[rolenthedeep]

I don't want to pay YouTube

I'm happy subscribing to creators' patreons or Kofi or whatever because almost all of my money goes to them.

Whereas on YouTube, most of my money or ad-generated money goes to Google. YouTube pays creators very little and treats them very poorly. There's a new adpocalypse every few months where YouTube will randomly change the rules, retroactively demonetize and delist videos, while offering no chance to appeal or even have videos reviewed by a person.

Without even considering Google's generally evil and monopolistic behavior, why would I ever willingly give them money?

YouTube's shitty treatment of creators is why every video now has a sponsored segment in the middle. They aren't paying enough and creators need additional income sources. YouTube can decide at any moment without notice to nuke your entire business and give you no option to recover. They keep shittifying the website with shorts and aggressive ads and dark patterns to drive up ad exposure, but this doesn't translate to higher pay for creators. In no circumstance is giving google more money going to fix any of the problems.

All a YouTube plus subscription gets you is YouTube will turn off the ads and dark patterns designed to force you to pay for the subscription. As well, I have exactly zero faith that YouTube won't also start showing subscribed users ads in a year or two.

[dialogbox]

You and your creators use yt as a service. Their servers and network. Payment and others. That services don't come for free. If you don't give them any money, why Google need to provide the services?

If you don't like that, you can build your own server and steam from that.

[brewdad]

My state has given Google a truckload of tax breaks to build data centers here while raising my tax rate consistently over the past half decade.

Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear for their hosting costs.

[rolenthedeep]

And I'd rather not use YouTube! I want nothing at all to do with google. They quite simply do not deserve my money.

How much money has google made on selling my data? What do I get in return? More ads. If I pay google to remove the ads, they still sell my data and they take my money directly. By playing the game at all, you can only lose. So to the extent that is possible, I don't play. I also feel exactly zero remorse for taking advantage of a company like google. Their practices are deeply unethical and harmful, being a monopoly is inherently bad, and stealing from them is an ethical net positive.

Don't be reductive, it makes you look uninformed. This is a much more complex issue than simply paying for bandwidth.