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YouTube is axing its ad-free Premium Lite subscription plan - The Verge
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Technology
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I think we're starting to see the beginning of YouTube's end. The algorithm is actively choking the life out of the platform, they're forcing viewers to pay fees that seem to keep getting bigger and bigger, and they're making life miserable for creators while also paying them less and less.
Once another platform comes along that ticks enough boxes to satisfy people then YouTube will be absolutely screwed. The only reason we all use that wretched site is because there is no viable alternative. More and more creators are moving to premium platforms like Nebula that offer better deals for viewers and creators alike. I'm likely to jump ship myself once more people I watch also join up.
Youtube is still the biggest video website on the world and there just isnt a viable competitor to it and nor is there financial incentive for anyone to jump into something like it given the overhead and cost. Hell even early on when youtube was lower resolution and ran worse on hardware it still beat out competitors like vimeo, dailymotion, and the various early internet content creator sites that spun off of youtubes early copyright purge.
At the end of the day they serve a tiny amount of ads which honestly is more of a minor inconvenience(especially when you remember what TV was like) and the algorithm is pretty hit and miss(personally on my feed it's not bad). Even worst case scenario if the adblockers stop working youtube will probably still not die.
It would take an antitrust hearing or something to really push youtube off of it's top spot and it would be interesting to see what that would look like for the site(though I suspect a google dismembering would leave youtube intact and just remove it form other alphabet brands which wouldnt entirely fix the issue).
Hell look at what happened on reddit. That was a very visible very big protest and there was a huge amount of outrage and reddit skews nerdy enough that the userbase actually pays attention and cares about whats going on. Weeks later and not a lot has changed. Lemmy and some other alternatives became viable but even then it And thats essentially just a big message board which links to content on other sites, in terms of design it should be easier to replicate compared to an open video site that anyone can upload to.
I wouldn't say that nothing has changed. Maybe you have to be a former daily user to notice, but most of the subs have gone downhill. Quality of posts is at a 10-year low, likely due to the mass exodus of power users and mods. I'm not saying that every valuable user has left, and I'm not saying that reddit is dead. But the quality-to-shit ratio went from 60/40 to 40/60, and it is noticeable.
Yeah I've been back there a few times to check, and the reddit I knew is most certainly dead. Its corpse will stumble around for a while animated by venture capital necromancy, but it's not really a threat any more and will stop moving soon enough. Youtube still has much enshittification to go before it gets to that point.
I think what's likely to happen isn't that we'll see one replacement for YouTube, but a large number of niche and possibly subscription based or peer to peer sites that collectively end up offering everything of value that YouTube does/used to.
Haven't they said the same thing about the last 10 adocalypses
Yes, but we keep hoping something better will show up, it's just taking way too long.
I think something like Reddit/Lemmy needs to happen to YouTube, the content creators are just not at that point yet.
There is a fediverse version of YouTube already called PeerTube. But people are finding it's incredibly expensive to host video streaming servers and is a large part why it hasn't really taken off.
Well, that and a host of other problems with its interface. Nobody's very interconnected, so it's hard to find videos.
Not to mention you're paying for it, where the goal for making videos to to get paid lol. Peertube has no ability to monetize, so even if the hosting was somehow solved, the monetization would prevent it from taking off.
Less-corporate, creator-owned networks like Nebula and Dropout might be a potential route to a more sustainable and less centralized online video ecosystem.
What requires YouTube's end is a competitor, and there is no competition. People might complain about YouTube, but it still remains the free video streaming platform. Everything else is paid, including small streamers like Nebula. You also have small content creators relying on YouTube to advertise and draw traffic.
You might jump ship, but the market doesn't seem to be doing so. If anything, people are reevaluating their paid streaming services to go less instead of more. People will complain about YouTube, but it is still the cheapest option.
This is 100% true, the issue is it's very unlikely for that happen out of nowhere. Youtube is a service that needs a lot of work & $ to compete with & they have all the content creators locked in as well. Personally I would love to be on a video platform where people just want to spread information for fun & to educate people, how youtube used to be, instead of everyone monetizing everything with clickbait video covers, titles, while making arbitrarily long videos to satisfy some Youtube ad criteria.
User content deliver platform is a really bad business model cause:
I don't know how Nebula do the revenue split, can a user even specify like I want to support this creator only? cause from what I see only 50% revenue is distributed, that means the bigger channel you are traffic wise, the more you get from sign ups. so smaller creators might not have a good time there compare to the patreon model.(where user pay directly to them and the end user just watch youtube or from other source direct stream/download).
Nebula is so cheap I have a subscription even though I almost never use it. I would use it more if they had a better recommendation system, as it is now you almost have to search for a specific video you want or dig through piles of random videos you don't care about.
Yeah I mostly open Nebula when I'm watching a video, and the creator says "I had to censor this on YouTube, you can get the full version on Nebula"
I would get a subscription but (at least last I checked) they don't want European customers. Who the fuck has a credit card and why aren't you accepting plain old bank transfers. I half-way expected them to list "mail us a cheque" under payment options.
Wait, there are parts of the world where you can pay for online subscriptions via BANK TRANSFER?!
Bank transfer is the standard option because everyone has a bank account and everyone can do it, also, there's generally zero fees attached. There may be more convenient options, but it basically always is there as a fallback. As a company you have an account, anyway, only thing you need to do is have your payment system look through incoming transactions and scan the "intended use" field for a transaction id or account number or such you told people to put in there.
Literally pretty much every online service - especially subscription ones - want a card. Not necessarily a credit card, but at least debit.
Even in Europe many people have credit cards and pretty much everyone with a bank account has a debit card.
I have a bog-standard bank account and yes of course it comes with a debit card that doesn't mean that it works with the US-centric "enter card number and expiry date" system, though. Way too insecure anyway.
Steam manages to use Giropay, I can understand if a US company doesn't want to deal with that kind of solution^1^ but accepting SEPA transfers is dead-simple, dirt cheap, and covers 100% of the EU (and more) market.
^1^ The German banking sector, alas, in in the habit of pioneering stuff and then be incompatible with what big financial players elsewhere come up with. Other times the rest of the world simply doesn't care, e.g. when it comes to HBCI/FinTS.
Nebula seems geared as a curated collection of small content makers that make more money per watch of Nebula content than YouTube. You also have some content creators who get additional funds to do larger productions on Nebula that are either Nebula exclusive or Nebula first.
I would probably see it as a middle ground between YouTube and a Patreon gift.
I really hope there is something like a flare system. You pay a fixed price every month, and that money gets distributed by watchtime or likes or so between creators. Including higher budget creations such as series and movies. Maybe depending on production budget, they can get a multiplier. Since a movie minute is usually a lot more expensive than a random guy talking into a microphone.
Nebula does this. I really like the platform except there aren't comments. Sometimes I like reading the comments on a video
The CEO is never going to add comments.
So does it have access to all the content from YouTube, netflix, hbo, Disney+ etc?
Oh no sorry. It has creators and users that business model you described afaik. There are some creators on Nebula that are also on YouTube. Nebula is not a program to watch stuff on YouTube
Same. I like reading comments. Sometimes you'll find good advice from there.
YouTube already does that, though? In fact your premium sub helps creators much more than a non-premium viewer does. Of course the multiplier proposition would be new/different.
Not trying to shill for YouTube but that's one of the main reasons I have a subscription is to support creators I like.
Premium sub probably does but not guaranteed. Iirc, premium subs offer creators $ from google via time watched, vs free users ad impressions.
Its part of the reason why some youtube channels have scheduled Livestreams, as Livestreams make a lot of money off premium subscribers watching.
Well true, but YouTube does not have all the content of the other streaming platforms, and also wants you to pay extra for e.g. movies.
I'd imagine most people using YouTube aren't looking for TV/movie style content, rather the user created stuff. Or maybe TV shorter clips.