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Have you perhaps considered blocking the screen with a big piece of cardboard? No coding required.
Maybe just close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and shouting 'lalalalala' for a minute or so? No cardboard required.
Instructions unclear, fingers stuck in eyes.
I use an app on Windows called ontopreplica. The original purpose of it is to draw another window on top of other windows but I legit use it to block random stuff I don't want to see.
I don't know how popular this take is, but I pay for premium and feel like it's worth it. Granted, it's super cheap in my region and I get the student discount on top of that. I'm not a creator but last I checked, premium revenue is a little higher than ad revenue and isn't affected by demonetization.
There are multiple factors that convinced me to get premium and ads weren't one of them, since I've been using ublock and Vanced/ReVanced for years.
- Many creators I watch make excellent, high effort content but get demonetized for not being brand safe.
- I use youtube a lot. I'll be the first to try fediverse alternatives of anything, but unfortunately, youtube isn't something replaced so easily simply because the creators still need money to make the content I enjoy. That's reality.
- I can afford premium but not Patreon/merch/memberships/superchats frequently enough to matter if at all.
Content on the internet hasn't been free for a long time. It's been funded by shady and user-unfriendly means like ads, harvesting data and affiliate links. It's just that the money from these sources has started to dry up recently and people are panicking. I think the web monetization api has great potential if made easily and widely accessible, since I'm sure that a significant portion of people are perfectly willing to pay a little bit monthly for a better experience and to support the content they consume. I'm looking at using it in a project of mine as well.
Premium is mostly exempting you and the creator from completely artificial problems Youtube chooses to impose otherwise.
Yes. This is 100% true for youtube and really any proprietary service with paid tiers. The greed is obvious and premium is only a little better than the alternative because creators are still being screwed over but slightly less. I only partially blame it on a large amount of people getting used to free content. But until there's something clearly better, I'd rather do this at least since it's still a net positive. In the meantime, I'll participate in FOSS communities and try to contribute to alternatives so that it doesn't stay this way.
I partially agree with you, but hosting and serving video is expensive on that scale. The cost of that has to be covered somehow, and for those who don't pay directly ads are generally the only way currently available. And companies don't want their ads associated with some kinds of content, which makes perfect sense. Would you like it if your name was associated with pornographic depictions of carebears?
Video is a massive amount of data just compared to images, not to mention plain text.
Would you like it if your name was associated with pornographic depictions of carebears?
I've literally gotten multiple ads for a local museum I support while browsing furry vore hentai. It clearly isn't that bad for businesses to advertise in front of content, because guess what, the people who browse that content probably don't consider it an issue.
Wait, I can be associated with carebear porn? SIGN ME UP!
cf Cory Doctorow's theory of Enshittification
Agreed. Considering how much I use YT, and how much high quality content I find there, the price for premium is incredibly low. I would definitely pay multiple of it if I had to (maybe I shouldn't give them ideas though...).
I've been considering paying for Premium, for largely the reasons you mention.
One question I have is, as a Premium user, do you have to disable ad block/uBlock on Youtube so that YT can track which videos you watch and pay the creators accordingly?
No, I still keep ublock enabled and still use revanced on my phone (RYD, sponsorblock, qol improvements). None of these actually prevent youtube from tracking your view, since the view counter still goes up and the video appears in your watch history.
Good point! Thanks for the info!
Just watch the ads if your worried your YouTubers are not getting money...or donate to them. I would refuse to use an ad blocker that didn't block the ads but added more crap to my system to make a black screen
The question becomes, how does someone that does not have any disposable income support creators they like without inundating themselves with ads for products they are unable to afford?
I'm a small-time YouTuber who relies on the ad money to an extent.
My take is that if you like what I do, can't afford a donation, but don't want to sit through ads, first of all I'm still happy you're there and enjoying the content. Even the view itself is valuable in a small way, algorithm-wise.
Secondly though there are plenty of other things you can do that help bring in more viewers who might be able and willing to support monetarily. Sharing videos, commenting and liking on new videos to give them that initial bump, recommending the channel when it's relevant to a conversation. In my case, taking a free pattern I've made available for you to follow along with a tutorial video, and making sure to give credit when you make the project. Etc etc.
It genuinely all helps and although my YT friends are all small-time like me, there's not a single one of us that doesn't appreciate our regular viewers regardless of whether they actually earn us money.
Just out of curiosity... if you could charge per view rather than relying on ads, how much would you need to charge per view in order to meet your income goals?
Views vary wildly between videos so I took my last year's stats to average it out a bit. Looks like the answer is around 10p.
Forgive me, I'm not super familiar with world currencies... is that 10 GBP?
Hah, no, ten pence, as in one hundred pence to a GBP 😉
Ahhh that makes more sense... that's about 0.13 USD. It's interesting to me, because I would gladly pay that much per video (or more!) if it meant I didn't have to watch ads.
Of course that model doesn't exactly lend itself to mindlessly clicking through videos (which is what Youtube wants). I know there are other video platforms out there... do you know of any that charge users per view?
Thanks for doing the math!
Honestly no idea, I don't know much about alternative platforms at all. Only just started to look into other options myself!
I'd never framed it in terms of price per view but I do love a good stat so no worries lol, was interesting.
I'd probably just mute the ad and go to a different tab or look away from the screen. I don't mean that to sound flippant, but it feels like the easiest solution.
The problem with that is lost time. It’s not much, but it can be a bit of a headache especially on things like repair videos.
That's true, especially when the video itself is only like 90 seconds long.
I’d probably just mute the ad and go to a different tab or look away from the screen.
Which is what my solution would do automatically.
If it's about monetarily supporting creators, the answer is "they can't". To monetarily support someone you either need to give them money or do something that gives them money (which, in this case, is watching ads).
In terms of supporting in other ways, someone with a large enough reach might be able to post links to videos to their communities and those other people may watch the videos (and ads), or by subscribing to/ringing the bell for a content creator's channel and being very on top of liking and commenting as soon as something goes up so that the Mystical YouTube Algorithm™️ pushes the video to more people.
Respectfully, if you can't afford something, then you shouldn't consume it. Ads are a nice way for creators to get paid for the time they put into creating the thing without requiring their customers to actually fork out money. If you don't want to fork out money AND you don't want to watch ads, then you need to just not consume that media. Anything else is not fair to the content creator.
I’d say the situation is unfair to all parties involved. No matter what someone loses. If the viewer watches the ad, the ad buyer does not receive a return on investment. If the viewer blocks the ad, the content creator is not compensated. If the viewer choses to not watch videos at all, they miss out on whatever benefits the video would have provided.
I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "If the viewer watches the ad, the ad buyer does not receive a return on investment." Doesn't the ad buyer want the viewer to watch the ad?
In any case, my comment was in the context of the OP, which is specifically concerned about the creator making money. If you care about the creator making money (and you should), then you have to either watch ads or pay them directly (via patreon, e.g.).
I have to admit that I have a sore spot for this subject. I believe (at least in America) that people are far too comfortable with the idea that we should be able to consume art for free. Obviously paying less is better than paying more from a personal finance perspective (and paying nothing is best!). However, it's quite clear that the distribution platforms are more interested in making a profit than they are in compensating creators fairly (some are better than others, of course). If the distribution platforms are stiffing the creators, and the consumers are paying little or nothing, then it's the creator left with the short end of the stick.
Generally speaking, creators just want their creations to be seen/heard because they care MOST about the art, not the money. Unfortunately, this often leaves them making less than they deserve for the value they create. Who benefits from this price/value disparity? The distribution platforms. I think if most people thought about this arrangement for a little bit, they would probably prefer that the creator gets more money and the distribution platforms get less.
However, I don't think that's the whole story. Distribution platforms need to make some money to cover the expenses of running the platform. I think it's entirely likely that the cost paid (via ad impressions) doesn't actually cover the TOTAL expense of paying the distribution platform overhead AS WELL AS fairly compensating the creator.
All that is to say, when you think about art in a producer/consumer context, it makes the most economic sense for the consumer to pay the producer. This circles back to my original premise: people are far too comfortable with the idea that we should be able to consume art for free. If we could get ourselves into the mindset that art is valuable and therefore should cost some money, I think we'd have a much more vibrant art culture.
bUt HoW wIlL i Be AbLe To PeRfOrM iNvOlUnTaRy ChArItY oN bEhAlF oF gOoGlE??11????1?
Sorry, I'm not understanding what you're trying to say. Your original post made it clear that you wanted to support the creators, so what's the involuntary charity you're referring to?
involuntary charity of google
I think the point is to not waste time and get straight to the video. If I'm watching a black screen, I may aswel have something to look at while I'm waiting
There are plenty of ads that are so repulsive that a blank screen is preferable.
I'd rather paypal/patreon/kofi/whatever $1/mo to 10 creators I like, than give Google any cut of what they get, whether by ads or premium. I'll never give Google a goddamned penny.
I use Stop the Madness which turns all their ads into a single click at most.
I'll spend $50/month on Patreon/Ko-fi sponsorships long before I ever CONSIDER spending a cent on YouTube Premium or sit through a single ad. I just avoid YouTube for the most part, because the entire experience has become a toxic cesspool of aggressive and predatory advertising (including sponsored plugs). Blech.
If you press "not interested" on every single clickbait video and use ublock origin and sponsorblock, it's not bad at all. I'm shocked whenever I see the site without being logged in, the entire page is filled with trash and ads and I need to scroll quite a while before finding anything I'd even consider watching.
But I do agree, paying money for that shit is stupid since there are much better ways to support creators.
YouTube pays creators when premium customers watch their content.
Patreon and similar services and if a creator doesn't have one encourage them to do so, so that money goes directly to the creator and doesn't go to YouTube / Google
There is also AdNauseam that hides ads and clicks on them in the background but then some money still goes to YouTube and I'm pretty sure Google banned them from the Google chrome Web store
I agreed with this idea a few months ago, and you could actually unblock specific channels. Some would even ask during the video for you to whitelist their channel.
But now they add YouTube ads... And a sponsor segment. And a shady "undercover" mobile game ad. And they plug their merch store. All in a 10 minute video.
Sorry, no. I'll block ads. In fact, I stopped paying for YouTube Premium precisely because I was paying for an ad free experience and getting ads all over the video anyway.
I make 30 minute videos with ads at 10 and 20 (with natural breaks) and refuse to do more than that because ewwww. (The automatic ad populator puts like 10 ads in the same amount of time. It’s insane.)
My channel is tiny and I still manage about $25/month (making money isn’t my goal) so I feel like my limits are good. I’d rather someone watch my stuff than bounce because there are too many adds.
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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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