- Because Youtube is run by a company that has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours.
- Because Youtube is built on copyright infringment; giving it money is exactly like paying for an account on any piracy site to help keep it running.
- Because even where there isn't infringment, Youtube has a broken compensation model you should consider not paying into.
- If Youtube died, it would probably only be a good thing anyway for the whole video ecosystem.
- If you really want to donate money or help, pick some worthy cause, like kids with cancer or something; the Googles of this world don't need your charity.
> Youtube[...] has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours.
I'm mostly concerned with money going to the content creators. If you're not watching ads and not paying for Premium, they get nothing.
> Youtube is built on copyright infringment
I think this is a [citation needed] kind of thing, I'd assume that original content and fair use content is the vast majority of their revenue. But I don't know that for sure either.
> If Youtube died, it would probably only be a good thing anyway for the whole video ecosystem.
Long term, I could see this being the case. Short term, I think a lot of creators would be displaced as they tried to figure out how to make it work in a YouTube-less world. People with large audiences would probably survive fine, but I'm not sure if some of my favorite < 50k subscriber channels would stick around. But these are all guesses.
> If you really want to donate money or help, pick some worthy cause, like kids with cancer or something
I don't look at this as charity, I look at it as providing an economic incentive to continue getting content from creators I like. But this is a "but there are starving kids in Africa!" kind of argument anyway, which doesn't really hold up if you try to scrutinize everything that way.
> I think this is a [citation needed] kind of thing, I'd assume that original content and fair use content is the vast majority of their revenue. But I don't know that for sure either.
I read it more as being a historical record kind of thing. Early days when youtube was first getting content it was a repository for all sorts of copyrighted content - music, movies (clip 1 of 20 style due to upload limits), scans of entire books and comics being put up. It was really the wild west of "throw every piece of media at the wall and see what sticks" in terms of what was on there.
There's a fair argument to be made that youtube gained a lot of visibility as a platform in hosting that content and outcompeted places like vimeo, metacafe, etc., as a result.
It was the acquisition by Google that provided the resources and talent to start building out automated systems to detect media and issue a strike (as well as pay the CDN fees and build the hosting network for such a load). Youtube today doesn't rely on copyright infringement for sure, but it certainly took advantage of it in when it was first starting out.
>I'm mostly concerned with money going to the content creators.
This doesn't really hold up when you gloss over his discussion of the broken YouTube compensation model. Even though it's not salient to your biases or original conjecture to bring up that YouTube's compensation system is harmful for most creators, it seems unproductive to put your head in the sand about the issue and keep claiming that you want to see money go to content creators you support.
You're right that I didn't approach that issue, and part of that is because I have a bit more research I want to do before I take strong public stances on it. I agree that the ad-supported revenue model is pretty busted, and YouTube is the primary beneficiary of that. But as far as I'm aware, the Premium subscription model is pretty beneficial to everyone. I don't know exact percentages, but I'm under the impression that the average Premium view nets more money to the creator than the average ad-supported view. I haven't personally seen any content creators explicitly dissuade people from paying for Premium.
But like I said, I don't know specifics to strongly hold that view and publicly argue it. _That_ would be putting my head in the sand. I need to read up a bit more and see what content creators are saying about Premium. I was hoping that prompting this discussion would lead me to some more good info on that.
To be clear, you went as far to omit it from your mostly dismissive response despite your contradictory view underlying your original assumptions, you didn't simply take a stance of uncertainty.
> I have a bit more research I want to do before I take strong public stances on it
>I don't know specifics to strongly hold that view and publicly argue it.
You took a strong public stance on its negative externalities already and that the Premium model is actually a solution before knowing specifics about even how views are broken down into ad revenue, this doesn't hold up.
You're putting your head in the sand about arguments that don't seem salient to your original conjecture. You seem to only want only additional info to disprove your biases - not prove them, and YouTube has an incentive to keep that information private.
>I was hoping that prompting this discussion would lead me to some more good info on that.
This doesn't hold up given the above points about misrepresenting your original strong public stances and providing no information as to why your biases are correct.
I said "It feels heavy on negative externalities" in my original comment which is not a strong stance by any means, and have not said that Premium solves the creator payment model anywhere, only that it gives you the ad-free experience that Vanced gives you, while still continuing to pay content creators for viewing their content. Those are two separate discussions.
> How does that compare to just donating directly?
It's definitely less effective than monetizing creators directly, I think that's the best option when it's available, and you have the time, energy, and motivation to do it. But if I watch just 2 or 3 videos from somebody but don't seek to support them outside of the platform, I prefer that they get _something_ for the value provided rather than nothing. I'll admit that I'm a bit lazy and it's convenient to have YouTube directly transform my views into dollars for them.
> If they were to do that anywhere in YouTube, you'd think that would be some kind of TOS violation.
I highly doubt that. Just search for videos about de-monetization or the dislike count removal, people make videos criticizing the YouTube platform all the time. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong if there's some special language around their paid subscription specifically.
If Youtube were a Government
- They would be running huge surpluses, while still raising taxes
- They would be a police state
- They lower the minimum wage at all costs
- They repress their population
- Because Youtube is built on copyright infringment; giving it money is exactly like paying for an account on any piracy site to help keep it running.
- Because even where there isn't infringment, Youtube has a broken compensation model you should consider not paying into.
- If Youtube died, it would probably only be a good thing anyway for the whole video ecosystem.
- If you really want to donate money or help, pick some worthy cause, like kids with cancer or something; the Googles of this world don't need your charity.