- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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When you have a goose that produces a reliable daily supply of golden eggs do you:
- keep collecting your daily egg
or - see if giving it a good kick or two gets you more eggs
Youtube most likely never made any money. Hosting these vast amounts of video is expensive. Google stopped telling us how much they money youtube made them lose. You would think they would start bragging when they could make a profit off of it.
That being said, this still sucks of course.
Although they don’t profit directly from youtube, it’s a strategy they take to impede competition from arising and keeping their name as the main one. It’s the kind of strategy only multibillionaire companies can do, and, in my opinion, something that should be restricted, because it affects smaller businesses to the point of becoming inviable.
I agree. Amazon is infamous for that strategy as well. They either buy competitors or make a loss until the competitor is bankrupt.
More notably, its a strategy they can do when borrowing costs are functionally zero.
A lot of this shit is just the consequence of Fed Rate Policy. No more cheap money means these loss leaders are actually being expected to generate profit, not to just act as clearing houses for propaganda.
“But what about profits”
“The ~$10MM in profit we booked last year is not enough!” The curse of infinite growth.
enshittification at play
As YouTube increases the number and length of ads, the amount of traffic behind blockers rises accordingly.
This is also just… a function of the evolving digital space. The consolidation of the internet ownership sphere and the modernized APIs/coding tools afford server-side content warehouses more and more power over what the end user receives.
Because AWS owns all the fucking rack space, because ISP monopolies are the defining feature of western net access, and Microsoft force-feeds people their proprietary interfaces, we’re moving away from the point where clients control what they display and closer to the point where everything’s just a dumb-terminal for big business.
We’re effectively backpeddling from Web 2.0 to Terrestrial TV.
- keep collecting your daily egg
We’re getting closer to the prophetic 4chan post
They have really gone all out on the whole enshittification process during the past couple of years, haven’t they?
Just wait until they figure out how much more $$$$ they can make by putting all content behind microtransactions:
Imagine a world where, instead of grappling with complex tokens and crypto jargon, you have a digital wallet connected to your Web browser. This wallet would automatically handle microtransactions as you browse and consume content, creating a seamless and simplified experience, reminiscent of exchanging tokens at a funfair or arcade
This transition to the Great Paywall isn’t just about the monetization of content; it’s about balancing the scales and recognizing the value of content creators in the digital ecosystem. In the next chapter of the Web, users aren’t just passive consumers but active participants whose attention carries tangible value.
Let’s not forget that, if we do go down the microtransaction hell of an internet path, we’d be screwing things up big-time for the coming generations…
We did the Twitter to Mastodon migration. Now we are doing the Reddit to Lemmy/kbin migration. When are we doing the YouTube to Peertube migration?
That’s impossible or at least very difficult, right now. Video content is very expensive. LBRY is the only feasible option.
Or people could just host their own peertube instance with banner ads instead of preroll/mid video ads and maybe add a donation/subscription system.
add a donation/subscription system.
At this point you could just subscribe to YouTube.
Not wanting to pay youtube does not mean not wanting to pay creators.
Then I’m going to begin not fucking watching YouTube.
There is a federated version of YouTube…
But storing video is a massive challenge, way harder than dealing with a Lemmy or Mastodon instance.
My rational mind realises it’s such an expensive system to run that it’s reasonable for them to charge or show ads. The problem is they’ve been extremely aggressive with ads and pushing subscriptions, to the point where I’m pretty resentful of the idea. Plus they’ve neglected so many things (like allowing aggressive copyright predators and refusing to implement sensible human-based appeals processes) that they really should have dealt with and instead embraced an algorithm that I’m pretty sure is at least partially responsible for the radicalisation of large groups of people.
I… don’t mind paying for shit. I just don’t want to give them money.
Also: wow there’s federated video sharing? Bet that’s not cheap to run.
Also: wow there’s federated video sharing? Bet that’s not cheap to run.
It’s called PeerTube for the record.
No videos listed there.
I think the other issue is that giving them money doesn’t stop some of the ads iirc
The federated version also breaks one of YouTube’s bigger strengths: Just browsing for something interesting.
even google is having difficulty storing video.
lol
Yeah, good luck making me watch ads trough newpipe
The great thing about using free open-source software is the immunity from corporate shenanigans.
Well, all the open-source Reddit clients are pretty drastically affected by Reddit’s shenanigans.
RedReader isn’t actually. Reddit granted them an exemption, partially because it’s FOSS
YouTube demands NewPipe to pay $1b…
Haha
Newpipe or even better, LibreTube, for even more privacy (and included sponsorblock!).
Damn straight - they can take my NewPipe from my cold dead hands :-)
Alphabet killbots have been dispatched to your location. Remember to enable sponsorblock in the settings.
oh boy, I wish youtube kills itself like reddit is doing right now so decentralized alternatives can become widely adopted
YouTube is a bit of a different animal.
YouTube allows creators to monetize content - so there’s a sense of shared success. Channels from Tom Scott or Captain Disillusion are amazing, because their production in part relies on that revenue model.
YouTube also understands that without paying for popular content, you won’t get the consistent cavalcade of medium content from people that want to earn a living or notoriety through YouTube. And that include anything from videos of cats falling over, blogs about life in remote places, DIY home improvement or niche guitar technique lessons.
Meanwhile on Reddit, if a user gets thousands of upvotes and a million page views for a short story they wrote exclusively for the platform, Reddit won’t pay them a cent. The very thought is laughable.
The other thing to consider is that the technology just doesn’t exist for there to be a viable ‘federated’ YouTube. YouTube has 800 million videos - many in HD and many are hours long. That’s a big ask in terms of storage and maintenance - even several thousand videos.
Video compression has a long way to go before that changes. For now, it makes sense for leave that storage to the companies with resources.
Text, however… well, all of Wikipedia can fit on around 20 gigs - 60 million odd articles. And for the record, that can pretty much fit on an iPod from 2002.
I do wish that YouTube wasn’t a monopoly. Twitch is the only thing that’s close, and it has it’s own special lane for live streaming. Back in the old days, there was some competition - including Google Video. But that went away when Google bought YouTube. I guess there’s Vimeo, but they’ve got a very different approach.
I mean, the Justice Department is suing Google for monopolizing ad tech - and I think we could see antitrust laws used in the next few years to breakup YouTube. Maybe the successor companies would federate - like when Bell was broken up into what became Verizon and ATT - who now directly compete for customers.
The other thing to consider is that the technology just doesn’t exist for there to be a viable ‘federated’ YouTube.
Well, Peertube exists. But I agree it is very hard to get close to the amount of videos YouTube hosts without it becoming too expensive. But that is even true for companies like Google, which is why they are pushing these changes. It seems like people need to accept that a video platform must either show ads, make you subscribe, or receive substantial donations.
I almost can’t believe Wikipedia is only 20GB btw. Does that include all the pictures on there?
Does that include all the pictures on there?
It can’t. 60 million odd articles with pictures only taking 20GB? I doubt it. Just the text taking up so few space that I can believe.
@pinwurm @manned_meatball I wonder if if Nvidia Video Upscaling and similar tech could also help 480p videos turn HD. That could help bandwidth reduction but it isn’t a solution as much as a workaround.
I think the day will come when YouTube caps uploads or stops them entirely. Maybe limiting user’s uploads for videos that don’t get high viewership. Eventually this model can’t go on forever, I can’t even comprehend how it’s profitable currently.
YouTube is very profitable.
Targeted ad revenue is massive - and Google owns both the platform and ad delivery system (AdSense). As well, YouTube Premium and YouTube TV exist.
YouTube Premium has 50 million subscribers.
YouTube TV is great for live sports and has something like 6 million subscribers now (compared to Comcast who has around 15 million TV subscribers). It’s only going up. At $73/mo, that earns them $5.25 Billion a year in subscription fees alone.While they have high expenses, they’re rolling in money.
As data compression gets better and hardware becomes cheaper - YouTube’s operating costs get cheaper… which means bigger paychecks for execs.
Right there with you on that one. The biggest problem is video hosting is a pain in the rear, particularly at such a grand scale. Hopefully, video hosting platforms will go niche, thus reducing bandwidth costs for each platform and “YouTube” will be the whole federation.
Just FYI for anyone reading: Invidious and Piped are great YouTube mirrors, and Piped even blocks in-video sponsor sections!
We need a Lemmy not that comments on all YouTube links and gives an invidious link instead
As fill-in ads are a vector for computer viruses and other malware I for one will NOT be disabling my ad blocker unless YouTube is willing to provide a lifetime subscription to something like Life Lock and make me whole for anything lost to whatever malware arrives as a part of an ad.
Where else can I watch sci-show, Linus-tech-tips, and all the other channels I subscribe to?
Just use newpipe. It’s youtube without the ads. Doesn’t have casting support, but it allows you to download the videos. You can also listen/download to the audio of videos, without fetching the video.
Newpipe will probably be blocked as well if youtube is doing this. Honestly not sure why youtube hasn’t blocked yt-dlp and others already.
It’s not easily block able as it scrapes the YouTube website. They’d have to stop having a website for that to happen.
The problem with scraping is that while it’s difficult/impossible to block completely, it’s pretty easy to keep making changes to your site to disrupt scrapers. The work required by the scraper to adapt to those changes is usually way more than the work you put in to disrupt them.
So if a commercial site wants to make scraping unreliable and impractical, they almost certainly can.
Honestly curious if they’d ever consider that, considering how popular watching youtube on the phone is, so I could see them trying to get even desktop users to use an app to prevent 3rd party launchers
If they did though, it would probably cause at least a decent number of people to try to find alternatives
At the end of the day, the main way the fediverse gets new users is the big tech companies screwing up
More for fedi :)
@beatniak @blank_sl8 recently many yt-dlp User Interfaces stopped working, I couldn’t download certain videos. So maybe the cat and mouse is about to begin.
this particular cat and mouse has been going on for a long time.
Although I get the impression it’s not particularly aggressive.
There was a while there about a year ago where newpipe seemed to break every week and you had to install the next patch version from github. It’s not like newpipe had to develop some new workaround or something, just changed class names or something.
Seems like it’s profit squeezin season on every major platform.
VC cash is drying up, and other investors are getting leery of the Silicon Valley funding model. Investors are demanding a path to profitability soon or right now.
Nebula is really good at this point. Almost everything I enjoy watching is one there now.
Seems like one of the best options to support your favorite creators.
YouTube is the only Google service I use on a regular basis. Happy to leave them behind if they continue with this type of behavior.
It would be less convenient, but it is what it is and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s ads.
I actually do not understand the widespread hostility that people have toward this kind of thing. I watch a lot of content on YouTube, and I don’t want to see ads, so I pay for premium. I watch a lot of content on Twitch, and I don’t want to see ads, so I pay for turbo. Hosting a major video streaming website isn’t cheap. It’s not like these things are unreasonably priced. If you hate the ads so much, then why not pay for the service that the platform is offering you, and for the content that creators are providing on it? And if you don’t watch often enough for ad-free viewing to be worth a few bucks a month to you, then why get so worked up about having to sit through an ad every now and then?
I hate ads with a passion due to my experiences in the marketing industry and will go out of my way to never watch any. I also don’t want to pay for random internet content, especially not to companies on the stock market. (Though I do use Patreon a bit for some content creators)
Can‘t explain it much more than that. If youtube locks me out due to that, so be it. I don‘t get worked up either, I simply state my opinion on it where I please and if I‘m not wanted I leave. That‘s about it.
I simply hate ads with a passion due to my experiences in marketing and will go out of my way to never watch any. Can‘t explain it much more than that. If youtube locks me out due to that, so be it. I don‘t get worked up either, I simply state my opinion on it where I please and if I‘m not wanted I leave. That‘s about it.
Why don’t you pay for YouTube premium? This removes all platform ads.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I block ads and don’t pay because I hate Google. In addition to their repeated violations of user privacy, they go out of their way to disable OS features unless you pay them. Like disabling background play or PiP with Safari on iOS. Those features use the same open standards as foreground web browsers, so it literally takes extra effort to break them. Effort that could instead be used to fix the numerous problems with their platform, which they don’t. I refuse to reward that behaviour.
One of the reasons I’m willing to pay is because I want the creators I watch to get the revenue to make more videos. (Although, without knowing for sure, I’d bet they get more off sponsorships than they do out of subscriptions or inserted ads.)
And if you don’t watch often enough for ad-free viewing to be worth a few bucks a month to you, then why get so worked up about having to sit through an ad every now and then?
There is an awkward gap where most services (not just YouTube) don’t offer reasonable pricing for consuming small amounts of content. So if you consume a lot of YouTube, the subscription price is justified. If you consume very little YouTube, you can probably suffer through some ads. But if you’re somewhere in the middle, there isn’t a great option.
YouTube probably makes fractions of a cent off of ads on a single video it shows me, but I can’t pay fractions of a cent to watch one video.
I’d consider this to actually be a pretty widespread problem across the internet, where it’s frustratingly difficult to buy small amounts of content for a reasonable price. It’s either the subscription or nothing for a ton of services.
I hate ads. They are annoying, and waste too much of my time, are irrelevant to me 90% of the time, and often can be malicious.
I would like to watch videos on youtube, but I dont wish to watch videos on youtube if there are ads. Also, ads are not every now and again, they are 2 ads for every video without fail now. 2x 30s ads for a 5 minute video is as bad as cable, I ditched cable and replaced it with youtube.
I just don’t think content should be behind a paywall. I want to live in a socialist utopia where content and knowledge is free to share, copyright is a relic of the past, and art and science blossom. Blocking ads takes me 0.0001% closer to that, so I’ll take it. I don’t want to pay, because I don’t want money to exist, it’s deeper than experience vs how much it is worth.
If I could download a car I would.
I was happy paying for Premium until they doubled my subscription fee out of the blue.
I was a day one Google Play Music All Access subscriber, supposedly grandfathered in to a lower subscription fee, but all that ended up getting me in the end was “Sorry, but it’s your turn to pay up now. We know you were supposed to be grandfathered in so we’ll give you a few extra months of your current rate after we bump up the costs for everyone else.”
And yet somehow they always get away with it… yar har yar the pirates life for me?
Hopefully we get a decent alternative soon
PeerTube exists but it is not popular. It has a lot of potential though
It’s about to have more potential for growth.
When will companies finally understand that some people won‘t watch ads no matter what tricks they employ. I‘d rather watch no video at all than a single ad. If that is their goal, fine.
And the percentage of people using ad blocking has to be crazy low. I’ve never seen another person in public with ad blocking. Every time I happen to see someone watching youtube, there’s ads playing.
Yeah I worked in IT support for a time and most seemed not even aware it is a thing, let alone installed it. Mostly the other IT people and a few others.
That’s likely their goal. At least some percentage of ad blocking users will disable the adblock and for those that won’t, they’ll save server costs.
For corporations that care only about quarterly stock price this makes sense. They don’t care about the long term damage to the ecosystem (adblocking users still contribute in many ways).
Yeah probably. I‘m not gonna pretend like I contribute a ton to Youtube, but I‘m still an audience member and being advertised to by the content (like sponsorships, trailers, hype and product placement). All that heavy handed blocking and banning approach does for me is push me towards researching alternatives. Similar to how I went from piracy -> Netflix -> piracy.
