I think most people are angry with YouTube premium because it's a service that doesn't give you anything. It's a service where they stop annoying you. But it doesn't unlock anything new that you didn't have before, doesn't give you access to content or data you don't have access to, it doesn't improve the service. It just removes the annoyances they put there deliberately. So people are a little angry about it
It's a protection racket, for your attention and time.
Paying for premium is fine, but premium users letting Youtube off the hook for their corporate greed is annoying. If YT ran reasonable ads like they used to in the olden days I wouldn't use an adblocker. Don't even get me started on their garbage search, a multi billion dollar company can and should do better. Then of course there's the fiasco of their demonetization system, and rules that apply to some but not others. Simply put they don't deserve to be paid for premium, if their grinch heart grows and they decide to do better as a company I'd honestly pay for premium.
I'll pay to not be exposed to ads. I'll also pay to support a service I get value from. So I'm paying for YouTube premium, Netflix, Hulu. etc. When a service with media I want that has a more desirable corporate structure becomes available I'll pay for that and maybe get rid of other services. I also occasionally sail the high seas if the thing I want isn't available on any of the services I'm already paying for.
I pay for it so my kids' accounts don't have ads. They're too young to sort out all the edge cases that aggressive ad blocking generates and for a bonus we get youtube music.
Here’s the thing: how much YouTube content creators are really affected by ad blockers varies widely, and that’s due to several factors such as what region their main viewership is in, their subject matter, and how many viewers of each creator fit the demographic that might use ad blockers. YouTube is the only entity that would have the real data on the real impact to content creators due to ad blockers, and it’s believed that the reason they don’t share that data is so that they can inflate the numbers in order to claim greater losses than they actually suffer— and while that may very well be a strong motivation, I believe the primary motivation to be to hide the wide variation in levels of compensation between their top content creators. If the ad-blocking impact data became public, it would also reveal the wide disparities in how much YouTube compensates different tiers of content creators and would make public deals with top creators that have, until now, remained private.
This so why it’s always discussed in vague terms and as some existential threat— which is is, for them.
I believe it's someone else's hard earned money, if they want to throw money to have what is objectively a better viewing experience, then it's not my problem.
I know this is a silly meme but my issue with not wanting to pay for youtube is 3 fold.
1.Theyre a monopoly. Google bought out the plucky streaming service on the rise(and honestly if it wasnt google it would have been someone else) and then continued to build up momentum and squash the competition. There is no competition. Daily motion and vimeo and peertube exist, but they dont really compete with youtube anymore.
Google can complain all they want about how it's expensive to host 4k videos from anyone who wants to upload and how all the global traffic makes their service unprofitable but given theyre a giant corporation, if it didnt bring them value they wouldnt be doing it and if it is a hole theyre putting money into then it's an hole they dug for themselves.
2.Google sucks at dealing with their creators. The lifeblood of the site is that it is the default platform for video content creators because its so big. Unjustified DCMA takedowns which ruin a persons livelihood and are difficult to appeal, their demonetization and essentially delisting from the algorithm of nsfw videos(which can happen if a key word is detected or a specific type of image, that recent issue with the big youtuber doxing another and getting a slap on the wrist, and the changes made to algorithms that hurt creators and shape content.
Like how the comedy sketches and animators that were prevalent in the early days got squeezed out because the algorithm favored longer videos and a steadier stream of content. Or a case where a youtuber got his own song DCMA'd because another artist remixed his music. And thats not even getting into the poor compensation from ads that means creators need to use sites like patreon to get by. "Oh but if you pay premium your views count more" wow how nice of one of the biggest most valuable companies on earth.
They also have no easy way for even decent sized creators with millions of subs to appeal or get a hold of them, let alone one in the 100s of thousdands or tens of thousands mark. All ai reviewed and ai resolved.
The algorithm debacle. Its fickle tweaks have indirect impacts on creators and at worst it has been known to feed into conspiracy theories and red pill people into extremist pipelines and it took google way too long to address it. Even when it works well it can still push a lot of the same content. But its arbitrary nature an be a windfall on some seasons for one type of creator and tank another.
Honestly even if all else failed and adblock stopped working I would probably just watch the ads. It's like a 15 second clip in the beginning if you skip and a minute worth of ad 10 or 15 minutes later. Im not gunna say I love it but do you people not remember what watching tv was like or reading magazines, or have you ever had a bus drive by you? I can live with the minor amount of mostly skipable ads I'd get an hour especially if it means Im not paying.
I can pay for Netflix to be entertained for days at a time if I want to by original and classic shows and movies that I can't watch anywhere else, or I can pay for YouTube to show me a bunch of kowtowing brow beaten "creators" try to skirt their ever changing draconian rules long enough to make something that barely counts as entertainment anymore WHICH I could also already watch for free with ads.
So I was against premium for a while, was using vanced and it was fine. Nowadays with my boy getting a bit older and how much we use YouTube it's just easier to have premium. I know people have mentioned the android TV app but I have a Vizio TV and can't get it on there. Also, I'm not going to try to root my tv or anything like that (not even sure if I can with this one)
In my region YouTube Premium includes YouTube Music and is a dollar or two more than paying for Spotify Premium. I cancelled my Spotify sub and went over to YouTube. Seems like any okay deal to me.
A further way to divide the masses. It's almost as if the masses desire division. We must judge each other based on the others decisions. Even if we were in complete agreement half of everyone would think the other half is agreeing incorrectly.
Ya know, if someone wants to spend their money on it, I really don't care because that's their money and not mine. It's not something I would personally buy into, but to each their own.