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YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household (www.androidpolice.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 239 points 1 year ago (45 children)

I have to hand it to them, they are really good at finding new, innovative ways to make the platform worse.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Deactivated Premium recently. I used their music app when driving – expecting some ads now - nope, it just doesn’t allow running in the background anymore.

    Seems like such a hostile thing - I’d like to think running ads would be a positive net income for them. (Now that I think of it - maybe they don’t have it built out into their music service.)

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Makes me long for the days of google music. It just worked. Streamed stuff and even allowed you to stream your own library that you had stored in drive. I would use that in the car. Then they ditched it for YouTube music, which was a worse experience and lacked the features.

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  • [+] -51 points 1 year ago (39 children)

    If you pay, the platform remains great. I get a discounted YouTube premium membership through my mobile phone company. I think YouTube is great, I never see ads, lots of features.

    Just to offer an alternative view.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do you have a means of removing sponsors on the mobile app though? Revanced has sponsorblock and adblock in the app.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You mean removing sponsor led segments inside a video? Sort of. The jump ahead feature, which I think is a premium feature, allows you to jump in the video based on where everywhere else is jumping in the video. So when a sponsored segment starts and you skip forward 30s (double tap on mobile, ‘k’ on PC) you are offered to jump ahead. You click that and you get to the end of the sponsored segment.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    "If you just give them your wallet right away, the mugging isn't so bad, really. They didn't even kick my teeth in!" 🤓

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  • [+] -25 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    It’s a product. You can buy it or not. If you don’t think it’s worth it, stay away, or stay on the free tier. You’re acting as if you’ve got some kind of right to use a service that’s provided by a commercial entity.

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  • [–] 59 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    and it's a multi-billion dollar corporation, that already makes more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes, that actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay, when they've got a practical monopoly in the "free video sharing platform" market. And you're whiteknighting for them. 🤡

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes

    I mean, I feel like you need to expand your comparison a little as the amount that you'll see in your lifetime is such a minute grain of sand on a beech compared to corporate profits. The money they made today, hell, in the last hour... minute... will dwarf the amount that you will likely see.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay

    And evidently those who do! My parents live in a different country. What are they, not my family? What's the family plan for? (Rhetorical question)

    With Vanced I have so many more options to customize my experience. I can hide shorts I never watch, set a fixed resolution for data and wifi, return the stupid dislike ratio they removed... And if I'm using Vanced anyway to fix all the issues they introduce, why on earth would I additionally pay for their service?

    I want to pay for their shit, especially to support content creators, but I can't support a platform whose singular mission it is to make everything worse for everyone constantly. Feels like every month I have to get a new extension to undo some horrible design decision.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    I only simp for Steam.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Gabe and his 300 yachts thanks you.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    whiteknighting

    was a weak-ass criticism when it was on 4chan being leveled at anyone who said anything not derogatory about a woman, and it's weak-ass now. Oh no, someone on the internet has an at-least-partially positive opinion of a company, how awful, we'd better stereotype and body-shame them for it.

    If you had your way, the only comments about YouTube - or any other product from a large company - that would be allowed would be negative ones. How the fuck does that make sense?

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago

    By Darwin you see a lot. I was merely stating that I think YouTube premium is worth the price I pay for it.

    Is there no product you are satisfied with? Your life must be pretty bleak.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's a "product" that profits billions off other people's - often stolen - works.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    YouTube steals other people’s work?

    I tend to watch content creators who willingly put their content on YouTube. Am I missing something here…?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    You are missing something. Multiple things actually.

    • most content isn't uploaded by the copyright holder (e.g. TV excerpts)
    • demonetized videos will still have ads (at least for people without ad blockers)
    • videos are used for machine learning without credit to authors or financial compensation (especially without consent when it's not the copyright holder uploading them)
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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'll join you in the downvotes. There's many reasons to hate YouTube. Asking them to pay for video content to everyone for free is a bit silly.

    I'm also not saying you shouldn't use alternatives or run an ad-blocker. Those are cool. I just find it funny how someone is saying: "I get some benefit in paying for this service" results in such backlash, lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm willing to sacrifice some of my valuable internet points here and be down voted to low hell.

    I was going to make a comment along those lines.

    They are, at the core, an ad company. Their motivation is to make money, and we are free to pay or not pay for their services.

    The idea that we have a right to a non essential product for free is entitlement. They make a shit load of money, but also pay money to most content creators. Could they provide a service where they essentially just pay for costs? Sure, but no for profit Corp is going to do that, it has to make money somehow. While I'm all for peer tube, I really don't know if it's sustainable.

    I wonder how many of the people who demand free access to services donate to FOSS Development.

    Maybe some form of consumer co-op, where users essentially pay for operating costs, could be an option.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Wow, shilling for YouTube premium and anti-net-neutrality (the "discount through your phone company" part) in one comment.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don’t think that has anything to do with net neutrality

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Not allowing ISPs to pick and choose winners among web services is absolutely what Net Neutrality is about. Bundling or discounting subscriptions isn't technically the same thing as zero-rating, but the end result of making a particular ISP-preferred service cheaper than alternatives is the same.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Weird number of downvotes here -- I thought they were meant for low-effort or non contributive comments, not an "I disagree" button. This person is giving a unique perspective as a subscriber (in this thread, anyway) and should be met with curiosity, I think. It is helpful to know that there are people who enjoy paying for it, so thanks for giving your opinion here.

    I disagree because they have a dominant position for reasons other than having a good product -- they squash competition trying to make the space better while themselves actively making it worse. Subscribing means supporting that style of inhibiting innovation, not to mention the other user-hostile practices they embrace (extend, extinguish). They are an ad company and obligated to make a profit, I get that, but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices. If your product is good, it shouldn't need to be artificially propped up.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices.

    Indeed, no company should be praised or rewarded for emulating the moves that made companies like Walmart and Amazon big.

    This hellscape would be slightly more tolerable if there was ample competition in every space. Companies need to be motivated to make their profit in ways that please the consumer, but also in ways that are increasingly more ethical.

    But truly, as they say, there is no ethical consumption. Modern slavery and third-world exploitation...even literal child slavery are rampant in our supply chains and offshore manufacturing.

    Even Google indirectly uses child slavery. The court threw the case raised against them (and other giants) out last year because these companies simply purchase "unspecified amounts" of cobalt through "global supply chains" - never mind how it came to be on the global supply chain to begin with and how much obscene profit these companies make off these resources.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    I'm OK with your opinion and I appreciate hearing an alternate view to offset the echo chamber effect.

    But for a lot of us, or at least me, its far deeper than just cost and ads.

    It's the fact that steps keep being taken to make the platform worse. They don't want the platform usable unless you pay, and in this case they're even taking a stab at the people who pay...you don't pay enough in their mind.

    If they had balls, they would just make it a closed platform. Pay to access, and restrict that per account IP. But they'd rather gaslight everybody and slowly turn up he heat so the frogs don't jump out of the pot. This way they maximize their profits for longer. Point of all of that is, they don't care about he platform or service at all.

    For me, its not even about that. Their algorithm was so jacked up I was sick of being fed videos I didn't want to see over and over, and videos I've already watched over and over. That's why they added the subscription bell...because you would subscribe to things you wanted to watch and they never showed it to you. It wasn't "you" tube it was "their" tube.

    I bailed on them years ago. I still watch some content on there because there really isn't a viable alternative. I use a scraper that gives me a feed of just what I want and without ads. I watch what I like and move on with my day. I'm back in control of my video viewing.

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