601
YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Technology
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Fuck GOOG for normalizing surveillance capitalism
Fuck YouTube in particular for making it basically impossible to usefully host an Invidious proxy any more and for their algorithmic manipulation
PeerTube is the Way
A big problem with peertube is monetization. There should be some sort of mechanism that'd do that automatically. Otherwise there won't be much content ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that it exists but just don't see it replacing even few % of YouTube as it is.
If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.
Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.
I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.
Believe it or not, YouTube Premium is one of them. A Premium view is worth more than an ad-supported view to a creator.
(Obviously Patreon is better, as they can’t make a living off of only Premium views because it’s a smaller group; the population of ad-supported users is much much larger. But YouTube Premium does benefit the creators more than ad-supported YouTube does.)
I don't think that necessarily follows.
Have you heard of self-hosted Patreon-similar Ghost ?
No, and neither has anybody else. Not saying that to be rude or dismissive, but just using their own numbers on the front page to paint a picture. They have ~3,000 paying members as of right now. Patreon has over 10,000,000 paying members, and even then only a tiny, tiny fraction of their creators are actually sustainable.
Paid subscription services like this are a great idea, in theory; I'd love to get away from ad-supported platforms. But the truth is that they just don't work for all but a few lucky people.
YT also has a "tiny, tiny fraction" of creators that make a living there. There are many, but there are also gargantuan numbers of people never going beyond a handfull views because they can't reach their audience without paying or LUCK. No saying you're wrong though.
That's 100% true, but YT also foots the bill that creators would otherwise be responsible for when it comes to just the basics. Free hosting/distribution of high res full-length videos, globally accessible, with a player app that is actively developed and maintained, a recommendation algorithm to put your content in front of viewers' eyes... That, alone, has tremendous value for a creator that they really can't get anywhere else without paying out of pocket. All of those things would have to otherwise be paid for/maintained by the creators. While it's not a direct payment, YT relieves a huge burden for creators.
It sucks because it keeps creators' success dependent on corporate oligarchs. But at the same time, it's also great because it gives them a fighting chance to get started.
True, yes. But there's also vimeo and the federated services like (forgot the name because I rarely consume any video anywhere). It's not just YouTube. People just use it because they don't know the others or just want to be famous (for reasons beyond me but that's besides the point)
That is correct. Though I guess that there aren't more than 0.1% on yt that are "making it". You just don't see the vids that got 5 views since 2004 or the millions of ppl that so dread to be someone yet never gain traction.
And you know when exactly YouTube went total ape-shit? The moment people could earn some meager bucks. Then shitty content flooded the whole platform until it was full of crap and actual good content got harder and harder to find in that pile of "you might wanna see this" Nowadays i see the frontpage, sigh in disgust and close the page. And I haven't even seen an ad there yet. This would be the cherry on top
Shallow content comes from trying to manipulate the recommendations algorithm and "go viral". Without a recommendations algorithm, the incentive disappears.
The front page is a direct reflection of the content you engage with.
Not in my case. I watch one vid per year or so, and I block everything google. They don't know jack.
And props to the dedicated folks still running Invidious instances like https://yewtu.be/
Where would the money come from?
I'd be perfectly fine with some sort of subscription. That gets distributed to authors I watch. But I can see technical challenges to it.
Monetization itself is the problem.