The people saying “just pay for premium” don’t seem to understand that in the beginning YouTube was free and had no ads. When google purchased it they promised to keep it that way. Then they slowly started with ads. At first they were pretty unobtrusive banners, then a short skippable preroll then multiple preroll then unskippable preroll. The reason I refuse to pay for premium is because Google created this issue and is now selling the solution. I refuse to be a part of that. It has nothing to do with the creators.
I don’t think this is as simple as “they’re too young to know”! I’m a 30+ year old man, and I was around 15 when YouTube first came out. I was a huge fan of the early days, when YouTube was free!
I am absolutely fine with paying a monthly/annual fee for ad-free access to perhaps the best compilation of human knowledge and entertainment which has ever been compiled in one place. One reason I’m cool with it is that premium views pay the content creator more than the equivalent ad view.
Sure, YouTube “created the issue” of ads. But if it means supporting the creators and removing a barrier to videos, I’m fine with the price.
The people saying “just pay for premium”
don’t seem to understand that in the beginning YouTube was free and had no adswere born after the 2008 housing crashFtfy.
The cost of hosting YouTube itself doesn’t pay for itself unfortunately. They could get away with it back then because the internet itself wasn’t that big. Therefore, we need to KICK THE NORMIES OUT OF OUR INTERNET. WE WERE HERE FIRST, REEEEEE
Google reported an annual gross profit of $240.3 billion last year.
They can fucking pay for YouTube
It’s even worse, their net was $132 billion
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/net-income
So even after expenses, the profit of alphabet group was obscene.
It’s even worse, they laid off approximately 12,000 employees in 2024 alone.
So even after everything, the profit of alphabet group was obscene.
ReVanced and Grayjay do the same thing but for free and are open source so long as Google keeps trying to engineer enshitification the proud people of the open source community will engineer a solution.
The new Revanced is Morphe. 👍
Hmm weird take. Yes these are solutions to the Ad’s problem from the user side but they are just UI Wrapper for Youtube so they don’t have any costs for hosting & providing all the content. So yea they don’t need to monetize. This doesn’t however fix the problem for Youtube itself. How are they supposed to pay for cost & make a profit?
I totally agree that Youtube with all the Ad’s is unusable (I’m using an AdBlocker) but Youtube is still a Profit orientated company so how do we fix this dilemma. Youtube Premium feels not worth it to most people because Youtube was always “free” so paying for it now makes people go like “WTF?”. So Ad’s & enshitification was/is the only way to make a profit for Youtube. I don’t like it either but this is reality.
If you have a solution for them I’m sure they would pay you handsomely for it.
Peertube is a solution, it is an open source peet to peer video hosting platform. But in truth having good competition is a way to force better practices, and if open source is the best option people will go for it if they know about it. linux, thanks to valve and Microslop’s poor idea of what people want (and governments leery of Microsoft and Trump’s close association decoding to have their own OS for internal use at least), have gotten a small influx of users as a whole, but with more users the more open source solutions to compatibility will be produced, and hopefully if you are looking for the YouTube equivalent you’ll try peertube.
I would totally pay for youtube if it was even remotely decently priced.
You can get multiple concurrents on disney+, Hulu or Netflix with blockbuster content for the same price as youtube’s slop filled premium family.
Seriously, the service is worth maybe $9 a month. I don’t want their music, i won’t use it, the quality is crap.
I mean, as it grew the hosting/staffing costs went up as well. There’s no way it could have continued to be completely free.
That’s still a bait and switch though.
No, it isn’t.
Yes, it is. Start by offering unsustainable ad-free video. Drive competitors out and monopolize the market. Start turning the screws. Classic tech bro bait and switch.
That’s really not what happened. YouTube wasn’t created to drive out competitors and monopolize the market.
It may have ended up doing that, but a bait and switch is an intentional action.
But you yourself literally just argued the impossibility of it running ad free indefinitely. If you attract customers by knowingly offering a level of service at a cost you know with absolute certainty that you can’t maintain, then yes, it’s a bait and switch. It’s deception and manipulation. Classic bait and switch. Youtube isn’t special. They’re just Walmart.
And you’re just wrong. There’s no other reason to offer a service temporarily for free than to use it to drive out competitors. That strategy only has any value as a means of driving out competition.
But, sure, keep simping for the evil megacorp.
Unlock origin always always always free
With the glorious return of Tom Scott, I finally signed up to Nebula yesterday, and am pleasantly surprised at how many of my YT regulars are already on there. £30 for a year, no ads, and an Apple TV app.
Which is £30 more than I paid YouTube, because the family plan is a ridiculous amount of money.
They show screens about that ? I haven’t seen any !
On desktop I get the “Video running slow? Disable your ad blocker” popup in a corner. But videos loaded normally.
On mobile everything was fine until recently. In the last couple of weeks, videos do have a small lag before loading. Still preferable to ads. And I’m just using the browser’s in built blocker.
I would not be surprised if Google deliberately introduces slowdowns to some ad blocker users.
Yeah and they are pretty bad in terms of wording. It’s like „Try premium now for free“: „Yes“ or „Next time“
What are scare screens in this context?
I think it’s referring to the “you can’t block ads on YT or we might ban you” popups you get on YT occasionally, if you’re using an adblocker. I have only had it happen once or twice before I did a quick online search and found an extra filter or two to add to uBlock Origin, and then I stopped seeing them.
I wonder how much time their devs spend working on a new ad block detector scheme that gets shown to a couple dozen people before ublock origin adds it to the default filters and none of their users see it again.
I wonder if they get frustrated or just laugh and get back to the endless job. Or if they also write some of the ublock filters themselves.
This is a cold war happening in the background of the internet. If the advertising industry wins, everybody loses. Advertisement is intrusive by design.
What is a scare screen?
No idea because I use Ublock Origin/YouTube ReVanced/SmartTubeNext
Some guys from Revanced left to create Morphe.
Love it!
Thanks but what’s different/better about it? Does it fix the issue with nested comments not nesting, and ads that are showing up in Shorts after the latest ReVanced update?
Something like: “You’re using an adblocker and we don’t like it. You can’t view any videos.”
They usually go away after updating your Adblocker.
is his shirt a label, a seasoning, or a command?
Yes
Yes…yes.
So is the scare screen when the UI flicker’s and I get a pop up saying “why you experiencing interruptions”?. I use brave browser
I found that logging out solves it
ahem VPN Albania. Sorted.
Doesn’t always work. I’ve gotten German ads on my phone in YT. But it does feel like you get fewer ads.
That’s worrying - I use split tunnelling on the express VPN and haven’t seen an add in months.
If you don’t visit YouTube…
I pay for it, and get YouTube Music with it. I think it’s worth it, and in the country I’m currently living, it’s inexpensive (~US$5 a month) 🤷🏻♂️
Love how you get downvoted for your own personal preference. This place is wild.
Just like Reddit 🤮
Dissenting opinions aren’t allowed here, obvs
Have all the opinions you want just fucking voice them and don’t downvote shit just because it’s not your preference. Or do I’m not your mum.
A big chunk of ad revenue goes to content creators, so you at least support them.
While this is technically true, this only works because of the scale. Each individual user contributes less than pennies.
If you really want to support a creator, donate 5 dollars to them every year and you will be more valuable than any ad viewer.
That’s just not true… When you have YouTube premium, you pay the creators you watch proportionally to your watch time of their content out of your subscription. You are giving them more of your money the more you watch that specific channel.
A cap of 50% of your youtube premium goes to the creators.
Small creators are given a pittance, large creators get the lions share, even with equal watch hours.
And even the pittance is more than 3x your AdSense view. As far as I’m concerned, premium is paying creators i watch while providing me with a more than serviceable music app and an ad free experience on both.
If you pay $14 for YTP and watched literally only one channel, ever, that channel could get up to a max of $7, less transaction fees. Alphabet eats the other $7. If you use uBlock and SponsorBlock, you get the same ad-free experience and can then control how the $14 gets distributed. I technically spend more than the cost of YTP each month on the creators I support, but I can see my contribution going directly to the creators in nearly the full allocated amounts. That’s a huge difference to small channels. Corporate lackeys will go ‘but the server costs!’ but Alphabet made ~$34B off of other people’s creations last quarter alone and have consistently made the user experience worse since they acquired YT, so any complaints from Alphabet’s C suite can be safely filed under BS.
I don’t disagree with your point but your data is not correct… Alphabet reported $34.46 billion in net income for Q4 2025 on total revenue of $113.8 billion. Ads generated $82.3 billion (72% of revenue):
- Google Search ($63 billion)
- YouTube ($11.4 billion)
- Network ($7.8 billion)
This is all REVENUE not Profit! Yes Alphabet made ~34B Profit that Quarter but not only from Youtube ad’s. I would assume a 25-30% margin on Youtube Max, so it’s more like ~4B Profit of Youtube Ad’s (Yes still a fuck ton of money).
I never mentioned premium, because yes it works like that for premium. But even for that paying them directly is better, as it avoids youtube’s cut completely.
Yeah, of all the subscription services I don’t think YouTube is very egregious. The people you watch earn way more from you that way than watching ads.
I block all ads. Content creators earn more than I do by shilling for any company giving them 2 cents. They can fuck right off if they start crying about adblockers.
“Experiencing interruptions? Find out why” - Naah I’m fine dude, just take your time.
I’m watching a 4h video. I can wait 5 seconds for it to load 😂
Very well knowing why and watching them do their stalling is indeed fine.
Every time you are reminded how petty they are.Oh no! The video is black for a few seconds instead of showing several ads for a minute! Whatever am I going to do???
Even if they keep the screen black for 30 second to a minute, I’d still gladly wait in silence than be subjected to advertisements.
If they ever make it impossible to watch videos without first watching ads, then I’ll just leave the platform. I have no loyalty to YouTube and I’ll sooner dump the platform and move on to other video sites than deal with enshittification and ads.
If they ever make it impossible to watch videos without first watching ads, then I’ll just leave the platform.
Yep. Then it will be time to finally start exploring peertube or something…
i wish peertube had more/better discovery tools
The problem isnt discovery its content. There isnt much good content on there. You’ll find the good stuff pretty quickly.
I take that personally :(
Actually most of my videos are just boring things that I find interesting, and I get just as many views on there as I did on YouTube. And the autocaptions are waaaaaay better.
What I like about peertube is it’s just people uploading for the love of it, not content farms and AI slop chasing a quick buck.
Edit: oh yeah and not having multiple ads on my videos.
But they offer an ad free plan that isn’t expensive, and the service is really fast and reliable, and comes with YouTube music as well. Why pay for streaming sites that still give you ads like amazon or peacock, but won’t pay for YouTube?
Why pay for streaming sites that still give you ads like amazon or peacock
I don’t? Anyone who pays for a service to show them ads is a rube?
I would actually consider paying for a service like Youtube if it truly was as simple as that, but it isn’t. Even if they aren’t showing ads after your buy premium, they are still collecting, training on, and selling your data and habits. This is payment. I don’t believe in double-dipping; if I’m already paying in my data, then I’m not going to give you money or watch your ads.
If you want to show ads without harvesting data or offer a way to pay monetarily that stops ads and data harvesting, then I’ll watch ads or buy. But I absolutely do no accept double-dipping. If I’m already paying, I’m not paying again.
So you watch ads and get your data collected? That’s crazy.
No, I don’t watch ads?
Crazy how they keep having to put words in others’ mouths to have something to argue against.
Why
pay for streaming sites that still give you ads like amazon or peacock, but won’tpay for YouTube?Fixed that for ya.
I don’t pay for streaming sites. 🏴☠️ And I definitely won’t give YouTube any money. I’ve always been able to browse their videos without paying a cent. I’m not about to start now.
Besides, I don’t like how everything has become subscription services nowadays. You used to be able to pay once and own a product. Now you need to pay monthly to have temporary access to a constantly changing library. No thanks, I’ll only spend money on things I can own forever.
“Actually I like getting cucked by YouTube” - you
I love ad free music on my car, and no ads on my phone and pc, i and support company’s they allow my to get this service. You enjoy pricing every company is right to go to the ad models because people won’t pay for the ad free versions.
I also love ad free music anywhere, its called downloading a fucking mp3 file and using an mp3 player.
Go to bed grandpa.
I just dont trust them not to use the payment and account info to track me more for every other ad they serve.
They get nothing.
Well i hope you didn’t send this message from an android phone or Windows 11.
We truly live in a society, don’t we.
I used to pay for YT.
I quit because they were very anti-creator and i did not support the changes they were making.
Not expensive? I just checked. It’s 8€/m for me. Which means 96€/year.
Maybe that’s not expensive for the USAians that earn hundreds of thousands per year. But it is expensive to just remove a few ads that can be easily blocked. It won’t even stop the Google tracking, it just stops the ads on YouTube. An ad blocker will also block the tracking.
The way I see it, don’t make your thing free for 20 years if you want people to pay for it. At this point, it’s as natural and free as a summer’s breeze in our minds.
It’s still free though. The paid version is just an ad free version. YouTube had always had ads for the free version.
not OP but personally I watch maybe 2h of YT /month. Because I only watch one dude who posts about monthly, then the rest is just random links I’m clicking from a post or something. I donate to the guy periodically. The other links half of them are news clips or something that I could prob just get from their site.
The one-size model just doesn’t fit my use case. I’d pay for a per-time-watched plan if it was reasonably priced but it doesn’t even exist.
Honestly I could do without it entirely. Personally.
Oh that’s why it says this? Guess I’ll block this message too.
I’m fine with waiting 10 seconds at the beginning of a video. I wonder how much YouTube would save (by reducing bandwidth, smaller caches, choosing slower storage) if they didn’t have the goal to start the video virtually immediately.
That feature isn’t built into YT? I have it set on my browser to where the video needs to be manually started (excluding playlists).
My point was: You don’t need to wait for it to buffer or even load. Once the page is there, the video is playable.
I don’t know why this just happens on my laptop. Probably it’s because it has a slower CPU. Also, this website shouldn’t be this bloated
Bloat + they default to that message after a timer + they intentionally throttle users using adblock
Just using Firefox triggers the throttle too.
You can tell they’re deliberately causing the delay by the way it pops up instantly and sends you to a page about turning off adblockers. The experiencing interruptions message used to send you to a page about ISP network performance…
I’ll never pay for YouTube ever.
I was happy to pay for YT Premium when there was a loophole so you could sign up from a far cheaper country. I paid about £6 a month for the family plan, purely so I could watch on Apple TV without having to tolerate adverts.
Then they closed the loophole, shitcanned our premium, and demanded £20 for the same experience. We had Netflix at the time, which was cheaper. So I made a little app as a frontend for yt-dlp, and downloaded what I wanted to watch into my Jellyfin server.
Fuck Google.
I’ll never understand why people are proud to waste their life watching ads. Or are proud to use adblock and steal the content being posted by small creators. You’re really sticking it to the little guy, great job.
If the little guy is staking their livelihood on revenue from getting in bed with the devil, they deserve nothing.
Ok, so you can never use any google product ever again! If you ever again in your life watch a Youtube Video remember what kind of Hypocrite you are! This also goes for TikTok, Instagramm, etc. (Any plattform that has User generated Content & uses Ad’s)
Try thinking harder than… whatever this is.
Fuck YouTube too while we’re at it.
The best part is that Youtube ad revenue is low enough that everyone who can is doing their own sponsor segments, so paying for Youtube to remove their ads doesn’t remove a lot of the ads. The only way to an ad-free experience is adblock+sponsorblock.
