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While it is fine for Google to require monetization, since you are right that it does cost money to host video, I think you are missing the reason people got up

While it is fine for Google to require monetization, since you are right that it does cost money to host video, I think you are missing the reason people got upset. They provide an option in the channel mgmt UI to turn off ads, and they changed their minds without any warning. Had they given blender a month or 2 to change this setting, I expect people would have been less upset. If it's such a problem for them, then why do they offer the option to disable ads in the first place? This is just another example of YouTube acting capriciously, which doesn't do much to encourage people to trust even more of their revenue to them.

kbenson 8y ago
> I think you are missing the reason people got upset. ... They provide an option in the channel mgmt UI to turn off ads, and they changed their minds without any warning. Had they given blender a month or 2 to change this setting, I expect people would have been less upset. Less upset likely, but still upset. My interpretation of most the comments I saw is that the immediacy spurred them to post their feelings, but their feelings seemed heavily weighted towards being upset by Google taking any action at all. I think people are too caught up in it being a big company and an open source project. Really, it's just two parties, and if you can't substitute other examples and come to the same conclusion, there needs to be an examination of specifically what makes it different, and whether that's valid. If I colocated a server and had fairly cheap bandwidth costs and agreed to host someone's videos for free, if I then decided a year later that this is costing me far too much, how much time am I required to give that person before disabling the serving of the videos? Every moment they are still up costs me real money, and the other party has paid nothing, ever. I can be nice and give them some time, but my niceness costs me money. Should I feel bad for disabling hosting immediately? Presumably, if it was really important, they have a backup method for serving and weren't basing everything on some ad-hoc free service, right? I would feel perfectly fine disabling hosting immediately for them. Why should I expect differently of Youtube? > If it's such a problem for them, then why do they offer the option to disable ads in the first place? Maybe for 99.999% of channels exposure and bandwidth aren't large enough to really matter, but they want to police that 0.001% and either move them towards being profitable (or closer to break-even), or get them off the platform? The correct way to handle a subgroup that small (or smaller even) may well be to change their behavior or get rid of them. The overhead of making special accounts types and keeping track of any special behavior they require as development goes on and any bugs that might produce could very well outweigh the benefits of that account type existing. The truth is, there's no reason to expect Youtube will, or should continue any behavior they do today tomorrow, much less a year or more in the future, unless you're paying them on some contract which ensures this.

kbenson 8y ago

> I think you are missing the reason people got upset. ... They provide an option in the channel mgmt UI to turn off ads, and they changed their minds without any warning. Had they given blender a month or 2 to change this setting, I expect people would have been less upset. Less upset likely, but still upset. My interpretation of most the comments I saw is that the immediacy spurred them to post their feelings, but their feelings seemed heavily weighted towards being upset by Google taking any action at all. I think people are too caught up in it being a big company and an open source project. Really, it's just two parties, and if you can't substitute other examples and come to the same conclusion, there needs to be an examination of specifically what makes it different, and whether that's valid. If I colocated a server and had fairly cheap bandwidth costs and agreed to host someone's videos for free, if I then decided a year later that this is costing me far too much, how much time am I required to give that person before disabling the serving of the videos? Every moment they are still up costs me real money, and the other party has paid nothing, ever. I can be nice and give them some time, but my niceness costs me money. Should I feel bad for disabling hosting immediately? Presumably, if it was really important, they have a backup method for serving and weren't basing everything on some ad-hoc free service, right? I would feel perfectly fine disabling hosting immediately for them. Why should I expect differently of Youtube? > If it's such a problem for them, then why do they offer the option to disable ads in the first place? Maybe for 99.999% of channels exposure and bandwidth aren't large enough to really matter, but they want to police that 0.001% and either move them towards being profitable (or closer to break-even), or get them off the platform? The correct way to handle a subgroup that small (or smaller even) may well be to change their behavior or get rid of them. The overhead of making special accounts types and keeping track of any special behavior they require as development goes on and any bugs that might produce could very well outweigh the benefits of that account type existing. The truth is, there's no reason to expect Youtube will, or should continue any behavior they do today tomorrow, much less a year or more in the future, unless you're paying them on some contract which ensures this.