Same. But IMHO Google would be fine with this. They aren't in the business of giving out CPU time and bandwidth for free – your data must be catalogued and correlated and sold to keep YouTube viable.

What do they gain from the 5-10% of users consuming videos but offering no salable data in return? It's a direct hit to the bottom line from a minority who would rather stop using the service than be converted to impressions. Good riddance

YouTube isn’t just a video sharing site though. It’s a social media site. There is value in people participating by replying and Liking/Disliking.

Frankly, banning ad-blockers feels like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. There is something wrong with your platform if people hate your ads so much that if they can’t block them they would rather not visit your site at all.

Youtube is an ad showing platform. All the other features are just there to get people to view ads. If you stop viewing ads you are of no value to Youtube.

If you participate in the social network, i.e. post comments and vote, you are creating some content. So your value isn't completely zero.

Which is fine. It's just that the options they offer aren't good. You either take annoying ads or pay $14 per month. How much do they make showing me ads per month? Probably not $1. If they wanted to offer me premium for $20 per year I would gladly pay and it would be win-win. As it stands I will play cat and mouse with ad blockers and they will get $0 from me.

It's just going to push the smart people with self respect to other platforms. YouTube will then cater to the captive ad tolerant audience that's left and the quality of the whole platform will degrade. More people will leave, the quality will drop, the number of ads will go up, etc. This will reduce the quality of video on YouTube until what you basically have now on reddit: a hot trash fire. Sure you can milk these people for a while, but eventually they'll follow the crowd elsewhere. Cable TV -> Netflix.

Can that progression even happen anymore? Call me cynical but I think we are long past the days of “the digg migration to Reddit”, “MySpace exodus to Facebook”, leaving vbulletin forums en masse for social media, leaving irc and Usenet for vbulletin forums, etc

How could a viable competitor to YouTube even begin to pull away YouTube’s inertia without massive vc funding? That VC would want the platform to eventually end up with the same shitty ux issues, intrusive ads, and data collection as YouTube. Guaranteed. Unless someone finds a way to store and serve tons of hi def video for free.

Not to mention even if you get past that step you’re going up against a Goliath. If you’re actually viable and potentially going to make a serious dent do you think google is just going to do nothing? They’ll leverage their gigantic market share and huge amount of resources to take you down. Whether it’s by suing you for some nonsense, replicating your service model in their own platform to recapture customers, straight up buying your platform, etc

> How could a viable competitor to YouTube even begin to pull away YouTube’s inertia without massive vc funding?

I think it depends on what people are trying to do with youtube. I doubt any one new service could replace all of it. Plenty of people want to share videos but aren't looking to get rich from it though. For them, I think a competitor that does video delivery well, but doesn't pay for views could exist.

People who want to make videos for money would have a harder time replacing google, but lots of creators get direct support already so it isn't hopeless. A lot of people are already on multiple platforms now too so it doesn't have to be a hard cut off.

It'll go to niche services. Dropout, Nebula, Curiositystream, possibly even Patreon.

Youtube will degrade and smaller competitors will not replace it because of what you said. But isn't that a progression on it's own?

It will be a shittier experience for users, but I think that's the general direction of the web anyway. Just look at other streaming companies. All of their UXs suck (as far as I have tried them on TV) and there is more and more segregation.

In the US, we’re talking about a quarter of users. That’s a lot of traffic to lose.

If they stop bundling Music, and possibly lower the cost of YT Premium, it might convert better.

Your point and attitude would be applicable if YouTube wasn't a de facto monopoly due to the network effect and the Goog throwing their warchest around, effectively eliminating any semblance of a "free market." Meanwhile this monopolistic site is the only repository of massive amounts of content with cultural and practical use to society.