I can't bring myself to pay for user-generated content platforms that do so much censorship, which results in the creators themselves having to self-censor (apparent in how many YTers avoid saying certain words to not trigger audio analysis that would result in demonetization).

Plus a lot of the ads are in the form of sponsor segments, which YouTube premium would not skip automatically, unlike the free add-on SponsorBlock.

Also watching R-18 YouTube videos now requires uploading an ID when doing it from an European IP. A lot of those aren't even porn videos mind you, just some videos randomly classified as mature audiences only.

Their content recommendation algorithm absolutely sucks. Spotify gave me better recommendations after a few days of use while YouTube has years of history from tens of millions of people to go by and can't do anything else than cycle the same videos/channels on repeat.

I will gladly pay to use/support a free-as-in-freedom YouTube competitor though.

Netflix and Spotify are fine in that respect because it's full of professional commissioned content.

Because Google still tracks me. With Google, even as a customer you don't stop being the product. That's the only reason stopping me really.

Because YouTube employs an evil recommendation system that is designed to maximize your screen time, even if this results into addiction. There are much better and more ethical alternatives, at least for some kind of videos.

I’m having a good time with nebula for educational videos. It’s not great, but it’s good enough and it’s very reasonably priced.

I dunno, I honestly think their sacred algorithm needs work.

Here's a dead simple suggestion that would help increase viewing time for me at least; if I queue up X number of different videos, don't just base autoplayed video suggestions on the last one. Look behind and base it on the other videos too. That would make for much more diverse viewing instead of just falling asleep to the same topic/channel over and over.

My point is not on how well it performs, but more on the fact that it is designed and tuned to maximise the screen time, which results in very unpleasant effect on young and children.

And to my view, when you are the largest player, by far the one with the biggest market share and you exploit children weaknesses to make some more money, well, then you are the lowest form of life on earth.

plus your favorite youtubers actually get a little bit of money when you watch their videos, even if you see no ads

Do the people who actually make the content get a sizeable chunk of the cash? I don't want to pay a monopoly that shits on smaller publishers at the behest of larger, incumbent publishers. For this reason I prefer using something like Patreon and block ads on the current monopoly platform.

Same. I watch tons of content on YouTube, so it's money well spent. And you get the bonus of YouTube Music which isn't as good as Spotify but is fine to use. I can't remember how much it cost, but I pay for the family version too, so nobody in the family has to watch the ads.

I just wish Google/YouTube would put some pressure on YouTubers to stop filling up their videos with a shit ton of advertising for VPNs, website builders, etc. It's so annoying having to skip through so many videos and I'm not interested in any of their products either.

Try SponsorBlock [0]. It’s crowdsourced and works very well by skipping intro/outro/sponsorship etc. parts of the videos.

[0] - https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Personally I don't mind such sponsorships provided it's always made clear that it's a sponsored endorsement. Not an unreasonable way to pay the bills, and I get high-quality content free of charge.

There's a new trend to add intrusive and distracting Subscribe now! 'pop-ups' to videos. I find these intensely annoying, and they put me off revisiting a channel, but I might be in a minority.

I wouldn't mind so much if these were actual endorsements that I know the creator actually liked. But it's always nordvpn or raid shadow legends or some other bogus crap that I know they either don't understand well enough to recommend or don't play themselves, it just offered the highest paycheck.

sponsor block is an amazing extension that helps with that nuisance

Those videos are required to put "contains paid promotion" or something, I think an extension should be able to detect that but don't know if one has been made yet.

Its an inventory problem.-

Also do you mean pre and post roll ads or the ads the creators them selves do ?

I'm paying for YouTube Premium, I haven't seen YT ads in years. I meant the ads that YouTubers put inside their videos.

Well the same problem exists there not many types of advertisers to go in for YouTube content.

Some of it is conservatism from brands but product fit is also a problem.

How else do propose creators make a profit or even cover their costs?

Creators do that because the ad revenue from YouTube is so low. So to fixed that, YouTube would either have to show more ads or introduce more paywalls.

I never understood why "show more ads" = "make more money". Wouldn't competition for fewer ad slots drive ad prices up?

Yes, what makes sponsor segments more valuable is the superior human-curated targeting.

The ad value doesn’t reach zero though, so more ads = more revenue

- Because you will still be looking at ads inside the video content: Product placement, also known as embedded marketing.

- Because Youtube still tracks you and sells a detailed profile of you to other ad companies (privacy risks)

- Because the actual content makers get only a tiny bit of your payment

I've found it's no longer worth the money. All my favorite content providers started shilling directly in their videos. I cancelled and have been watching a lot less youtube because the product placement has become annoying.

I've had premium for a while. The music app is really bad. Spotify recommendations are way better.

The music app is embarrassingly bad considering they had a functional Google Play Music app that they stopped producing and replaced with Youtube Music.

Don't they look at their past work and notes at least? It's shameful how bad Youtube Music is. Just the fact that there's a pause between tracks, I mean come on... I know there's an extensive list on some subreddit of all the issues with the youtube music app.

I prefer to pay creators directly, often just a one time donation through paypal or a recurring payment

I bristle at paying for YouTube Premium seeing as how I'm already paying for YouTube TV. If Google offered it as an add-on option at 50% of the cost I'd add it in a heartbeat, though of course I'd prefer to see it just added as part of the service.