Do I hate giving money to Google? Yes. Do I watch 6+ hours of Youtube a day? Also yes. I almost always have something playing in the background throughout my day, so it's the one service I'm ok paying for and I don't have to worry about it breaking like I would with other frontends.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

You have already been paying Google for that 6+ hours before even a penny came out of your account - you're just been paying in data. We have to stop pretending Google is some good guy that left an open platform in the world and just said "if you use it we'll show you some ads."

Ads aren't even the main revenue stream for Youtube, data is. All of these points about "paying for a service" become moot the moment we acknowledge the value of the data Google is farming from our interactions. This is how we're paying for Youtube. If you choose to buy Youtube Premium, understand that you're paying to not have ad interruption. You aren't paying for Youtube, because that was already happening, you're just paying for the convenience of avoid ads.

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