zlacker

>>pabs3+(OP)
Waving that don't be evil flag proudly eh team.

>>gonzo4+g4
I hate ads as much as anyone but providing a free service that runs ads and shares part of that income with content creators is hardly particularly evil.

>>yreg+G4
People were quite ok with the ads when they were not as obnoxious as today. Apart from techies, few people would put the effort to block them.

But these days, you want to watch a 2' video on YouTube you are subjected to 20-30" of unskippable ads. Discounting the privacy (and even security) concerns, this alone pushed a lot more people to start ad-blocking were they can.

>>m000+l5
I hate it as well, but you have the option to pay for the service instead.

If Netflix introduced a freemium mode where you can watch their content with injected ads for free, would that be evil as well?

>>yreg+Lh
Big differences between the two platforms.

People pay for Netflix because they want to watch the specific content, for which the platform has already invested money. It feels natural and fair to pay them. For the same reason, if they had a perhaps limited in content, but not obnoxiously annoying ad-supported options, people would be more likely to respect it.

On the other hand, YouTube wants you to pay to get rid of the annoyance they intentionally planted in their platform, while they have invested 0 of their money on content. Also, most creators don't seem to be paid enough from YouTube, and appear to make their living off of 3rd party sponsors, sales, referrals, etc. With this model, it is not surprising that people aren't very keen in having a YouTube subscription.