I'm OK with your opinion and I appreciate hearing an alternate view to offset the echo chamber effect.

But for a lot of us, or at least me, its far deeper than just cost and ads.

It's the fact that steps keep being taken to make the platform worse. They don't want the platform usable unless you pay, and in this case they're even taking a stab at the people who pay...you don't pay enough in their mind.

If they had balls, they would just make it a closed platform. Pay to access, and restrict that per account IP. But they'd rather gaslight everybody and slowly turn up he heat so the frogs don't jump out of the pot. This way they maximize their profits for longer.
Point of all of that is, they don't care about he platform or service at all.

For me, its not even about that. Their algorithm was so jacked up I was sick of being fed videos I didn't want to see over and over, and videos I've already watched over and over. That's why they added the subscription bell...because you would subscribe to things you wanted to watch and they never showed it to you. It wasn't "you" tube it was "their" tube.

I bailed on them years ago. I still watch some content on there because there really isn't a viable alternative. I use a scraper that gives me a feed of just what I want and without ads. I watch what I like and move on with my day. I'm back in control of my video viewing.

ergo, there are extra steps, which is a pita, but not insurmountable.

I’m getting the same scores/results for Safari + uBOL and Orion + uBO but I’ll stick with safari for a bit just for a change in pace.

Weird number of downvotes here -- I thought they were meant for low-effort or non contributive comments, not an "I disagree" button. This person is giving a unique perspective as a subscriber (in this thread, anyway) and should be met with curiosity, I think. It is helpful to know that there are people who enjoy paying for it, so thanks for giving your opinion here.

I disagree because they have a dominant position for reasons other than having a good product -- they squash competition trying to make the space better while themselves actively making it worse. Subscribing means supporting that style of inhibiting innovation, not to mention the other user-hostile practices they embrace (extend, extinguish). They are an ad company and obligated to make a profit, I get that, but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices. If your product is good, it shouldn't need to be artificially propped up.

I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don't need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don't need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it's easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you're sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don't give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).

And Prime? Don't think people won't start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don't need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.

People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure...but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.

I really wanted to like and use Peertube more, but it's so devoid of any content aside from political podcasts, as far as I can tell. I can't tell if the search function is bad, or I'm using it wrong, or there really is just that little content. Any recommendations for Peertube content?

but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices.

Indeed, no company should be praised or rewarded for emulating the moves that made companies like Walmart and Amazon big.

This capitalist hellscape would be slightly more tolerable if there was ample competition in every space. Companies need to be motivated to make their profit in ways that please the consumer, but also in ways that are increasingly more ethical.

But truly, as they say, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Modern slavery and third-world exploitation...even literal child slavery are rampant in our supply chains and offshore manufacturing.

Even Google indirectly uses child slavery. The court threw the case raised against them (and other giants) out last year because these companies simply purchase "unspecified amounts" of cobalt through "global supply chains" - never mind how it came to be on the global supply chain to begin with and how much obscene profit these companies make off these resources.

Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. "It's 2 days from when the order is processed." I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it's processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you're telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?

I think it's important to keep expectations realistic though..

in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it's still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don't know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.

Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there's been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory...it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it's not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It's just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further...

You can sideload up to three apps without a paid dev account, they just expire in 7 days. Use something like AltStore (or better yet SideStore) and you have an easy way to install and re-sign two other apps. They also have the ability to essentially “offload” apps so you can have more than two other sideloaded apps, but only two can be active at a time (other than the signing app)

Gaben is gonna be the first person to digitally upload their consciousness.

I'm on my brother's premium. I told myself if my brother stopped wanting to pay for it I'd pay for it myself because I hate ads that much.

On the other hand, if Youtube itself takes it away from me I'm going to just stop watching Youtube.

I've been using Nebula, and I dig it. It's owned by the creators and there's no algorithm. Only sucks you can't really share since it's all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.

Gotta give it to them. They are extremely innovative in coming up with ways of enshitifying stuff.

I had recently heard about that service for the first time and I do think it's a good step forward. But like you said, being properly walled off is a big miss w.r.t the ideal vision of Internet culture. I think that's why I like the idea of server bill crowdfunding (same model that Lemmy instances use basically). Some people need to step up and pay for it, and once a threshold is reached, the content is publicly available for all. But it's not like the people who pay are martyrs, since of course if nobody pays then the thing is lost entirely.

For a video hosting service, I feel like paywalling features is a good compromise, too. Once the bills are covered, everyone gets to enjoy ad-free, unsponsored videos... something along those lines would be preferable, at least to me since I feel like the openness of the internet is a great component to what makes it such a special place. Not that I mind private internet spaces either. I think both are important. So I think Nebula has a place in my personal utopian internet landscape too lol

I’m willing to bet my left nut that they will rename it as such in the future.

No they are keeping the family plan but shutting down the non household sharing. Now it is "one additional adult and four kids."

Revance if you're on android man. I mean I pay for premium but I still use it to patch the app at least.

This depends heavily where you are. In urban areas the one day and overnight options have expanded quite a bit, but seemingly at the expense of rural two day options.