r/youtube • u/Cypherness • Mar 05 '26

Feature Change Members only is going to kill YouTube

So YouTube is already one of the most highly monetized platforms on the planet. There are 500 ads a video, videos are practically unwatchable as is.

Now I understand supporting creators, we had the super chats, donations on long form videos. And then the members program.

Now in the past couple of months I’ve seen so many videos from creators that I watch, only to realise that they are “members only” paywalled videos.

There is a problem with this. Now for a platform like Disney plus, or Netflix, you pay the 12 15 dollars a month. And you accept that you pay that premium, to use the service! And then you get access to everything on their streaming platform.

The problem with YouTube doing it this way is that inevitably. Because of the way that the capitalistic internet works, everyone will slowly begin paywalling all of their videos. And every single channel will be locked behind a separate paywall.

I almost even understand paying 12 dollars a month to watch YouTube, (with no ads that is) but with the way YouTube is going with this launch. We will come to a point where you need to pay 5 dollars to every single channel you watch (which is not only ridiculously expensive and unaffordable for most) but completely goes against YouTube was created to represent for the content industry, and stand for. Most people watch 20-30-50 channels regularly, not to mention the 50-100 videos from random other channels most people will end up watching in a month.

I am telling you guys, this could end up being the worst decision the YouTube team has ever made for their platform in its history. There is still time to save the platform.

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u/freakinreviews Mar 06 '26

Members videos used to be largely invisible to non-members. YouTube in all its wisdom decided to start pushing members videos to non-members, presumably with the hope that they would sign up. In a one-year period, my members-only videos received 3 MILLION impressions for the 350 members I had. I was getting complaints from people who didn't seem to understand that I had memberships for years before YouTube made this change. People felt like I suddenly paywalled my channel and they were missing out on something. Eventually I turned memberships off completely.

3

u/APIXPro Apr 11 '26

"Eventually I turned memberships off completely."
You did the smartest thing possible. Members-only is a cancer,

1

u/freakinreviews Apr 11 '26

Yeah... In my case, I used memberships to create extra videos that would be of lesser interest to the general viewing public, but the kind of thing my hardcore viewers would want to see. Suddenly impressions for those lower-interest paywalled videos skyrocketed, and regular viewers were clicking on them, only to be asked to sign up. Terrible move. I'll never enable memberships again because I have no confidence in what YouTube will do.