cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40372957
fyi:
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp lets you download videos (from youtube and also hundreds of other sites)
- for desktop, https://mpv.io/ is free and lets you watch youtube (or any other video) at even more and faster speeds than youtube premium does, among many other features
- for android, https://newpipe.net/ lets you play youtube in the background (and download videos, and block ads, …)
- https://ublockorigin.com/ blocks ads everywhere (and yes it does still work on youtube, at least in firefox anyway)
People pay for features they want. YouTube did a bait and switch and launched their service with all the features that were expected, such as running in the background, no ads, fast forwarding and everything else.
Now when the service is a monopoly, they are removing features instead of adding things that are worth extra money.
Its a bait and switch.
The cost of running YouTube is constantly growing. New features cost extra to develop and maintain. Monetizing existing features lessens the burden and allows the platform to keep providing their core service for free.
Youtube is owned by Google, market cap of 3.7 trillion dollars, third richest company in the America.
3.7 trillion is 62 million times the average American salary.
Lets pray together they will be able to manage their bills this month.
Why are you comparing the market cap of a company that runs multiple services for billions of users to the average American salary. That really shows where your brain is at and why you keep landing on the conclusion that this is unfair.
Maybe the example was a poor one, but the idea was to show that these companies have so much money, that im not going to feel sympathy for them needing even more.
Ok let’s take a look at the numbers. They might be unreasonable I dont know.
I couldn’t find YouTube’s profit or net income. So I’m going off the 2024 net income for alphabet which was 100b
YouTube is considered to be about 30% of alphabets valuation.
Let’s assume YouTube’s net income 2024 was 30b
Now they have 2.54 billion users. Divide that up and its about $12 profit per user and that is in their best year due to the election driving massive 30% increases in traffic and ad revenue.
I think $12 profit per user per year is reasonable margins.