youtube getting more aggressive.. i've got firefox and ublock but this shit is still coming up
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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This was 2022 and there is conflicting figures, most of which are 2 billion to 2.8 billion regular users (regular use of at least once a week, most daily.) https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statistics/
Google has claimed youtube costs 5 billion a year to run back in 2019 but has never put out a solid figure or statement to the public, Entourage Marketing & Design did research in 2019 but the article seems to be down as I can't locate the actual source. This could be inaccurate today but all information I've seen points to it still being single digit billions to operate year to year.
If these figures are accurate, 2USD from their claimed regular users would put them near their break even point without even considering income from advertisers or other investors and business opportunities. If they really did intend for every adult youtube user (roughly 80% of their audience) to pay them 14USD a month, that's still over five times their operating costs alone.
Clearly, youtube is getting a lot more money from advertisers then they are from premium users, which is why they are trying to make the free to use option on their website so awful and unbearable that people will pay them directly to skip the ads (though rumblings have been going around at them finding ways to insert ads into premium user viewing experience as well.) And since the advertising side is so toxic and predatory they can tell when people are using ad blockers to avoid it, it reports back they aren't watching ads and thus tries to prevent people from utilizing the service entirely until their participation generates money for youtube.