• Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “the price is what the market will bear” or whatever. I used to pay for ytp (red)/gpm. Paused for a month, went to resub, was like +$4 more a month. I don’t value yt at ~$16, not even at ~$12 really but hey, they wouldn’t fuck billions of users over in the pursing of profits, right? If yt/Google was a scrappy little startup, or a creator that I valued, sure, here’s $5 a month through patreon. But they aren’t, they bought a platform with no clear avenue to monetization/breaking even, and sat on it for 10 years, and then they want to be like ‘please we are the victim here, it’s the evil ad blockers that are forcing us into the streets!’.

    G has, metrically speaking, fuck-tons of money. And if they so desperately need to clear their books, they can always close yt, anytime they want. Or they could let the customers pay what they think the service is worth. Hell, they could even shift the costs to the creators, which isn’t the worst idea in the world - it’d at least stop kids from uploading their fortnite clips with them screaming into their mics. Not everybody should be allowed in front of a webcam.

    But as long as it’s [number higher than I value yt as] or [shitty experience], I will take option 3 and tell g to gag on my balls, and I shall enjoy my $5 and my ad-free experience.

    Lots of options, but nah “fuck the users” came out on top. Acting like the users are the reason why they bought and operated a money pit for 15 years is just hilarious.

    • Chozo@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You say YouTube’s solution was “fuck the users”, but the solutions you offered are “fuck the creators”. I’m not sure how that’s any better.

        • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          Storage isn’t the only cost, or even the major cost, it’s bandwidth to serve them

          I don’t see a better way for YouTube to be managed in the current environment, but I do agree it’s not the best possible way; it’s just the ideal way is limited to an ideal world, which we don’t have.

          • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That can be a shared expense, but bandwidth is variable and storage space isn’t, so I imagine yt would charge by the MB for uploads but do a simplified floating split cost for bandwidth. Again, not everyone should be able to blast the internet with their (tbh) shitty unboxing, multiplayer raging, prank/harassment, 8 second meme, etc videos.

            Everyone knew - or should have known - that yt was a money pit. I was happy that the og devs got bought out, but the writing was on the wall back then. The fact that g let it sit for so long before trying to recoup some funds for it is one reason why everyone is so pissy about the whole paying vs ads debate - it was free and non-intrusive for so long, the fuck do they need to fix it now?

            So yeah, my idea is shitty for the people who aren’t able to bankroll their video startup career, but if you just open yt and take in what kind of ‘content’ is being created and shoveled… The fact that they haven’t at least pitched the idea is an active disservice to the internet as a whole. I don’t think it would be so bad, short-term pain for long-term (theoretical) sustainability.