How exactly are you planning to adjust the situation so that someone in Liberia making $2.50/day can afford a YouTube subscription?
Well, the moral and true answer is that invest into the developing world until everyone has the ability to earn a living wage and can afford small fees like this should they choose.
Anything else is anti-poor.
Re:The correct amount of ads is zero
by oneeyedpigeon on Friday December 06, 2024 @06:32AM
(#42338804)
This is just a general point about globalisation and selling to different markets. Obviously, a YouTube subscription should cost a Liberian a proportional amount, not the same as a wealthy US citizen. Do YouTube advertisers make as much money from the average Liberian as they do from the average American?
YouTube is a US company with US costs. It might not be worth it to provide the service at a rate that Liberians can afford. The reason they do so now is because the ad-driven model allows them to extract a lot more value out of the US (or other more affluent) customers than those people would reasonably be willing to pay for.
One wonders if there's be a lot more local competitors to services like YouTube in an ad-free world, then. Where the revenues would boost the local economy rather than US.
And if anything, ad-supported services to the poor often means outcompeting services provided by those communities themselves and ends with transferring even more wealth to silicon valley techbros.
Resolving that the poor must endure advertising to be subsidised by the wealthy is anti-poor and anti-person.
A more reasonable take is that all humans should have reasonable access to services through the fruits of their labour, and a situation where wealth inequality makes this infeasible should be rectified.