A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world Donut @leminal.space 2 wk. ago

YouTube offers virtual trophies so you can feel bad about quitting premium

I started a free trial and cancelled it immediately to have no ads while on holiday. Didn't realize they are offering some illusion of achievements as a "reward" for your attention, doubling as a FOMO weapon for when you want to quit.

33 comments

Google bad, UBlock Origin good.
- ☝️ + DeArrow to replace clickbait thumbnails.
  
  SponsorBlock (by the same guy) to cut out in video ads
  
  Hard disagree, the arrows let me know what channels and videos to avoid
  
  I have been using dearrow for about a year, cant believe I survived yt without it before.
I have YouTube Premium for a while, and I have never seen these badges.
- Same, this is the first time I've heard of them. I guess OP is shown these in some form of A/B testing?
- Same
I had premium... until they started glitching my songs out because every time an ad would have played, they just skipped 15 seconds of the song, and since an ad never played, the trigger never got disarmed, and all of my songs would play for 5 seconds, then skip 15 seconds.

I was willing to pay to rid my life of ads, but instead I just got glitchy garbled music.
- Sounds like a personal problem. That's not how YT premium works at all.
- Wow that sounds atrocious. Music glitching is such a mood killer. Hope you're in a better place today.
- That's not how YouTube ads work at all. Sounds like your device was just messed up, or maybe some YouTube related addon was interfering with playback. I know from experience that Revanced is unusable with YouTube premium, it seems like they've only tested the app on subscriptionless users.
  
  No add ons. Just how youtube premium was behaving on both my android youtube app and my Firefox browser back when I cancelled.
  
  I still love the balls of saying "this is what you experienced an undisclosed amount of time ago? ThAtS nOt HoW yOuTuBe AdS wOrK."
- I had the same on revanced, thought they found a new way to fight adblock.
  Turns out if you clear the cache occasionally it goes away. The youtube app is a piece of trash.
  
  I would switch, but I only use it for music and I haven't seen another frontend support mixes, which I rely on
YouTube ReVanced for Android phones and tablets.

Smarttube for Android TV.

And there's an array of ways to block ads in a web browser.
Sigh.

I always get downvoted for these takes but…

Your favorite YouTubers don’t do it for free. They need to eat too.

And sure, absolutely call out shoddy business practices from Google in other areas, call out invasive ads and tracking. Call out their monopoly and all their other abuses!

But this? This is just marketing, and marketing that you are quite free to ignore at that. Is it weird? Sure. But is it dystopian? Hell naw. It’s about creating the funding that allows your content creators to feed themselves.

I am begging you to post stuff like this to !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world instead. This is just depressing.
- I don't think many people are aware that premium is used to give revenue to content creators as well. This might be the cause of some downvotes.
  
  I agree that my favorite content creators need to eat too, and I do support them through other, more direct and tangible means like Patreon and merch.
  
  It’s about creating the funding that allows your content creators to feed themselves.
  
  This is not about premium being a thing. This is about virtual shinies being dangled in front of your face to manipulate you in making choices you otherwise might not, and encouraging users to spend as much time on the app as possible. Taking advantage of people that are susceptible to this kind of marketing should not be legal, but that's just my opinion.
  
  First paragraph is news to me genuinely :0 I thought that was obvious I guess
  
  Without knowing more about the virtual shinies I guess I can’t give a full opinion, so fair. In my head I was comparing them to the “subscriber for 18 months” badges YT and Twitch give you, which aren’t all that destructive.
- My favorites youtubers aren't getting paid dick without having to downgrade their content with algospeak, even then they're very vocal about how much they begrudgingly abide by it and push viewers to patreon saying whatever they make there is worth a lot more than what they make from ads
The psychology on caring about some useless pixels is strange.
- Agreed, and please upvote if you agree too
  
  My entire life is caring about pixels lol.
- Here, have some useless pixels to make you feel better about yourself: 🏅
Oh no, I can't get the trophies when using Invidious..... 🙃
This will not work on some, but it will work on some.
Man, everything is a game, how will people ever figure out what is reality at this point and get off the dopamine ride express?
These badges look like someone at Google decided to copy the system from Google Maps / Local Guides in some cases verbatim and it's just odd, you can tell the idea wasn't designed for Youtube.

This is also your regular reminder that if you're avoiding Youtube Premium because it's too expensive for what it offers instead of just avoiding it completely on principle, then you might look into subscribing using a VPN in a country where it's cheaper (Usually considerably cheaper).

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