You're positing that YouTube itself provides no value, but I strongly disagree with that. I find YouTube to be very pleasant to use, I have found a lot of great stuff through their discovery algorithm, and obviously the bandwidth and storage itself isn't free. I think it's worth paying for. Separately from that, I also support several creators on Patreon directly.

And yes, I use an ad blocker. You'd be crazy not to.

No, I was not positing that YouTube itself provides no value -- I was responding to a comment that asserted their reason for subscribing to YouTube Premium was to support content creators. I suggested an alternative.

Personally, I do not disagree that YouTube is worth paying for. But I have reservations because I believe their parent company (Google) already profits tremendously in morally objectionable ways. Thus, I try to avoid giving them my business as much as possible.

Unfortunately, the reality is Google (and YouTube) are practically impossible to compete with in all things data.

To play devil's advocate: you say you use adblocker (I assume you use it on sites other than YouTube) -- but why? Because the modern web is practically unbearable without it? But is there not an implicit contract when you visit a website and consume their bandwidth, that you view the ads? Are you not, in effect, stealing? Sure, advertisers don't have the right to your attention, but don't the content creators have the right to your financial support?

I feel we are talking past each other. I apologize for missing your original point.

For content I regularly view (i.e. subscriptions)? Sure.

What about all the one-off bicycle/car maintenance videos I watch? Or a cool animation someone linked me? Or that music video from my favorite band?

What about the countless clickbait channels whose content you immediately regret clicking upon viewing? What about the ones that prey on the short attention span of kids and thrive on YouTube's recommendation algorithm putting them in an endless sequence of generic content? You can't get your time or money back, even if you despised the content.

> What about all the one-off bicycle/car maintenance videos I watch? Or a cool animation someone linked me? Or that music video from my favorite band?

They don't get paid! Unless, you'd like them to. :) I think it makes more sense to use adblock and deliberately give your time or money to the creators whose content you truly value. If it was a one-off video that you derived personal value from, toss them a couple bucks (Paypal, a month of Patreon) or temporarily turn off your adblock and watch a video of theirs.

If they have no outlets for you to directly give them money, it's highly likely that they don't see YouTube as a means to make money.

EDIT: Also, if it's a video from your favorite band -- dude, buy some merch already!

> They don't get paid! Unless, you'd like them to. :) I think it makes more sense to use adblock and deliberately give your time or money to the creators whose content you truly value. If it was a one-off video that you derived personal value from, toss them a couple bucks (Paypal, a month of Patreon) or temporarily turn off your adblock and watch a video of theirs.

This would be much more reasonable if there were a frictionless way to do it. Nobody is going to take 5 minutes out of their day after each little video to support the content creator. If there was a button I could use to support them built-in to Youtube? Sure!

> If they have no outlets for you to directly give them money, it's highly likely that they don't see YouTube as a means to make money.

Or perhaps they make money from YouTube via ad impressions.

> EDIT: Also, if it's a video from your favorite band -- dude, buy some merch already!

Somehow I knew it'd get picked apart if I used the word "favorite." Obviously I've got plenty of merch! And still I'd like to support them when I listen to their music - even if minusculely.

> This would be much more reasonable if there were a frictionless way to do it. Nobody is going to take 5 minutes out of their day after each little video to support the content creator. If there was a button I could use to support them built-in to Youtube? Sure!

I didn't know this before today, but apparently there is such a feature called "Applause." Although, I personally have not seen it anywhere, so not sure if it's opt-in for Youtube creators, and perhaps it is not fully rolled out yet. This does seem like it could be a good way to directly express support for Youtubers: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9632365

> Somehow I knew it'd get picked apart if I used the word "favorite." Obviously I've got plenty of merch! And still I'd like to support them when I listen to their music - even if minusculely.

Admittedly, I knew you were just giving an example and I took a cheap shot. :) Couldn't resist.

You can use an adblocker and still pay for premium.

In the beginning I mostly did it to get rid of iOS YouTube ads. Now I just keep it to support channels as well. Not everyone has a patreon and I don‘t want to pay every channel membership.

The family premium plan is really fairly priced I feel like.

I'm never going to do this. I want to pay content creators but I don't want to do it so much I'm going to go through some random bespoke Patreon flow, figure out how much I value this guy, and set that up.

If I have to click a button O(n) times for n people I like, I'm just not going to do it.