I feel respected because I grab the product I want, take it to the register, and pay for it and get the result that I expect based on what I paid. Marketing and manipulation aside, I acknowledge that’s part of being an educated consumer. I’d thank you for putting value in my response, but I’m not interested either.
And yet here we are. Yet again on Lemmy. Yet again with the crybabies wanting ad-free and cost-free shit without considering that someone somewhere has to pay for it. Google is not a charity.
I was tempted to state that I was wrong, clearly you have thought about this, but I don’t agree with this perspective at all and won’t be changing my opinion. If we’re in the business of calling things out that “nobody said,” then nobody said Google was a charity.
That’s how the free market works; nobody has a gun to your head.
The ‘nobody has a gun to your head’ approach to laissez-faire mercantilism likes to ignore how important free market access is. Lack of access can be just as bad as a gun to the head, if not sometimes worse. This is a one sided argument in favor of corporatism that doesn’t address access. The main thrust of my point.
I pay for premium. I’m happy to pay for content I enjoy and I’m happy that the creators I enjoy watching get a cut without me having to watch annoying adverts. I do not expect handouts. There is nothing “shitty” about paying for things.
I don’t think YouTube has ever left me feeling like it had any regard for me as a consumer or even valued my time. It appears, from the many complaints I’ve seen by YouTube content creators, that many of them don’t feel valued or respected either. By the time Premium came along it had long lost me as an interested customer. There’s no feeling that one should honor a one-sided social contract because that requires an actual relationship. If I felt that YouTube actually cared about anything other than being the middle-man that ensures that I get served ads, and demands–but not delivers–respect for it, then maybe I would reconsider. Until then, I will enjoy their competing products. Ad-Blockers and supporting alternative hosting sites that make me feel more valued. They’ve assisted in creating their own black-market for ad-avoidance, and that’s the free market working.
Maybe tone down the extremism and personal attacks against a stranger, huh?
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Good counter-point, except that your local supermarket has to respect three separate market pressures that Google (edit: to be clear, I mean YouTube) clearly has no regard for:
So no, I don’t feel that we should ‘fuck them, too I guess’ because when I go to the supermarket I feel like I’m the customer, not the product. I feel that I get what I’m paying for and that my time is respected. Nothing about YouTube leaves me feeling like that. There’s no sense that I’m a respected customer and therein no sense that there’s any value in trying to respect a clearly one-sided relationship.
Did YouTube make all of those videos? If not, then how much should YouTube get from hosting them? This whole argument that people just want free shit isn’t just wrong, it’s also annoying. People have proven time and again that we’re willing to pay for quality and convenience. And not in that order. Once again it’s an issue about access, how they’re fighting tooth and nail to gatekeep that access to continue to control the flow of capital so they can also play the kingmakers in digital media. Messages like yours are so off base that it’s hard to believe you’re not projecting your own shitty world view, but also somehow think that because you’ll gargle some shitty ads every once in a while that you have some moral high ground. AKA; one of those people who believe they’re right and that’s all that matters and you don’t actually have to think any deeper. PS: I hope I’m wrong. Please feel free to correct my own world view if I am.
Excellent argument all around. I like that it stayed on point and didn’t devolve into something else entirely. I know you and I don’t necessarily agree, but I respect that you stood your ground and as a result, you as a person. I do feel that you could put more value into the demand-side of things, AKA, the consumer but there’s a bit of nuance there and we probably have different approaches that solve the same ideal. My follow on points would have been to argue that YouTube isn’t deserving of being given a social-contract of ethical conduct etc etc. I would also address that YouTube is central to some livelihoods and the financial well-being of others. I really wanted to highlight the sense of irony that I get that you would call a group of people crybabies and then feel personally attacked when someone took you to task and stood their ground on the counterpoint; however, I concede that if I had known you would have felt personally attacked I would have picked a softer tone and for that I apologize. I think we can both acknowledge that we’d only be arguing nuance at this point and that’s not a worthwhile use of our time. You sir (edit: or ma’am, or something in between, if it pleases), are not an NPC. (also edit; upvotes given for the statements except the original statement I disagreed with)