I don't like the bait-and-switch. It's evil and scummy. I feel dirty paying for evil and scummy.
Youtube was built based on work of a creator community -- much more so than Alphabet engineers -- who viewed this as a sort of open platform. Once there was network lock-in, the paywall hits, the mandatory obnoxious ads hit, and the user-hostile JavaScript hits.
Alphabet holds the legal contract, and the army of lawyers, but there was a social contract with a community which it simply broke.
It tried (with mixed success) to do the same with the free GSuite service (once they have all your email, bill you for seeing it). Remember how Alphabet originally won by using unintrusive adwords instead of flashing banner ads? All these things might be legal, but they ain't right.
I pay for subscription services, but yes, I'll go to great lengths to never, ever pay a penny for Youtube.
this is why free software and peer-to-peer network architecture is important. centralized network services and proprietary software inherently make users vulnerable to such abuses, and the companies that engage in them will be more profitable than their competitors who don't
Youtube was built based on work of a creator community -- much more so than Alphabet engineers -- who viewed this as a sort of open platform. Once there was network lock-in, the paywall hits, the mandatory obnoxious ads hit, and the user-hostile JavaScript hits.
Alphabet holds the legal contract, and the army of lawyers, but there was a social contract with a community which it simply broke.
It tried (with mixed success) to do the same with the free GSuite service (once they have all your email, bill you for seeing it). Remember how Alphabet originally won by using unintrusive adwords instead of flashing banner ads? All these things might be legal, but they ain't right.
I pay for subscription services, but yes, I'll go to great lengths to never, ever pay a penny for Youtube.