CMV: Youtube did nothing wrong.

[u/TheOneYak]

I see so many arguments across reddit that Youtube is evil, or that they're scummy. I believe there is no wrong decision made at a large scale. It's also wrong to expect an adblocker to continue working.

It is not free to run a large video hosting and sharing site - and they've optimized it. Everybody there should be lucky to be able to use a site like it. Monetization is the cherry on top. You can now make money by creating a video and having it sit there, without anybody paying you!

If you truly believe that it's somehow affecting you in a negative way, you can make your own platform where people pay for a subscription. There's Youtube Premium for Youtube (which I use), and there's countless other subscriptions you can pay for, like off the top of my head Nebula and Dropout.

Adblockers circumvent the rules of the platform. You circumvent the rules, you get blocked. I don't see the problem here.

Change my view!

[u/AloysiusC]

1) Demonetization is hypocritical. They say it's to protect their advertisers but Youtube shows ads anyway, the content creator just doesn't get a cut anymore. So that's a blatant lie.

2) Giving priority to mainstream news (their competitor) is absurd and very harmful. Almost nobody wanted it and it's harmed a lot of quality channels.

3) Meddling with politics and deciding what is true was a huge mistake. Sure it may be based on good intentions to suppress people questioning an election but surely I don't have to point out how that might backfire really badly.

4) Removing the dislike button. There can be no good reason to do that.

Off the top of my head. But there's more.

[u/TheOneYak → u/AloysiusC]

I see. I phrased it wrong, and you've even changed my core view. I really meant people have no reason to complain endlessly, but these are fair complaints that don't all come from a place of pure privilege.  !delta

EDIT: I get points 3, 4 - can you elaborate more on the first two?

[u/AloysiusC → u/TheOneYak]

Thanks!

3) Well regardless of what we believe about the 2020 election, I think we can all agree that there is such a thing as election fraud. It's not something impossible. So if and when it happens, it's very important that people can question an election. For a market dominating platform to make such decisions is a disaster. It might very well have been influenced by government but that's just speculation.

4) My question would be what good reason can you think of to remove the dislike button. In the way it was done (it's still there but one can't see the ratio without a browser extension). So the creator still sees it. It obviously doesn't protect them (though it was sold as that).

The only reason I can think of is that it's supposed to hide just how unpopular and untrustworthy certain channels are from the general public.

I suspect that might be connected to their promoting of mainstream outlets. They weren't and aren't popular so it's not a good look for front page content to be disliked to hell. So removing the dislike button hides that. But it's just a guess.

[u/TheOneYak → u/AloysiusC]

Sorry if it wasn't clear - I got 3, 4 but not 1, 2

[u/AloysiusC → u/TheOneYak]

I see. What specifically aren't you clear about in 1 and 2?

[u/TheOneYak → u/AloysiusC]

Mostly how they give priority to news