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I think we need a good YouTube alternative. Sure, there are lots of them out there. But one people actually use. YouTube is the best place to find so many th

by jdlyga 7y ago

I think we need a good YouTube alternative. Sure, there are lots of them out there. But one people actually use. YouTube is the best place to find so many things: creator videos, music, clips from TV shows, and years and years of videos to build up an immense library. Any YouTube alternative needs to take one of these niche areas and pick at it.

cyborgx7 7y ago
Nobody, at all, would disagree with you. Do you have an idea how to get there?
- ars 7y ago
  I disagree. Any youtube alternative would very rapidly run into exactly the same problems and constraints that youtube hits. You will accomplish exactly nothing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dageshi 7y ago
Anything that people will actually use will become popular and will need to run ads to support itself, so it ends up in the same situation as youtube. The pressures that make youtube act the way it does aren't going to be significantly different for another provider.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  So, what you're saying, is that another business model is more what we need? How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    Here's an experiment that might not be well known. They have a little incentive ecosystem and the vids are hosted on IPFS. https://about.d.tube https://about.d.tube
  - vkou 7y ago
    Yes, only another business model would solve this issue. > How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos. Peer-to-peer torrent-like distribution. Of course, then you'll have the problem where the system will be full of pirated content, illegal content, etc, and you'll get to enjoy attention from police and regulators.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Not to mention that anything unpopular will be poorly distributed and harder to access than popular stuff... which kinda defeats the point really. YouTube loves popular stuff because it makes money.
    - zanny 7y ago
      Peertube already exists and has seen growing usage: https://joinpeertube.org https://joinpeertube.org Of course, it doesn't have an ad or patronage model built in.
      - vkou 7y ago
        So, what you're saying is that it's useless to the people complaining about their videos being demonetized, or not getting a firehose of algorithmic marketing.
  - DrScientist 7y ago
    Host it yourself. Back to how the internet was envisaged - a network of peers, not a network of clients and hubs. See https://solid.inrupt.com/about https://solid.inrupt.com/about
    - jasode 7y ago
      >Host it yourself. No, that self-hosting option doesn't replace Youtube. A lot of techies seem to have a blind spot as to the real value Youtube provides to content creators and video uploaders: $0 hosting costs for unlimited audience. No self-hosted tech stack or home-based network appliance to stream videos can offer that same financial deal. Techies seem to only see the technical stack and the protocol to host a video. The intimate knowledge computers is actually misdirecting you away from the real strengths of Youtube. Instead, look at Youtube the same way a non-techie content creator would. My previous comments trying to explain this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19940180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19940180
      - DrScientist 7y ago
        For those treating youtube as a business - you are right that you trade upfront risk ( the only thing you lose is your time ), a promotion platform and the ability to scale, for reduced slice of any revenue and loss of control. However people making money on youtube are a significant minority. Most uses are not that use. So in terms of non-commercial sharing - I already pay for my internet connection and fibre 'upload' speeds ( from home-out ) are very under-utilized. Also usage isn't metered - the limit is maxbandwidth X time. So the only risk here is being too popular - which is frankly unlikely! If you wanted to scale - p2p is an option - the issues around illegal content etc - that can be fixed if you have identity and permissions built in - the people who share are identifiable and you only choose to peer people/content you approve. Imagine it being like a retweet - with just the same legal consequences, but with just the same potential to reach millions - but without a single company in control...
  - imgabe 7y ago
    Content creators could pay the hosting costs for their video and sell ads themselves.
gibspaulding 7y ago
Youtube seems to have also started more aggressively pushing against accessing videos from outside of their app on mobile. In the last few days all of the iPads at the school I work at have begun showing the following error when attempting to open YouTube links in safari: "Sorry for the interruption. You are seeing this message because your current network has been identified as using non-authorized applications to access YouTube." The only way I've found around it is to use their app, or solve the reCAPTCHA puzzle every time. Some actual competition in this space would be wonderful.
- anticensor 7y ago
  Does privacy pass fail too?
- catalogia 7y ago
  I wonder if youtube-dl works on that network.
ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
Speaking of that, what about PeerTube? Looks like it's still alive.
jagged-chisel 7y ago
> I think we need a good YouTube alternative. I said this about Twitter during the days of ubiquitous fail whale pages. The problems are branding and money. One needs to create a brand, and market it effectively. It needs funding to pay for hosting and traffic. So how does one disrupt YouTube?
jrockway 7y ago
After the spamming-emotes-got-your-gmail-deleted controversy, which is absolutely outrageous and indefensible, I've heard a lot of people interested in doing this. I'm also very close to making some sort of self-hosted Twitch type thing. A lot of streamers are getting caught up in Twitch's bullshit policies. Someone I follow wore their workout clothes on stream after they finished a workout and wanted to make their normal stream time. Twitch banned her for 30 days because that's supposedly inappropriate. I think it's time to cut them out of the loop and make streaming decentralized. The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.) All you need is some software to run it all and a standard way of paying the streamers across the decentralized network. Probably a good application for cryptocurrency. People are crazy about their favorite streamers, and would probably be willing to learn how to use something other than a credit card to subscribe. Emotes are already decentralized with things like BTTV and FFZ. So it could work. I just don't see how I would personally make any money, so I haven't pursued it much. But the days of requiring some megacorp like Google or Amazon to be able to distribute video are over -- this area is ripe for disruption. But I think as much as content creators love to hate on their platform, they do love the free audience. A lot of people got their start when "the algorithm" finally recognized them, and they turned their hobby into a day job. I'm not sure it could ever work with a centralized gateway that collects metadata and suggests new creators to users. But maybe it's OK if we put the money and the servers in the hands of the creators, and let discovery be an additional bonus. And maybe running that could be profitable; you get a $1 commission for sending a new subscriber their way. I dunno, just some random thoughts... but this all sounds more and more reasonable every day. People lost access to their email for chatting in a streamer's chat. That's CRAZY.
- notyourwork 7y ago
  I think workout clothes depends on what it is. Wearing a sports bra is surely different from wearing a T-shirt. Before we assume malicious intent by twitch it should be worth specifying what streamer was wearing.
  - 7y ago
sdinsn 7y ago
Video distribution is such a hard thing to develop. YouTube isn't profitable; it only exists because Google props it up. I'd only imagine someone like Netflix, who has existing infrastructure, to actually create a profitable video site.
- creato 7y ago
  Netflix's infrastructure is probably drastically simpler and easier to build. They don't have any of the problems that make caching hard: few/no consistency challenges, and they probably can fit their entirely library in a single server's RAM.
  - jaywalk 7y ago
    > they probably can fit their entirely library in a single server's RAM. You either vastly underestimate the size of their library, or vastly overestimate the maximum amount of RAM a single server can hold.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    Netflix creates caching boxes inside the local ISP which reduces both latency and bandwidth requirements for top content. These only store the most popular content.
brandmeyer 7y ago
Its not enough to have a competitor. All of the features we have come to dislike about YouTube are a natural consequence of the pressures it faces. High volume implies moderation by machine along with all of the negative side-effects. Bandwidth, storage, and arithmetic costs imply advertisements with all of their negative side-effects. A large library implies a recommendation engine with all of its negative side-effects. To be a viable long-term alternative, a competitor will have to break at least one of those fundamental constraints.
- criddell 7y ago
  On top of all that, the videos have to be discoverable. If you think Google will ever rank your YouTube competitor above results from YouTube, then we should talk about a bridge I have for sale.
swalsh 7y ago
The one thing that's been proven time and time again, building a new community from the outcasts of a larger mainstream community does not end with a high quality community. If you're worried about the power tech companies have gained, and you're using that as the sole reason to build a new community, it's not going to become something better. If you want to compete with Youtube, You have to have something that is fundamentally more appealing on a mainstream level than their product.
- zanny 7y ago
  I like and use Mastodon, and don't think its "low quality" Twitter.
  - dimensi0nal 7y ago
    The largest Mastodon instance is teeming with lolicon. Quality.
    - cannonedhamster 7y ago
      That really leaves out that both left and right wing ideologies have found a way to use the technology effectively for their own means. The platform itself isn't some niche platform.
thrower123 7y ago
Nobody is ever going to get away with the massive open copyright infringement that was so important to the growth of YouTube the first go round.
charlesju 7y ago
Can't you just throw up a website and serve mp4 files? YouTube doesn't owe it to anyone to serve videos, it's just one way to consume video content online. If you want to move off platform, the technology and services are both open and widely available.
dation 7y ago
I tried switching to vid.me but then they shut down because they weren't make money. Considering that YouTube still allegedly operates at a loss to Alphabet, it will be pretty hard for a viable competitor. Maybe something distributed like PeerTube has a chance.
johnchristopher 7y ago
I am surprised Vimeo hasn't been mentioned in the thread yet.

by jdlyga 7y ago

cyborgx7 7y ago

Nobody, at all, would disagree with you. Do you have an idea how to get there?

ars 7y ago
I disagree. Any youtube alternative would very rapidly run into exactly the same problems and constraints that youtube hits. You will accomplish exactly nothing.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dageshi 7y ago

Anything that people will actually use will become popular and will need to run ads to support itself, so it ends up in the same situation as youtube. The pressures that make youtube act the way it does aren't going to be significantly different for another provider.

bilbo0s 7y ago
So, what you're saying, is that another business model is more what we need? How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Here's an experiment that might not be well known. They have a little incentive ecosystem and the vids are hosted on IPFS. https://about.d.tube https://about.d.tube
- vkou 7y ago
  Yes, only another business model would solve this issue. > How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos. Peer-to-peer torrent-like distribution. Of course, then you'll have the problem where the system will be full of pirated content, illegal content, etc, and you'll get to enjoy attention from police and regulators.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Not to mention that anything unpopular will be poorly distributed and harder to access than popular stuff... which kinda defeats the point really. YouTube loves popular stuff because it makes money.
  - zanny 7y ago
    Peertube already exists and has seen growing usage: https://joinpeertube.org https://joinpeertube.org Of course, it doesn't have an ad or patronage model built in.
    - vkou 7y ago
      So, what you're saying is that it's useless to the people complaining about their videos being demonetized, or not getting a firehose of algorithmic marketing.
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Host it yourself. Back to how the internet was envisaged - a network of peers, not a network of clients and hubs. See https://solid.inrupt.com/about https://solid.inrupt.com/about
  - jasode 7y ago
    >Host it yourself. No, that self-hosting option doesn't replace Youtube. A lot of techies seem to have a blind spot as to the real value Youtube provides to content creators and video uploaders: $0 hosting costs for unlimited audience. No self-hosted tech stack or home-based network appliance to stream videos can offer that same financial deal. Techies seem to only see the technical stack and the protocol to host a video. The intimate knowledge computers is actually misdirecting you away from the real strengths of Youtube. Instead, look at Youtube the same way a non-techie content creator would. My previous comments trying to explain this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19940180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19940180
    - DrScientist 7y ago
      For those treating youtube as a business - you are right that you trade upfront risk ( the only thing you lose is your time ), a promotion platform and the ability to scale, for reduced slice of any revenue and loss of control. However people making money on youtube are a significant minority. Most uses are not that use. So in terms of non-commercial sharing - I already pay for my internet connection and fibre 'upload' speeds ( from home-out ) are very under-utilized. Also usage isn't metered - the limit is maxbandwidth X time. So the only risk here is being too popular - which is frankly unlikely! If you wanted to scale - p2p is an option - the issues around illegal content etc - that can be fixed if you have identity and permissions built in - the people who share are identifiable and you only choose to peer people/content you approve. Imagine it being like a retweet - with just the same legal consequences, but with just the same potential to reach millions - but without a single company in control...
- imgabe 7y ago
  Content creators could pay the hosting costs for their video and sell ads themselves.

gibspaulding 7y ago

Youtube seems to have also started more aggressively pushing against accessing videos from outside of their app on mobile. In the last few days all of the iPads at the school I work at have begun showing the following error when attempting to open YouTube links in safari: "Sorry for the interruption. You are seeing this message because your current network has been identified as using non-authorized applications to access YouTube." The only way I've found around it is to use their app, or solve the reCAPTCHA puzzle every time. Some actual competition in this space would be wonderful.

anticensor 7y ago
Does privacy pass fail too?
catalogia 7y ago
I wonder if youtube-dl works on that network.

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago

Speaking of that, what about PeerTube? Looks like it's still alive.

jagged-chisel 7y ago

> I think we need a good YouTube alternative. I said this about Twitter during the days of ubiquitous fail whale pages. The problems are branding and money. One needs to create a brand, and market it effectively. It needs funding to pay for hosting and traffic. So how does one disrupt YouTube?

jrockway 7y ago

After the spamming-emotes-got-your-gmail-deleted controversy, which is absolutely outrageous and indefensible, I've heard a lot of people interested in doing this. I'm also very close to making some sort of self-hosted Twitch type thing. A lot of streamers are getting caught up in Twitch's bullshit policies. Someone I follow wore their workout clothes on stream after they finished a workout and wanted to make their normal stream time. Twitch banned her for 30 days because that's supposedly inappropriate. I think it's time to cut them out of the loop and make streaming decentralized. The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.) All you need is some software to run it all and a standard way of paying the streamers across the decentralized network. Probably a good application for cryptocurrency. People are crazy about their favorite streamers, and would probably be willing to learn how to use something other than a credit card to subscribe. Emotes are already decentralized with things like BTTV and FFZ. So it could work. I just don't see how I would personally make any money, so I haven't pursued it much. But the days of requiring some megacorp like Google or Amazon to be able to distribute video are over -- this area is ripe for disruption. But I think as much as content creators love to hate on their platform, they do love the free audience. A lot of people got their start when "the algorithm" finally recognized them, and they turned their hobby into a day job. I'm not sure it could ever work with a centralized gateway that collects metadata and suggests new creators to users. But maybe it's OK if we put the money and the servers in the hands of the creators, and let discovery be an additional bonus. And maybe running that could be profitable; you get a $1 commission for sending a new subscriber their way. I dunno, just some random thoughts... but this all sounds more and more reasonable every day. People lost access to their email for chatting in a streamer's chat. That's CRAZY.

notyourwork 7y ago
I think workout clothes depends on what it is. Wearing a sports bra is surely different from wearing a T-shirt. Before we assume malicious intent by twitch it should be worth specifying what streamer was wearing.
- 7y ago

sdinsn 7y ago

Video distribution is such a hard thing to develop. YouTube isn't profitable; it only exists because Google props it up. I'd only imagine someone like Netflix, who has existing infrastructure, to actually create a profitable video site.

creato 7y ago
Netflix's infrastructure is probably drastically simpler and easier to build. They don't have any of the problems that make caching hard: few/no consistency challenges, and they probably can fit their entirely library in a single server's RAM.
- jaywalk 7y ago
  > they probably can fit their entirely library in a single server's RAM. You either vastly underestimate the size of their library, or vastly overestimate the maximum amount of RAM a single server can hold.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Netflix creates caching boxes inside the local ISP which reduces both latency and bandwidth requirements for top content. These only store the most popular content.

brandmeyer 7y ago

Its not enough to have a competitor. All of the features we have come to dislike about YouTube are a natural consequence of the pressures it faces. High volume implies moderation by machine along with all of the negative side-effects. Bandwidth, storage, and arithmetic costs imply advertisements with all of their negative side-effects. A large library implies a recommendation engine with all of its negative side-effects. To be a viable long-term alternative, a competitor will have to break at least one of those fundamental constraints.

criddell 7y ago
On top of all that, the videos have to be discoverable. If you think Google will ever rank your YouTube competitor above results from YouTube, then we should talk about a bridge I have for sale.

swalsh 7y ago

The one thing that's been proven time and time again, building a new community from the outcasts of a larger mainstream community does not end with a high quality community. If you're worried about the power tech companies have gained, and you're using that as the sole reason to build a new community, it's not going to become something better. If you want to compete with Youtube, You have to have something that is fundamentally more appealing on a mainstream level than their product.

zanny 7y ago
I like and use Mastodon, and don't think its "low quality" Twitter.
- dimensi0nal 7y ago
  The largest Mastodon instance is teeming with lolicon. Quality.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    That really leaves out that both left and right wing ideologies have found a way to use the technology effectively for their own means. The platform itself isn't some niche platform.

thrower123 7y ago

Nobody is ever going to get away with the massive open copyright infringement that was so important to the growth of YouTube the first go round.

charlesju 7y ago

Can't you just throw up a website and serve mp4 files? YouTube doesn't owe it to anyone to serve videos, it's just one way to consume video content online. If you want to move off platform, the technology and services are both open and widely available.

dation 7y ago

I tried switching to vid.me but then they shut down because they weren't make money. Considering that YouTube still allegedly operates at a loss to Alphabet, it will be pretty hard for a viable competitor. Maybe something distributed like PeerTube has a chance.

johnchristopher 7y ago

I am surprised Vimeo hasn't been mentioned in the thread yet.