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DSzymborski said:
They're literally a charity.
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A charity implies an organization that provides humanitarian or educational support. They're often nonprofits but that doesn't mean all nonprofits are charities. Organizations like the Signal Foundation thrive upon donations and grants, both from the users and from larger entities. There are also plenty of FLOSS applications developed by individual developers (or a small team of developers) which is done purely upon a voluntary basis.

Nine times out of ten, the "you're the product" philosophy is spot on but there are some exceptions.
 
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Forget targeted ads. I'd be happy enough to have curated ads that at least do not show scams - which I seem to get an exceedingly amount of.

But Google doesn't care. Minimum effort is the way.
I mean, they will pause playback to ask if I'm still watching in the middle of a 5min song, because tweaking the algorithm to do it at the end is somehow too complicated. Even for longer videos, they could easily check for timestamps and only if none are found, then fallback to interrupting whenever - but it doesn't increase profit margins, so why bother about users' quality of life?

I have one more. I have had watch history disabled for about 3 years now. Up until a couple of months ago I would still get a normal suggestions page based on my video likes and followed channels. It worked perfectly. But someone somewhere decided that they're going to start just showing me a blank page with a warning about search history until I turn it back on. Well, tough luck, because I'm not going to. I'll keep manually checking the channels I follow for new content, and I'll discover new content from suggestions at the end of watched videos.
 
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Archon of the Valley said:
A charity implies an organization that provides humanitarian or educational support. They're often nonprofits but that doesn't mean all nonprofits are charities. Organizations like the Signal Foundation thrive upon donations and grants, both from the users and from larger entities. There are also plenty of FLOSS applications developed by individual developers (or a small team of developers) which is done purely upon a voluntary basis.

Nine times out of ten, the "you're the product" philosophy is spot on but there are some exceptions.
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I literally used the word literally, literally. It's a registered charitable foundation in Germany, or more accurately, the governing entity, The Document Foundation is.
 
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Sleepy_Hollowed said:
From the C-Suite bonus/salaries.
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Well, that's an interesting revenue model. The executives pay for all the running costs of the company from the money they make...uh...from the company, which gets their money from the executives which they pay to the executives. The immaculate conception theory of enterprise.
 
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USAFRet said:
I hate ads as much as the next guy...maybe more.

But as a point of discussion:

Where should the money to support online services come from?
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I dont mind the apps , but cutting the movie I am watching is a very bad experience and is worse when the Ads are loud in the middle of slow music or landscape peaceful soundtrack etc..

If they want to make money , Just put the ads outside the screen and with sound muted...
 
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I wanted to add one more thing which hasnt been discussed.

We, the consumers did not come up with the Ad model i.e. the one where the consumer has to 100% have sat through an Ad and only then do the Advertisers pay Google and the creator. That revenue model was created by them, not us.
Why not have it like the sponsor spots some videos have. The Advertiser pays for the spot via YTs payment system and Google and the creator get their slice of the pie. I can skip it if I want to. Pretty much the model they had on TV. I could wander away during an Ad break or fast forward though it if I had recorded it.
What next ? Are they going to clamp my head in place and prop open my eyeballs to make sure I watch ? The format and revenue model needs to change and make it fair to everyone involved..
 
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As much as I like the idea of YouTube, I do hate what it has become. I think YT is way overdue for a dead serious reckoning. I hope they're forced to eat a dick on this one! They deserve it at this point to be forcefully humbled.
 
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Archon of the Valley said:
But not all developers of FLOSS are registered as such, right?
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In the US all 501(c)(3) organizations are by definition charities.

Charitable Organizations | Internal Revenue Service

Find tax information for charitable organizations, including exemption requirements, the application for recognition of exemption, required filings and more.
www.irs.gov www.irs.gov

Exemption Requirements - 501(c)(3) Organizations | Internal Revenue Service

Review a description of exemption requirements for organizations under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).
www.irs.gov www.irs.gov

Organizations organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, educational, or other specified purposes and that meet certain other requirements are tax exempt under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).p
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It's one of those things where the legal / governmental definition of a word is different or more nuanced then the lay definition of a word. Most FOSS organizations are organized under 501c3 status because that's where you can organize a foundation or trust the easiest and cleanest. The only real restriction is that the organization can not significantly participate in lobbying / political activities, which is why those groups that want to do that have to form a separate entity that handles those aspects.


While Alphabet does make a ton of money from ads, it's real goal is to mine as much user specific data as possible. They then use that data to generate models and sell business intelligence. That business intelligence is where the real value is at, the most accurate they can answer marketing / product questions the more business's will pay them for that answer. That data also helps Alphabet further advantage it's products over it's competitors products. This is where the real competition is happening in the market, who can provide the best data analytics model.
 
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Could care less about other sites, but Google is already charging me for their Google One service, which I get value out of. They should offer ad-free YT experience for already being subscribed to a service of theirs, esp. since they're trying to push everything into Google One anyways (online storage, device VPN, Dark Web monitoring, etc).
 
USAFRet said:
Just like the fraudulent 16TB flash drives sold on Amazon and fleabay.

You are free to point and laugh at them.
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I feel like that may be different because with the quantum AI thing, it mainly targets gullible people, but the fake flash drives will most likely be bought by people who don’t know any better.
 
Order 66 said:
I somewhat agree with what you are saying, but ads are how creators make the majority of their money. On other sites, I would consider using an adblocker to improve performance on low-end devices.
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The theory is, that ads will drive up sales.

The only ones able to prove that are least motivated to measure objectively. And they have been shown to cheat e.g. Facebook inventing populations with purchasing potential in an attractive age group, while openly available census data demonstrated that even the population total was 10% of the prediction.

If they could prove ad effectiveness and down to the individual level they promise to vendors, they'd have to stop pushing ads to me, because my track record proves, that ads for any product will reduce the probability of me buying it.

They are still pushing, and it still has the opposite effect.

And that puts the ball right back in their court: it's up to them to figure out the correct way to incentivise my purchase decisions and distributed the money to those who help motivating me. No amount of annoyance will make it better.

For me, the "ads" that might do the job, are good critiques, the type you see here or (used to) on Anandtech etc.

So if these authors were to be paid for "imprints" by vendors who they report on, instead of these vendors pushing ads on the site, money could still flow.

Perhaps it would seem to make it slightly more difficult to ward off vendor influence, but I'm not sure it would change the current situation that much: if TH says your product is horrible, you won't advertise it here.

Every time an ad accidentally makes it through my filters, I just want to join those click farms, where insisible ad impressions earn crooks millions and demostrate just how badly the ad instustry has gotten off the rails: code and models invent the usefulness of ads and now even the content and code will listen and decide to distribute in other ways. Let those bodies of code fight that war until ad budgets and electrons are expended and humans can have some peace!
 
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USAFRet said:
I hate ads as much as the next guy...maybe more.

But as a point of discussion:

Where should the money to support online services come from?
Click to expand...

From Alphabet, the parent Company of Google. They have a ton of other ventures that make money.
Youtube does not have to have adds or anything to run, if Alphabet is willing to pay for it.

Like I said, it has nothing to do with running youtube. It has to do with increasing revenue and corporate profit, at the cost of the consumers.

And yes, they are a business and they should make profit. However, forcing advertisements down consumers throats is not the way of achieving that goal.
 
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Alvar Miles Udell said:
He's not going to win, sadly. I wouldn't mind paying for ad free Youtube Premium, but the price they want is in excess of some ad free streaming services at $13.99 a month. That's fine if you also want Youtube Music (which is bundled with it), but for the vast majority of people who don't, Google needs to make it stand alone and inexpensive ($3 a month tops), or include it in the Google One feature set for Standard and above, since Google One is pretty lackluster.
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Let's see what the courts say. The law as quoted states " that those intentionally accessing information by infringing security measures, or doing so without lawful authority “shall be guilty of an offense.”"
"We're Google so we assume we're above the law your honour" probably isn't going to fly.
 
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