This is Youtube trying to eat Patreon's lunch, essentially.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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A lot of creators are going to Patreon because they're smart enough to recognize that putting all eggs in the YouTube basket yields diminishing returns over time. Hopefully this doesn't change that.
I think it was setup more as an alternative to Twitch Subscriptions? A way for streamers to monetize their content on YouTube. For a long time this was a reason for people choosing Twitch and other platforms over YouTube.
The annoying thing is, on Twitch when subscribed to a channel, you no longer get ads on that channel. With YouTube people still get ads, which makes being a member a lot less attractive.
I think this is for specific channels so they get more of the money, not for general ad removal like YT Red is.
This is correct. Creators turn it on.
yeah and as a creator and as a viewer it’s some bullshit.
Yes it's YouTube trying to stop creators from going to Patreon
It's also completely independent from YouTube premium
Paid Youtube channel memberships have been around for years. I know starting 2022 or so up to 2024, Impact Wrestling had their weekly shows and monthly specials available through a paid channel membership in addition to through their own streaming service.
Let them invent subscriptions for everything so people start realizing that this is just a bew way of extracting money. Capitalism is a damn pyramid scheme.
Subscriptions within your subscriptions.
Such is subscriptions. They all go down this path.
Increase in price, reduce features, add more tiers and more options to pay, and reintroduce ads. The reintroduction of ads is the latest in YouTube Premium in the form of Premium Lite where it only does it on some videos and on music. These memberships have been a thing for a few years now.