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So long... I'll not be returning
(lemmy.ml)
I've used most available services, but discontinued one after another along with promises that a better user experience will be provided with reduced content and removed functionality with the slight price hike. YouTube was my first and last video service I paid for, only Spotify remains on the borderline.
I have held a vendetta against YouTube Premium for nearly a decade. I will never use it. I don’t give a shit how cheap it is or how many features they take away. I will stop watching YouTube entirely before I pay a single cent for Premium.
You used to be able to lock your phone on iOS and continue listening to YouTube. I always had audio playing, but I was still connected to my environment. They took that away just so they could add it back in as a feature in Premium. Maybe it seems overly petty to be this upset about it 9 years later, but I don’t care. I’m a treat addict and they fucked with the product. I let go of most things when it comes to enshitification because the alternative is to drive yourself mad. But this is a hill I will die on every time forever.
Fuck YouTube Premium.
As someone who has worked on free Internet services, it used to be easier to make money from ads. A video ad view was worth nearly a dollar US. Audio ads were maybe 7 or 8 cents a listen. Now, a video ad view makes a few cents and audio ads are worthless. They likely did the math about how many audio ads they'd have to play on the phone in your pocket to break even and decided you'd hate it more than they would. Since content owners get just over half of what YouTube makes, they'd probably be pissed about seeing the drop in income too.
Feel free to hate YT. This was an economic decision at around the time when ad revenue had just fallen off of a cliff.
A whole dollar per view !!???