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| We're coming in hot! |
You know, I've been using Youtube for over 10 years. To some of you who are younger, for whom Youtube has always been Youtube from after Google buying it, it may seem that Youtube has not changed all that much in a decade. And indeed there's still many things that are basically unchanged.
Yes, this is where you put in the jokes about the comments section.
And I'm not here to lament that it went from a social network (I had "Youtube Friends") to something that tries to sell you Batman and Robin when you look up clips of it. If YT us is now a service then YT is now a service and there's no fighting back against that.
With that said, if Youtube is a service, then we judge it as a service. Here's the service: You browse through the millions of vids, find one you like, click and the video plays. There's channels native to Youtbe providing original content, there's officially hosted preexisting content suppliers, and there's "guy at home trying to get you to help him steal superman." varieties of quality. You can rent or I think buy movies for Youtube, you can..."find" movies on Youtube, you can find somebody who hosted just that good clip from that good show or movie.
There might be some ads, too.
Now, skipping ads is something I generally did not do...because I used my internet browser to watch YT instead of the dedicated app, so I did not get ads. I didn't do it for that reason, I just thought Google had enough control of our lives that I should also be using their app for something I could see on the internet. I considered it a failure on their part not to put ads in the browser, and no, I wasn't gonna reward their failure by watching it in their app.
But I understood that watching this ads helped Creators, so if ads ever played I did not skip them, because I knew at least there was a solid chance Lewis Louhaug or Phelan Porteus or Lindsay Ellis or Larry Bundy or Bob Chipman might see some money from it. I know how this works, a single view is /nothing/ but little by little you fill the cart, as my momma used to say.
I did not like the ads. I don't remember ever seeing a Youtube ad that made me want what it was selling. And while I might have tolerated them, there where certainly ones that crossed some lines. Like I like you guys, but I'm not watching 20 minutes of Prager U just to watch 8 minutes of you. I do not like you THAT much, I don't think I like ANYBODY that much.
But it was understood that watching the ads was broadly good for Youtubers and skipping them, I assumed, sent some kind of virtual signal to YT HQ that you weren't ENGAGING with the ads. When you saw that ad you knew you where doing your part.
Unless Youtube chose to just give all that money to somebody who claimed the copyrights of the work.
Yes indeed, YT has been notorious for years by handling copyright disputes by just putting the ads and giving the entire winnings of that video to whoever claims owns some copyrighted material in it, even if the material is 10 seconds long and the "owner" can't prove it owns anything. This happened to me recently, as a midi of the first 30 seconds of Smoke in the water was met with offers to just put some ads in there and give the money to Deep Purple, or delete the clip.
I am not allowed to monetize my own channel. I used to , but YT changed the rules so that you had to have a lot of views to monetize. So I'm not allowed to put ads for my own gain. If you see ads in my videos just skip them, it's just money going to some company. It does not support me.
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| This Partnership can't be held together. |
So watching the ads supports creators unless it doesn't and they don't even let you know, either. They don't let you know you might be putting up with these garbage ads for nothing. Depending on the content you're watching there's a solid chance that money is going straight to nobody related to the video.
And lately there's been a lot more ads, if you've noticed. That's because Youtube recently rolled out a policy where they're just gonna be monetizing unmonetized content for themselves, off of the people they don't allow to monetize because it "just didn't get enough views" before. They're putting ads in just old videos or videos of clips of shows, and you can't even know if the money is going to Fox or themselves.
So that's Youtube as a service: Where your video you made for fun in 2010 is now making anybody money but you. What's where "prosumers" went. So if you aren't skipping the ads because it might support the creators, remember that there's a solid change it isn't. Like, imagine one of those "antipiracy nags about how 15,000 people worked in this film" and then there's an asterisk like "*and some of them might have even been paid! Who knows? Well not YOU, that's for sure."
Personally on my end I'm always gonna skip, and if I can't skip I'll refresh the page. Maybe it won't be always, maybe sometimes I'll be to busy, but I'll do it when I can. Pretty much all my favorite creators all have said YT barely gives them money anyway, and they're all on Patreon at this point. Supporting authors is a nice sentiment, which is why those who exploit authors always have that one up their old sleeve. They'll then say supporting them is supporting creators.
And no, I don't think I'm important enough to tip the scales of YT with an "ad boycott" that will force it to treat it's creators fairly. I'm just one guy. But if it's all the same, this one guy isn't putting up with more Manscaped ads until you give me a reason.
See? I can change my terms as well.
