I'd agree if and only if this was some drastic shift in policy, but it really isn't. The headline here is basically ad-supported platform shows ads. Ads have been super common on YouTube for years and years, so this isn't really a big change in overall expectations & experience. It's not an ad-free platform goes ad-supported situation where it was subsidized to kill off others before showing ads. More a small loophole was closed, and only if you were large enough to even have the loophole available to you in the first place.

I think what we're saying is compatible. Youtube isn't really doing anything new, just putting out more ads. They're able get away with it because they have a monopoly.

In my opinion, they don't really have a monopoly. They have plenty of competitors. In fact, the largest user generated video servers are under facebook control.

They didn't do it because they had a monopoly, they don't have a monopoly. It was more base than that. They did it because they wanted more money. Which is their right. I'm not complaining, but everyone's putting forth a great deal of high tone reasoning fro something that really is base venality at its root. They want more money. They believe they can get it even though they are not a monopoly. Even though Facebook is bigger. And even though their users will get mad.

You're totally right, they want more money. I agree they don't have a perfect monopoly either. There are lots of other options.

The reality is, most of their customers aren't going anywhere. Consider all the times you use Youtube. Trying to find a music video, watching sports highlights, videos from your favourite creators. Can you switch to DailyMotion for all of that now? Are all of your creators posting their videos on Facebook? Even if they are, are the videos as easy to find and discover as they are on Youtube? For content creators, is there anywhere else they can share and expect to find the same kind of audience? Not really.

This is what I'm talking about when I say monopoly. It's true, there's other options. A creator can post their videos on Vimeo and host their own website to monetize, just like someone could have taken a horse and buggy instead of the new railroad. No one is forced to go by train, but doing it the old way is inefficient and expensive. n both cases they won't get the same bang for their buck.

You yourself admit that Youtube is a platform that provides you with great user base and discoverability. That's also the exact reason what every other platform uses to charge 30% (Steam, Apple Store, etc). So why is it expected here for Youtube to give away all that for free, and allow you to completely turn off all the ads making them zero dollar, while you are having your content hosted for free and making money externally?

You're right, they shouldn't give all of that away for free. They deserve to make money for their service. I don't really have an opinion on the business model, or whether it's right or wrong to force ads on all videos.

I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits. I think monopolies are bad in principle, and Youtube is another example, just like Microsoft was, cable companies are, telecom was, railroads were, etc.

> I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits

But I'm not sure that's clear. There's been a distinct increase in the number of in-video ads (Raycon, Skillshare, ExpressVPN, Squarespace, Curiosity Stream, and so on), which probably corresponds to a distinct decrease in Youtube enabled ads. So with that logic, Youtube is probably making less money from top creators, who have been skipping the middleman entirely. This seems more like a step to retaining existing profits instead of increasing them.