Why would you pay though its really simple to block ads and youtube is already rich enough. Why bow down to consumerism and enrichment of the already rich?
maybe, hard to say. but the people who make videos, and get 55% of the revenue (give or take a bit), frequently are not (unless you insist on watching mega channels only).
While I think there is certainly a lot of questionable content because of monetization, some of my favorite YT channels exist because of it.
For example, there's a guy who rebuilt a early-1900's sailing boat from scratch, funded almost entirely by revenue from his channel. The videos are crazy high quality hand-construction porn and would never exist without the monetization aspect. Oh, and I had no prior and no current interest in boat building.
Most of the channels I follow (via RSS, rather than YT itself) are like this, and YT generally does an excellent job at putting new channels in front of me from time to time that marry my interests (even one's I didn't know I had) with phenomenally great story telling via video.
I know that it creates opportunities for people. The question is, could that guy have done it without the monetization part? Certainly, would've just taken a lot longer...
Exactly. All those screaming clickbaity headlines etc. Even serious youtubers have this now. And all the horrible sponsor fragments. It's just no longer usable without sanitation plugins.
They screw us too though. For premium viewers they already get more money, but you still have to put up with their sponsor stuff. They could put clean videos on their patreon or something but almost nobody bothers
