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Comment by monkeyfacebag | Hacker News Reader

I don't dispute any of that. I'm saying that, as a YouTube premium subscriber, I'm not clear exactly what I'm paying for. I mean, I guess fewer ads is better than more ads but I think a paid service should be able to provide me with stronger guarantees.

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To the extent that YouTube is just a user-generated content delivery platform, paying for premium makes them stop injecting their own ads. Ads that are part of the videos are outside their purview. It's a defensible, and I think reasonable position to take (and I say this as someone who hates advertising in general).

I mean, I get how Youtube works. I understand there is a distinction to be made, if I cared to make it, between Google's ads and creators' ads. My point is that Youtube premium is not ad-free and explaining how Youtube works doesn't refute that point. You may think it's fine that Youtube premium has ads because that's how Youtube works. I respect that. I still watch Youtube all the time myself.

I agree, but then the price is too high. They charge $12/month because much of the money is supposed to go to the creators - but that goes against the idea that they're just a dumb platform.

For decades, people have accepted ads in television, though it's a paid service.

And then they jumped at the first ad-free alternative. Which at first, was cable. After that ship sunk under the weight of ad-crap the Internet was the new thing.

For a while, people managed with ad-blockers until they became too easy to use and too popular so now... Netflix had a brief moment where there were no ads. Now they advertise (their own content, but still).

So from what I gather, people have spent decades running away from advertisement.

It's the natural evolution. Everyone jumps on a great product, then it becomes heavily monetized and the user experience declines, and people run to the next firm's solution that has less ads, then once they have the eyeballs, they monetize it, it's cyclical.

For decades, we did not have the means to fight back. Now we have the technology to fight this abuse: ad blockers, DVRs that automatically delete ads in recorded video, radio ad/chatter filters, sponsorship segment skippers, etc.

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