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So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. I'm not clear if they want that because of

by Joeboy 8y ago

So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. I'm not clear if they want that because of bogus copyright claims, EU legislation etc, or just because they favour making money over not making money? Edit: Either way looking for alternatives seems like a good idea.

Applejinx 8y ago
I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined. Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become obvious. I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of that. Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.
- lainga 8y ago
  Well, they picked the wrong org to gamble on strongarming in the case of Blender. Instead of getting them to monetize they've just compelled Blender to move platforms.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    Other than unlikely damage to the total user critical mass effect, what does YouTube potentially lose from kicking blender out?
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      Visibility for a viable alternative?
    - tmpz22 8y ago
      It seems like Google is pretty conscious of their own PR, presumably actions like this alert Youtube employees that everything they do isn't in the best interest of humanity.
      - NegativeLatency 8y ago
        > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I doubt most of them care. Even if some engineers care, I really doubt that the product team does in a circumstance like this.
      - flukus 8y ago
        Google employees work for the worlds largest spyware company. They aren't worried about being ethical.
        Xorlev 8y ago
        That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with. Maybe avoid sweeping generalities.
        thisacctforreal 8y ago
        I agree with the first sentence but not the second. I think a lot of employees are just not taking a step back to look at the sum of the parts they are helping to build, or maybe they have optimism/trust in their leaders to not fuck everyone over, and others might just draw their line further down the sand (e.g. no Pentagon contracts). I imagine a brave few are also working to change it for the better from within. I'd definitely choose to work at Apple instead though, Google seems fundamentally creepy these days.
    - Applejinx 8y ago
      Nothing. They gain by use of a chilling effect: most of the seemingly negative actions and expectations they're known for, tend to rebound in favor of their core business. It's all meant to be Logan and Jake Paul and PewDiePie and whatever will drive low-quality mass views so long as the viewer quality isn't so low that they're losing advertisers. At a scale like this, it's just pure statistics. This is not damage. This is benefit, in terms of getting other content creators in line. The message is clear.
      - laken 8y ago
        Funnily enough, PewDiePie is no longer on YouTube's good-side, and virtually all of his newly uploaded videos get demonetized by YouTube. He's no longer "advertiser-friendly"
        andai 8y ago
        Why am I hearing this about almost everyone I watch? Isn't that a lose-lose-lose for creators, YouTube and advertisers?
        Skunkleton 8y ago
        It is likely that PewDiePie has a negative enough image that YouTube believes that associating a given brand with his content will not generate ROI for the advertisers. By demonetizing these videos 1) the advertisers win because their ads are shown more frequently in "profitable" spots, 2) YouTube wins because they build trust with their advertisers, and 3) YouTube wins again because they don't have to pay out to the content creator for valueless ad spots.
        lackbeard 8y ago
        PewDiePie viewers aren't profitable to advertisers?
        monetus 8y ago
    - chris_wot 8y ago
      They lose high quality content and have indirectly caused the promotion of a competitor. Also exposes their inability to answer basic questions, giving rise to questions from creators about their value and longevity on the Youtube platform.
    - elsjaako 8y ago
      The blender foundation is more likely than other groups to make something different work. Once something else works, it can start to get traction. This is unlike other content creators, who migh not have the technical skills to try a new platform, or might rely on youtube to get views.
    - notatoad 8y ago
      YouTube has little to no competition right now. By kicking blender out, they're forcing blender to promote an alternative to YouTube.
      - blihp 8y ago
        That is potentially the real story here, IMO. Ton has a track record of doing amazing things with impossibly small amounts of money. Given that his interests are in (video) content production, I'm not sure YouTube really thought through how this could play out...
        DoctorOetker 8y ago
        Actually the timing (near EU upload filter laws) seems to indicate they didn't dare do this before, and fully realized this danger.
        notatoad 8y ago
        Not sure what the EU filter laws have to do with anything here?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Blender serves as an optimal test case for other large non-profits with online video content that Google may push off YouTube (would love to see PyCon move their archives off as well). Discovery and subscriptions will need to be solved, but that’s not insurmountable (ie RSS). CDNs can be plug and play in front of nginx (if P2P torrent isn't your cup of tea), backend storage can be whatever is cheapest.
    - pavs 8y ago
      If only things were so simple. This reminds me how not too long ago, how everyone was trying to make a clone of HN and Reddit within 24 hours in x programming language. It's one thing make a service for few 100 users, it's a different beast to serve millions of users. In case of Online Videos, it is not only extremely difficult, it still remains very expensive. There is literally a handful of companies who can financially and technically pull it off at youtube-scale. After more than 10 years, youtube either makes very little profit or still not profitable.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        I don't disagree. Consider that perhaps you can't serve videos online and expect it to be entirely free. Can you run your compute for free? No. Can you host your database for free? No. Why would serving videos be any different? (Let's ignore limited free tiers for this argument). The more popular the content, the cheaper per unit it'll be to serve (based on bandwidth/transit costs and how they scale, and that you most likely can serve it out of RAM with Varnish, a very inexpensive CDN, or peer to peer), but there will still be a cost, and either the producer or the consumers of that content will need to pay for it.
        doomjunky 8y ago
        Pure p2p networks scale by O(log n). This means if the popularity of your video scales with n then your infrastructure just scales with log(n). The idea is that leechers become seeders. So with every new layer of distribution the coverage increases exponentially.
- gnopgnip 8y ago
  Would Blender make money from Youtube Red subscribers if they did not have monetized videos? How does this affect the profitability of Youtube?
  - larkeith 8y ago
    YouTube takes a cut of advertising profits, but gets no direct revenue from ad-free videos, I believe.
- thefifthsetpin 8y ago
  I watched your video and you made some great points. As an aside, I have to wonder if you've thought through your desire to serve your website over HTTP instead of over HTTPS. You noted that you use ad blocking software because ad networks are a common route by which malware propagates. HTTP websites comprise another salient target for malware. If I am at a coffee shop with a compromised wifi router and I load your HTTP website, that compromised router can inject malware into your page and my browser will run it, just like it would have run malware served by an ad server. If your website were served over HTTPS, the router wouldn't have been able to do that. I imagine you knew all of that, and you're right that HTTPS does have some problems, but trying to avoid those problems by opting for HTTP is exchanging those problems for (imho) much bigger problems.
  - arcbyte 8y ago
    Sometimes HTTPS makes sense and sometimes HTTP makes sense. HTTPS everywhere NEVER makes sense.
    - confounded 8y ago
      Why?
      - ldng 8y ago
        It will break the decentralised Internet ?
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      It's 2018. Https absolutely makes sense in all circumstances... everywhere for everything. Http should not even be considered as an option.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    It's simpler than that. I'm hosting websites on Hostgator, my income is that Patreon I mention in the video, and though I have a little knowledge on webmastering it's not much compared to what I make content for. I don't know how, and I'm seeing high prices for getting HTTPSed up, though I have a mental note that using Cloudflare might be a way to do it. That said, a service like that seems like it would cost a bunch of money too. I think I can't afford to use HTTPS, and I think this may be a feature not a bug to some people out there controlling things. I could well be wrong. I'm hoping for the reasons you mention that some benevolent hacker people work out how to bring this to people for free and make it simple to do.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  You made a video about YouTube criticism and host it on YouTube? Either that's being optimistic about them, or the dominance is so large that it outweighs everything else...
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    ...wouldn't that be a logical place to post your YouTube criticism? Do you think Martin Luther weakened his message by nailing his criticism of the church to the door of a church? Do you think picket lines are misguided for surrounding their targets when they could picket unrelated areas farther away?
    - Larrikin 8y ago
      It has become a pretty common complaint lately that people should only have their protests in places where the only people that will see them are the people that already agree with them.
      - mark_edward 8y ago
        Yeah it's almost like a lot of people really just want everyone to shutup and accept how things are.
        lucb1e 8y ago
        Does this still have any relation to my post earlier in the tread, or is this some different topic you're talking about? Because it sounds as if you're saying that I'm arguing everyone should stop criticising YouTube.
    - lucb1e 8y ago
      Nailing your complaints about X to the door of X, does not support X. Uploading it to YouTube makes the network effect bigger because anyone who wants to hear what you want to say will have to go to the site. It works more like vouchers, where you get a discount (technically worse for the store because they get less money) but because you'll have to go to the store to redeem it, and you'll probably buy more, it's worth it.
- cvwright 8y ago
  Eventually this is going to get them in trouble with the Sherman Antitrust Act. From Wikipedia: > "Innocent monopoly", or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. The purpose of the Sherman Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space. And now they're engaging in the type of abuse of customers that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to mitigate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Sure, its clear to you and I. But we on HN aren't whom you have to convince. Do you believe the US DOJ or more powerful states would go after Alphabet/google? That's the ones that count. I just can't see our current administration going that avenue.
    - cvwright 8y ago
      Yeah I don't know. With this administration, anything is possible. There's lots of bad blood between silicon valley progressives and the Trump admin, too.
      - JetSpiegel 8y ago
        Silicon Valley progressives? Are you talking about RMS or something? Are (American) liberals automatically progressive even if they collude to lower salaries, pay less taxes, and contribute to housing bubbles? Not to mention selling to the DoD and ICE.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- scrollaway 8y ago
  There's more stuff like this happening these days. Saw this tweet yesterday: https://twitter.com/AnneMunition/status/1008852515629105152 https://twitter.com/AnneMunition/status/1008852515629105152 YouTube preventing Linus Tech Tips from advertising their non-YouTube videos/streams. In other words, like you said: > Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.
  - welly 8y ago
    I'm surprised why anyone is surprised by this or thinks it should be any other way. Google is running YouTube as a business and they're running it the way they believe will be the most profitable. For some reason, people are still hanging onto a belief that Google cares about its users in ways other than to profit from them. Of course, it could well be that people aren't surprised and are just highlighting the Google's behaviour towards certain channels.
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      It's not particularly surprising given how shitty youtube's behaviour has been towards its content creators lately. It's just a reminder that nobody should accept it. Kind of like sometimes a president's behaviour isn't surprising, but still deserves to be highlighted and nobody should accept it.
      - welly 8y ago
        A fair comment. The only way people can refuse to accept their behaviour is by not giving YouTube their business (by either visiting the site or submitting content) and who's going to do that? It's YouTube :-/ It's their way or the highway (or Vimeo)
- etatoby 8y ago
  Thank you, very informative. Here's an idea: if you want to drive home the point that you don't do it for the ad money, and if you want to force yourself not to depend on that money, you could give it all to FOSS foundations. You could publish your YouTube check every month, as small as it may be, on your blog or website, alongside an equivalent donation to, say, the FSF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Archive.org, Blender, EFF, or whatever foundation you like. If you publicize it on YouTube and here, you may even start a movement of sorts.
jrochkind1 8y ago
https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
stcredzero 8y ago
> So this seems to have happened because YouTube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. "Don't be evil."
- drb91 8y ago
  Isn’t it convenient they don’t define any morality or worldview?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    It's hard to define, but you can know it when you see it.
    - drb91 8y ago
      So Google is clearly violating their motto?
magicalist 8y ago
> So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. But that doesn't seem to make sense. There are lots of popular channels that don't have advertising and Blender's videos are popular but not that popular. Their blogpost about it is here: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... I haven't looked at the contract they posted, but they seem to have the same interpretation as you. Maybe it's just an updated contract that includes new rules if you monetize? (that aside, the communication chain from google posted there is just atrocious. I wouldn't sign a 6 page contract based on those robo-emails either)
- orbitur 8y ago
  > There are lots of popular channels that don't have advertising and Blender's videos are popular but not that popular. It makes sense if it's staged rollout. I'm assuming all unmonetized good actors (ie not stealing other people's content) will see this ultimatum eventually.
- michaelt 8y ago
  It seems bizarre, but there is a quote from Google's support literally saying: I’ve received an update from our experts stating that you need to enable ads for your video. Once you enable, your video will be available in the USA. It's a pretty big change in policy, and a poorly announced one, but...
kolpa 8y ago
This appears to be the source for the above claim: https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097 https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097 > Google sent a contract to Blender Foundation in which we have to accept monetizing our Youtube channel content. and link to contract: http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20Google%20and%20Blender%20Foundation.pdf http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20G... The contract looks like a regular monetization contract, so the cause-effect relationship between blocking and monetization is not made clear. Why would Google single out Blender for this? Unless they had copyright concerns and needed to revshare with copyright holders, or they want to go "freemium" and make all high-view/quality videos monetized.
Theodores 8y ago
In other news, did anyone get a 'go ad free' pop-up on YouTube today, with 3 months free? Seems there are some changes going on.
- judge2020 8y ago
  Did you see this after already taking the 3 months before? I subscribe to Red (now premium, grandfathered price) and they seem to give this popup to every user.
  - Theodores 8y ago
    First time seen, in the UK, which is not the primary market.
CamperBob2 8y ago
It's pretty irritating. I'm a Red subscriber, so whatever bullshit Google has going on with their advertising monetization policy doesn't -- or, rather, shouldn't -- affect me. Yet the MIT OCW videos are blocked from my account the same as they are for everyone else. Get your act together, Google. This is just stupid.

by Joeboy 8y ago

Applejinx 8y ago

I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined. Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become obvious. I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of that. Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.

lainga 8y ago
Well, they picked the wrong org to gamble on strongarming in the case of Blender. Instead of getting them to monetize they've just compelled Blender to move platforms.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  Other than unlikely damage to the total user critical mass effect, what does YouTube potentially lose from kicking blender out?
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    Visibility for a viable alternative?
  - tmpz22 8y ago
    It seems like Google is pretty conscious of their own PR, presumably actions like this alert Youtube employees that everything they do isn't in the best interest of humanity.
    - NegativeLatency 8y ago
      > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I doubt most of them care. Even if some engineers care, I really doubt that the product team does in a circumstance like this.
    - flukus 8y ago
      Google employees work for the worlds largest spyware company. They aren't worried about being ethical.
      - Xorlev 8y ago
        That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with. Maybe avoid sweeping generalities.
      - thisacctforreal 8y ago
        I agree with the first sentence but not the second. I think a lot of employees are just not taking a step back to look at the sum of the parts they are helping to build, or maybe they have optimism/trust in their leaders to not fuck everyone over, and others might just draw their line further down the sand (e.g. no Pentagon contracts). I imagine a brave few are also working to change it for the better from within. I'd definitely choose to work at Apple instead though, Google seems fundamentally creepy these days.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    Nothing. They gain by use of a chilling effect: most of the seemingly negative actions and expectations they're known for, tend to rebound in favor of their core business. It's all meant to be Logan and Jake Paul and PewDiePie and whatever will drive low-quality mass views so long as the viewer quality isn't so low that they're losing advertisers. At a scale like this, it's just pure statistics. This is not damage. This is benefit, in terms of getting other content creators in line. The message is clear.
    - laken 8y ago
      Funnily enough, PewDiePie is no longer on YouTube's good-side, and virtually all of his newly uploaded videos get demonetized by YouTube. He's no longer "advertiser-friendly"
      - andai 8y ago
        Why am I hearing this about almost everyone I watch? Isn't that a lose-lose-lose for creators, YouTube and advertisers?
        Skunkleton 8y ago
        It is likely that PewDiePie has a negative enough image that YouTube believes that associating a given brand with his content will not generate ROI for the advertisers. By demonetizing these videos 1) the advertisers win because their ads are shown more frequently in "profitable" spots, 2) YouTube wins because they build trust with their advertisers, and 3) YouTube wins again because they don't have to pay out to the content creator for valueless ad spots.
        lackbeard 8y ago
        PewDiePie viewers aren't profitable to advertisers?
        monetus 8y ago
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    They lose high quality content and have indirectly caused the promotion of a competitor. Also exposes their inability to answer basic questions, giving rise to questions from creators about their value and longevity on the Youtube platform.
  - elsjaako 8y ago
    The blender foundation is more likely than other groups to make something different work. Once something else works, it can start to get traction. This is unlike other content creators, who migh not have the technical skills to try a new platform, or might rely on youtube to get views.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    YouTube has little to no competition right now. By kicking blender out, they're forcing blender to promote an alternative to YouTube.
    - blihp 8y ago
      That is potentially the real story here, IMO. Ton has a track record of doing amazing things with impossibly small amounts of money. Given that his interests are in (video) content production, I'm not sure YouTube really thought through how this could play out...
      - DoctorOetker 8y ago
        Actually the timing (near EU upload filter laws) seems to indicate they didn't dare do this before, and fully realized this danger.
        notatoad 8y ago
        Not sure what the EU filter laws have to do with anything here?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Blender serves as an optimal test case for other large non-profits with online video content that Google may push off YouTube (would love to see PyCon move their archives off as well). Discovery and subscriptions will need to be solved, but that’s not insurmountable (ie RSS). CDNs can be plug and play in front of nginx (if P2P torrent isn't your cup of tea), backend storage can be whatever is cheapest.
  - pavs 8y ago
    If only things were so simple. This reminds me how not too long ago, how everyone was trying to make a clone of HN and Reddit within 24 hours in x programming language. It's one thing make a service for few 100 users, it's a different beast to serve millions of users. In case of Online Videos, it is not only extremely difficult, it still remains very expensive. There is literally a handful of companies who can financially and technically pull it off at youtube-scale. After more than 10 years, youtube either makes very little profit or still not profitable.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      I don't disagree. Consider that perhaps you can't serve videos online and expect it to be entirely free. Can you run your compute for free? No. Can you host your database for free? No. Why would serving videos be any different? (Let's ignore limited free tiers for this argument). The more popular the content, the cheaper per unit it'll be to serve (based on bandwidth/transit costs and how they scale, and that you most likely can serve it out of RAM with Varnish, a very inexpensive CDN, or peer to peer), but there will still be a cost, and either the producer or the consumers of that content will need to pay for it.
      - doomjunky 8y ago
        Pure p2p networks scale by O(log n). This means if the popularity of your video scales with n then your infrastructure just scales with log(n). The idea is that leechers become seeders. So with every new layer of distribution the coverage increases exponentially.
gnopgnip 8y ago
Would Blender make money from Youtube Red subscribers if they did not have monetized videos? How does this affect the profitability of Youtube?
- larkeith 8y ago
  YouTube takes a cut of advertising profits, but gets no direct revenue from ad-free videos, I believe.
thefifthsetpin 8y ago
I watched your video and you made some great points. As an aside, I have to wonder if you've thought through your desire to serve your website over HTTP instead of over HTTPS. You noted that you use ad blocking software because ad networks are a common route by which malware propagates. HTTP websites comprise another salient target for malware. If I am at a coffee shop with a compromised wifi router and I load your HTTP website, that compromised router can inject malware into your page and my browser will run it, just like it would have run malware served by an ad server. If your website were served over HTTPS, the router wouldn't have been able to do that. I imagine you knew all of that, and you're right that HTTPS does have some problems, but trying to avoid those problems by opting for HTTP is exchanging those problems for (imho) much bigger problems.
- arcbyte 8y ago
  Sometimes HTTPS makes sense and sometimes HTTP makes sense. HTTPS everywhere NEVER makes sense.
  - confounded 8y ago
    Why?
    - ldng 8y ago
      It will break the decentralised Internet ?
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    It's 2018. Https absolutely makes sense in all circumstances... everywhere for everything. Http should not even be considered as an option.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  It's simpler than that. I'm hosting websites on Hostgator, my income is that Patreon I mention in the video, and though I have a little knowledge on webmastering it's not much compared to what I make content for. I don't know how, and I'm seeing high prices for getting HTTPSed up, though I have a mental note that using Cloudflare might be a way to do it. That said, a service like that seems like it would cost a bunch of money too. I think I can't afford to use HTTPS, and I think this may be a feature not a bug to some people out there controlling things. I could well be wrong. I'm hoping for the reasons you mention that some benevolent hacker people work out how to bring this to people for free and make it simple to do.
lucb1e 8y ago
You made a video about YouTube criticism and host it on YouTube? Either that's being optimistic about them, or the dominance is so large that it outweighs everything else...
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  ...wouldn't that be a logical place to post your YouTube criticism? Do you think Martin Luther weakened his message by nailing his criticism of the church to the door of a church? Do you think picket lines are misguided for surrounding their targets when they could picket unrelated areas farther away?
  - Larrikin 8y ago
    It has become a pretty common complaint lately that people should only have their protests in places where the only people that will see them are the people that already agree with them.
    - mark_edward 8y ago
      Yeah it's almost like a lot of people really just want everyone to shutup and accept how things are.
      - lucb1e 8y ago
        Does this still have any relation to my post earlier in the tread, or is this some different topic you're talking about? Because it sounds as if you're saying that I'm arguing everyone should stop criticising YouTube.
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    Nailing your complaints about X to the door of X, does not support X. Uploading it to YouTube makes the network effect bigger because anyone who wants to hear what you want to say will have to go to the site. It works more like vouchers, where you get a discount (technically worse for the store because they get less money) but because you'll have to go to the store to redeem it, and you'll probably buy more, it's worth it.
cvwright 8y ago
Eventually this is going to get them in trouble with the Sherman Antitrust Act. From Wikipedia: > "Innocent monopoly", or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. The purpose of the Sherman Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space. And now they're engaging in the type of abuse of customers that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to mitigate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Sure, its clear to you and I. But we on HN aren't whom you have to convince. Do you believe the US DOJ or more powerful states would go after Alphabet/google? That's the ones that count. I just can't see our current administration going that avenue.
  - cvwright 8y ago
    Yeah I don't know. With this administration, anything is possible. There's lots of bad blood between silicon valley progressives and the Trump admin, too.
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      Silicon Valley progressives? Are you talking about RMS or something? Are (American) liberals automatically progressive even if they collude to lower salaries, pay less taxes, and contribute to housing bubbles? Not to mention selling to the DoD and ICE.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
scrollaway 8y ago
There's more stuff like this happening these days. Saw this tweet yesterday: https://twitter.com/AnneMunition/status/1008852515629105152 https://twitter.com/AnneMunition/status/1008852515629105152 YouTube preventing Linus Tech Tips from advertising their non-YouTube videos/streams. In other words, like you said: > Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.
- welly 8y ago
  I'm surprised why anyone is surprised by this or thinks it should be any other way. Google is running YouTube as a business and they're running it the way they believe will be the most profitable. For some reason, people are still hanging onto a belief that Google cares about its users in ways other than to profit from them. Of course, it could well be that people aren't surprised and are just highlighting the Google's behaviour towards certain channels.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    It's not particularly surprising given how shitty youtube's behaviour has been towards its content creators lately. It's just a reminder that nobody should accept it. Kind of like sometimes a president's behaviour isn't surprising, but still deserves to be highlighted and nobody should accept it.
    - welly 8y ago
      A fair comment. The only way people can refuse to accept their behaviour is by not giving YouTube their business (by either visiting the site or submitting content) and who's going to do that? It's YouTube :-/ It's their way or the highway (or Vimeo)
etatoby 8y ago
Thank you, very informative. Here's an idea: if you want to drive home the point that you don't do it for the ad money, and if you want to force yourself not to depend on that money, you could give it all to FOSS foundations. You could publish your YouTube check every month, as small as it may be, on your blog or website, alongside an equivalent donation to, say, the FSF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Archive.org, Blender, EFF, or whatever foundation you like. If you publicize it on YouTube and here, you may even start a movement of sorts.

jrochkind1 8y ago

https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...

stcredzero 8y ago

> So this seems to have happened because YouTube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. "Don't be evil."

drb91 8y ago
Isn’t it convenient they don’t define any morality or worldview?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  It's hard to define, but you can know it when you see it.
  - drb91 8y ago
    So Google is clearly violating their motto?

magicalist 8y ago

> So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. But that doesn't seem to make sense. There are lots of popular channels that don't have advertising and Blender's videos are popular but not that popular. Their blogpost about it is here: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende... I haven't looked at the contract they posted, but they seem to have the same interpretation as you. Maybe it's just an updated contract that includes new rules if you monetize? (that aside, the communication chain from google posted there is just atrocious. I wouldn't sign a 6 page contract based on those robo-emails either)

orbitur 8y ago
> There are lots of popular channels that don't have advertising and Blender's videos are popular but not that popular. It makes sense if it's staged rollout. I'm assuming all unmonetized good actors (ie not stealing other people's content) will see this ultimatum eventually.
michaelt 8y ago
It seems bizarre, but there is a quote from Google's support literally saying: I’ve received an update from our experts stating that you need to enable ads for your video. Once you enable, your video will be available in the USA. It's a pretty big change in policy, and a poorly announced one, but...

kolpa 8y ago

This appears to be the source for the above claim: https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097 https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097 > Google sent a contract to Blender Foundation in which we have to accept monetizing our Youtube channel content. and link to contract: http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20Google%20and%20Blender%20Foundation.pdf http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20G... The contract looks like a regular monetization contract, so the cause-effect relationship between blocking and monetization is not made clear. Why would Google single out Blender for this? Unless they had copyright concerns and needed to revshare with copyright holders, or they want to go "freemium" and make all high-view/quality videos monetized.

Theodores 8y ago

In other news, did anyone get a 'go ad free' pop-up on YouTube today, with 3 months free? Seems there are some changes going on.

judge2020 8y ago
Did you see this after already taking the 3 months before? I subscribe to Red (now premium, grandfathered price) and they seem to give this popup to every user.
- Theodores 8y ago
  First time seen, in the UK, which is not the primary market.

CamperBob2 8y ago

It's pretty irritating. I'm a Red subscriber, so whatever bullshit Google has going on with their advertising monetization policy doesn't -- or, rather, shouldn't -- affect me. Yet the MIT OCW videos are blocked from my account the same as they are for everyone else. Get your act together, Google. This is just stupid.