> then why do people still upload their content? That makes no sense to me at all.

Why do websites exist that don’t have ads? Why do people have personal websites and blogs? Perhaps it is, in fact, physically possible for a website to exist without serving third-party JavaScript ads.

Definitly. And hosting is very cheap. But i would argue, that if you were a band or a big company like disney, and suddenly you have millions of people interested in your stuff, because you have a new release or constant demand, that you then must have some kind of model, that pays for it all. Who can do this with their own pockets?

Ah. I see for example netflix. And now it splits up into many sites again, who offer their own things. The technology is now there, maybe it becomes more and more a commodity, organizing payment is easy, maybe it all gets more diversified again. Does no one remember, how popular internet shops once were? But then amazon became way more convenient.

Ah, iam ranting :>

There's a method of distribution called bittorrent that scales with popularity. If people love it, you don't have to pay to distribute it. If people want you to make more, they've shown themselves willing to send money even after they've consumed your product.

> Perhaps it is, in fact, physically possible for a website to exist without serving third-party JavaScript ads.

This was never in dispute. If a website owner chooses to do so, it is their own choice.

Nobody disputes that. But then there is website and website.

That’s a good question. People do it for free, because they want to contribute to society. That’s why people contribute to open source, or Wikipedia, or write blog articles, participate on StackOverflow or post to HN.

Not everything is about the almighty dollar. Did you get paid for participating in this discussion?

Of course they also want to contribute to society. It is a great thing. And behind all this, someone has to pay for the other stuff. Its not only the content creator. On what hardware is this all running on? Who provides for electricity? Who is writing the software? Who makes sure, that we have internet cables deep below in the ocean. Someone has to pay for it. There are people having jobs. So of course i want that people can contribute. But it is only a part of the calculation, its a give and take. Everyone is in for something.

Let's not pretend that the distribution of things that people enjoy isn't free. People pay for an internet connection, they happily share media with each other. If you have a fanbase, you could make a film and put it on a high speed connection for five minutes once, tell people when it will happen on a message board, and rest assured that everyone who wants to see it will see it and it will exist in perpetuity with no further intervention from you.

Right, but the discussion is about whether that money has to come from (exploitative and invasive) advertising or not. In support of the current advertising model, someone had claimed that YouTube must be compensating content creators well, it is a good thing and so forth, because people still upload videos -- meanwhile, most people upload videos for free. The people doing it for money are uploading things like "CGI Joker Mates With Choo-choo Train Sing-a-long ABC's" and "$30,000 Rolex Watch -- Can We Blend It?"

Exaggerating only slightly for argument, YouTube is presently a great force for evil, actively chipping away at collective privacy and promoting the creation and dissemination of Worthless Garbage so that they can sneak in ten second promotions for Even-More-Worthless Garbage like Grammarly, whatever horror movie's coming out soon, etc.

Because for historic reasons, Youtube has a monopoly position on viewers and the content creators need those viewers, despite that they have to resort to other means, like Patreon, merchandise or product placements/sponsorship to make any money themselves.

This won't be the case forever, I hear more and more people (creators and viewers alike) complaining about Youtube, its monetisation and it recommendation algorithms.