>Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video. Maybe they want to watch one.
Youtube's giant selection of people demonstrating every DIY repair topic (car repair, appliance repair, iPhone battery replace, etc) you can think of -- that's available nowhere else -- has literally saved me thousands of dollars (no exaggeration).
I guess one could twist that into "you didn't really _need_ to save thousands of dollar$, you just _wanted_ to."
Youtube is much more than frivolous music videos and you're too dismissive of how it helps people.
EDIT REPLY TO: "Doesn't justify their advertising."
I wasn't responding to the advertising business model. My issue was the "nobody _needs_ to watch a Youtube video" is way too dismissive.
>There's always other sources of information. There's always better sources of information.
Not always. Last week, I needed to replace an oxygen sensor on my truck and wanted some guidance on how to do it. Yes, a pdf of a vehicle service manual has diagrams etc but that book doesn't show a video of someone actually doing it. I need to see somebody actually put a wrench on the the bolts and unplug the sensor cable. I watched 5 different mechanics do it and I'm glad I did because there are some tricky issues that my inexperience would not have solved on my own. Vimeo and other video services didn't have this car repair content. Only Youtube.
YouTube videos have helped me a lot as well. Doesn't justify their advertising. There's always other sources of information. There's always better sources of information. I make it a point to read books now. Libraries should be valued.
> "Need" is too strong a word. Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video.
Circumstantially, maybe not. In high school and college, I had plenty of homework assignments that involved a YouTube video. After classes, YouTube continued to be the biggest asset to my professional development. Having access to conference talks and long-form tutorials changed my life.
For the sake of argument, let's just say I'm fixing my sink and the first result on 5 search engines is a YouTube video. What do you expect the average person to do next?
> It's exactly what I am proposing.
Well, good luck with that. I'm very curious to see who shows up to pick up the bill in your new world. It sorta sounds like your mental model feigns the existence of capitalism and free will, though.
> I'm very curious to see who shows up to pick up the bill in your new world.
I will pick up the bill for my own consumption. I have less than zero tolerance for advertising but I still buy a lot of stuff. The difference is I do it on my own terms. I won't have them actively advertising to me. When I want something, I'll ask them. When I actively seek out their products it's not advertising but information.
"Need" is too strong a word. Nobody "needs" to watch a YouTube video. Maybe they want to watch one.
> without advertising arguably none of those services would exist
Then let their existence cease. They're corporations. They don't have human rights. They aren't entitled to life.
> I don't know what you are proposing if not completely tearing-down our relatively accessible status-quo.
It's exactly what I am proposing. A status quo where mind rape is normalized for the sake of convenience should not be allowed to exist.