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0 pointstitzer4mo ago0 comments

> (presumably, I haven't looked into it)

YouTube broke even sometime around 2010 and has been profitable ever since. The ad revenue has always been more than enough to sustain operating costs. It's just more growthism = more ads. If you want the YouTube of 2010--you know, the product we all liked and got used to--you can't have it. Welcome to enshittification.

Personally I find YouTube unusable without an adblocker. On my devices that don't have an ad blocker, it's infuriating.

0 comments

Arainach4mo ago

You can absolutely have that. You can pay for YouTube Premium and you don't get ads. It's shockingly reasonable in my opinion* - dollars spent to hours I watch, it's my personal best value streaming service.

*Bias disclaimer: I work for Alphabet. Not for YouTube. There's no employee discount, I pay full price for YTP.

devsda4mo ago

Ads, I can tolerate occasional ones but not signing in to YT or premium has a biggest benefit of all, no more creepy tracking and ads based on Google search keywords, no more shitty recommendations.

I can open a private window, clear cookies, clear app data or advertising id and have fresh slate that is not tainted by previous videos.

PS: While at Alphabet, if you ever run into the person who made the call to enable automatic AI translations on YT videos with no way to change language on mobile, please whack them on the head on behalf of us countless frustrated users.

titzerOP4mo ago

I refuse to pay on principle. The idea that a megacorp can field a loss leader for nearly a decade, enticing users to create enormous crowd-sourced content, then later, even when profitable can gradually reduce the quality of the service to the point where users have to pay to get back to an experience they used to have is textbook enshittification.

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