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Comment by koito17

9 days ago

All that achieves is companies introducing ads to boost revenue for next quarter's earnings.

For a concrete example: LINE (most widely-used messaging app in Japan) has paid subscriptions, and even the highest tier subscription doesn't reduce ads. Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.

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koito17

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dspillett  9 days ago

Also, they still do the stalky part. Even if the paid service does remove the manifestation of ads on that site/service, chances are the tracking still happens so they can immediately target if you stop paying (instead of resuming collection at that point) and so the information can potentially be sold to 3rd parties or new owners (if the site/service itself is sold) or accidentally leaked (directly due to dumb decisions like sending the wrong data somewhere or indirectly due to dumb decisions resulting in poor security a black-hat can exploit).

sbarre  9 days ago

> Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.

Hmm curious to know where you live that you still get Youtube-supplied ads with YT Premium?

Because "ad-free" is literally the headline feature.

Unless you're talking about in-video ads and sponsorships added in by the video creators themselves, and then that's not something in YT's control (although they provide the "skip commonly skipped sections" feature in Premium that helps with this).

  • 8note  8 days ago

    it is something in YTs control

    they can require ad and sponsor-free copies of videos to be uploaded in order to get YT premium revenue.

    they control the platform. that they choose not to make the premium experience ad free is up to them

    • sbarre  8 days ago

      This would not be enforceable. Do you understand the scale of Youtube?

      Also why would YT get involved in the content of videos themselves, beyond legal moderation requirements?

      That's a slippery slope in itself, and it would just lead to a cat-and-mouse game where creators try to incorporate sponsorships in less obvious/visible ways, which is a net bad thing for the audience.

      Now at least creators are required to disclose when their videos contain sponsored segments or paid advertisements. What you propose would take away that accountability.

      As it stands, you can see when a video includes ads, and you can choose to not watch it. That's your choice.