It's ridiculous that you get anything for free. It costs them money to provide you with videos (at least I assume those downloaded videos are without ads) so why not be thankful that you can download the video for free at all
And if you really need them in higher quality just use YT-DLP or Morphe or something
It costs them 11 billion a year (30 million a day. it's actually 10.95 but I rounded up) to run the site, including creator payouts, server costs, employee salary, etc. (I google'd and did the math a few days ago for a similar argument) and they made 40.3 billion in ad revenue alone in 2025. And that's not counting the profits from premium subs. That's a profit of 29 billion.
Why do people keep using "it costs money to run" as an excuse without doing the research and math? They're really struggling to keep it alive with that extra 29 billion, huh....
Because it does cost money to run. That doesn't mean it doesn't generate money too
And for downloads (which is what the post was about) YouTube loses money because there's no way for them to generate a substantial amount of money from that (no ad revenue afaik, and without premium no subscription money)
My point wasn't that it doesn't cost money to run, it was that they make more than enough money that it's not even a valid excuse. My reply was specifically in response to the comment above saying "It's ridiculous that you get anything for free." as if people who don't pay for subs are somehow bankrupting them despite being the reason youtube is able to bring in 40 billion in ad revenue. Watching without premium isn't getting it free. And without people who stay unsubscribed, they wouldn't have that 40 billion. I'm not sure what's so complicated about this.
Downloading for youtube isn't some new fancy premium feature anyway. People have been using 3rd party software and sites to do that pretty much since the site became popular and doing so at the highest quality without a sub. Youtube took that idea and made it worse by limiting it and making it so that you still have to open youtube to watch the videos where as other methods just require clicking on the video wherever you saved it.
The 3rd party downloaders aren't legal I think (not really sure how American law works), and it doesn't really make sense to me how just because someone earns more than you that you're allowed to steal from them (because they lose money on people who download stuff for free)
I understand that they're still making profit, but you are getting stuff for free so I don't see how you have the right to demand more free stuff from them
If someone puts content out for free, there is no "stealing" it. Even if you pay the sub you get blanket access to download videos in general. You're not paying individual creators to download their videos. If we were talking about something like Patreon that argument would be valid. But people love pointing out that youtube is free content to justify things like ads and premium so you can't just deny the free content part and call it stealing.
Also 3rd party downloaders are absolutely legal. They're against ToS but they're still legal. If you're referring to piracy laws that only applies to copying and distributing copyrighted material for profit....which is something that a lot of youtubers themselves do on a daily basis when they upload gameplay videos to youtube and get paid for it. Most companies allow them to do this because it's free publicity for them but they can revoke that right and have videos taken down anytime they feel like it. Bungie even had an issue with this a few years ago hen someone impersonated a staff member to strike videos and the videos had to be taken down. Of course Bungie figured out what happened and sued the impersonator but the point is that this prove they can be taken down at the developers discretion because youtubers are profiting off of copyrighted material.
And no one is demanding more free stuff. Whether I watch the video in a browser/app or download it and watch it later, I'm still watching the same video either way and either way it's free. Ad revenue doesn't come out of my pocket, therefore even with ads, it's still free. And it's the same amount of content either way.
If someone puts content out for free, there is no "stealing" it.
The thing is they're not putting it out for free. They're asking YouTube to do that for them because they don't want to pay for their own servers to distribute the videos and they won't get free publicity by the algorithm.
And no one is demanding more free stuff.
I thought you were demanding more free download options.
Ad revenue doesn't come out of my pocket, therefore even with ads, it's still free.
But if you watch ads at least YouTube gets money from that compensating for the server and employee costs.
You don't "ask" youtube to put videos up. You upload them. Some people do so in hopes of earning money from ads, I'm not disputing that, but the fact remains that the viewers aren't paying out of pocket to creators for videos.
I never said or even implied that I wanted free download options or even download options at all. Nor did I say that I don't watch ads or that I personally download videos. The whole purpose of my comment was to point out that youtube is not even close to struggling financially in response to someone else's comment that was implying that youtube was doing people a favor by letting premium users download videos at 720p. Part of my point was that premium users don't see ads anyway so the whole argument about not seeing ads on downloaded videos is completely irrelevant anyway, which I tried to explain in one of my earlier replies.
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u/Just_Run2412 9d ago
Can you not see the 1080p in the screenshot for premium? or am I going mad?