I get that it started for free with less intrusive ads, but YouTube has had a huge impact on the way we all share and consume information. Understanding how much money it takes to run a service with the technology needed to provide high definition videos on a site that is up 99.9999999% of the time, I have no issue paying for a service that has changed my life in many positive ways. Now I do hate price gouging like everyone else, but it’s inescapable from gas & groceries to all streaming platforms.
Prepping the market for future fuckery is not a virtue, and this smacks of apologist rhetoric.
This in no way is grounds for a society to handwave increasingly unethical, exploitive tactics.
Operational costs? That’s the crux of this apology for poor li’l YT just trying to make it in the big scary world? FFS. I’m sure exec profits have nothing to do with their business model. 🤦🏽♂️
The logical fallacies continue…
A plea to the plebs?
Ah, there’s the “but”, of course…
Gas & groceries are goods, a streaming platform is not. More accurately, you’d have to rephrase it to something like “from Chevron & Kroger…”, but therein lies the rub, citizen.
It’s not about the product that “has changed your life”, it’s the simple fact that the corporation behind the platform is using you — and you’re paying them to be their fucking product. 🤦🏽♂️
So what should we do? Avoid all monetized information sources? I don’t pay for YT except with my time until I can skip an ad. But if you stop and think no information source is free. Libraries - over inflated taxes on an already middle to lower class that can’t afford the luxury tax breaks the ultra rich can buy, the internet - if it’s a free site then it’s selling your data skimmed from accessing the page. So what should we be supporting? Where should we be sharing and consuming knowledge in a 100% no cost to the user atmosphere?