YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
I’d happily pay for the content on youtube, if the user experience was not as miserable as it is.
Search is basically non functional, sort by oldest is gone, search in channel is only available on desktop not on mobile, filter videos by date range is not possible, video quality is mediocre, everyone and their dog makes titles that leave no clue at all about whats actually in the video because “they do better for the algorithm”, if you want to actually read the comments or video thescription on mobile you’ll have to click “show more” and “expand” until your finger hurts, video caches only a few seconds ahead, which makes watching on flaky connections miserable, video quality defaults to 480p even on gigabit internet, subtitles have become almost completely useless, etc., etc., etc.
If they would actually care about the user experience, I’d pay. Instead they just make the ads as annoying as humanly possible, in the hopes that users pay just to get rid of the annoyance, instead of paying for an actually good service.
This is crux of the issue. The whole websites interface is structured around ads. If you pay to get rid of them, it’s still structured around ads from its most basic level, so much so that simply getting rid of them doesn’t fundamentally change the experience.
I’d happily pay for the content on youtube, if the user experience was not as miserable as it is.
Search is basically non functional, sort by oldest is gone, search in channel is only available on desktop not on mobile, filter videos by date range is not possible, video quality is mediocre, everyone and their dog makes titles that leave no clue at all about whats actually in the video because “they do better for the algorithm”, if you want to actually read the comments or video thescription on mobile you’ll have to click “show more” and “expand” until your finger hurts, video caches only a few seconds ahead, which makes watching on flaky connections miserable, video quality defaults to 480p even on gigabit internet, subtitles have become almost completely useless, etc., etc., etc.
If they would actually care about the user experience, I’d pay. Instead they just make the ads as annoying as humanly possible, in the hopes that users pay just to get rid of the annoyance, instead of paying for an actually good service.
This is crux of the issue. The whole websites interface is structured around ads. If you pay to get rid of them, it’s still structured around ads from its most basic level, so much so that simply getting rid of them doesn’t fundamentally change the experience.