most months.
  
  Yeah, It would not be uncommon to see my largest use of data by far on my phone would be YouTube.
- I got grandfathered in when they shutdown Google Play Music and it made Youtube so much more enjoyable of an experience. If I were to sign up today, I wouldn't pay for Youtube Premium, but I've been spoiled and don't want to go back to how shitty Youtube has become.
- I'm not rewarding them for bad behavior, I am paying them for running a sophisticated system that delivers any and all information in a digestible format to my fingertips. I do agree their free service has gone to shit, but it should have been a paid service from the start. I've built my own personal cloud and it is prohibitively expensive for me to have it stream HD video. Definitely more than a YT Premium subscription.
  
  Don't conflate services with goods. If your grocery bag boy showed up at your door when you were 3/4 through your loaf of bread and said you owed an extra dollar before you ate the rest you'd tell em to get the fuck off your property before you called the police.
  If you want to compare them as the same, you've got to use every example.
- Hard agree. I’d love to have decided to most due to the convenience and quality of the service but I decided to pay because the frequency and number of ads wa ramping up. These fuckers know exactly the point that which I broke and they’re going to use that information to break others.

I also upvoted for an absurdly unpopular opinion, this is a shocking take.
It's like paying for Exxon Mobil "premium" oil out of respect that they were one of the first oil companies.

I wouldn't mind paying for YouTube Premium, if:
They did not track or keep selling your info for money after buying it
It wasn't so expensive
But both of them seem like things that can never become true (especially the first point), so yes. I am hoping for PeerTube to get attention when YouTube starts breaking down.

I already paid for a lifetime of free Google services with all the data they stole from me before I had any sense that something so massive and invasive could even exist.
Thanks to ReVanced and Freetube and some others, Google can effortlessly pay out their equitable share.

Unpopular opinion, I agree.

I enjoy making Google hurt by blocking the ad revenue.
I would be ecstatic if they failed as a company.
Google is evil, supporting them financially is unethical.
- https://killedbygoogle.com/
- I enjoy making Google hurt by blocking the ad revenue
  I'm sure they're in agony...
  
  They would not spend so much effort blocking adblockers if it wasn’t hurting them to some degree.

I'm with you in this one (so expecting downvotes). I've got 5 people in my house that all watch a shit load of YouTube. Originally I used Vanced on my phone, but realized that my kids were watching YouTube on the TVs and on their personal devices. At one point, I went into my daughter's room at night and saw there were ads playing on her device where she had fallen asleep watching YouTube.
So once Vanced shut down (I know there is ReVanced and other alternatives) I decided to start paying for YouTube Premium. The reality is, being a tech nerd is fine for me, but it wasn't easy to scale up and protect my entire family from ads on all their devices. So I figured that a few bucks a month was worth it for me.
- That's the only reason why i would pay for it
- Same reason here, I could deal with it but my wife and kids and nieces and nephews can not

There was a time where I would have been happy to pay for it too, back when the ads were less intrusive. However, the number of ads increased drastically when they started pushing premium, and it's only gotten worse - not to mention the fact that, even though they make more money, the content creators (employees) are paid less per view. I don't mind paying for a product or service. I do mind paying to make an engineered inconvenience from a mega corporation that has a de facto monopoly go away.
- I miss Metacafe and Big-Boys/Break.com. You know, from the days when YouTube actually had competition.
- I was under the impression premium views result in more revenue for the creators you watch compared to views with ads.
  
  They do but it's not that much more significant than overall ad revenue. Having a Patreon or a merch store will probably outperform 10 fold anything that YouTube pays from both ads and premium views combined.
  
  They do!

I'll pay Tubular (NewPipe) / PeerTube first.
- Try Pipepipe its like Tubular but better ime. Tubular crashed a lot for me.
  
  Thanks!

Even if YT Premium was cheap AF, I wouldn't pay for it because:
I know they will raise the price non stop (we all know this).
It doesn't come with Sponsorblock, that is already a downgrade.
- It also does not come with downvote count.
  
  You are right.
- You can actually have both.

I bought premium years ago as part of Google Music family (pre yt-music) and stuck with it, it was affordable. I am more than capable of blocking the ads over the years. Other members of my family want to use YT without ads on a myriad of devices. When the price got hiked at the start of the year I was really annoyed, and probably would have dropped the service if it were just me. However my family made it pretty clear that they did not want to jump through the hoops of blocking the ads.
- Ditto

I'm the same way. I bought Premium when I started sleeping to Thunderstorm Sounds videos and didn't want ads interrupting my sleep. And I found that it's nice to watch my ASMR videos and videogame reviews without struggling with ad blockers, etc. Overall I don't mind spending a couple bucks a month for it. I get that server costs are expensive and the platform needs a way to make money so it is what it is.
My lemmy instance doesn't support downvotes and I only see upvotes, so feel free to downvote me to oblivion - I'll have no idea.
- Why does your instance not support downvotes tho?
  
  I can only imagine that some people are so fragile that they can’t cope with a random internet stranger disagreeing with them. I honestly can’t think of any other reason - but they still allow upvotes. What’s the point? I really can’t understand. If someone can give me another reason, please do. I really really really hope I’m wrong.
  
  I believe the official reason is because it's a trans-focused instance, and trans people are often downvoted by bigots. But to me, the biggest advantage is escaping the peer pressure of upvotes/downvotes.
  I found myself easily swayed by karma on Reddit, and it got so bad that I could barely express myself without trying to copy the Reddit "tone of voice" and agree with everything the hivemind went for. Now that I don't see downvotes, it forces people to actually have a discussion in the comments if they want to sway my opinion. It feels much more human and has been great for my mental health.
  
  By choice, because fuck toxic culture and herd mentality

Your take is so incredibly bad and you should feel bad and this is the most uncomfortable upvote
- I acknowledge your opinion, but you won't make me feel bad for exercising my freedom of choice. I do appreciate your upvote.

Would rather pay the creators directly instead of it going 80% to anyone in ceo position and maybe 5% to the creator.
- At least with ads, 60% goes to the creator and 40% to YouTube. I had a video go viral because it was newsworthy, and a CDN (Storyful) offered to help with licensing and marketing, and their price was 40% of my 60%. I wasn't really expecting the video to go viral, so decided "why not."
  I only got 36% of the money from the YouTube views, but Storyful delivered and got it on the news and a few documentaries and I ended up making thousands of dollars for a few minutes of video. 10/10 would do again, but then YouTube changed the rules and now you need like 1,000 subscribers for your video to even qualify for monetization :(
  
  Interesting !
  
  That's neat. Good on you! I like the platform but to be flushed with ads and pay more ceo salary versus creators like yourself, I rather choose to support those I enjoy my entertainment from. Of course realistically A VERY difficult thing to do. I like the idea of Jaybird and Floatplane to an extend. It's just that if I was more settled with life, i probably could afford it finely but its not that high on my worthy things list.
- Where are you getting this 5% number?
  
  Pulled out of my ass as it was hypothetical.. Just that I rather support creators instead of orgs with ceo's salaries.

I don't mind paying and I do pay but I do mind this disgusting bootlicking, OP...
You need to think big picture where this is going. Big tech has no limits or regard for us.
This is an adverserial situation and you are trying to be a good faith actor.
Never forget who you are dealing with here.
With that said... This is likely unpopular so got to upvote haha
- I'm not bootlicking, I just recognize the value their platform adds. Do I wish there were a better alternative? Absolutely, but I have not done the work to figure that out and am able to pay without issue. I have been working on Tech for nearly 2 decades, so I am acutely aware of who I am dealing with.
  
  recognize the value their platform adds
  You are shilling for a bad faith actor who is also the enemy of the people...
  I doubt Google would ever give you the same decency.
- We vote with our wallet. Right now the value proposition is still in my favor, once it becomes not so, I’ll unsubscribe

Nice try Diddy.

I pay for it as well. I started when it was Youtube Red because I absolutely fucking despise ads. I learned later on that YouTubers get paid a lot more per Premium view, and that's helped to keep me paying for it. I tend to watch channels that don't do sponsorships, and many of those channels have videos that are quite expensive to produce (Project Farm and Torque Test Channel stand out in that regard). I like these people and what they do, so I want to help them.
It's expensive (I have the family version so my partner and her dad can be covered as well), but I have the means to afford it.
If YouTubers stop getting paid more for my views, I'll probably drop it and switch to NewPipe (which I already use on occasion for videos that have intrusive sponsorships).
- Source that creators get paid now for premium views?
  
  I wish I had a better source, but it appears that the details are hidden in the agreement people sign to become partners on YouTube: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/177353i/you_should_at_least_know_that_55_of_youtube/
  Basically, YouTube does a 55/45% split between the individual and YouTube respectively. I'm not totally clear on how the actual value of a Premium view is calculated based on the contents of the contract snippet included in that post. All I know is that I've heard several YouTubers say that it's much more than they get from ad revenue per watcher. That was enough evidence for me to continue on with Premium, but I haven't done extensive research on this.

I remember youtube when there weren't ads.
- Same. I also remember when it took forever to load and there was nothing but viral videos. Now I can learn a new skill or watch in depth research on things I am interested in buying by people who took a lot of time to produce a video to help me make the best decision. If I was only consuming trash YouTuber content like Mr. Beast, then I would understand. The majority of my watch history consists of educational or informational content, and not having to watch ads and have it on-demand reliably is something I see worth paying for.

What I dont get is most of the people shitting on it pay for premium on Spotify...
Google play music was awesome, and rolled into YouTube Music, which is decent.
It comes with YouTube Premium and at least used to cost similar.
No ads on YouTube was just an extra.
- Becuase the difference between Spotify and Google is massive?
  Compare the criticisms of them and at worst Spotify rips off artists and price gouges. Google enables genocide, Orwellian surveillance, pushing alt right incel propaganda to everyone, etc. on top of ripping off artists and price gouging.
  
  Spotify also pays Joe Rogan a truly insane amount of money to platform liars and right-wing grifters to his audience of millions.

I also post for it and I also don't mind. I watch a lot of YouTube (nearly 2000 hours so far), I listen to a lot of YouTube music (nearly 4000 hours) and I find it to be a reasonable price.

I don't mind ads.
But I do mind having targeted ads. To be fair, most of what Google presumes about me is wrong, but from the ad patterns it's pretty obvious what's going on. Our data shouldn't be hoarded and we shouldn't be herded like cattle from which they can extract money through ad placement.
I'm fine with subscription services, and ads, but the steps they're taking to maximize their revenue is gross and I don't just mean youtube. This is just the stuff we know about for sure.
- You can just turn off targeted ads in the Google settings though

I only wish they’d kept the “premium light” option (which I paid for until they canceled it). I don’t need another music service or locked screen playback, so I wish I could still pay a bit less for not using those.

Good post, I vehemently disagree in every way

The problem is that the paid premium is NOT better than free with extensions. Piracy is a service problem, and the paid service is NOT better than the "pirated" one. Even if premium was completely free, if it didn't allow extensions I would still use the ad version with extensions.
Revanced android apps also exist, and I won't use them with premium accounts (no point) and they are the only way of having sponsorblock, return youtube dislike, manual HDR and many other small but very useful features.
I would gladly pay for the content if and when the youtube official apps and website had features similar to those extensions.

I also don't mind using ReVanced and getting the same features as YouTube Premium for free.

It made economic sense for us to get the YouTube Premium family plan. When we dropped several streaming services and also Spotify, it was a bit more expensive than Spotify's family plan, but YouTube without the ads was worth it, especially considering they have a huge library of movies that they are offering in high quality for streaming.
Honestly, I'm more satisfied than when I was paying for Spotify Family and Disney+ and Paramount+. And if I must see the eight billionth Marvel show of the year, which I generally don't, there's always the high seas.

https://fedia.io/m/microblogmemes@lemmy.world/t/1239428/Teach-the-children#comments

Which department do you work for?
Google is fucking evil and has had a big hand in making society worse over the last 15 years. They will never get another penny from me.
- Thank you for having a conscience. I agree.
- I don't work for Google, but I have been in IT Support for almost 20 years.
- Careful, you don’t want to fall and hurt yourself from up there on your pedestal

I have a family plan but it's not for any reason other than my children use it and I can afford to pay to reduce their ad exposure. We live in a swing state so they were previously bombarded with political advertising.
The way I see it, I swapped the Netflix account for a YouTube account because that's what the kids favor now. If they move on, I will drop it immediately. If the price goes up then I am very likely to drop it. It's already overpriced for what it is.

Upvoted for a truly unpopular opinion.
How voting works: vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it’s something that’s widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

I think this is unpopular enough. Though I will always advocate people donate directly, buy merch, or figure out some other way to support the creators. Typically buying a single t-shirt will completely offset your personal adblocking of a creator pretty much for life.

I agree with this, though part of it is that I am still grandfathered into the $7.99/mo original Google Music launch promo price. It is worth it to me not to see ads to continue paying for it. The current monthly premium at $14/mo for new users is insanity.

I didn’t really mind until the recent pay rise. It was ok value (for me) before. Now it’s getting expensive. Not sure if I’ll cancel or not yet.
- I cancelled Disney+ after the last increase, if YouTube premium does the same, I'll have to reconsider, I can't justify paying over $20 to only get rid of ads.

I dislike the pricing structure. Their family plan indicates the true cost of YouTube premium. To me it indicates that for a single person plan, the price should be about 1/3-1/2 of its current price.
If it really came down to it and they continue the current pricing structure, they I'd begrudgingly pay. And don't get me wrong, I'd pay for it now if the price for an individual plan was more reasonable.

inescapable

If you are paying for premium, you are paying twice.
Once with money, a second time with your data.
I'd gladly pay for an option where they stopped tracking me.
- You can literally change that in your settings.
  But then YouTube doesn't know what you have watched or anything it's pretty bad for user experience
  
  For an eclectic viewer like me I am the complete opposite of you; being tracked and remembered by YouTube would be miserable. I arrive at a fresh home page that shows only a search bar every time I go there. (There are no video thumbnails) I have to stop and think about what I want to watch. I click on a video after searching, reload the page to skip the ad, unmute and away I go. Any creator I want to remember I’ll take a screen shot and then copy and paste their channel name to notes.

I'm on the family plan, and it's certainly expensive compared to other streaming services. But I use YouTube both personally and professionally. I teach, and whenever I need to show a video, having a work account with premium is invaluable since I can't install ad blockers on campus. My wife and kids all have their own accounts under the family plan as well. We all use YouTube music as well.
Google pisses me off and I've been getting out from under their heel for a while, but YouTube premium is something that I genuinely find value in paying for. At the very least, I want to financially support the creators that I watch and this is the best way to do so while avoiding advertisements.

Hahahaha, yeah, that’s probably because most people still don’t want pay for it, once your opinion gets popular, then it won’t be worth it.

I watch a lot of YouTube streaming to my Roku and I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting premium. I spend far more time on it than the other streaming services.

If you got the money, you can pay for whatever you want that's legal. No needs to justify yourself at all.
- Why not?
  
  Cause it's your money

https://slrpnk.net/post/13669006

I would be fine with it if it were a privacy-respecting platform that was subscription-based first and foremost, then had an ad-supported tier as well, but unfortunately it's owned by Google so they're collecting untold troves of data even from paid subscribers and that's the actual product for them.

I subscribe too. I'm an expat in a SE asian country where the subscription cost is a bit lower so, I do have that going for me. (~$5.50)
My consumption of YouTube is primarily through the official app on my Xbox. I also have a Pihole but it doesn't work for YouTube.
This subscription lets me watch the creators I want to see, on the device I want, with the least amount of friction.

I paid for Google Music back before it was YouTube Music. It came with YouTube Red (I think they still called it that at the time). I'm still paying for premium because no ads is important to me. Also, according to now ancient videos by Hank Green, YouTube Red made a considerable, good impact for the content creators and I don't care that other video platforms are cheaper because I'm not watching random videos, I'm following particular channels. I can almost never get the same content somewhere else. I'm locked in because of that. If my channels put their content on other sites, I'd drop YouTube in a heartbeat. If every video went on patreon and not just the exclusive videos, I'd drop YouTube in a heartbeat. I believe in the patreon model and am not a member of a single YouTube channel.
I wish YouTube understood that they are not the content I watch, they are between me and the content I watch. Maybe then the relationship could be more respectful than ads on the pause screen.

Honestly I'm with you. It recently told me I've watched > 1,620 hours of YouTube since switching to Premium a few years ago.
There's a lot to hate about Google and price gouging, but honestly this is a service that's well worth the convenience for me.

This feels less like an unpopular opinion than an ad.
- Your comment just made me $10, thanks for participating!
  
  That's nice. They'll easily make that money back from the massive price hikes.

I seriously thought about it but I wasn't down for paying $80 a month.
- I only pay $22.99, I didn't want YouTube TV since I don't really watch regular TV.
  
  Gotcha, yeah I think I was looking at the YouTube TV thing.

I also use YouTube music. I think their algorithm is good

If the enshittification works, it will be an ad service offering videos on the side (if you pay up).

Just use Brave browser and you will not see any ads, anywhere, on any website... for free.

"Unpopular" can also mean "uninformed and willfully ignorant".
- I am not opposed to being enlightened if you are willing to share. Otherwise, your comment adds nothing of value.
  
  I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads
  Prepping the market for future fuckery is not a virtue, and this smacks of apologist rhetoric.
  but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information.
  This in no way is grounds for a society to handwave increasingly unethical, exploitive tactics.
  Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time,
  Operational costs? That's the crux of this apology for poor li'l YT just trying to make it in the big scary world? FFS. I'm sure exec profits have nothing to do with their business model. 🤦🏽‍♂️
  I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways.
  The logical fallacies continue...
  Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else,
  A plea to the plebs?
  but it's inescapable
  Ah, there's the "but", of course...
  from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
  Gas & groceries are goods, a streaming platform is not. More accurately, you'd have to rephrase it to something like "from Chevron & Kroger...", but therein lies the rub, citizen.
  It's not about the product that "has changed your life", it's the simple fact that the corporation behind the platform is using you — and you're paying them to be their fucking product. 🤦🏽‍♂️