YouTube premium is one of the subscriptions I most often feel thankful for having. I watch enough YouTube videos that avoiding all those ads is really worthwhile, I hope that my view is worth more to the channels I watch, and YouTube music let me cancel Spotify.
I understand being pissed at YouTube and Google, but at the end of the day, of all the things I have to rage at, YouTube isn’t worth it. I like it, there are creators that use it that I like, and I understand that it costs real money to run the platform.
You used to be able to play videos in the background but they removed that feature specifically to lock it behind a paywall. YouTube will never see a dime from me because of this.
Charging for new features? Sure I guess. Removing features to charge for them later? Get fucked.
You can get around this by running YouTube in the web browser on Android at least
Or use NewPipe
They’re especially greedy when you consider they are not only the most profitable of all their competitors (Netflix/Disney Plus/Hulu/etc), but that they’re unique in that they’re the only one who doesn’t fund creating any content at all.
At least the other companies put tons of money producing content alongside their other stuff. YouTube just lets others do that for them and then takes all the profit.
So how does YouTube really justify their costs for premium with zero production costs and the largest profit margin?
Most other companies can be selective in what they host / stream. YouTube will host/stream anything users upload and that’s actually quite insane. Current statistics say that YouTubers upload 30.000 hours of video… per hour.
Aside from the streaming/processing, only the disk space that would need is already frightening. Most of those videos will never be seen, and no ads will be played on them. The setup needed for this is massively more impressive to me than services like Netflix.
Do you perhaps have a source for those profit margins? I really wonder if they’re already running break even.
From a technical perspective, I wonder what they do with those seldom viewed videos. Do they get stored somewhere in slower, deep storage, only to be eventually transferred out and cached when they’re actively receiving views? I imagine you wouldn’t want to waste faster, more expensive storage on something that’ll likely rarely to be retrieved.
Don’t worry about YouTube - according to alphabets filings they account for ~10% of Googles ad revenue. Google is posting record profits every quarter, so they should manage.
I was paying for it until it got to like $16.99 on iOS. As much of an annoyance to use a work around like AD Guard. I can now afford it but refuse to give those greedy mofos a dime.
That is because you are paying for the premium of signing up through ios; apple takes a cut so to make money they raise the rates. It’s extremely common signing up to any service through ios, that you will be charged higher than if you went to the website on your browser and sign up for it there. First link has link to Hank Green who does a great break down and investigation but provided many more examples.
https://www.devicemag.com/youtube-premium-cost-iphone/
https://lifehacker.com/dont-sign-up-for-subscriptions-in-the-app-1850298355
https://umatechnology.org/psa-subscriptions-cost-more-when-bought-on-an-iphone/
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One downvote and you start complaining about downvotes? Have another. Maybe it’ll help thicken your skin.
My screen shows you having one single downvote. I wouldn’t worry about a single techfruit loyalist.
More than you think, actually. My wife recently signed up. I’m like, Babe! I already have uBlock Origin to block ads on desktop! On mobile, Firefox also blocks ads and allows listening to videos with the screen off. 😫
But, we still get ads on our smart LG TV. So. That’s apparently enough to throw the money away.
we still get ads on our smart LG TV
That’s when I hit the mute button, hold the remote with my finger on the OK button ready to skip, and use the remote to block my view of anything but the bottom right corner of the screen. Then when I see the skip button appear, I can click it.
Recently I have discovered that I can just use the “why this ad?” menu and select “return to video”. That way you can skip any ad before the timer runs out.
It’s okay to pay for a service that you use daily.
I don’t, but I disagree it’s “to throw money away”.
Especially if you can finagle a subscription out of one of the cheaper countries, too!
Does that still work? Thought to have read here and there that Google is cracking down on that loophole? Maybe not (yet) if you are an existing ‘foreign’ sub.
Finally gave in to a 2 month free trial of YouTube premium this week. Not planning on buying into it however when the trial expires. But with the holidays thought it was a good time to accept the trial for two full months.
They are getting stricter, but there are still ways around it - and it only gets easier if you have friends/family (or are willing to make friends) in said countries; the internet is a global community, after all.
Look into getting SmartTube for the TV. Works pretty great for me
Exact same story. It’s frustrating.
We csncelled all streaming and use plex but we watch too much YouTube and am tired of having to keep up with versions of pirate apps every time they break. I already deal with having to keep patching the newest youtube apk with vanced on my phone. Not gonna bother for all the other devices.
That actually makes more sense to me compared to most premium features. Higher quality directly costs more money to stream.
Even with premium they will send lower quality if they think they can get away with it, I have to change the quality on every video that plays on my tablet now: it completely ignores the preferred quality in the settings.
I haven’t noticed any issues on Firefox, can also use an add-on to force specific quality.
Yeah I sometimes switch to Firefox instead of the youtube app, but its a little bit annoying switching in and out of fullscreen and I’ve found the tap to fast forward doesn’t work consistently. I wasn’t able to find an addon for Firefox Android to force the quality selection last time I looked but maybe I need to check again.
Is that why I am getting about one ad for every 90 seconds of video ?
Creators have a say in how many ads they want to roll. Maybe try another channel.
Is that how bad it is? Fuck…
Just recently it has gotten worse. The good thing is that I don’t watch TV at all any longer because I used youtube. Now I’m watching less youtube AND no TV so win win for my free time.
YouTube already randomly drops me to 360p on my big-ass broadband sometimes because it just feels like it. What are the guarantees YouTube Premium won’t do that? ANSWER ME YOUTUBE, THIS IS CRUCIAL PRE-PURCHASE INFORMATION.
Premium user since Red launched.
Mobile defaults to 320p no matter what I do. I have to manually select 1080p each and every video
On mobile, many videos will start at 720 and I have to specifically select a higher resolution but it will stay there. It will have me wait for buffering if my internet isn’t capable but it won’t drop the resolution.
On pc it remembers the resolution you set last.
If your internet is flaky, there’s nothing YouTube can do about it. The alternative would be waiting for the video to buffer at 1080p.
i have 8gbps… youtube buffers nonstop for me. my connection isnt flaky, as I can maintain multi gigabit connections to upload and download sources without issue. youtube sucks
Check your browser
If it doesn’t work on Firefox, then it’s using non-standard web calls. Which Google is notorious for. That doesn’t make youtube suck any less.
Yup, i have the same issue on ff. It just stops and buffers. Goes through fine on the same pc when i test on chrome (used for work). Plays fine on embed, it’s just their website.
I just close the window. Don’t need youtube.
That’s what I do more and more. I’ve had my own invidious setup, I’ve done grayjay. If I continue to have problems, I’ll simply not use Youtube at all…
I paid for youtube red until it wasn’t reasonable anymore. I tolerated the ads until it wasn’t reasonable anymore. I can only do so many mitigations to youtube’s bullshit before I just stop…
Right now I have YT-dlp setup to import some channels into my plex setup. That may be all my house has here soon.
I on 300 mbps internet and barely had YouTube buffering on me. I can even run YouTube videos while watching multiple streams on both YouTube and Twitch and it doesn’t buffer.
Clearly the problem is either your connection is flaky or your device cannot handle a YouTube video. Maybe it’s a video driver issue or you accidentally turned on the feature that automatically upscale YouTube videos using Nvidia cards, assuming you have one. I had some buffering issue when I used this feature when it was first released.
No. On all accounts.
Linux, 7950x3d, rx7900xtx, 64 GB of ram. I’m a veteran in the IT world. It’s not my system. Those same multigig transfers happen over https traffic on domains I have control over. As far as “drivers” go… I’m on kernel 6.11.10, which is stable. If I can push 200 fps on beatsaber in VR… and that’s somehow a problem for Youtube… guess what! That’s Youtube’s fault.
What it is, Google pushes chrome and nerfs Firefox. Plain and simple. They push everything they can into their ecosystem and that makes youtube suck.
It’s well known. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delayed-loading-in-rival-browser-complaints
Edit:
My system pushing 7.1Gbps out it’s interface… (note the ~2gbps steady transfer happening prior to the test)
No issues with speedtest… (my 8gbps minus the 2-3gbps I’m pushing on the backend here…)
My connection is fiber. Little jitter, no fuss anywhere else. Youtube runs like ass because it IS ass.
But I’m watching YouTube on Firefox without spoofing my browser and never had this problem. It’s funny how some people are downvoting me for suggesting some solution to your problem, but idk.
Another potential issue is that it’s your ISP that is causing the problem. I have a less powerful system than you and a slower Internet while using Firefox, yet I’m not having any buffering issue, so our different ISPs might be the reason.
It could also be that you have a stricter standard for what you deem buffering than I do, considering your experience with that good of an Internet connection and PC. Mine only buffers less than a second at the start of the video while it loads, but I’ve never considered that an issue.
It’s a 70/30 split. 30% of the video I watch will have issues. And those videos will often spend more time buffering than playing the video.
And nearly 100% of the content I watch should be in youtube’s caching system. As I almost universally watch new releases from my subscription page and don’t tend to let the algorithm recommend anything to me. This has been my normal for years.
Except lately it’s gone up to nearly 100%. I can’t load a damn thing anymore (as of the past month or so). It just sits and spins, multiple devices including phone on cell network. I can only get phone to work using something like Grayjay.
You can claim that my ISP interchange might be at fault… But that wouldn’t explain why I have no issues with virtually any other platform on the entirety of the internet that I exchange packets with. This would still be squarely youtube’s fault. My ISP is one of the big ones, Lumen (Centurylink/Quantum). Lumen owns backhaul. A lot of backhaul. While it’s possible my local interchange is completely crammed full in other situations, I happen to know it’s not. We’re not even 1/4 of the way through their build out in my area. And the fiber goes straight to the head end for my area. There’s capacity galore.
What’s likely, and has already been cited is the fact that youtube has been waging war again firefox for a long time. It’s well documented. Further Google also has a history of targeting specific users where an account simply being logged in will achieve the same effect of constant buffering.
Youtube is bad. Here’s the kicker… Other platforms? Never have an issue. Twitch, Odysee, Rumble (Cringe platform, but a couple people I watch went there even though I wish they went elsewhere), hell even most peertube instances work with better results than Youtube does for me.
At this point I’m not interested in help fixing it. It’s clear there’s no helping Youtube. The platform is broken, both in the business sense and technologically.
It’s pretty easy to check if this is caused by YouTube throttling Firefox. Just install a chromium browser for testing or check if the YouTube app is still buffering. Well, only if you’re actually interested in finding out the cause of the issue.
If you just disagree with YouTube’s actions, it’s best to just boycott them altogether. My personal anecdote is that I’ve only had issues with YouTube on Firefox but not any other browser for a short period, which does prove that they had history of throttling Firefox, whether intentional or not. It’s just hadn’t been a problem in my area of the world currently.
Yow answer after this message from our sponsor!
I don’t care that enhanced Bitrate is premium only. I do care that you still need to click “advanced resolution settings” to access this even for premium users on mobile.
And even if you select high resolution preferred in settings, they will absolutely serve that shit at a low resolution forcing you to manually select the resolution every damn time.
Yes YouTube my connection is absolutely fast enough to watch at the max resolution you can serve, don’t pretend it’s my connection to cover for your intentional bumping down in resolution.
The speed at which you are connected to the internet via your ISP is only part of the path to youtube’s content servers. You could easily have a fast connection to an ISP with a congested uplink, you could be located a long way from the nearest google CDN, or that CDN could be overloaded.
You aren’t wrong in the bigger picture, but the fact that I can change to the highest resolution and I get essentially 0 buffer time and it just automatically starts playing at the higher resolution tells me that the bandwidth is there between my device and whatever server I end up connected to that is hosting the data. Otherwise I would likely have a slight delay of a few seconds for it to buffer as it pulls down the data.
ReVanced :)
Grayjay.app :)
NewPipe :)
PipePipe :)
As with most things in the modern world that have gone to shit. It is not the monetization scheme in of itself that is the issue. It is the never ending desire for more profit this quarter than last forever.
If it was acceptable to stop trying to make even more once the cost to operate is covered and some healthy profit is made predictably then a lot less people would have issues. And enshitification would slow down.
I pay for premium but would love to use peertube instead since it’s decentralized. It would be great to have all the people I sub to upload there as well then I’d bail.
I’d try it if they finally offered us a one year subscription period here in europe. they don’t. their loss 🤷♂️
My girlfriend said the same thing about Korea. Google keeps getting in their own way of selling a good service
„I don’t want to watch ads and I want everything to be free.”
My brother in christ, this is not how services work.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the ads were reasonably placed.
Don’t target people who come in from another domain or on the first viewed video. Pre- roll ads after that. Most importantly, ad breaks at creator-defined times only. Sick of ads coming in at arbitrary times in the middle of a sentence. That’s the worst part of it, IMO.
Oh and a time limit on ads. That has to happen too.
Also could somebody tell all the streaming companies that they know what language I watch all my videos in and to stop giving me Spanish language ads? Like, I got no problem with other languages, I just really feel like you’re wasting your advertisers money showing them to people who don’t know a quesadilla from a carton of pickles.
I was fine with it back when it was just one ad that you could skip.
I was fine with it back when it was just two ads that you could skip.
I was fine with it back when it was just two ads, and you could skip one, and the other was 5 seconds long. 10 was a stretch, but I’m patient.
Without an adblocker, now it’s playing an unskippable, 10+ seconds long ad at the start AND at the end. Some ads are as long as 20 seconds. If the video is long enough, it dares to abruptly play an ad right in the middle. You can’t skip that one, either. We’re back to television content-to-ad ratios - the exact thing I was happy to dump once there was enough content on YouTube. I was patient. That wasn’t enough for them. They can suck a beehive.
I can be patient if the content is >10min long.
If I need to watch an ad for every 2-5min video of streamer clips I’d go balistic as that are even more ads than the broadcast tv nonsense.We’re back to television content-to-ad ratios
I hate ads too but we’re not there yet. When I stopped watching tv it was like at least 30% ads and I am sure it got worse the decade after I quit while it was still relevant.
I wonder if it’s (about) the same in every country but I stopped watching it a long time ago (over a decade). If it got even worse then there’s no way I’m ever going back, but it was too much for me below that 30%.
Fair, the only reason I was watching that long was because I was just a young child, once I was able to provide for my own entertainment I never looked back to TV.
Free-at-point-of-service is a common feature of amenities provided by countries with socialist economies.
But they only work when the economy is actively managed. If you’re just pumping cash into a big banking machine and telling people to grab for it, you’re not incentivizing any particular economic activity. You’re just encouraging entrepreneurs to get particularly good at snatching money out of the air and elbowing one another in the face.
Line must go up
Well companies do need to make money, yeah
Nah, they have enough money. They won capitalism. Billions in profit. Fuck advertisements. Directly support the creators in your life.
That turns out to be a lot more expensive, personally I’d get a lot less useful content/content I enjoy. I do chip in to a few patreons etc, but realistically someone like Karl Jobst or Levy Rozman or many other creators that I use to plug a 10 minute hole between tasks would likely get nothing from me because £10/mo is a lot for maybe 1-2 hours use a month.
Companies don’t need to make infinite money. That’s just a weird incentive that modern corporations seem to be chasing and burning everything down around them to achieve.
The Stock Market. It’s an inherent consequence of being a company that rapidly filled a new niche and being publicly traded. A private company wouldn’t have grown as quickly, but could in theory, transition into a steady state monetary model. The investors expect the same quarterly reports every single time and will not be satisfied with dividends. The founders might have pushed out long ago and executives who make the decisions have no long term commitment to the company, so they have no reason not to crash the company into the ground trying to wring every ounce out of their customer base.
they already did
I don’t mind paying. Except if it’s evilcorp. Which it is.
According to Google, YouTube had made US$15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019, […] nearly 10% of the total Alphabet revenue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Finances quoting https://abc.xyz/assets/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=05bd9fe
But have you considered how clever you look if you simp for the bourgeoisie?
It would be fine if there were so many ads
Lol, yep that’s how it works in tha GAFAM ecosystem because YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. So I’m not giving a dime to google but I’m hapoy to support creators directly.
Don’t assume Google et al. will ever consider enough people buy their subscription. There’s never enough money for these people.
A company isn’t successful in hyper capitalism unless they are accelerating the growth of their profits every year. They have to sell more products to existing users, acquire new paid users, charge more for their existing products, or they’re considered unsuccessful. The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth of the human race where success can only be achieved if every human alive is paying for every product offering possible, buying every upsell and microtransaction, freely giving their data to be sold so that more useless products can be created at minimum cost and sold at maximum price. But also hyper capitalism lobbies for less benefits, lower pay, etc. It inevitably collapses into neo-feudalism or just slavery
The model literally assumes a constant infinite exponential growth
Cancer. Capitalism models cancer.
They finally shut off my premium account in Argentina for $3 and now I’ve been blasted with ads so much it’s unbearable. Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
Maybe I can try again in another country but I’m pretty sure they’re wise to it and demand a card used be of the same country too.
It’s fine on my phone but on the tvs where I mostly consume it’s hell on earth!
God damn YouTube. Why do we like it so much.
Like 3 ads every 3 mins pretty much.
It’s crazy on both ends of the pipeline. Like, if I’m an advertiser, I want my content to be relatively exclusive. I don’t want to be the twelfth ad you see in an hour. If I’m a consumer, I want a continuous uninterrupted stream of media. I don’t want a service that repeatedly cuts out, spams me with some volume-adjusted bullshit, and then cuts back in again seemingly at random.
Yeah I honestly don’t mind a short ad in between videos like the old days. But this shit right now is horrible, forcing people on to premium. YouTube don’t care about the creators they just want subs.
You could try SmartTube
It’s a great product. It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer who is constantly fighting Youtube changes to break it. If you do use it and like it, and you can afford it, please consider a few bucks a month via patreon to keep it alive.
It is thanklessly maintained by a single developer
A lot of these services are just passion projects by odd individual developers who create something for themselves and then share it with the rest of the world.
Github is great for this kind of spontaneous innovation. But it doesn’t do a good job of organizing communities at large. Why have six different “YouTube cleanup service” alternatives when you could have a single collaborative team working towards the same end-goal? Why are people constantly trying to “fix” YouTube when what we really seem to want is an alternative media host?
I am seriously thinking of cobbling together a cheap pc just to plug into my TV to watch things like YouTube without the ads.
I know right. I have Apple TV because it’s awesome and doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
I’m thinking an android tablet with revanced or similar and casting to the tv…
doesn’t have Ads everywhere like Google and fire tv.
yet.
I’m not sure if it counts as an AD but seems like an AD, many many moons ago (I think when Apple TV+ was introduced), they changed the “home screen” with the apps in your Apple TV to an Apple TV+ one with their content (and some linked from other platforms).
The apps view still exists but now the “home” button gets you to the Apple TV+ one unless you click it again from there (unless you accidentally scrolled a bit and the button) or double click it to open the menu with the recently opened apps.
You can change the home button behaviour in the settings to take you to the app view.
Casting on ReVanced will still have ads, because the ads are baked into the cast feature. The ad removal only works for the app itself.
I’ve got smartube on my fire TV
You can usually pay a radom guy in any latin American country who makes a business sharing family accounts for netflix etc. or just get ublock origin.
Try Invidious
I’ve heard there’s too many issues and they have to keep one step ahead of YouTube all the time and it’s getting difficult. Plus, can’t use that on TV
Any good instances? All I’ve tried are dead
It’s the world’s medium length video platform. If there’s an indie creator that’s good he’s there. Of course we like the whole world’s content that’s fed to us by an incredibly sophisticated algorithm.
Google asking me for €13 a month? Their empire is built upon selling user data. Fuckers should be paying us.
And if you’re a content creator, you can opt in to allow your content to be used by AI… Without compensation. 🤡
At least that’s opt-in, unlike them using your Wi-Fi SSID to fine tune their location settings. Not only was that opt-out but you had to change your router settings (either change your SSID, which isn’t hard but shouldn’t be required, or hide your network, which alienated guests when mobile data wasn’t so ever present). I don’t even know if there’s still a (simple) way out.
But yes. The option you describe is clearly ridiculous.
The funny thing is, I’m nearly certain that it’s opt-in for their benefit (i.e. legal reasons) and not because it benefits the content creator, because it really doesn’t benefit the content creator at all! “Here’s my work. Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about paying.”.
I suspect any time Google gives you a choice about anything, especially anything regarding data, it’s not for your benefit. With that in mind, you’re likely right.
I thought it was based around BSSID which cannot be changed on most devices. Changing SSID helps?
Yes, it’s bssid (the wifi mac address) which is collected by streetview cars as they pass by.
Back when I researched this (which, as mentioned previously, was a long time ago), it was just the SSID. Possibly (probably) they were also collecting the BSSID but I don’t think they were publicly admitting it at that time.
Well, last time I looked was many years ago, so it might no longer be true. However, supposedly, adding
_NOMAPor something like that would prevent your network from being recorded. As I said, though, that was a long time ago and, of course, trusting Google to not record anything at your request was always a fool’s game.
