Just to play Devil's Advocate (and I can't believe that I'm arguing for YouTube here): Why shouldn't they charge for a useful service? And it does sound like they're removing other major problems with using their platform for this purpose.
Problem: Creators want to be paid more for their content (great content, good content, bad content, etc)
Solution proposed by Google: Lets charge customers who view this content so that we can pay creators more without losing revenue.
Solution proposed by Consumers: Lets give creators a larger share of youtube's profits. We're already paying for the service by offering our data, our youtube premium subscriptions, and other forms of MTX monetization.
TLDR; Youtube is double dipping in the guacamole bowl, despite having billions of pounds of guacamole.
But the new paid videos are ad-free, so the user would no longer be offering anything monetizable. A company offering free, ad-free video streaming does not turn a profit.
That's a pretty big assumption that offering this service would not result in these users also spending more time on other, non-education related content on YouTube that is monetized. There are also other ways to monetize the product.
I think that two things can both be true: creators should be paid for their work, commensurate with the value they provide, and learning should be free (or of negligible cost) to the person doing the learning. There are exceptions to the latter when there isn't a platform involved, like personalized tutoring or coaching, but in general.
YouTube can achieve both of those goals, and advertising is not the only solution. What bothers me most about this announcement is that they aren't doing anything _new_. This is basically a carbon copy of Udemy's value prop, leveraged by YT's existing massive scale. Other than the videos being hosted on YouTube, it doesn't do anything that other platforms haven't already been doing for years.
> That's a pretty big assumption that offering this service would not result in these users also spending more time on other, non-education related content on YouTube that is monetized.
It isn't a big assumption at all because this is an external embedded player (so the user is not 1 click away from the youtube homepage, they will be in a completely separate app), with no watch-next recommendations or external links.
This is designed explicitly to not compel the viewer into continuing on to watch unrelated youtube videos.
> a new YouTube embedded player that shows content on commonly used education apps without distractions like ads, external links or recommendations.
your "solution proposed by consumers" seems obviously absurd. Google should just give away money for no reason?
If you're going to make a pitch that Google should pay more money to creators, there's got to be at least some justification for it. other than "i want more money". If google is underpaying creators, then creators should switch to other platforms. If platforms like nebula become a threat, they'll start paying more. as long as most youtubers can make more money on youtube than any other platform, there's no reason for youtube to pay more. that's how capitalism works.
Even if youtube gives total of its ad revenue(not just profit) to its creator, it will still amount to something like a dollar per 5 views. Which is too low for high quality niche content.
We've determined by our standards that you have too much guacamole. But, we refuse to see the hypocrisy of this hand-wavy standard that we've got way too much guacamole ourselves compared to another arbitrary entity. We also think, based on our own subjective assessment that guacomole is bad for you and you must reduce consumption. Correct strategy according to our experts is that we need to coerce those who have too much guacomole (again based on our subjective assessment) must give it to those who we think do not have enough. It is morally approved by insert-current-virtue-thing.
I'm confused, how is this different than adding a 5$ membership program? Why is allowing the creator to sell video content users want a bad thing? Yes Youtube gets a cut, but that's literally how every single platform works.
