Vincent and Clara's videos are offered for free and there is zero obligation for anyone to pay either of them anything whether it be money, time, attention, or engagement.
If someone who spends less of their time watching Clara's videos chooses to support Clara because they value her content more than Vincent's, or because they feel like Clara needs the money more than Vincent does, or for any other reason that's entirely up to them.
Similarly, it doesn't matter how many of my comments here on HN you read, you don't owe me upvotes, or responses, or donations although I might certainly appreciate them
And, likewise, Youtube is free to send the bytes to only the people they want. If they don't want to serve video data to people who use adblocks, it's their right.
You are then free to try to work around it, the same way Youtube is trying to work around your adblocker.
I'd agree with that, although that doesn't make both activities equivalent either.
Google is being increasingly obnoxious and user-hostile in an effort to get people to pay Google money to stop harassing them and wasting their time by delaying and interrupting the free content they requested with repeated attempts at manipulation, while the people who block ads are just trying to avoid Google's unwanted (and at times harmful) behavior.
Google's bandwidth and storage for the valuable content the public produces and provides to Google for free are more than paid for by the personal data they take from us and use against us at every opportunity. Google has the trillions to prove it. Some subset of youtube viewers depriving them of just one opportunity to exploit our personal information isn't going to hurt them one bit.
Right, equating views or view time with the value something brings is another thing wrong with ad-based funding. There's a lot of media that I am happy to watch as long as it is free but would also be happy to replace with other activities if it was not. Meanwhile there are other creators that I am freely choosing to pay just to see them keep creating.
I think the current YT Premium model is more fair, creators get paid more the more you watch them. I'm glad it works like this instead of pandering to donations. Anywhere I've looked, I've seen the donations model been a complete failure. Usually I am the only person or one of less than 10 that donates to an OSS project with thousands and thousands of users. People just don't donate to things that are important and useful to them. Likewise with YouTube, nobody will donate to well-made instructional videos or original news reporting, but they will donate to e-girls or gamers because they want to feel associated with those people. So I'm glad that creators are not forced to depend on donations.
> I think the current YT Premium model is more fair
I don't think it is entirely fair to invent problems for people and then demand payment from them to stop getting in their way. That said, I don't object to Google providing people with the option of giving their money to Google either, I just don't think they need the strong arm tactics.
> Likewise with YouTube, nobody will donate to well-made instructional videos or original news reporting
There are countless examples to prove you wrong. Many people on youtube doing original news reporting and providing instructional videos get donations and many earn their living entirely from money they made on youtube (either from those people who choose to donate their money directly, or those who pay Google for Premium, or those who choose to allow themselves to be subjected to ads).
After running the platform at a loss over over a decade until their competitors evaporated. And then refusing to sell the solution to the invented problems without bundling it with an unrelated service in another market they want a foothold in...you know, just anticompetitive behavior.
> There are countless examples to prove you wrong.
I think there are many more examples proving me right. In my estimate, about 1 in 750 to 1 in 1000 subscribers will donate to a video creator. That's "nobody". If you look at your favourite channels and compare numbers of subscribers with numbers of Patreon sponsors, I think you will see similar numbers.
It's not only YouTube, it's almost everything on the internet. Then people here complain about diminishing quality of the stuff online... Well, people who make that stuff need to eat. If they can't support themselves with producing quality content, they will do something else and that content will not be made. It will not exist. At least YouTube is a way that enables a lot of high quality content to exist. I know hackers think that these creators should go to hell if they don't accept to create their stuff for free, but I side with the creator in this one.
For me, I look forward to the day when YouTube is completely behind a paywall, so that penny pinchers are left to wallow in the filth to save their precious dollars.
This is also why unhealthy slop food is sold everywhere. Most people will happily destroy their own health and keep buying the cheapest crap so they can pinch their precious penny, instead of spending a little more on quality.
But what I've always wondered is what people want to do with that penny that they've pinched for so long?
If someone who spends less of their time watching Clara's videos chooses to support Clara because they value her content more than Vincent's, or because they feel like Clara needs the money more than Vincent does, or for any other reason that's entirely up to them.
Similarly, it doesn't matter how many of my comments here on HN you read, you don't owe me upvotes, or responses, or donations although I might certainly appreciate them