this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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I agree with that... somewhat. Except they are providing a service.
The content is not produced by YouTube, but it is made available by YouTube. There's a cost to provide that service and value to the consumer for having videos available to watch.
I doubt you want to pay for the service, so how is it supposed to work? What pays YouTube's costs so we can all keep watching videos for months and years to come?
I get that this comes across as someone simping for YouTube. I'm not trying to do that though. I'm just intrigued by this worldview and would like to understand if there is more to it or if you believe YouTube should not be compensated some other way.
Is it a "Fuck you. I got mine." mentality where people watching ads and paying premium cover the cost for you to use the service for free? Or is there some nuance I've missed?
Nationalize youtube and turn it into a public utility financed by the UN. Create a kind of patreon system that distributes funds to creators similar to how it's done for music collection agencies.
There are always alternatives, but not until people demand an alternative to constant brainwashing. Right now it's unthinkable because people insist that there cannot be an alternative and therefor the status quo mustn't be endangered.
At this stage burning it all down would be preferable although that would never happen until we're seen widespread system collapse.
There is nebula.tv which works like that, but it lacks content. I am a subscriber, but I'm running out of interesting content to watch there.
OBviously there is network effect in play here. If Youtube switched to subs-only model tomorrow, they would have much wider content offer from the get-go.
Yeah, but the issues there are any musicians that aren't Taylor Swift don't make enough on their music alone. They have to either continue working, or go to other extreme lengths with frequent touring, extensive merch offerings, etc. They have to work the equivalent of 3 full time jobs (somehow) to make the money worth it.
If they were to nationalize YT in the same way, there would be 0 content creators. There is already so much effort that goes into that work, lowering the amount people earn even more would kill that as a career path.
Just my speculation of course, but I don't think the answer is always "make the governments pay for it". That will come back around in taxes, and the everyone is paying for YouTube Premium.
Well even if you'd keep advertising if you turn YT into a public utility or non-profit, MUCH more of that money would go to creators. And/or much less advertising. Or less annoying or more discerning ads. And of course no demonetization because you talk about problematic issues.
Without advertising you'd need some kind of revenue. I imagine something like e.g. a EU wide "universal content subscription" or something like that. So if you create good content the various distribution channels simply track what you watch, anonymize it (firefox has this new system that got them in hot waters) and distribute the money from the giant pool to the creators.
Maybe start with a universal newspaper subscription so we'd have a free press again, new newspapers or channels that produce independent news with only the viewer as a customer, without ads.
For music in the EU / Germany there are collection agencies that already do this sort of thing. So it's not even without precedent.
Obviously there are tons of issues to work out, but the biggest is simply that the elite do everything to gain and maintain power or wealth and this would go contrary to that.
Not our problem. They can go the twitch.tv'ish way and add subscription models for people to subscribe and support their favorite content producers and Youtube can take a cut.
Just because they can't think of a profitable business model other than annoying and exploiting the internet's userbase while deplatforming, demonetizing and having their own myriad of problems doesn't mean that's on us.
Doesn't mean you're simping. You have a valid point, but when's enough enough when they're squeezing everything out of us for ad revenue and finding new ways to fuck with our psyche/psychological things like Facebook does with its highest paid employee(s) to rake in attention for cost-per-click and cost-per-view? We're more than just 'metrics' and KPIS. We're humans, we deserve joy. If youtube dies, there's decentralized solutions out there that can become more mainstream. People can self-host and host their own content.