I’ve been paying Youtube Premium for years and I don’t regret it. The problem is that going back is impossible

I do not know since when I have Premium YouTube, but the first track in my mail is a cancellation notice of September 2018. Spoiler: At two months I went back to discharge.

There is something uncomfortable for many people to admit that you pay for Youtube premium. It is like confessing that you have gone to a sophisticated blackmail. But here I am. I keep paying, and I don’t regret it.

I took the step after an annoying epiphany: I was watching a long video and interrupted me for the fifth time with an ad. It was not just the discomfort, but The feeling of being manipulated by an algorithm that had calculated exactly how much I could torture me before he left the platform. Google knows that YouTube is a de facto monopoly and acts as such.

Youtube premium changed how consumption content. Without interruptions, I can follow long documentaries without losing the thread. The platform was a library of knowledge again, not a sequence of advertising cuts. The creators who continue to charge more with my subscription than with ads. And as a gift comes YouTube Musickilling two birds of a shot: perfect to solve The Garminoblivious to Apple Music.

The model is perverse but effective: degrade the free experience to make it annoying and then sell the solution. It works because YouTube has trained a whole generation to tolerate constant interruptions. We have normalized to cut our thought Every three minutes.

But here comes the most insidious: Premium is an entrance drug to an interruption without interruptions. Once that experience tests, go back it becomes impossible. Google knows it. They have hooked not only to their content, but to their version of digital comfort.

That accumulated time and constant interruptions are worth more than what the subscription costs. Each announcement avoided is time that I dedicate to something that really interests me. Pure self -defense in an economy that monetizes our attention.

I’ve been paying for years and I will continue to do so. Not because the system seems fair to me, but because I have decided that my mental tranquility is worth more than my resistance. In the era of digital monopolies, this is the closest thing to freely choosing that we are going to get.

In Xataka | Arc, I apologize for what I said about you, you are the best browser in the world

Outstanding image | Omar al-Ghosson