SnotFlickerman

Y'all are just really desperate to kill any remaining faith I had in humanity that they aren't all stupid selfish jerks, huh?

I remember the pre-Youtube internet where we created content because it was fun or educational, not because we needed money for the task of doing so.

Paying for server costs and maintaining them, sure. MetaFilter has a good system for that, they're effectively a non-profit and have a donation structure and paid admins and moderators. The rest of the people on the site, they just make good content for the sake of making good content, not because they feel the need to be paid for their time doing it.

God I miss the pre-Youtube era. "Content creators" looking for a payday via advertising are a fucking cancer.

I have watch history disabled

Man how many people fail to fucking read this is literally re-enforcing my point that maybe more people need to read. This me, quoting myself, from above. Further, someone else made the same kind of comment over a half hour ago and I responded the same, noting that I had already mentioned that I have watch history disabled, so Youtube does not and cannot give me recommendations based on my watch history.

I actually almost never watch Youtube except for the odd video game trailer or random comedy-shit-post-snippet. I don't have any subscriptions or channels I care about. I read.

Kinda scary you get recommendations like that just due to no history.

Agreed.

I have watch history disabled

Their ability to trample rights because of how much profit they make from horrible content is directly related to their ability to give you that space for free. "I'm not directly contributing" is a real weak excuse to keep using it, in my personal opinion.