The good news is that none of the content you care about is Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance to jump ship, just like we are as watchers.

In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Newpipe and youtube-dl so you never see an ad.

This generously assumes that the new provider won't take the same steps YouTube did. I feel like the only solution is to not care all that much about watching videos.

Nebula is such a streaming service. From what I understand, they are a subscription based company that has a profit share incentive for it's creators. Consequently, the creators skew toward educational-esque content.

Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network, targeting, etc.

It's not inherently a money pit.

Google and Facebook have a complete oligopoly over the ads market and are manipulating it so nobody else can prosper.

It seems like inherently a money pit to me. Was Google even profiting off it before they started cramming in ads and offering YT Premium?

Serving video data to, potentially, billions of users is absolutely expensive.

You can't, "in a weekend" a youtube clone that can stand up to the first viral hit.

That's what BitTorrent is for. The main issue with torrenting is that non-viral content is going to have very low availability.

Yeah, the important 3rd wheel of the video space:

1) Hosting space/cpu/bandwidth. Video is one of the most intense data jobs out there, behind I suppose maybe AI and Big Data (if anyone is still doing that). You need Terabytes of drive space, petabytes of traffic, all the CDNs, processors capable of encoding inefficient video uploads to efficient video downloads. 2) Network effect. People need to actually want to come, so that people come. 3) Paying for all this - People don't like donating, don't like paying, but hard drives/servers/power banks are not free. So you either charge premiums or use ads.

I wish more people had been willing to pay for Youtube Pro, e.g. (I still do), they're (still) getting worse because the ad-supported version(s) are still the bulk of their income. And so the ad-supported version is messing up everything, being very aggressive, etc. You/I pay for Netflix, why wouldn't you pay for Youtube?

You can't influence the dynamic with capitalism at all when something is free. Sure, companies can "en-shittify", but at least for video this is fairly simple - when it costs too much/works too terribly on one video platform, you can move to the next one. 1) and 2) Make it harder to start a new paid platform, but not impossible - you can directly reflect the costs to your users. YT is just a black box at present...but would have been less so if Youtube Pro had been more popular (ads might have been easier to block, even).

There's a space for Netflix here. They have the "TV" class subscribers, they have all the networks, knowhow.

All the initial groundwork is done.

All they need is a platform for the youtube class content provider. They already have ad deals too.

They could, if they found some model that works, snap up loads of talent.... and that talent could even stay on youtube too.

As long as they keep content in its own category...

That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.

> Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.

It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content. I find the act of opening clickbait videos in an incognito window along with judicious use of the "not interested" button has kept it quite usable.

> It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content.

Yup. You still get the occasional dud, but most of the feed is relevant in my case.

I once browsed YouTube without being logged in. Do not recommend. I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I imagine it's a similar experience to browsing the web without an adblocker.

Live the speedup ability in YouTube videos. Minimum 1.5x, some faster (because it's pretty obvious the creators slow the content down)

Mindlessly consuming the video feed is not the only way to use YouTube. If you are looking for something in particular, it is very hard to beat. Besides, at that point, is it really any different than TV, or other streaming services?

> it is very hard to beat

For any content I’m interested in, a blog post with pictures beats it. If it needs video then have it interspersed throughout the page.

LLM summarisers are the only thing that make YouTube usable for me in that I can still get the content without wasting time.

I more or less ignore the front page and use the bell as an rss, having found channels I like via recs from channels I like and friends

Same, with a few exceptions. Once in a blue moon, I check if one of the two creators I care about has something I want to watch.

> Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.

Depends on what you're watching.

I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.

Having said that, I watch a ton of YouTube videos. Not randomly, like zapping through TV channels (do people still do that, by the way?). I watch videos from the dozens of channels I'm subscribed to, by authors I enjoy watching and about topics that are relevant to me. YouTube is unbeatable for this, because almost everyone is on YouTube, but few other video platforms are as universal.

And yes, I pay for YouTube Premium because ads absolutely break YouTube. Ads make everything worse. I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos (looking at you, Squarespace -- you can go f*ck yourself); I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well. At least some authors make self-deprecating jokes about their sponsored content.

> I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos […] ; I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well.

May I introduce you to SponsorBlock:

<https://sponsor.ajay.app/>

Wow. Didn't know this existed. Will definitely try it, thanks!

ReVanced (phone) rsp. SponsorBlock allows to skip ads and sponsorship segments (and more)

I find it crazy that someone will say "I still consume it more than any other type of video media" but somehow just paying for it isn't an option. You can pay to make YT ads go away. And the payments go to the video creators (eventually).

I would pay for youtube if they provided an official API to download videos and stream videos in a client of my choice.

I prefer to watch youtube with a custom player (mpv+yt-dlp on desktop, newpipe on android). I do not want to watch youtube on the youtube website or official youtube android app. The custom clients I am using are unofficial. They reverse engineer youtube to make it work. They often break when youtube changes something.

Interestingly the comment you're responding and the article the comment is responding do not mention ads as the problem being solved by de-Googling.

I also think YouTube has gotten worse over time and I'd be happy to find a workable replacement despite being a long time YouTube Premium subscriber. I do use SponsorBlock though as I found supporting creators directly while paying YouTube for serving the content left still getting sponsorship ads as a bit ridiculous. It's a good product, just often intentionally shy of being great in interest of metrics

Flex the steelmaning and incentivize me to buy YouTube Premium when adblocking gives me the same functionality and I own the process to block.

I'm happy to watch an occasional ad. Maybe 2 minutes for every day, curated and high quality advertisements relevant to everyone. No, I will not pay with my data. No, I will not accept interruption in flow, within or between videos.

Interrupting during a video means adblocking is justified.

Adding adverts to nonmonetized channels means adblocking is justified.

It's my time. Google isn't paying for the use of my eyeballs, and I actively don't purchase things I see advertised via YouTube. I'm not alone in this; most people don't buy for digital ads. They already nefariously steal my data at every opportunity.

I've never found defaulting to paying for services I consume in need of steelmaning but I suppose it ultimately comes down to how much you care about that sort of thing than the particular reasoning in the end. The biggest reason I won't pay for content is because it's harder to consume that way. E.g. actual Blu-Rays are often impossible to legally play the way you want on the devices you want, especially in comparison to a pirated mkv. YouTube Premium is extremely easy to pay for though, even for the whole family and all my devices. Solutions like uBlock Origin (which I use on many other sites) are actually harder and more fragmented in approach if I want to cover all the same usecases so, in the continued spirit of steelmaning each side, why should I seek to "pirate it" (for lack of a better term) instead?

By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways).

> By the same logic I use SponsorBlock when I can because despite paying the creator and paying YouTube the hardcoded sponsors are still present (plus it has uses outside skipping just ads anyways)

Got it. So you are fine with adblocking; your take comes down to practicality.

Debate aside, I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Yeah definitely a bit of practicality but mostly the factor of having already paid everyone that would be getting paid yet the system not being built to adjust to that properly (YouTube only has one version of the video it'll serve and no knowing that I'm subscribed externally to the person either).

Excluding some other somewhat reasonable scenarios which break the mold in corner cases (like accessing the dozens of subscription news sites that get posted on HN with no way to actually pay for them properly except spending more time managing the subscriptions than actually reading article or two a day) my "I paid everyone for the content so I can consume it the way that works for me" stance and reasoning doesn't really apply when you intentionally skip the first step "I paid everyone for" out of disinterest in doing so.

The main reason (imo) would be if you wanted no ads on Mobile without a lot of hassle, and the ability to play audio from youtube with your phone screen off.

Ah, Newpipe!

They by and large don't. Most creators on YouTube aren't even eligible to monetize, especially if they're making niche educational content.

Google just pockets all the revenue if you have fewer than 4,000 "public watch hours". If you put together an a concise 4-minute DIY video, an average view time will probably hover around 1 minute, and you will need 240k views to qualify. Most videos on YouTube get under 1k views.

There is a negligibly small percentage of content creators / content farmers who live in a symbiotic relationship with the platform and actually make good money, but let's not pretend you're patronizing the creators when you're paying for YouTube Premium.

> Google just pockets all the revenue if you have fewer than 4,000 "public watch hours". If you put together an a concise 4-minute DIY video, an average view time will probably hover around 1 minute, and you will need 240k views to qualify. Most videos on YouTube get under 1k views.

With less than 4k public watch hours your channel has barely made any money. It is accumulated for your videos for the entire channel, that isn't per video.

And no, youtube isn't making money on those videos, it costs them more to store etc and most of them aren't getting any ads anyway. Instead you get free video upload on youtube, normally you pay for that.

Youtube makes their money from the big creators that draws in a lot of views per video, there efficiency of scale lets them get over the profitability hump.

YouTube runs ads on all my videos, including the ones with fewer than 200 views. I'm not sure what you're getting at otherwise. The point I was making is that paying for YouTube does absolutely nothing to support the vast majority of content creators on the platform. All you're doing is paying Google, and a tiny slice of that supports a handful of celebrity content creators like Mr. Beast. Maybe it's a bargain that makes sense to some, but the parent was deriding the grandparent for not willing to pay.

I’m conflicted on this. I pay for YouTube premium - for background playing on my phone and for Ad-less on my TV.

I pay more for Netflix, and I use it a lot less.

So I’m airing on the side of agreeing, but I also think Googles tactics have been incredibly shoddy, and I can understand someone not wanting to support that.

Maybe they do pay for it? It's not obvious they don't. (edit: they mention they do pay for it below)

I would have written a similar comment and I pay for Premium. I don't use any other Google service at this point, but I do have an account just for YouTube (I dig into the privacy settings to disable all the things I can).

It wasn't really that hard if you use Apple for almost everything and Fastmail for mail.

I use DuckDuckGo for search and occasional search again on Google, but that's becoming less relevant over time with LLMs (and generally reddit or youtube is the best place to search anyway for most things).

I do pay for Youtube Premium precisely because it is something that I use basically every day. It's just kind of an opaque system where it's not really clear how much it is actually supporting video creators, how much of it is maintaining the service, and how much of it is lining Google's pockets.

I watch quite a bit of videos by creators with very lower viewership and sub counts and I suspect they're not seeing a penny.

Paying won't make Shorts go away. Nor will it remove the 8 other elements of the YouTube UI I have to block to make the site somewhat useable.

Also I believe the payouts are split entirely by watchtime. Three minutes of watching an original song with a high-quality music video is worth more to me than 8 hours of some game stream or rambling video essay I happened to have on in the background while doing chores, but if YTP values both equally per minute it'll basically send no money to the creators who I believe bring the most value to the platform. There's even a like/dislike system, but there's no indication that it matters for Premium money. Channel memberships and superchats don't even remove ads, so even if I did decide to sub on a per-channel basis, I'd still need an ad blocker.

How should they split the money then? By time seems the fairest way. How else should they judge the quality? That music video you mentioned is likely to get more views so more money overall. But if the gamer stream is getting more views and watch time why shouldn't it get more money?

Likes and dislikes, like I said. It's literally a feature where the users judge the quality of the video.

That doesn't seem fair. If you produced something and everyone watched it and disliked it... well a) why did they watch it then and b) they won't watch your next thing... Or they will because they disapprove but cannot help themselves. Either way, your content drove the traffic regardless.

You can’t pay YouTube to remove in-video ads that the video creators put in. For that you need SponsorBlock anyway, so might as well use a 3p client that supports blocking both kinds of ads, without giving money to Google to continue building ad surveillance software.

I don’t mind ads in the videos for creators I enjoy, it pays their bills. There’s a difference between those and YouTube’s ads which the creators don’t get a big percentage of. I can easily fast forward those ads if I want to, anyways.

How do you expect all this content to be made without any sort of money? You’re basically leeching off the rest of us, in this case, IMO.

I hate ads, but right now that’s the only ticket, or paying for premium. Perhaps that will change, I hope.

I mind all ads. They rob you of your most precious and nonrenewable resource without consent.

Ads are cancer and should be excised at every opportunity. Ad companies should be destroyed. Ad tech workers should be blackballed. Shilling is shameful.

This entire forum is an advertisement for an investment firm. Many posts are advertisements for startups.

Not really. HN would still be excellent and useful and valuable even if pg and yc ceased to exist.

I’ll agree in some capacity that ads are a scourge today, but what’s your alternative? You can’t just burn down the world ave start fresh, there has to be a better way and a plan to transition. Those who would just burn the world down are not mature. This applies to just parts of the world, too, such as “advertising must burn” or “let Y country burn because of X problem” (paraphrasing).

I cannot agree on blackballing workers. That’s just another form of control we shouldn’t exercise. Imagine if someone blackballed you for your career doing whatever you do? They’re just trying to survive and earn a living. Maybe I’ll agree on shaming and calling out execs though.

It’s possible to survive doing things that aren’t shameful and destructive. If we don’t shame and blackball people for their freely taken adult decisions about how to spend their time and direct their effort, what can we shame or blackball people for?

It should be hazardous to your career to engage in certain types of business. Mass murder, advertising, spyware, spam, network abuse (DDoS), or conspiracy to commit same should always make people think twice about hiring you.

Hot take, putting advertising employees at the same level as literal murderers.

The creators get the majority of the ad revenue from YouTube's ads (it's a 55/45 split).

55% isn’t big to be when you consider they made the content, though the cost’s for video are probably higher than most things online.

Do you walk out of a movie once someone drinks a Coke on screen? This seems like a level of ideological devotion that makes doing anything pretty difficult.

Do you have any examples of a movie where someone spends a couple of minutes drinking Coke while talking about how delicious it is and why you should buy it?

I don't want to send google money. I happily pay nebula though.

If only that were true!

Like the OP I consume a ton of YouTube and despite my misgivings about Google, I was a long time subscriber to the YouTube/music combo deal until they started showing ads despite my subscription.

It would happen a few times a week, and if I'm being charitable I could chalk it up to a deployment error, but it happened too many times for me to not get the impression that no one at YouTube gives a shit about subscribers.

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive

I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph. And when you add 30 second ads every 5 mins it makes it even less compelling

Don't everyone on HN use ublock origin? I haven't seen an ad in years.

Sideloaded the latest and greatest YouTube++/uYou/uYouPlus/(currently uYouEnhanced) on my iPhone and re-sign it weekly with AltStore, Trollstore, or use a jailbroken equivalent on a device that managed to stay jailbroken.

There’s a few other new options I’ve seen through Reddit for web viewing, iOS content blockers, or hosting your own VPS invidious/piped instance with rotating ipv6 servers (not google/aws/digital ocean as they require using a web panel).

You can leave ads on for whitelisted creators sponsored advertising content also.

same. firefox with ubO is my best friend.

I don't want the ads, but I'd rather see the carefully curated list of creators I care about be able to get paid, and Youtube Music works for me. Youtube Premium is worth it.

YouTube seems to be doing subtle dark patterns if you use uBlock origin.

For example, I can watch videos, but I often get an "error" if I try to seek in the video.

Same here.

Phones and TVs.

> The ads are insane.

The ads are indeed insane. They break YouTube in practice. YouTube, in its wisdom, much like a mobster in the protection racket, offers you an out: pay for Premium. I ended up doing this because YT is one of the things I use the most. The alternative was having Firefox with uBlock Origin on every mobile device in my household, I suppose, but this wasn't feasible.

YouTube Premium took the win :(

> I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't want to waste time watching videos that could have been a short paragraph

Depends on what you're watching. I always disliked, say, programming tutorials in video form -- give me text, to read and understand at my own pace. Many video tutorials are unnecessarily longwinded and always go at the wrong pace for me, either too fast or too slow.

But I watch tons of videos about other topics where video is the right form. I watch hobby tutorials, I watch videos about cinema/art, etc, and I feel video is the right format for me.

It's harder to avoid bad quality videos that now you can't see downvotes.

As for the video being unnecessarily long - I have played with copying the transcript from the video into ChatGPT, but they tend to be too long for ChatGPT to handle.

Kagi has an Universal Summerized function that can give you a nice summary of a video.

Where do you see ads on Youtube? I have seen maybe one or two in 10 years.

More and more content creators are just embedding them directly into their videos. Either by just mentioning sponsor names in the flow of what they are talking about, or doing little sidebars where they talk about/promote their sponsors.

I don't mind these so much because they are easy to skip, but ad-blockers don't catch them.

I see them almost guaranteed unless I'm logged in. I ended up paying for Premium to remove them.

I use yt-dlp to download the videos, then play it on VLC on my iPad. Much nicer experience!

This is also my preferred way of consuming YouTube. In addition to zero ads, you get instant seek, consistently high bitrate, ability to watch anywhere, and no autoplay for the kids to get sent down an addiction spiral.