this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I see your point, but I think there's a psychological reasoning behind this.
YouTube in its early days ONLY had a free option whereas services like Netfix have always only had a paid option.
YouTube in its early days certainly had a ton of ads, but they were non-obtrusive. Things like banner ads and ads on the side of the video. Then slowly, they added in-video ads. Iirc it started out only as a single pre-roll ad, but in its current form it has devolved into multiple pre-roll ads and an ungodly amount of imcredibly jarring and obtrusive mid-roll ads that violently break up the content you are consuming. YouTube then has the gall to say that if you want to consume the platform how you used to, you have to shell out money. YouTube hasn't added anything with its subscription service. Instead it wants you to pay them money to return the service to the usability it had prior.
Discord Nitro has a subscription feature that ads something. They didn't take away say, the ability to voice chat, and lock a feature it used to have for free behind a paywall.
We can also examine Spotify with this. Unlike YouTube, Spotify has always had both a free tier and a paid tier. The free tier has between song ads and the paid tier has always had no ads. It's less jarring to have to pay for something if it has always been there. Imagine also if Spotify started putting ads in the middle of a fucking song and forced you to pay to remove them even though there never used to be ads in the middle of a song.
Tl;Dr - A twofold issue. 1. YouTube sort of shot itself in the foot in a way by not starting out with a paid tier. 2. YouTube did not really ad anything with premium, but instead is making you pay to use the service as you used to be able to for free. Obtrusive in-video ads are cancer and one of the worst types of ads.