this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Nominally? For sure. What about per user? Maybe, or maybe Youtube uses more resources than it should.
Also we are comparing different kind of platforms. Youtube is video sharing platform. Any “creative individual” can post there 24/7 any nonsense. Piracy sites are about licensed paid content, so comparison should be against say Netflix.
Youtube’s competitor is PeerTube which has 0 ads whatsoever
I agree but im not drawing the comparison. The meme is drawing that comparison I am just saying why I dont think its so ridiculous for youtube to run more ads than a piracy site.
Yeah, that’s on meme, I’m not accusing you of anything.
On ridiculousness part let me politely disagree. They don’t need so much ads, their revenue was around 25 billion in 2023. There are no official numbers on costs but guesstimations I saw around 14 billion (infra plus operational) so they could lower number of ads to 2/3 and still be very much profitable. They just won’t because people accepted it
Idk I saw that there margins were estimated to be around 10-30% and their ads revenue isnt set in stone they can only make a projection of what they expect it to be and hope it comes in at that or over. I think they are running as many ads as they can because they need extra money for AI capex. Its all speculation though no one knows their actual costs.