Thanks for proving my point.

Libraries are paid for with taxes.

you think libraries are free?

most public libraries and librarians spend a great deal of their time applying for grants, asking for donations, and parsing out the meager state and federal funds they receive. You can tell that a lot goes on in a public library besides what patrons see!

Did you know that staff salaries, books, other library materials, office supplies, and utilities are funded primarily by city and county taxes? (link)

Taking this chance to say support your local libraries! Even just being a patron will show that it's a necessary resource that needs to continue. My partner and I just were talking about the library today and how we both used to go at least once a week back in the day but we've fallen off in the past decade.

Sure anytime.

A previous version of uBlock Origin (1.64.1b4) seems to work perfectly on Firefox, just in case.

I pay for YouTube premium so that I can leave the app and listen to videos. I still get ads even though I’m paying. I don’t think there’s a single surefire way to avoid them.

Having to wait with a black screen before the video starts is completely acceptable to me.
Having to watch Ads is not.

USE PORNHUB, Start uploading your content there.

Newpipe may be of interest to you.

Get Revanced or Newpipe or something like that. You get the same benefits you're paying for, plus many that you aren't, and it's all for free. Not only that, but you're not giving you're money to Google.

I have revanced on my phone and adblock on my laptop so I don't see ads on youtube on them, but I can't get rid of the youtube ads on my smart TV so I'm forced to deal with the ads for now... and the contrast shows just how insufferable youtube has become. They're so fucking aggressive with the ads now. I'm starting to get a full minute of unskippable ads for a 2 minute meme video. It's completely ridiculous. Not only that but the number of skippable ads, short ads, or videos with just one ad are quickly decreasing. Youtube is destroying itself.

That's because of missing views though mostly, no? The ad revenue isn't big anyways I think.

I wish the videos were longer than 8 min on nebula.

Philosophy tube and jet lagged are both longer than 8 minutes, I think nilered is on there as well and is definitely longer than 8 minutes.

There's a ton of content that's much longer. There's no 8-minute limitation.

It's not for everyone, but I think it's reasonable to pay for a platform that pays its content creators fairly. I spend a lot of things watching videos, and even though my income is limited, some kind of payment for the service makes sense.

I don't mind blocking ads on YouTube because they used unfair practices (endless resources from Google) to destroy the competition and become the only video provider. They put us in a corner and deserve to be put in one too.

People have been saying this for years now.

Then it's not an alternative

If it pays "a good bit more per view" than YouTube when basically no one on YT pays and many users have adblockers, someone is getting ripped off here

It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted).

Do you really expect more than even 5% of all youtube channels to do it? You have high hopes.

compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers

I believe it's done in a kinda P2P way? Didn't really check, but wouldn't that just not work with NAT internet connections, which many people have because that's just more secure this way? Also, bad for privacy.

Using a TURN server would also add huge costs so it's basically like hosting your own server

Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

I don't so I wouldn't, but if I was, I would be wondering, as I always do. Anyways, I believe XMPP doesn't store stuff and only transmits, and Matrix doesn't store things forever (and doesn't store videos like YT), and the main instance is funded by donations, and smaller instances are just pretty small and have media wiped when needed

it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary

That's the POV of people in !technology@lemmy.world or selfhosted. Most people can't be bothered with this shit and are pretty tech illiterate. Some don't want to waste even a minute. And that's the case of the very vast majority of people on the internet.

I think I should be more clear: I agree that it is reasonable to pay a platform that is fair.

The comparison to youtube is where it gets lost for me:

The issue is that, in general, the value of watching what is typically on youtube is about the level of free. If it cost me money, I could do without, it just isn't that important. I will find better ways to spend my time. So with Nebula, you have a platform that is more like just another streaming service, albeit a good one for independent creators. But that leaves me thinking what do they have that I would bother watching? Which is a pretty high bar (I didnt even own a tv for nearly 20 years). It seems less like youtube and more like HBO for independents on paper, and without free access how would I know the difference?