I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
If this was true, you’d use an ad blocker, and donate directly to your favorite content creators. They’d see way more money, and you wouldn’t be supporting an evil organization.
They’d have more freedom to switch platforms as their revenue isn’t directly tied to youtube, but rather their viewers. Freedom to switch platforms gives youtube incentive to run a better site and charge a more reasonable fee for premium features.
But this isn’t what you’re doing. You’re supporting youtube directly and supporting all their business practices in the process
I have been looking at trying to support all the creators I watch on their Patreon pages, but I can’t pay that much to follow everyone.
I am aware that I’m not just paying for Premium features, but helping them keep the lights on. The cost for data centers, storage, and workers to keep it running comes from my contribution, so to say I’m just paying for features is inaccurate. The fact they still pay their creators after all that is good, but I agree they could do better.
All in all, I do feel there is a tipping point approaching where I will abandon Google which I am actively working on by setting up a personal cloud on my own server.