You must log in or register to comment.
Don’t assume Google et al. will ever consider enough people buy their subscription. There’s never enough money for these people.
A company isn’t successful in hyper capitalism unless they are accelerating the growth of their profits every year. They have to sell more products to existing users, acquire new paid users, charge more for their existing products, or they’re considered unsuccessful. The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth of the human race where success can only be achieved if every human alive is paying for every product offering possible, buying every upsell and microtransaction, freely giving their data to be sold so that more useless products can be created at minimum cost and sold at maximum price. But also hyper capitalism lobbies for less benefits, lower pay, etc. It inevitably collapses into neo-feudalism or just slavery
The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth
Cancer. Capitalism models cancer.
They’re especially greedy when you consider they are not only the most profitable of all their competitors (Netflix/Disney Plus/Hulu/etc), but that they’re unique in that they’re the only one who doesn’t fund creating any content at all.
At least the other companies put tons of money producing content alongside their other stuff. YouTube just lets others do that for them and then takes all the profit.
So how does YouTube really justify their costs for premium with zero production costs and the largest profit margin?
Most other companies can be selective in what they host / stream. YouTube will host/stream anything users upload and that’s actually quite insane. Current statistics say that YouTubers upload 30.000 hours of video… per hour.
Aside from the streaming/processing, only the disk space that would need is already frightening. Most of those videos will never be seen, and no ads will be played on them. The setup needed for this is massively more impressive to me than services like Netflix.
Do you perhaps have a source for those profit margins? I really wonder if they’re already running break even.
Don’t worry about YouTube - according to alphabets filings they account for ~10% of Googles ad revenue. Google is posting record profits every quarter, so they should manage.
From a technical perspective, I wonder what they do with those seldom viewed videos. Do they get stored somewhere in slower, deep storage, only to be eventually transferred out and cached when they’re actively receiving views? I imagine you wouldn’t want to waste faster, more expensive storage on something that’ll likely rarely to be retrieved.
I don’t know about YouTube exactly, but when I was still using Telegram I noticed the following: When you’re scrolling back in your chat history long enough, you’ll get to a point where loading them a message takes 1–2 minutes. This indicates to me that these were stored on magnetic tape somewhere.
deleted by creator
Because of Google going out of their way to cripple YouTube in the name of advertisers, even going as far as to cripple Firefox’s performance just for using it because their videos would sometimes stop resuming, you’d need to refresh .etc
They aren’t seeing shit from me. I will use UBlock Origin as I please.
yt-dlp and VLC still work. I’m good.
Do you use VLC to play the downloaded YT videos from yt-dl or is there some method to stream directly from a given YT url with VLC?
i beleive you can open a yt vid straight into vlc, not sure on the specifics of how its done tho sorry
More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I’m like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫
But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That’s apparently enough to throw the money away.
It’s okay to pay for a service that you use daily.
I don’t, but I disagree it’s “to throw money away”.
Especially if you can finagle a subscription out of one of the cheaper countries, too!
Does that still work? Thought to have read here and there that Google is cracking down on that loophole? Maybe not (yet) if you are an existing ‘foreign’ sub.
Finally gave in to a 2 month free trial of YouTube premium this week. Not planning on buying into it however when the trial expires. But with the holidays thought it was a good time to accept the trial for two full months.
They are getting stricter, but there are still ways around it - and it only gets easier if you have friends/family (or are willing to make friends) in said countries; the internet is a global community, after all.
Look into getting SmartTube for the TV. Works pretty great for me
We csncelled all streaming and use plex but we watch too much YouTube and am tired of having to keep up with versions of pirate apps every time they break. I already deal with having to keep patching the newest youtube apk with vanced on my phone. Not gonna bother for all the other devices.
we still get ads on our smart LG TV
That’s when I hit the mute button, hold the remote with my finger on the OK button ready to skip, and use the remote to block my view of anything but the bottom right corner of the screen. Then when I see the skip button appear, I can click it.
Recently I have discovered that I can just use the “why this ad?” menu and select “return to video”. That way you can skip any ad before the timer runs out.
Exact same story. It’s frustrating.
Friendly reminder: If you know how to use Docker, you can self host Invidious on your PC and have an experience better tgan YouTube for free.
Invidious alone has been working quite badly this year (stopped working for months until inv-sig-helper was invented, etc), but combined with FreeTube it almost always works; can recommend.
I’ve done this for about 6 months, I’ve had a very mixed experience with Invidious, mostly with YouTube constantly making changes without notice or the video stream not really supporting resuming if the connection breaks briefly.
This isn’t a comment on the Herculean effort the contributors are taking on, but new users should be aware that they need a very reliable connection, update the container regularly, and exercise patience in the current state of Invidious.
YouTube has litterally attacked it by blacklisting all know cloud IPs world wide when tmaccessing YouTube.
Self-hosting is the only reliable way. Sometimes, YouTube breaks something, but after a few hours, Invidious pushes a fix…
But if you target the latest tag of all relevant images, itms just:
docker compose pull; docker compose down; docker compose up
Yeah, anything to make that line go up on YouTube’s end.
The latest tag still doesn’t support multiple audio tracks, which might sound niche, but YouTube just rolled out AI dubbed audio tracks, and so Invidious can just play the wrong track and you can’t do anything about it and it’s been this way for about a month.
That being said, it seems that the team’s plan is to put more dev time into changing the back end to video.js so they don’t have to brunt the video retrieval workload, and video.js supports multiple audio tracks as far as I know. I look forward to when that happens, but in the meantime the latest tag is not 100% usable :(
Browbeating people into buying services continues to be unpopular, film at 11.
Maybe it’s more expensive in Europe, my premium is 7.99 usd
I can’t believe people still even use YouTube when shit like this is happening. Paywalling resolution? Get fukt.
Edit: To be clear, people who keep using services like this as they enshitify are literally the problem.
Resolution is the same it has always been, they are just offering a higher bitrate stream with premium (except I think they offer 8K streams on premium? But like come on… who the fuck needs that).
Doesnt matter if the video is uploaded in 4K, you can watch that stream at 1080p with the same/better effect.
YouTube compresses the shit out of anything uploaded to it. More so than other sites.
Yes, which is why extra bitrate is valuable (depending on the video content) and the higher the resolution the video is, the higher the bitrate is. Which is why it is beneficial to watch a video at 4K even if you only have a 1080p screen.
I’m used to blu-ray and ultra hd blu-ray so now everything else looks like garbage to me. Google are cheap asses. Glad to know I’m not the only one who watches 4k videos on my 720p phone.
Yeah, I get that. Personally, it looks good for most of the content I watch and it’s free content, I really can’t complain. The compression these days is really good.
Paywalling a better resolution than the ones ALREADY present on the platform, may be the best way to approach the issue of it being fucking expensive to serve it.
Youtube has gone to shit and the enhanced 1080p bitrate is not one of the reasons
I just lost my premium subscription after about 2 years of paying $3/month in Argentina. Here it’s $24/month (family plan). YouTube is unbearable with all the ads. Sometimes a 10-minute video has 3 as breaks. I’m only using it for precise purposes now, not scrolling and exploring, and finding alternatives as much as possible.
OK, am I the only person that has a working ad blocker and doesn’t get YT ads? Literally never seen one.
Exactly. Why bother paying? Firefox + uBlock Origin on the computer, SmartTube Next on Android TV, ReVanced on Android phone. I haven’t been seeing ads on YouTube for years.
If you’ve used YouTube on anything besides a computer, then you would know that the experience is suboptimal.
There are ad blockers on mobile browsers, too. Besides, there are other ways to block ads, like DNS blocklists. Or if it’s just for Youtube use an alternative front-end like Piped or Invidious or Grayjay for built in ad- and Sponsorblock
I’ve used the alternatives and the experience isn’t really nearly as polished and consistent as using the YouTube app, especially if you just want to sign in and use your YouTube account. I’m not saying premium is cheap but it’s really not out of the ordinary to pay for the service as some people think it is. There are also YouTube kids and music that provides some value.
If there are DNS blocklists that work for YouTube, please provide a link or guide.
I agree, however most mobile platforms have some sort of AdBlocking solution/app. The same applies to popular tv brands as well (I use TizenTube for my Samsung) and worst case scenario you can plug a Chromecast and AdBlock it instead.
Google asking me for €13 a month? Their empire is built upon selling user data. Fuckers should be paying us.
And if you’re a content creator, you can opt in to allow your content to be used by AI… Without compensation. 🤡
At least that’s opt-in, unlike them using your Wi-Fi SSID to fine tune their location settings. Not only was that opt-out but you had to change your router settings (either change your SSID, which isn’t hard but shouldn’t be required, or hide your network, which alienated guests when mobile data wasn’t so ever present). I don’t even know if there’s still a (simple) way out.
But yes. The option you describe is clearly ridiculous.
I thought it was based around BSSID which cannot be changed on most devices. Changing SSID helps?
Well, last time I looked was many years ago, so it might no longer be true. However, supposedly, adding
_NOMAPor something like that would prevent your network from being recorded. As I said, though, that was a long time ago and, of course, trusting Google to not record anything at your request was always a fool’s game.Yes, it’s bssid (the wifi mac address) which is collected by streetview cars as they pass by.
Back when I researched this (which, as mentioned previously, was a long time ago), it was just the SSID. Possibly (probably) they were also collecting the BSSID but I don’t think they were publicly admitting it at that time.
The funny thing is, I’m nearly certain that it’s opt-in for their benefit (i.e. legal reasons) and not because it benefits the content creator, because it really doesn’t benefit the content creator at all! “Here’s my work. Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about paying.”.
I suspect any time Google gives you a choice about anything, especially anything regarding data, it’s not for your benefit. With that in mind, you’re likely right.
I’d try it if they finally offered us a one year subscription period here in europe. they don’t. their loss 🤷♂️
My girlfriend said the same thing about Korea. Google keeps getting in their own way of selling a good service
This has been a thing for a while now, hasn’t it? I remember trying to watch the Noseferatu trailer a few months ago and seeing how shit it looked. Tried to up the quality only to see that it was paywalled
trailer
I mean, that’s an advertisement. I feel like if you’re going to watch an ad, that the company trying to sell the product should find a way to have the ad in full quality themselves.
It looks like the official website does use YouTube, though.
I’ve just seen it for the first time now. Might be because I’m situated in Europe? Or because I mostly don’t give a damn about the pixel count.
Possibly, I don’t think its on every video
At least according to YouTube, the enhanced bitrate option is higher than 1080p normal has ever been
But what about the new normal 1080p? Has it been reduced?
Personal experience, but I feel like it has. Especially on videos with a lot of still frames like 3blue1brown, you can see the still images become slightly better quality after all the animations stopped. I noticed a few months ago and saw 1080p premium as an option.
No, at least according to YouTube
It’s obviously noticeable from the ones they don’t pull this shit on.
Thought it was always that way.
It’s a year or two old at the most
Yes. And I thought that’s how it always had been.
They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.
It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!
God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.
It’s the world’s medium length video platform. If there’s an indie creator that’s good he’s there. Of course we like the whole world’s content that’s fed to us by an incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
You can usually pay a radom guy in any latin American country who makes a business sharing family accounts for netflix etc. or just get ublock origin.
Try Invidious
Any good instances? All I’ve tried are dead
I’ve heard there’s too many issues and they have to keep one step ahead of YouTube all the time and it’s getting difficult. Plus, can’t use that on TV
You could try SmartTube
It’s a great product. It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer who is constantly fighting Youtube changes to break it. If you do use it and like it, and you can afford it, please consider a few bucks a month via patreon to keep it alive.
It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer
A lot of these services are just passion projects by odd individual developers who create something for themselves and then share it with the rest of the world.
Github is great for this kind of spontaneous innovation. But it doesn’t do a good job of organizing communities at large. Why have six different “YouTube cleanup service” alternatives when you could have a single collaborative team working towards the same end-goal? Why are people constantly trying to “fix” YouTube when what we really seem to want is an alternative media host?
Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
It’s crazy on both ends of the pipeline. Like, if I’m an advertiser, I want my content to be relatively exclusive. I don’t want to be the twelfth ad you see in an hour. If I’m a consumer, I want a continuous uninterrupted stream of media. I don’t want a service that repeatedly cuts out, spams me with some volume-adjusted bullshit, and then cuts back in again seemingly at random.
Yeah I honestly don’t mind a short ad in between videos like the old days. But this shit right now is horrible, forcing people on to premium. YouTube don’t care about the creators they just want subs.
I am seriously thinking of cobbling together a cheap pc just to plug into my TV to watch things like YouTube without the ads.
I know right. I have Apple TV because it’s awesome and doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
I’m thinking an android tablet with revanced or similar and casting to the tv…
I’ve got smartube on my fire TV
doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
yet.
I’m not sure if it counts as an AD but seems like an AD, many many moons ago (I think when Apple TV+ was introduced), they changed the “home screen” with the apps in your Apple TV to an Apple TV+ one with their content (and some linked from other platforms).
The apps view still exists but now the “home” button gets you to the Apple TV+ one unless you click it again from there (unless you accidentally scrolled a bit and the button) or double click it to open the menu with the recently opened apps.
You can change the home button behaviour in the settings to take you to the app view.
Casting on ReVanced will still have ads, because the ads are baked into the cast feature. The ad removal only works for the app itself.
