Im not saying there isnt a difference, or that I dont appreciate it personally. Im saying there are plenty of people that DO pay for video essays or LTT and find them even more entertaining than Game of Thrones or whatever show you want to watch on HBO or Netflix, at least at certain times of day and in certain scenarios

YouTube hosts millions upon millions upon millions of videos for free, and they set up and maintain the ad network that gets creators the money (55% of the ad revenue goes to them, 45% to youtube). That is the value they provide, not the content they create. They dont take a “risk” per se (anymore, that risk was taken in the beginning), but they are 100% outlaying resources to maintain the youtube network/experience at great expense so that people can create, host, and profit on their website with no risk to the creator except wasted time.

Obviously not a simple thing to do otherwise tons of websites would be doing the same thing and YouTube would have lots of competition, but they don’t because its actually a very resource intensive process that literally - and I mean literally as in literally - no other company is willing to take on.

There is no moral objection, unless you find funding Google in any way immoral.

Its a mutually beneficial relationship with YouTube and the Creators. Youtube has reduced the risk of spending money on content creation but takes on all the work of maintaining everything youtube offers, and the creators have reduced the risk of financial/commerical resources needed to make money on their product. Neither could exist withou the other

Thats why I added in the bit of patreon and merch. The persons argument was that no one was going to pay for content that was cheap to make, which is patently absurd given the amount of people making a living off of merch/patreon type deals

Youtube ad revenue is split 55% with the creators - presumably its the same for premium - so yes it actually is “most” depending on how you want to define that.

True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.

Lots and lots and lots of people make bank “on youtube” because people sub to their patreons or buy their merch as a way to support the channel. I think you vastly underestimate what people are willing to spend on a creator whose community they feel apart of and whos content they like.

Thats an interesting point, but I think a very, very small percentage of people are actively thinking about how much the content they are enjoying costs to make when they are factoring in if its worth paying for. Enjoyment is the number 1 metric by a country mile.

If an expensive show is shit to watch or listen to, no one is going to pay for it. You couldnt pay me to watch Battlefield Earth again for example, I dont care how expensive it was to make.

Call me insane but I pay for youtube premium. People have NO problem paying for netflix/hulu/amazon/HBO and whatever else but theres a large amount of people who wont even consider paying for Youtube( presumably because the adblocking options are relatively easy to install and use, especially on desktop)

Youtube premium and it is BY FAR the best value in entertainment for me. I watch videos on it multiple hours a day sometimes (in the background while Im doing housework or whatever) No ads for me or my kids, more money to creators, Its like $12/month or something and with that I also get a music service thats - for me - better than spotify/apple/napster or anything else really.

Theres a reason theres no completely free tier on the other services, and its because supporting things with ads alone takes lots and lots of ads. If you arent paying a dime for the service its tough to take your complaints seriously about how many ads there are, becaus you are getting the content FREE, thus you pay with your time and attention

Isnt that what they are doing here in theory? (assuming they arent just keeping it and not paying them higher wages)

At the very least there should be no tip option since thats what the service fee should be doing, but in theory this is what everyone online appears to want… higher prices and better pay for the employees (unless everyone really just wants the same prices, no tipping, and higher pay for the employees)