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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

If you're neither paying YouTube any money nor watching their ads, meaning you're a pure money sink, why should they care about your goodwill?

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Because you're an active user and thus help make the site "popular". We're seeing on Twitter what happens when management starts ignoring this basic logic of the internet.

Twitter pissed off their advertisers by pulling back content moderation. That is their biggest problem in terms of cash flow.

They're currently forcing logged-in users to share screenshots if they want to share something with non-logged-in friends and preserve any context whatsoever (you can no longer see replies, or what a xit was in response to, if you're not logged in—all you can see is a single xit). Search also doesn't work anymore if you're not logged in, and if you visit a user's page, their xits are ordered by some even-more-nonsensical-than-usual algo that puts years-old xits near the top. The site's basically totally unusable if you don't have an account.

This may be making some metric (account signups, presumably?) go up, but sure seems risky to me.

On Twitter and Reddit, the users most affected were also the people providing most value to the platform (tweets, reddit submissions, discussion, moderation). They're fairly symmetric platforms.

On YT, the people providing the value are the content creators. That is the same content creators who get a revenue share from ads and premium. They're the ones who benefit the most from blocking ad blockers. The people watching videos with ad blockers (and sponsor block)? They're not providing anything in exchange, to the platform or the creators.

If I'm referring thousands of people to YouTube, and I stop doing that while simultaneously joining the chorus of anti-YT sentiment on the internet, their bottom line should care.

good job you're not doing that then!

At this point I don't think anyone over the age of 3 doesn't know what YouTube is. I don't think much referring is happening by you.

Wow, someone actually playing the "you won't get a dime from me because you'll get something more valuable: exposure!" card against Youtube.

I'd guess those people have friends that they share videos and shorts with. Those people might want to pay for premium or watch ads.

This is precisely isomorphic to the logic of not paying freelancers because "you're getting exposure", which every freelancer knows is bullshit.

Reminds me of DJT stuffing his caterer for his wedding — “but you will be able to tell potential clients that you catered my wedding!” — which was no help at all when she had to pay bills for the food and staff.

Nobody using the site is a pure money sink. Every video watched, in what order, on what topics, is data contributed to the machine. The fact that you’re blocking ads is even useful information.

That's the price they pay for being ubiquitous. The alternative is to lose a good % of their userbase to a competitor that can make a better use of this audience.

I occasionally buy content from Youtube (primarily complete episodes of various series, occasionally a movie or movie rental).

That viewpoint will extend to others

a) there is no such user that is a pure money sink. Even without a subscription and all the ad blockers in the world they're still leaving a valuable data trail.

b) YT is a propaganda engine, too. It serves that end to allow nearly-unlimited membership.

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