If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.

Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.

I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.

It's always nice when the garbage takes itself out. And if you're inconvenienced, I feel for you, but the writing has been on the wall for years. They will keep trying to suck more money out of you every way they can until you cancel your subscription, and because that's going to happen in the end, why not cancel it today.

NewPipe told me I was IP banned last week but it went away.

I'd rather stop using than give them money.

How are they able to tell if you are in a different household ?
If the user use different VPNs then it shouldn't be able to tell the different between that and being in different locations.
So are they gathering internal network data, are they spying on the LAN and wifi ?

Meanwhile I installed the User Agent Switcher extension for firefox to change my user agent every 30 seconds to something random to avoid tracking. A few websites don’t accept it. I just quit those websites and find a non-billionaire-owned alternative like Kagi or Fastmail. So far it’s working out well.

Anyone who actually pays for this shit has it coming.

I'm thinking of doing the same but the issue is setting up the policy based routing so that only YouTube goes through that VPN.

Ill immediately cancel and goto pure piracy if they do this to me. I'm getting so tired of this shit 🥲

I'm similar - and my kids even more so. As they only watch YouTube on the main TV it's a pain to get alternate frontends on it I also like the fact there are no ads. I think the creators get a bigger cut per premium view Vs ad views, especially if they get blocked.

I honestly wouldn't mind paying for it if it didn't feel like such a fucking rip-off.

For example, for £19 a month I could sub to Netflix top tier. For that, I and three others could watch their stuff in UHD, all at the same time. And sure, Netflix content might be somewhat average these days, but it's still reasonably high quality and costs a decent packet to produce.

By contrast, YT Premium for family is £20 a month, with which I can access a bunch of videos that, while enjoyable, do not cost Google anything to make. Yes, hosting costs money, and yes, they (theoretically) pay the video creators. But it doesn't feel like £20 a month, y'know?

Part of the trouble is that they lump YT Music in to the same subscription. But I don't want or need that. I have Apple Music with its lossless catalogue, and library that I've built up over many years. If YT offered a straight up ad-free plan that I could share with my family that cost a tenner a month, I'd probably go for it. It would mean being able to watch videos on Apple TV without having to fuck about downloading them to my Plex folder first, because they've injected SO MANY ADVERTS in now that the YT app is completely unusable.

If you pay, the platform remains great. I get a discounted YouTube premium membership through my mobile phone company. I think YouTube is great, I never see ads, lots of features.

Just to offer an alternative view.

Same here. I’ve cancelled Netflix, never got Disney plus, never use prime (though I think I have access to something through prime shipping).

YouTube however; I watch this every single day, use it for learning, relaxation, documentaries etc.

It’s a fantastic platform and well worth the subscription AFAICS.

The whole internet has gone to shit

It’s too expensive agreed. However YouTube has a lot of discounted memberships through other services. I wouldn’t pay full price for it, but through my mobile phone company I get more than 50% off and that’s a bloody great deal.

"If you just give them your wallet right away, the mugging isn't so bad, really. They didn't even kick my teeth in!"

What I'm not ok with YouTube premium :

• The price is too high for a subscription. For that price I could get thousands of movies on a competing service like Netflix.

• Even if you take YouTube premium they are still farming your data and selling it to third parties.

So even if I watch a ton of YT I refuse to pay to sell my data.

If I pay for YT they have to not track me and not sell my data (at least data coming from YT).

So yeah taking YT is hassle free but is quite the scam if you think about it. Before paying you were the product. After paying you are still the product but on top of that you give them money.

It’s a product. You can buy it or not. If you don’t think it’s worth it, stay away, or stay on the free tier. You’re acting as if you’ve got some kind of right to use a service that’s provided by a commercial entity.

Imagine paying for youtube lmao

Your browser sends more data than you want it to. And if it's a specific app you're talking about, they can do whatever they want and spy you dry.
There's a reason every shitty shit wants you to install their app instead of just using their fucking webpage, which already sucks enough.

and it's a multi-billion dollar corporation, that already makes more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes, that actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay, when they've got a practical monopoly in the "free video sharing platform" market. And you're whiteknighting for them.