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YouTube's war against third party apps is just as ridiculous as its war on adblockers (www.androidpolice.com)

submitted 6 months ago by AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Google being an ass about alternative YouTube clients is somewhat dumb but they likely prefer to control user experience. They're a for profit entity so it shouldn't be that surprising. Google kicking users that cost them money is not dumb.

[–] Nommer@sh.itjust.works 16 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Or maybe Google should just improve the experience so people want to pay for a premium subscription. But instead of investing in a better user experience they'd rather intentionally make it worse to drive consumers to pay to unshitify it. But instead they're blowing loads of cash which could be used to invest in the platform and turn even more profit, but they're using it to fight a war with their customers for short term profits. They are dumb.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 months ago

Yup. I've considered paying for YouTube premium, but:

it's too expensive for how much I watch
the YouTube app kinda sucks - NewPipe is nice to use (adjust volume and brightness by sliding a finger)
it's unclear how much creators get from my subscription
there's still sponsorships and whatnot

Nebula gets rid of the ads and sponsorships, and my understanding is creators get a larger cut vs YouTube. Grayjay allows me to follow multiple streaming services and has the volume/brightness management bits as well. I'm willing to pay for both of them because they bring value, YouTube doesn't.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 months ago

We'll never know since we don't have numbers that Google does. Sadly, that also makes Google the best candidate to determine what's the best strategy for them :p

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 months ago

YouTube already did the math, as did almost every single company and corporation on the planet.

There's a lot more revenue in advertising than subscriptions, especially on a website that started off entirely free (so Netflix for example goes in the subscription model rather than the advertising model but that seems to have changed!)

There's a mass of people who follow up on these advertisements. The latest advertisements I've encountered on YouTube are really really calculated and well scripted. For example the digital dollar advertisements sound like they're going to save you from financial ruin. It's clever and it's working. Money is pouring in.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago

Or maybe Google should just improve the experience so people want to pay for a premium subscription.

The problem is that YouTube kind of already peaked, you can’t really make something that works well better

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 6 months ago

I don't think the for profit changes anything necessarily. The problem is size and impossible situations bad worse by bad leadership