Well, if you want an example, the premium subscription is not available in my country. I send a small sum (small by Western standards and pretty substantial to me) once or twice a year directly to the creators of two channels I am interested in.

Yeah, I think it's fine if you can't pay because the service provider is being dumb.

It's a whole different matter when you can pay, the service provider asks you to pay and then you release an app that deliberately bypasses that ask.

Same for me, I support channels with superchat. I think best compromise would be bitcoin miners. No ads and creators and developers earn their money.

The entitlement among the general population is a little nuts. We expect things for free, without ads, and with high reliability. In this case we also want additional features like not logging in, downloads and background playback. Side note: Is it any wonder that journalism is dying when no one wants to pay for it (or be subject to advertising)?

YouTube is asking that their users either watch ads or pay money. That's how YouTube and creators can keep the lights on. I think that's a fair model. There are other models, like Vimeo, where the uploader pays for the hosting.

It certainly seems like the future is one where we expect access to everything and pay for nothing. That worries me.

/soapbox

So you're saying Google (YouTube) should share some of their lion's share of cheddar with content creators?

Definitely.

Creators do get the lion share of YouTube's gross revenue.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/03261...

YouTube just showed me a COVID-19 hoax ad. I forgot I paused ad blocking.

Fuck YouTube.

Ok. Color me surprised. I assumed the payout was much less. Thanks.

I doubt Google is in any danger of not making outrageously huge sums of money off youtube.

YouTube makes a profit, after all operational costs are accounted for, they aren't paying creators what they're owed. Why would I support a company who regularly short changes the creators who work hard to produce quality content?

Hmm, YouTube pays out massive amount of money every year to creators (if I remember their revenue report, it's majority of their revenue), so I'm not sure what exactly are you talking about?

I don't think it's clear that YouTube actually makes a profit.

Content creators get 55% of the ad revenue so that is simply not true.

I'd be more than happy to pay google for add free youtube if they weren't also stealing my data. Bottom line is that I should be able to set the price for my data and they wouldn't want to pay me what it is worth to me.

People on HN always dismiss ads with "Just let me pay for the service." but only when that's not an option.

in the olden days, i could walk into a newsagent/video shop, pick up a product, exchange some plesantries, put down some coins, and walk out. no-one would know my name or anything about me.

nowadays, if you want to pay for a newspaper article or a video, you have to fork over all your pii and oblige yourself to paying a certain sum in the future unless you do something to cancel it.

there is no fairness in commerce any more. they treat us like hostiles, and we have to treat them like hostiles.

the current choice isn't between paying for it or pirating it, it's between handing over your identity and future income or actively hiding.

one party to this commercial transaction doesn't need to eat and has an income the size of hundreds of thousands of the other side.

NewPipe doesn't need to be trusted where Google actively requires you to trust them - yet repeatedly acts untrustworthily.

If they want me to happily give them money, let me do it without trusting those who do not deserve my trust. I shouldn't have to trust corporations.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate it, ferzul.

I 100% agree that personal data has unfortunately found its way into a transaction in which it should not belong. I respect the fact that you push back on this point, though I do find "treat them like hostiles" as an extreme position. Other entities offer transactions that I find abhorrent, and I simply just refuse to interact with them.

If paying for physical media (be it movies or newspapers or anything else) with "coins" is still valuable to you, I encourage you to continue to practice that behavior, and encourage others as well. It is still mostly possible in many cases.

> ...Google actively requires you to trust them... ... I shouldn't have to trust corporations.

Regarding YouTube, you can still interact with them in a trustless environment. Browse in incognito mode in a non-Google browser. Google gets to show an ad to an anonymous user and you get to watch a video. End of transaction.

But it isn't. YouTube, the service is free. What you can pay for is not suffering from ads, but you had no obligation to do that anyway.

[Could anyone who downvoted izacus' comment explain why?]

Ha! People are downvoting your comment too. I am also interested in a civil discussion about why people believe they are entitled to the content and service without contributing back. Maybe downvotes are easier than thoughtful replies.

See my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23880582

i did not but i do not pay youtube premium. Mostly because all that money will go to RIAA and other DMCA backers, not content creators. Specially not the ones everyone here watches.

Nobody uses youtube because they love it. Everyone uses youtube because google effectively killed all the competition by sliding billions of investor money to DMCA backers. And well, this one time it worked out nice for them, i guess. But it is not a business practice I will support. Fortunately, i'm technical enough to play their cat and mouse game to consume creators who are hostage to their monopoly on discovery.