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And every second they think that way brings them a step closer to being replaced. Literally the only thing youtube has value-wise is its audience. Nothing they

And every second they think that way brings them a step closer to being replaced. Literally the only thing youtube has value-wise is its audience. Nothing they do can't be done with existing cloud networks and off-the-shelf open source software, or a bit of clever coding. Furthermore by catering to advertisers wholesale, they are alienating their primary users and pissing everyone off. Eventually people will get sick of it and start a subscription-based video service where ads and sponsored content are banned. But that isn't even necessary -- all it really takes is 3-4 of the major content creators to switch to another platform with a less draconian view on copyright and advertising policies and real change could happen.

wutbrodo 7y ago
Ive always worked at a much higher level than infra, and I used to be similarly dismissive about the difficulty of infrastructure at scale until I had some exposure to it; You'd be surprised at how much talent and effort and money goes into delivering the volume of content that YouTube does at the reliability it does. The fact that I subconsciously always pick YouTube video search results links over the alternatives has a lot to do with the fact that it's apparently difficult enough for every other entity to deliver video content reliably (with far, far lower volume).
- sam0x17 7y ago
  Right but all of that auto scaling has been essentially donated to the community in the form of google cloud platform and AWS. Now we have cloud functions / lambdas (that are capable of running ffmpeg), Kubernetes, S3, Docker, and a whole slew of things that make this task fairly trivial compared to how it was in say 2005. There also isn't any rule saying you have to do your video conversions server side. Imagine the cost efficiency of client-side video conversion. You could probably do it in js these days or very worst case scenario have a cross platform desktop / phone client. WASM makes this an even easier task -- with some effort you could probably compile ffmpeg to WASM and run it fully client side in the browser with no performance penalty. If you take video conversion out of the equation, all that's left is file hosting, which is commoditized as possible these days, and the search/suggestions algorithm, which pisses people off with its accuracy anyway.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    > Kubernetes, S3, Docker, and a whole slew of things that make this task fairly trivial compared to how it was in say 2005. Agreed, it's much _easier_ to do these things, but evidently not yet _easy_. Handwaving about who deserves credit is irrelevant compared to an analysis of whether executing on it is easy or not, and my (admittedly low-confidence) model,based on the empirics of the situation, is that its evidently still not that easy to reach the reliability and quality of YouTube as a service.
eropple 7y ago
> Nothing they do can't be done with existing cloud networks and off-the-shelf open source software, or a bit of clever coding. Burn a lot of money on bandwidth while delivering video with minimal hiccups and impressive reliability?
- sam0x17 7y ago
  S3 can literally do this. There is even a "smooth video streaming" option.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I'm aware of S3's capabilities. That's why I included the "a lot of money" caveat. The barrier to entry is enormous. I run a podcast platform; I can't even host that on S3 without going to the poor house.
    - sam0x17 7y ago
      Yeah this is why I think without massive investment it would have to be a subscription only service.
      - eropple 7y ago
        Sure - and the Internet's userbase has decided that, for the most part, they don't want that. Maybe somebody with a really rocking Patreon could go use Wistia or something - but how do they maintain their fanbase and grow it?
        sam0x17 7y ago
        Could potentially be content creators that pay the subscription only. But yeah, something somewhere has got to give. Eventually people are going to be sick enough of ads that they will pay $5/month to remove them.
        7y ago
jasonlotito 7y ago
> Nothing they do can't be done with existing cloud networks and off-the-shelf open source software Please, link to this off-the-shelf open source software that can be used to replicate the YouTube experience, both in terms of hosting and playing videos as well as distribution on various platforms. I'll settle for Android and iOS.
- sam0x17 7y ago
  ffmpeg, s3 (or google cloud storage or if you want affordable then wasabi), and HTML 5 video tags basically get you there -- search you can just use off-the-shelf elastic search stuff. It's not like it was in 2005 where you had to invent the wheel. Then you just set your subscription fee to match your average cost per user, add 50% to that, round up to the nearest dollar, and you're good.
  - jasonlotito 7y ago
    So, frankly, you have nothing. Because none of that replicates the YouTube experience for both the producer and viewer. You also ignored delivery. Saying you can replicate YouTube with off-the shelf open source software and then proceed to provide me with common pieces that still need to be pieced together literally just don't know what "off-the-shelf" means.

wutbrodo 7y ago

Ive always worked at a much higher level than infra, and I used to be similarly dismissive about the difficulty of infrastructure at scale until I had some exposure to it; You'd be surprised at how much talent and effort and money goes into delivering the volume of content that YouTube does at the reliability it does. The fact that I subconsciously always pick YouTube video search results links over the alternatives has a lot to do with the fact that it's apparently difficult enough for every other entity to deliver video content reliably (with far, far lower volume).

sam0x17 7y ago
Right but all of that auto scaling has been essentially donated to the community in the form of google cloud platform and AWS. Now we have cloud functions / lambdas (that are capable of running ffmpeg), Kubernetes, S3, Docker, and a whole slew of things that make this task fairly trivial compared to how it was in say 2005. There also isn't any rule saying you have to do your video conversions server side. Imagine the cost efficiency of client-side video conversion. You could probably do it in js these days or very worst case scenario have a cross platform desktop / phone client. WASM makes this an even easier task -- with some effort you could probably compile ffmpeg to WASM and run it fully client side in the browser with no performance penalty. If you take video conversion out of the equation, all that's left is file hosting, which is commoditized as possible these days, and the search/suggestions algorithm, which pisses people off with its accuracy anyway.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > Kubernetes, S3, Docker, and a whole slew of things that make this task fairly trivial compared to how it was in say 2005. Agreed, it's much _easier_ to do these things, but evidently not yet _easy_. Handwaving about who deserves credit is irrelevant compared to an analysis of whether executing on it is easy or not, and my (admittedly low-confidence) model,based on the empirics of the situation, is that its evidently still not that easy to reach the reliability and quality of YouTube as a service.

eropple 7y ago

> Nothing they do can't be done with existing cloud networks and off-the-shelf open source software, or a bit of clever coding. Burn a lot of money on bandwidth while delivering video with minimal hiccups and impressive reliability?

sam0x17 7y ago
S3 can literally do this. There is even a "smooth video streaming" option.
- eropple 7y ago
  I'm aware of S3's capabilities. That's why I included the "a lot of money" caveat. The barrier to entry is enormous. I run a podcast platform; I can't even host that on S3 without going to the poor house.
  - sam0x17 7y ago
    Yeah this is why I think without massive investment it would have to be a subscription only service.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Sure - and the Internet's userbase has decided that, for the most part, they don't want that. Maybe somebody with a really rocking Patreon could go use Wistia or something - but how do they maintain their fanbase and grow it?
      - sam0x17 7y ago
        Could potentially be content creators that pay the subscription only. But yeah, something somewhere has got to give. Eventually people are going to be sick enough of ads that they will pay $5/month to remove them.
        7y ago

jasonlotito 7y ago

> Nothing they do can't be done with existing cloud networks and off-the-shelf open source software Please, link to this off-the-shelf open source software that can be used to replicate the YouTube experience, both in terms of hosting and playing videos as well as distribution on various platforms. I'll settle for Android and iOS.

sam0x17 7y ago
ffmpeg, s3 (or google cloud storage or if you want affordable then wasabi), and HTML 5 video tags basically get you there -- search you can just use off-the-shelf elastic search stuff. It's not like it was in 2005 where you had to invent the wheel. Then you just set your subscription fee to match your average cost per user, add 50% to that, round up to the nearest dollar, and you're good.
- jasonlotito 7y ago
  So, frankly, you have nothing. Because none of that replicates the YouTube experience for both the producer and viewer. You also ignored delivery. Saying you can replicate YouTube with off-the shelf open source software and then proceed to provide me with common pieces that still need to be pieced together literally just don't know what "off-the-shelf" means.