It's not a product where you are the user. Your attention is the product being sold to advertisers and the videos are a harvesting/production mechanism.

It is not in the interests of either YT or the advertisers to allow you to opt out of features that are proven to be lucrative for eyeballs.

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al_borland 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m a Premium subscriber. I don’t see ads, and YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections.

It seems like the incentive for Premium subscribers should be to keep them happy, so they keep paying, and minimize how much they watch, as they’ll be a cheaper user using less bandwidth.

Am I missing something?

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runlevel1 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections

That feature benefits YouTube, too. Maybe even more than its value as a Premium feature. It makes it so that viewers can skip the ads the creator was paid to make without YouTube getting a cut of the proceeds, pushing down the value of those ads.

	▲	gloxkiqcza 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s crazy to me YouTube is okay with hosting ads they get no cut from in the first place.

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tsimionescu 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This line of argument would make sense if they did allow paying customers who don't see ads to disable these anti-features. They don't.

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ajkjk 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

joke's on them, I have not consciously experienced a youtube advertisement in ten years

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charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

YouTube has multiple different products. YouTube as a company do not call your attention a product. There isn't a product team that is in charge of people's attention as a product.