Comment by anon-3988 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon-3988 | Hacker News Reader

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This is such a misguided and confused perspective on this whole matter.

> It's YouTube that's stealing from the content creators

Really?? And these content creators willingly post their content on the site so that Youtube can steal from them? Do you really think that Youtube does not provide any service here? It is really a parasite? My God, try setting up a video hosting platform for a week and see how that goes. It's amazing people can think this way, the ad-based "free for all" internet have ruined multiple generations conception of basic common sense.

Please tell me how Youtube is supposed to stay in business without using ads, without having premium services, without selling your information and all that? Please share with me this secret business strategy that no one bothered to explain how.

The only reasonable alternative that I can think of is making Youtube non-profit ala Wikimedia. But even then, people STILL hate on them because....they have so much money??? Why the fuck not, do people not realize how valuable Wikipedia is?

> Really?? And these content creators willingly post their content on the site so that Youtube can steal from them?

Many no longer do because of this. YouTube "demonetizing" videos they don't like, while continuing to show ads on that exact video and keeping 100% of the reward for themselves is certainly not fully in the right here.

> Please tell me how Youtube is supposed to stay in business without using ads, without having premium services...

As I said, I would be more than happy to pay for a service that actually treated me as a customer rather than an inconvenience. Stop forcing creators to do dumb things like "Shorts" to keep their recommendations up. Stop forcing creators to make videos of a certain length so you can drop ads in. Stop hiding incredibly useful features like the downvote just so you can force me to view content I'm probably going to hate. Just show me the content I want and provide actually useful recommendations next to that, and I'd absolutely be willing to pay money.

I think the real problem is they can't because of the mixed model. They need those dark patterns and anti-features for the ad-supported half of the userbase. Maybe if they were building two entirely separate applications?

Or maybe I'm entirely wrong and Premium actually does what I'm asking for. But I've never seen anybody claim it does, so I haven't even given it a shot.

> Many no longer do because of this. YouTube "demonetizing" videos they don't like, while continuing to show ads on that exact video and keeping 100% of the reward for themselves is certainly not fully in the right here,

If they are no longer using Youtube then it is not longer their problem innit? Good for them.

> dark pattern

This I agree with. I think we as a society need to accept that we are apes. This is what libertarians and free thinkers refuse to accepts. There are certain things that we just don't want to fuck with. You can't actually just say "lol just don't watch it" or "the free market decides what they want!". Guess what, people don't know what's good or bad for them (sometimes).

I wouldn't object to a full ban on short videos like TikTok or Shorts. inb4 "but I can control my desires!" . Okay good for you. Some people are immune to drug addiction too but that doesn't mean it should be legal.

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