Memes

Because they take payment already. What people don't like is being nickel and dimed. Google sells ads on the page. They sell ads in the videos. The creators sell their own ads and they ask for patreon and subscriptions and donations. It's too much. I pay for premium. Google logs me out, and then I start seeing video ads again. That's bullshit. For 10 bucks a month I should literally never encounter an ad on YouTube. That's not how it works. Now the price has increased by 50%. Why should I pay that? What benefit do I get? I can use invidious or libretube, or even host my own instance, and be far better off. No ads ever, including sponsored spots. At 10 bucks a month it wasn't worth my time. At 15, I'm insulted enough that it is.

On a side note, I'm autistic enough that I'll say the quiet part out loud. I care about someone making their reasonable living creating content. I don't care about the 'livlihood' of someone who's already so rich it doesn't matter, or some mega global corporation. And it's troubling that most ways you can support a creator end up doing much more to prop up companies or platforms that interact with them in a predatory way. It's not worth several hours of my time for creators to get a couple pennies. That's just a fact.

It's not my fault if a company decided it's not worth it to continue with the advertising platform it created. It's likely just as profitable as it ever was. They just take advantage of their huge size and its stifling effect on competition to squeeze us for everything they can. That's actually illegal and if our governments were doing anything they were supposed to they'd stop it.