That said, Patreon seems to be working very well for a lot of people making high quality content.
I also buy almost all my books used. Sometimes I flip past two-page-spread ads in magazines without looking at them. I use ad-blockers. Back when I watched TV with ads, I'd go take a whizz during ad breaks. I'd fast-forward past trailers in front of VHS movies.
Thug life, then?
It's not a matter of deserving, it's a matter of supply and demand and technological capabilities. To ignore the latter, let's pretend YouTube is capable of 100% effective DRM, such that you only watch the content if you see all the ads and sponsorships, eyeballs on screen, in the style of "15 Million Merits".
Even in this case, it's unmistakable that the supply of entertainment overwhelmingly exceeds the demand. This is why all the traditional Hollywood companies are all entirely focused on making blockbusters: it's the one thing they can do that no one else can (because of the initial investment required). But they're the exception. The vast majority of content creators, including people trying to do it full time, are making basically nothing or just enough to get by. There are thousands and thousands of Twitch streamers scraping by on 12 hour days where they average a hundred or so viewers.
In other words, even in this DRM hellscape, the push of the market is going to be towards less and less remuneration for each creator, because the total market capacity of entertainment as such is not enough for each entertainer to live off of. There is quite simply not enough money in it. If I'm forced to watch ads, I'll switch to content providers that don't use ads. The result is worse for the creator, because the vast majority of them are suffering from lack of visibility. So they make their content more palatable by reducing ads, and the downward spiral continues. This is already happening, because most creators are not making enough to live off of.
The only way to solve this problem is for us to decide socially that artistic creation is good as such even if there's not a marketable demand for it, and that therefore creators deserve to be compensated. The fact that it's society that would have to come to this conclusion means that it's society upon which the burden of providing this compensation would fall, not individual consumers. In other words, the solution isn't sponsorships or watching ads, it's something like universal basic income.
Overlapping options for content creators (many of which do or do not apply depending on various factors, mostly forms of privilege) include picking a different business model, having a different means to support yourself, giving up, and realizing that your existing business model is compatible with free viewing.
Depending on consumers to be selfless by donating or choosing to consume ads is not the only business model in town; there are more paths to take than "expect selflessness or give up". Selflessness isn't typically a basket worth all your eggs.
The sponsor segments are ads. You're getting doubled-dipped.
The interesting question I'd like to know the answer to is if creators get more money per ad impression or per premium subscriber view.
LOLLLLL
You don't though. You have the right to not watch whatever you want, but if content is published with the value proposition that the ads and/or sponsorships are the price of admission, then it's hard to argue that you have the right to access the content anyway. Some publishers try to enforce restrictions like that, mostly ineffectively, and it's probably only because of technical challenges that more don't.
When you use YouTube you accept the terms and conditions (at least the parts that apply in your jurisdiction) which (probably) should state that you are not allowed to circumvent ads. If you do so you are in violation. Not sure what the consequences of that are though.
I'm sure all sorts of sites have magic words that claim I cannot block their ads. Meanwhile, some of them may have ad blocker detectors even if they don't have magic words. Either way, it's on them to show me or not show me whatever content they want, and on me to block ads or not and view their content or not.
Sponsors and advertisers should realize that nobody wants to hear about the same product on every single video, have pages with more ads than content and have their privacy compromised - there's a middle ground where both sides can be happy, but the problem is that one side is continuously overstepping its bounds, causing the other to develop powerful countermeasures.
Will it result in vastly lesser free content to watch? Yes. I don't see a problem with that. I did not have Youtube growing up, I am sure we will survive without it. Maybe we will spend time on more productive things, than watching pewdiepie reacting to memes.
E.g., I pay some money -- $10/month. I can choose to pay more. A fraction of that is divided evenly amongst all the videos I've watched. Creators get a check at the end of the month.
This wouldn't rake in billions of advertiser money. But I think it would sustain a very decent business, and be better for society in general.
This does need to be voluntary: I need to be able to choose to not pay and not watch (or watch with ads, as an alternative). And you need to be very transparent about the rules from the get-go, as well as about how those rules get changed, and apply those rules equally, lest you sacrifice the trust of both your viewers and creators.
You can mitigate the privacy impact of ads with countermeasures such as ad-blockers or provide fake personal information if asked.
You can't easily do so with paid services because you need to provide real information for the payment to be processed. This requires mutual trust on both sides of the transaction.
Look at the comments under "YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube"[1]. And this is on Hacker News, probably one of the more Google-friendly communities you'll find online.
This is how you kill a vibrant community of creators.
Is that not the case?
I'm really not a fan of the double-dipping that content creators are all doing now with their own unblockable inline ads.
I've actually stopped watching a number of Youtube channels because I get so annoyed by ads. I HATE HATE HATE ads!
Anyway the sponsors won't know (unless I'm mistaken) if a viewer skipped that segment, so the creator will get paid anyway.
I can imagine people on a radio would be fine to have sound muted automatically during ads. But how many will wait for a video to continue after 30s of nothingness?
Pay to watch is, of course, an option, but that leads to discrimination based on income – unequally distributed between parts of the world and individuals in the same part of the world. (Yes, I am aware that the sponsorship system leads the creators to cater to the more well-off within each bubble, so it's still a bit discriminatory.)
Any ideas or objections?