I also pay for yt premium.

Most people do not seem to like pay to play, pay to “win”, etc and this falls either very close or in that category.

The long term economics seem questionable to me. Google can always turn up the heat a bit more with ads, charge more for the ads, play more of them, etc when they need to be more profitable. The only way they make more from premium subscribers is charging more and they will lose people each time they do. I guess technically they could make more if premium watchers viewed less content but there’s a pretty hard floor and I suspect the economics of it are much like soda fountains.

I’m afraid ultimately if premium becomes too large of a user base Google would need to turn it into an “ad-lite” experience to increase profits. Then we’re in an even worse place.

Where did you get the impression that it's controversial to pay for YT Premium? Most threads I've seen on this topic are composed of roughly half of the comments endorsing YT Premium, while the other half endorse adblocking from a privacy/autonomy perspective similar to the opening paragraph of the uBlock Origin manifesto [1].

What minor controversy I have seen is a small minority that argue either 1. You shouldn't pay for YT Premium because it enables user-hostile business practices or 2. You shouldn't use ad-block because it's effectively "stealing."

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md

I'd pay for YT premium in a heartbeat if they let me tune the platform to my needs: disable all recommends, disable all comments, allow only a whitelisted set of channels. That would be a "take my money" moment.

Privacy rights. Google’s ad surveillance eventually feeds ICE and its ilk, so I’ll not willingly reward this behavior.

YT Premium is my favorite monthly subscription - probably the highest value software that I pay for.

Because Google does not build a platform that is beneficial to the creators who make actually good and productive and positive content.

I don't want give Google money for building a Mr Beast platform. I want the stuff Nebula does.

So I pay for Nebula.

Paying an advertising company to not show you ads doesn't make that company not an advertising company, and the problem is being an advertising company. It's corrosive to society and people.

> So I never see any ads

> helps me skip in-content ads

So you get ads still! Whether or not they are from YouTube or the video creator is irrelevant. I thought paying was supposed to supplant needing to advertise to me during the actual video.

You think explicitly highlighting that you're in the market segment that's happy to pay for online services will mean you will never see paid ads for online services again?

I pay for YT premium, but it’s less because of the ads, and more because of the stupid restriction of not being allowed background play if my phone is locked.

It's a ransom.

Not controversial per se but it’ll go the same way as Netflix - once it’s got adoption they’ll crank enshitification up to 11