this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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To be fair, the only reason why YouTube got so big and stayed relevant is THANKS to the ads. Do you think there would be incentives for creators to create good content if there wasn't as revenue?
It got big when there were no ads and nobody got paid. People made stuff for shits and giggles, and Google had infinite budget to just fund things. Then everything started to change a decade or so ago and now we've got this Like&Subscribe corponet situation everywhere.
This is true but I blame the economy for squeezing people into needing to monetize what used to be harmless, fun hobbies.
Most of the creators have sponsored segments that's how they make money nowadays...
But not everyone does right? I feel like you have to be a fairly big/popular channel to have sponsors. I'm pretty sure smaller channels can only depend on ad revenue.
For Raids Shadow Legends, NordVPN or things like that I don't think you need to be too big, I see some videos of channels around 50k with sponsors.
Below that number of subscribers the channel doesn't get much of ad revenue anyway, most of the money goes to google anyway.
Why would I fuck your mom without a profit incentive?
This! So much this! On top of that, the amount of video YouTube processes is insanely expensive. We are talking billions of views of streaming video served instantly.
You're right, they took the incentive away over and over again and drove my favorite creators out. Now that the value is lower and the uncertainty is high - now they're charging a lot more for the product.
The way I see it is that anyone can put up an ad wherever they want but in my own space I’m allowed to do whatever I like to block it out. Feel free to show them to me but my eyes so I decide what to look at with them, and the tools that modern systems have are the same as the cardboard I put on my window when I was young to block out the gas station lights across the street.
If they tell me I’m no longer allowed to look out the window without being blinded by neon, there’s a 100% chance I’ll move.
.... but, but, but I want FREE stuff!1!! Waaaaaa....
Then the same people who don't understand that ads generate revenue are also the same people who in antiwork communities demand that workers get $15/hr.
Now of course there is a limit to this madness. The number of ads YT is playing if you don't have a Premium account is obnoxious.
The problem isn't that, the people understand this concept. The problem is the average person has less and less wealth every day while people at the top get richer and richer
If everything else wasn't this costly, I'd have no problem forking over some money for youtube or creators I really appreciate
"Well, watch the ads, then"
Time is also a resource and more and more people are fighting for people's time and attention. Regular social media is built around the concept of keeping us glued to our screens to sell our time looking at it to their advertisers
If time is also a resource people want me to fork over to them, I will fight to keep my time protected by using it on things I want instead of on ads (also, watching ads might get me to make impulsive purchases, which threaten my financial resources anyway, so double the reason to block them)
I don't have an abundance of time and money to give away just because companies want to extract even more of it from us