21 ms·

I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via

I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. I somewhat understand Google's stance on this, as it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. They don't really have such a way to opt out of pretty much any other service of theirs that has monetization. But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. This isn't a 'Netflix raising their subscription cost' scenario, where users can just cancel their subscription and sign up for a different service. It would be a massive undertaking to shift their backlog of videos onto another service, and they'd lose all their existing subscribers and have to build it up elsewhere. So in that respect, it's kind of a shitty move by Google.

draugadrotten 6y ago
> it's kind of a shitty move by Google. It's kind of business as usual for Google. Why would anyone expect them to be kind and generous suddenly when they have consistently for years pulled the rug out underneath previosly-free services. (or killed them off completely https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ ) gmail subscriptions are next, just wait and see.
- ce4 6y ago
  What do you mean by gmail subs?
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Sounds like he's suggesting that you'll soon be required to pay for it.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      You are already paying for it with massive crawling of your personal information.
      - oarsinsync 6y ago
        Are there any events over the last decade that leads to believe either of these are true? 1/ if you're paying with money, you won't have to pay with personal information 2/ if you're paying with personal information, you wont later have to pay some other way as well Monopolies (or near monopolies) like to double-dip. A good example of this is net-neutrality. You already pay to be a customer of your ISP, and for your ISP to provide you with Internet access. Your ISP stands to profit even more if they can charge the rest of the Internet for supplying that access to you.
        Nasrudith 6y ago
        Forget monopolies - the New York Times is a double dipper along with the long standing practice of selling mailing lists when a company goes bankrupt.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Gmail It's the one service easily replaced. If they go this route the internet will be a more decentralized place
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - collinmanderson 6y ago
    Search is the one service easily replaced. Took me ~5mins to switch to DuckDuckGo.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Easy? Good luck replacing all your accounts and contacts using your @gmail.com email. You'll move to another provider but you'll need to keep the old GMail one around for a long time before you're safe deleting it.
    - the_other 6y ago
      People you actually want to speak with will learn very quickly when their messages don’t get through. Sure, keep your gmail alive whilst you transition yourself, but don’t leave it hanging around too long. The inertia will kill you.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      Sure, you just set up forwarding (oh look, forwarding just became a paid feature in Gmail!) and then respond from your new email, and over time it will fix itself and you won't lose emails..
      - 1_player 6y ago
        Definitely, the point is you'll have to pay Google whether you want it or not, if they make GMail a premium product. So it's not so easy to leave at all.
        6y ago
- jrootabega 6y ago
  That's probably the one service that will always be "free" since it's such a gold mine of your personal info
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    I wouldn't be entirely sure about gmail... But search is the thing that is essentially free advertising space for them. So it's likely to stay free...
    - pcthrowaway 6y ago
      Neither of these are free services. You are the product
- pizzazzaro 6y ago
  Nah, gmail users are not absolutely next in line. That was hangouts users. But you do have the right idea. Gmail users are in line, waiting for the spyware to no longer have a free-to-use option. And even after becoming customers, they'll still be the product.
- levosmetalo 6y ago
  I have free grandfathered Google Business Plan, including Gmail, but on my domain. The moment Google decides that I have to pay for it, even if it's 0,01 € per month, I'll be moving to another paid service. Why I didn't do it myself, pure laziness, but starting to charge would be a kick in the right direction.
  - coddle-hark 6y ago
    Which other free email provider are you considering?
    - mac01021 6y ago
      I switched to Fastmail 2 months ago. It's been painless so far.
      - dmoy 6y ago
        Is fastmail free now?
        bluGill 6y ago
        No, you should never entrust your personal data to something free. They keep the customer happy, so if you are not the customer you can't be surprised if they don't keep you happy. I've been on fast mail for 10 years or so. I'm happy.
      - sideshowb 6y ago
        How does their search and spam filter compare to gmail?
        deadbunny 6y ago
        Not GP but I've been using FM for about 3 years now. I can probably count the spam that has got through their filter in that time on one hand and the same for the inverse of legitimate mail getting caught in the filter (each time it was admittedly sites on the sketchier side of the net). I can't speak for search as I've probably only searched a couple of times but I found what I was looking for so it's probably fine?
9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
Well if he has all the hardcore supporters on Patreon and can communicate with them over there already, changing services become much much easier. Don't really understand the fuzz since he is charging for being ad free anyway. I would be more supportive if ad free ia principle hence for all the visitors.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  The amount of support he has on Patreon allows him to go ad-free for all his videos, for everyone. It's not just a 'be a Patreon member and get ad-free videos, otherwise you get ads'. YouTube doesn't have any features to allow that.
fendy3002 6y ago
If let's say that google charges 1$ (or more, adjust yourself) per gb of stored video, or 1$ per 20gb of bandwidth use to opt out of ads, will it be better?
- thirteenfingers 6y ago
  Speaking for myself, I would be willing to pay YouTube to opt out of ads. I post mostly classical music videos, which are totally ruined if video advertisements are inserted in the middle. (Granted, YouTube doesn't seem to do that to classical music videos quite as much as it used to.) I'm already paying Vimeo for a low-budget data plan, and I only continue to use YouTube as my main platform because of the extra exposure.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - youcandothat 6y ago
    I would be willing to pay YouTube to opt out of ads But you can?
    - zinekeller 6y ago
      No, what he meant is that creators can pay YouTube/Google to not put ads on all of their videos for all of their audience, not YouTube Premium.
    - 0-_-0 6y ago
      No you can't, not as a creator, which is what GP was talking about.
    - freebasenic 6y ago
      nice name
- krageon 6y ago
  They don't need to charge, they're making money hand over fist.
Retric 6y ago
What I find more concerning is many people will have uploaded videos with the understanding people could just watch them for free and then died. At which point YouTube is essentially monetizing dead people without paying their estates. Are people going to need to stipulate in their will to delete all uploaded content to stop crap like this?
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  Should the products of dead people not be monetizable? How about selling a Van Gogh painting?
  - Retric 6y ago
    If you own it sure. However, if you’re suddenly changing contracts after the fact that’s just theft. What if a backblaze or other backup service just decided it the copyright on all uploaded files after 1 month of non payment and started selling people’s home movies as stock footage?
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Ah I see. It's a rules thing. In that case it's fine. The ToS explicitly allow this after all. So you aren't really changing things outside of what's allowed. This is like when you put into a contract "Party A may withdraw from this contract at any point" and then you withdraw at some point. That's playing by the rules.
      - Retric 6y ago
        You can put anything in a ToS, that’s simply not enough. Again, I would be fine if Google simply stopped hosting videos without consent, but behavior changes like this are different.
        alisonkisk 6y ago
        How is it different? If you want to make changes to your assets after you die, write a will and hire an executor. The living aren't obligated to negotiate with the dead.
Shorel 6y ago
But also if enough of them move to a new platform, this will hugely boost that platform. If they can coordinate their efforts of course. It is a big if.
- lopis 6y ago
  Standard [0] tried that with mediocre results. Even some of the founders left. [0] standard.tv
  - ebiester 6y ago
    It's a shame. I really like Nebula as a service and I pay for it, but it's missing some small features that I'm hoping they get to soon. (They're a small team.) The content is great, though.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
Jim uses an interesting strategy to achieve ad-free status, though. He purposefully includes content from many copyright holders that default to claiming the entire video. Since apparently highlander rules apply, the system just won't play ads on his stuff.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  The rules are complicated[0] and they say "If all valid claims monetize the video, revenue is divided by the number of claims except in special cases such as cover revshare and music." So just having content from multiple copyright holders doesn't necessarily stop ads from playing. However, that policy also says "If one of the assets claiming a video has missing ownership information, the default policy action is Track (owner missing)." which "Allows video to be viewable on YouTube and tracks viewership, but does not serve ads against it."[1] An alternative might just be to add some content at the end of the video which is not advertiser-friendly, which would demonetise the video while not annoying the viewers too much. [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6300781?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6300781?hl=en [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6085494?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6085494?hl=en
grey_earthling 6y ago
> But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. > It would be a massive undertaking to shift their backlog of videos onto another service, and they'd lose all their existing subscribers and have to build it up elsewhere. To me this sounds like a description of YouTube's business model — one that works for other services too, because people go along with it. So this seems... unsurprising to me. I'm genuinely curious to know what YouTube users were expecting instead. I get the impression some people see this as a breach of trust, but to me it seems like the obvious thing YouTube would do.
Aunche 6y ago
> I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon.
- comprev 6y ago
  Perhaps YT should have a tiered paid account system - as a content creator you pay a small monthly fee (relative to the local country) to cover costs... say €1 per month for 10hrs of content? As the channel grows in size (and ideally, viewings), the costs go up. It would certainly reduce the amount of junk uploaded to the internet.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Yeah should be - but the costs would be in terms of 100s of EUR per month, not 1EUR. This is why none of those creators really go on their own - hosting video is EXPENSIVE. It's easier to demand YT to host the content for free.
    - labawi 6y ago
      > costs would be in terms of 100s of EUR per month Personally, I don't consider it a valid point. It only costs so much to share some data because of massive centralization by the likes of Google and ISPs, and can only be sustained because of t sustained because these "subsidies" from large players. It's not technically hard to distribute some videos efficiently, but the market is less than 1/10000. Maybe in 5 years it will be near impossible to host a web site without being DDOS-ed, but I won't praise Cloudflare for their now-possibly-not-free service, I will blame them along side ISPs.
      - izacus 6y ago
        shrug These were the prices before YouTube really became big and were still the prices after they became big. I've worked in video streamin industry in years and I haven't seen YouTube be the fault of the high costs. It mostly comes from the fact that videos are large, they need a lot of CPU power to convert and need a lot of bandwidth to transmit to clients.
thdrdt 6y ago
"...and pretty much have their entire business on there..." This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income. This is bad practice in every business book. I am a freelancer. If I only had one customer my business would be instantly over when they didn't hire me anymore. YouTubers put too much trust in an untrustworthy business partner.
- watwut 6y ago
  If their skill is to create popular videos, they did not had much choice. It is not like there would be other popular video services that would compete. For many of them, it is youtube or nothing.
  - izacus 6y ago
    > For many of them, it is youtube or nothing. Is this really true? I mean, there are hundreds of video hosting sites, is YT really the only way of making any money? This is like saying that the only way to make your business sustainable is to get a reserved place on NY Times Square... are you really entitled to it?
    - watwut 6y ago
      I don't know about hundreda of video hosting sites. I know aboit two: youtube and twitch. I tried something else maybe twice. I am pretty representative for typical user. Typical user turns on yoitube and only things in there exists.
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        Typical users aren't relevant here. We're talking about Patreon supporters, people who gave money to a single creator and want an ad free video. They can click a link to vimeo.
        bluGill 6y ago
kllrnohj 6y ago
This sounds like a pretty straightforward cause & effect here. Creators went for direct monetization outside of youtube instead of ads, and youtube responded by keeping their net income the same by just showing ads anyway. > But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. A key part of running a business is risk management & mitigation. YouTube has very obviously been an ad-supported video platform for at least a decade. Hoping nothing changes about your little ad-free corner of that platform is not a sound business plan. It's shitty that Google didn't give a heads up, but anyone whose business is riding on this should definitely have been expecting something like this and had a backup plan. Literally free content hosting is obviously not a thing that will exist for very long. Enjoy it while it lasts, but you know also have a Vimeo account ready to go as well or something like that.
- leafmeal 6y ago
  I agree with most of what you're saying, but I worry that Youtube's effective monopoly means that there just aren't other hosting platforms with the same kind of user base and discoverability. Perhaps their current pricing model is fair, I have no idea. But being the de facto video hosting site gives them tons of power. They have the ability to extract extra value out of their users---much more than a non-monopolized market would allow.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    I'd agree if and only if this was some drastic shift in policy, but it really isn't. The headline here is basically ad-supported platform shows ads. Ads have been super common on YouTube for years and years, so this isn't really a big change in overall expectations & experience. It's not an ad-free platform goes ad-supported situation where it was subsidized to kill off others before showing ads. More a small loophole was closed, and only if you were large enough to even have the loophole available to you in the first place.
    - 6y ago
arkh 6y ago
They could let creators pay to remove ads from their video. Making Youtube like a usual hosting service.
wahlrus 6y ago
It would be cool of creators such as Jim could start hosting their vids on Peertube or something similar. They could still post on Youtube--just also link to the other option for an ad-free experience. Hopefully Goog won't bring down the hammer on cross-posting videos!!
cbozeman 6y ago
Hosting this video requires a lot of storage and bandwidth. I would not be surprised to learn YouTube alone requires $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in hard drive purchases per year. Sure, they make a lot more than that in advertising, but I imagine every year those hosting and storage costs go up. Why not implement an option for creators to share some of that load if they want to opt-out of advertisements on their videos? That way, everyone wins. YouTube gets money for the hosting of video, creators keep content ad-free.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Or how about paying $5/month for YouTube premium
  - mulmen 6y ago
    I prefer the Patreon model where I decide where the money goes. Content creators pay for everything else, why not video hosting too? Then it is up to them what ads if any they run.
  - phjordon 6y ago
    If only it were that cheap. The cost in the US is $12/month which is ridiculously high considering their “premium” content is garbage as is YouTube Music which is forcibly bundled in.
swebs 6y ago
Can't he give out his videos to subscribers in a torrent or something? That way you don't need any infrastructure to get it out there.
- ric2b 6y ago
  Or use PeerTube, which is built on top of torrents but provides a similar experience to a video site.
charwalker 6y ago
I hear Floatplane is pretty good these days and really should check it out as the initial creators were more technical than average YouTube (Linus Media Group aka LTT). I have YT premium so won't see any changes but it's not something I'd advocate signing up for at this point. I'm locked into like 2013 pricing and am not touching YT Music. This is definitely a Google push that will change the platform, I think. RoosterTeeth founders have pushed the whole "your content, your site, your store/etc" for a decade at least and though FloatPlane might be a capable rival as it builds more creators I think that is still true. You need to own your own distribution methods even if YT or another site is primarily where your views come from but that takes resources away from creating your primary content. Hard to do for a solo creator.
gist 6y ago
> But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. Anyone who has invested in creating content and thinking that it would be the way it was forever is naive and has learned a lesson. Most 'old timers' would realize (I know I would) that any business situation can change. Likewise I fully expect Amazon once they have killed off the competition to raise prices on many items. Sure they will have loss leaders and sure they are already doing it. But it's business no expectation that they won't do what is in their best interest. And this is not a 'shareholder' thing it's a business thing. Same thing would happen if it were a small pizza shop that decided to lower prices and drive others out of business. As long as no rules are broken it's not any worse than a sports team doing whatever they can to win the game. They are not 'in the business' of making it good for others to win. (Same with online gaming).
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
>So in that respect, it's kind of a shitty move by Google. 12 years of free video hosting with no ads and a platform for people to discover your videos is quite the deal. They always had to add ads at some point, hosting video, and the bandwidth and transcoding that goes with it, is incredibly expensive, not to mention the dev time going into creating such a massive platform. If you thought you could eat a free lunch forever... Well, I guess this is your rude awakening. But you honestly should have expected it. The discovery feature of Youtube shouldn't be understated either. A large number of creators have most of their audiences because of Youtube. And honestly your example of Jim Sterling sounds like a smaller company would have gone out of their way to ban them. He's reaping all the benefits of the platform while giving nothing back.
- moogly 6y ago
  I don't really understand bringing up the "hosting video is so expensive; poor poor Youtube being exploited by nasty creators" angle. It's a symbiotic relationship. Without content creators, Youtube is nothing. Without Youtube's massive user base, content creators will reach no one. Meanwhile, Youtube is the one making money over fist (4-5 billion dollars per quarter), so I don't understand why we should feel sorry for their hosting costs.
  - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
    >Without content creators Without content creators who refuse to allow ads in exchange for free hosting, is it nothing? Probably not, most creators do enjoy making money, and most of the ones putting out content for free, but without ads, will struggle to find a competitor who will indefinitely provide free hosting. >4-5 billion dollars per quarter In revenue, not profit. Very, very important distinction.
    - moogly 6y ago
      I mean... you take the good with the bad to get the breadth and depth in your platform. You make a shitload of money on PewDiePie and nothing on Mieleman (sorry; I forget the name of the German guy who posts videos of washing machine cycles), and balance the two. It's not difficult. ~~Okay then, 15 billion in profits last year. I'm no businessman but to me that's pretty damn good profits with those revenue numbers.~~ Edit: Alright, Google search failed me. Searching for profits gave me revenue. Sorry about that. Profits are still secret, it seems. But the hosting costs won't eat the lion's share of that, I can assure you.
paxys 6y ago
I imagine creators like Jim Sterling would be even more outraged if YouTube asked for a percentage of their Patreon revenue or whatever they make from external sponsors.
boogies 6y ago
> It would be a massive undertaking to shift their backlog of videos onto another service, and they'd lose all their existing subscribers and have to build it up elsewhere. Fortunately that’s not entirely true, IIUC — LBRY and BitChute can automatically mirror their channels. Anecdotal accounts say LBRY pays orders of magnitude more per view IIRC, and doesn’t decrease YouTube growth. minutephysics uses it and still has >5 million subscribers on YT. And failing those, it shouldn’t be too hard to youtube-dl a channel and upload it to a Peertube or GNU mediagoblin (here ’s hoping ytdl starts using git the way its creators intended and moves issue tracking to an antifragile mailing list).
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  LBRY's main stream page for new users, right now, is a mix of racism, conspiracy theories, and FTC-rules-violating infomercials. Why would I want to dip my toe in there?
  - mansion7 6y ago
    For the inevitable moment when Google changes their motto to "be evil"
Hokusai 6y ago
> it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. Many countries have regulations against non paid work. If google wants to limit monetization for creators but monetize themselves there is something that does not adds up.
ehwhyreally 6y ago
Easy fix, Google can charge the youtube channel owner for hosting their videos or just show adverts. If you are not familiar with out google do things, They change terms and conditions and bandwidth allowances quite a lot. thats if they don't move their service to the google grave yard. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
polski-g 6y ago
He should have half the content on YouTube then in the end say "click here to view the rest of this video". And it goes to bitchute.
deeblering4 6y ago
Hmm it’s almost as if G/youtube has a monopoly in the internet video space.
surge 6y ago
I was going to say, Vimeo directly targets the people that want video hosting, want to keep most of their rights and are willing to pay and have a more discerning or targetted audience. Just move to that.
HeavyStorm 6y ago
The main issue with YouTube isn't YouTube, but the lack of competition.

draugadrotten 6y ago

> it's kind of a shitty move by Google. It's kind of business as usual for Google. Why would anyone expect them to be kind and generous suddenly when they have consistently for years pulled the rug out underneath previosly-free services. (or killed them off completely https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ ) gmail subscriptions are next, just wait and see.

ce4 6y ago
What do you mean by gmail subs?
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Sounds like he's suggesting that you'll soon be required to pay for it.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    You are already paying for it with massive crawling of your personal information.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      Are there any events over the last decade that leads to believe either of these are true? 1/ if you're paying with money, you won't have to pay with personal information 2/ if you're paying with personal information, you wont later have to pay some other way as well Monopolies (or near monopolies) like to double-dip. A good example of this is net-neutrality. You already pay to be a customer of your ISP, and for your ISP to provide you with Internet access. Your ISP stands to profit even more if they can charge the rest of the Internet for supplying that access to you.
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        Forget monopolies - the New York Times is a double dipper along with the long standing practice of selling mailing lists when a company goes bankrupt.
wolco2 6y ago
Gmail It's the one service easily replaced. If they go this route the internet will be a more decentralized place
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- collinmanderson 6y ago
  Search is the one service easily replaced. Took me ~5mins to switch to DuckDuckGo.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Easy? Good luck replacing all your accounts and contacts using your @gmail.com email. You'll move to another provider but you'll need to keep the old GMail one around for a long time before you're safe deleting it.
  - the_other 6y ago
    People you actually want to speak with will learn very quickly when their messages don’t get through. Sure, keep your gmail alive whilst you transition yourself, but don’t leave it hanging around too long. The inertia will kill you.
  - sbarre 6y ago
    Sure, you just set up forwarding (oh look, forwarding just became a paid feature in Gmail!) and then respond from your new email, and over time it will fix itself and you won't lose emails..
    - 1_player 6y ago
      Definitely, the point is you'll have to pay Google whether you want it or not, if they make GMail a premium product. So it's not so easy to leave at all.
      - 6y ago
jrootabega 6y ago
That's probably the one service that will always be "free" since it's such a gold mine of your personal info
- Ekaros 6y ago
  I wouldn't be entirely sure about gmail... But search is the thing that is essentially free advertising space for them. So it's likely to stay free...
  - pcthrowaway 6y ago
    Neither of these are free services. You are the product
pizzazzaro 6y ago
Nah, gmail users are not absolutely next in line. That was hangouts users. But you do have the right idea. Gmail users are in line, waiting for the spyware to no longer have a free-to-use option. And even after becoming customers, they'll still be the product.
levosmetalo 6y ago
I have free grandfathered Google Business Plan, including Gmail, but on my domain. The moment Google decides that I have to pay for it, even if it's 0,01 € per month, I'll be moving to another paid service. Why I didn't do it myself, pure laziness, but starting to charge would be a kick in the right direction.
- coddle-hark 6y ago
  Which other free email provider are you considering?
  - mac01021 6y ago
    I switched to Fastmail 2 months ago. It's been painless so far.
    - dmoy 6y ago
      Is fastmail free now?
      - bluGill 6y ago
        No, you should never entrust your personal data to something free. They keep the customer happy, so if you are not the customer you can't be surprised if they don't keep you happy. I've been on fast mail for 10 years or so. I'm happy.
    - sideshowb 6y ago
      How does their search and spam filter compare to gmail?
      - deadbunny 6y ago
        Not GP but I've been using FM for about 3 years now. I can probably count the spam that has got through their filter in that time on one hand and the same for the inverse of legitimate mail getting caught in the filter (each time it was admittedly sites on the sketchier side of the net). I can't speak for search as I've probably only searched a couple of times but I found what I was looking for so it's probably fine?

9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago

Well if he has all the hardcore supporters on Patreon and can communicate with them over there already, changing services become much much easier. Don't really understand the fuzz since he is charging for being ad free anyway. I would be more supportive if ad free ia principle hence for all the visitors.

cableshaft 6y ago
The amount of support he has on Patreon allows him to go ad-free for all his videos, for everyone. It's not just a 'be a Patreon member and get ad-free videos, otherwise you get ads'. YouTube doesn't have any features to allow that.

fendy3002 6y ago

If let's say that google charges 1$ (or more, adjust yourself) per gb of stored video, or 1$ per 20gb of bandwidth use to opt out of ads, will it be better?

thirteenfingers 6y ago
Speaking for myself, I would be willing to pay YouTube to opt out of ads. I post mostly classical music videos, which are totally ruined if video advertisements are inserted in the middle. (Granted, YouTube doesn't seem to do that to classical music videos quite as much as it used to.) I'm already paying Vimeo for a low-budget data plan, and I only continue to use YouTube as my main platform because of the extra exposure.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- youcandothat 6y ago
  I would be willing to pay YouTube to opt out of ads But you can?
  - zinekeller 6y ago
    No, what he meant is that creators can pay YouTube/Google to not put ads on all of their videos for all of their audience, not YouTube Premium.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    No you can't, not as a creator, which is what GP was talking about.
  - freebasenic 6y ago
    nice name
krageon 6y ago
They don't need to charge, they're making money hand over fist.

Retric 6y ago

What I find more concerning is many people will have uploaded videos with the understanding people could just watch them for free and then died. At which point YouTube is essentially monetizing dead people without paying their estates. Are people going to need to stipulate in their will to delete all uploaded content to stop crap like this?

0-_-0 6y ago
Should the products of dead people not be monetizable? How about selling a Van Gogh painting?
- Retric 6y ago
  If you own it sure. However, if you’re suddenly changing contracts after the fact that’s just theft. What if a backblaze or other backup service just decided it the copyright on all uploaded files after 1 month of non payment and started selling people’s home movies as stock footage?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Ah I see. It's a rules thing. In that case it's fine. The ToS explicitly allow this after all. So you aren't really changing things outside of what's allowed. This is like when you put into a contract "Party A may withdraw from this contract at any point" and then you withdraw at some point. That's playing by the rules.
    - Retric 6y ago
      You can put anything in a ToS, that’s simply not enough. Again, I would be fine if Google simply stopped hosting videos without consent, but behavior changes like this are different.
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        How is it different? If you want to make changes to your assets after you die, write a will and hire an executor. The living aren't obligated to negotiate with the dead.

Shorel 6y ago

But also if enough of them move to a new platform, this will hugely boost that platform. If they can coordinate their efforts of course. It is a big if.

lopis 6y ago
Standard [0] tried that with mediocre results. Even some of the founders left. [0] standard.tv
- ebiester 6y ago
  It's a shame. I really like Nebula as a service and I pay for it, but it's missing some small features that I'm hoping they get to soon. (They're a small team.) The content is great, though.

jabroni_salad 6y ago

Jim uses an interesting strategy to achieve ad-free status, though. He purposefully includes content from many copyright holders that default to claiming the entire video. Since apparently highlander rules apply, the system just won't play ads on his stuff.

dane-pgp 6y ago
The rules are complicated[0] and they say "If all valid claims monetize the video, revenue is divided by the number of claims except in special cases such as cover revshare and music." So just having content from multiple copyright holders doesn't necessarily stop ads from playing. However, that policy also says "If one of the assets claiming a video has missing ownership information, the default policy action is Track (owner missing)." which "Allows video to be viewable on YouTube and tracks viewership, but does not serve ads against it."[1] An alternative might just be to add some content at the end of the video which is not advertiser-friendly, which would demonetise the video while not annoying the viewers too much. [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6300781?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6300781?hl=en [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6085494?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6085494?hl=en

grey_earthling 6y ago

> But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. > It would be a massive undertaking to shift their backlog of videos onto another service, and they'd lose all their existing subscribers and have to build it up elsewhere. To me this sounds like a description of YouTube's business model — one that works for other services too, because people go along with it. So this seems... unsurprising to me. I'm genuinely curious to know what YouTube users were expecting instead. I get the impression some people see this as a breach of trust, but to me it seems like the obvious thing YouTube would do.

Aunche 6y ago

> I know there are several content creators (such as Jim Sterling) that have their videos ad-free as a perk for their supporters (since he's supported enough via Patreon). He's pretty angry about this change. That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon.

comprev 6y ago
Perhaps YT should have a tiered paid account system - as a content creator you pay a small monthly fee (relative to the local country) to cover costs... say €1 per month for 10hrs of content? As the channel grows in size (and ideally, viewings), the costs go up. It would certainly reduce the amount of junk uploaded to the internet.
- izacus 6y ago
  Yeah should be - but the costs would be in terms of 100s of EUR per month, not 1EUR. This is why none of those creators really go on their own - hosting video is EXPENSIVE. It's easier to demand YT to host the content for free.
  - labawi 6y ago
    > costs would be in terms of 100s of EUR per month Personally, I don't consider it a valid point. It only costs so much to share some data because of massive centralization by the likes of Google and ISPs, and can only be sustained because of t sustained because these "subsidies" from large players. It's not technically hard to distribute some videos efficiently, but the market is less than 1/10000. Maybe in 5 years it will be near impossible to host a web site without being DDOS-ed, but I won't praise Cloudflare for their now-possibly-not-free service, I will blame them along side ISPs.
    - izacus 6y ago
      shrug These were the prices before YouTube really became big and were still the prices after they became big. I've worked in video streamin industry in years and I haven't seen YouTube be the fault of the high costs. It mostly comes from the fact that videos are large, they need a lot of CPU power to convert and need a lot of bandwidth to transmit to clients.

thdrdt 6y ago

"...and pretty much have their entire business on there..." This is what I don't get about YouTubers. They created a business with basically only one source of income. This is bad practice in every business book. I am a freelancer. If I only had one customer my business would be instantly over when they didn't hire me anymore. YouTubers put too much trust in an untrustworthy business partner.

watwut 6y ago
If their skill is to create popular videos, they did not had much choice. It is not like there would be other popular video services that would compete. For many of them, it is youtube or nothing.
- izacus 6y ago
  > For many of them, it is youtube or nothing. Is this really true? I mean, there are hundreds of video hosting sites, is YT really the only way of making any money? This is like saying that the only way to make your business sustainable is to get a reserved place on NY Times Square... are you really entitled to it?
  - watwut 6y ago
    I don't know about hundreda of video hosting sites. I know aboit two: youtube and twitch. I tried something else maybe twice. I am pretty representative for typical user. Typical user turns on yoitube and only things in there exists.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Typical users aren't relevant here. We're talking about Patreon supporters, people who gave money to a single creator and want an ad free video. They can click a link to vimeo.
      - bluGill 6y ago

kllrnohj 6y ago

This sounds like a pretty straightforward cause & effect here. Creators went for direct monetization outside of youtube instead of ads, and youtube responded by keeping their net income the same by just showing ads anyway. > But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. A key part of running a business is risk management & mitigation. YouTube has very obviously been an ad-supported video platform for at least a decade. Hoping nothing changes about your little ad-free corner of that platform is not a sound business plan. It's shitty that Google didn't give a heads up, but anyone whose business is riding on this should definitely have been expecting something like this and had a backup plan. Literally free content hosting is obviously not a thing that will exist for very long. Enjoy it while it lasts, but you know also have a Vimeo account ready to go as well or something like that.

leafmeal 6y ago
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I worry that Youtube's effective monopoly means that there just aren't other hosting platforms with the same kind of user base and discoverability. Perhaps their current pricing model is fair, I have no idea. But being the de facto video hosting site gives them tons of power. They have the ability to extract extra value out of their users---much more than a non-monopolized market would allow.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  I'd agree if and only if this was some drastic shift in policy, but it really isn't. The headline here is basically ad-supported platform shows ads. Ads have been super common on YouTube for years and years, so this isn't really a big change in overall expectations & experience. It's not an ad-free platform goes ad-supported situation where it was subsidized to kill off others before showing ads. More a small loophole was closed, and only if you were large enough to even have the loophole available to you in the first place.
  - 6y ago

arkh 6y ago

They could let creators pay to remove ads from their video. Making Youtube like a usual hosting service.

wahlrus 6y ago

It would be cool of creators such as Jim could start hosting their vids on Peertube or something similar. They could still post on Youtube--just also link to the other option for an ad-free experience. Hopefully Goog won't bring down the hammer on cross-posting videos!!

cbozeman 6y ago

Hosting this video requires a lot of storage and bandwidth. I would not be surprised to learn YouTube alone requires $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in hard drive purchases per year. Sure, they make a lot more than that in advertising, but I imagine every year those hosting and storage costs go up. Why not implement an option for creators to share some of that load if they want to opt-out of advertisements on their videos? That way, everyone wins. YouTube gets money for the hosting of video, creators keep content ad-free.

systemvoltage 6y ago
Or how about paying $5/month for YouTube premium
- mulmen 6y ago
  I prefer the Patreon model where I decide where the money goes. Content creators pay for everything else, why not video hosting too? Then it is up to them what ads if any they run.
- phjordon 6y ago
  If only it were that cheap. The cost in the US is $12/month which is ridiculously high considering their “premium” content is garbage as is YouTube Music which is forcibly bundled in.

swebs 6y ago

Can't he give out his videos to subscribers in a torrent or something? That way you don't need any infrastructure to get it out there.

ric2b 6y ago
Or use PeerTube, which is built on top of torrents but provides a similar experience to a video site.

charwalker 6y ago

I hear Floatplane is pretty good these days and really should check it out as the initial creators were more technical than average YouTube (Linus Media Group aka LTT). I have YT premium so won't see any changes but it's not something I'd advocate signing up for at this point. I'm locked into like 2013 pricing and am not touching YT Music. This is definitely a Google push that will change the platform, I think. RoosterTeeth founders have pushed the whole "your content, your site, your store/etc" for a decade at least and though FloatPlane might be a capable rival as it builds more creators I think that is still true. You need to own your own distribution methods even if YT or another site is primarily where your views come from but that takes resources away from creating your primary content. Hard to do for a solo creator.

gist 6y ago

> But at the same time, there are people who have so heavily invested into the YouTube ecosystem with certain expectations for a very long time, and pretty much have their entire business on there, so they can't very easily take their business elsewhere if they're unhappy with the change. Anyone who has invested in creating content and thinking that it would be the way it was forever is naive and has learned a lesson. Most 'old timers' would realize (I know I would) that any business situation can change. Likewise I fully expect Amazon once they have killed off the competition to raise prices on many items. Sure they will have loss leaders and sure they are already doing it. But it's business no expectation that they won't do what is in their best interest. And this is not a 'shareholder' thing it's a business thing. Same thing would happen if it were a small pizza shop that decided to lower prices and drive others out of business. As long as no rules are broken it's not any worse than a sports team doing whatever they can to win the game. They are not 'in the business' of making it good for others to win. (Same with online gaming).

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

>So in that respect, it's kind of a shitty move by Google. 12 years of free video hosting with no ads and a platform for people to discover your videos is quite the deal. They always had to add ads at some point, hosting video, and the bandwidth and transcoding that goes with it, is incredibly expensive, not to mention the dev time going into creating such a massive platform. If you thought you could eat a free lunch forever... Well, I guess this is your rude awakening. But you honestly should have expected it. The discovery feature of Youtube shouldn't be understated either. A large number of creators have most of their audiences because of Youtube. And honestly your example of Jim Sterling sounds like a smaller company would have gone out of their way to ban them. He's reaping all the benefits of the platform while giving nothing back.

moogly 6y ago
I don't really understand bringing up the "hosting video is so expensive; poor poor Youtube being exploited by nasty creators" angle. It's a symbiotic relationship. Without content creators, Youtube is nothing. Without Youtube's massive user base, content creators will reach no one. Meanwhile, Youtube is the one making money over fist (4-5 billion dollars per quarter), so I don't understand why we should feel sorry for their hosting costs.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  >Without content creators Without content creators who refuse to allow ads in exchange for free hosting, is it nothing? Probably not, most creators do enjoy making money, and most of the ones putting out content for free, but without ads, will struggle to find a competitor who will indefinitely provide free hosting. >4-5 billion dollars per quarter In revenue, not profit. Very, very important distinction.
  - moogly 6y ago
    I mean... you take the good with the bad to get the breadth and depth in your platform. You make a shitload of money on PewDiePie and nothing on Mieleman (sorry; I forget the name of the German guy who posts videos of washing machine cycles), and balance the two. It's not difficult. ~~Okay then, 15 billion in profits last year. I'm no businessman but to me that's pretty damn good profits with those revenue numbers.~~ Edit: Alright, Google search failed me. Searching for profits gave me revenue. Sorry about that. Profits are still secret, it seems. But the hosting costs won't eat the lion's share of that, I can assure you.

paxys 6y ago

I imagine creators like Jim Sterling would be even more outraged if YouTube asked for a percentage of their Patreon revenue or whatever they make from external sponsors.

boogies 6y ago

> It would be a massive undertaking to shift their backlog of videos onto another service, and they'd lose all their existing subscribers and have to build it up elsewhere. Fortunately that’s not entirely true, IIUC — LBRY and BitChute can automatically mirror their channels. Anecdotal accounts say LBRY pays orders of magnitude more per view IIRC, and doesn’t decrease YouTube growth. minutephysics uses it and still has >5 million subscribers on YT. And failing those, it shouldn’t be too hard to youtube-dl a channel and upload it to a Peertube or GNU mediagoblin (here ’s hoping ytdl starts using git the way its creators intended and moves issue tracking to an antifragile mailing list).

alisonkisk 6y ago
LBRY's main stream page for new users, right now, is a mix of racism, conspiracy theories, and FTC-rules-violating infomercials. Why would I want to dip my toe in there?
- mansion7 6y ago
  For the inevitable moment when Google changes their motto to "be evil"

Hokusai 6y ago

> it's a service that should be allowed to make money even on people who don't want to make money. Many countries have regulations against non paid work. If google wants to limit monetization for creators but monetize themselves there is something that does not adds up.

ehwhyreally 6y ago

Easy fix, Google can charge the youtube channel owner for hosting their videos or just show adverts. If you are not familiar with out google do things, They change terms and conditions and bandwidth allowances quite a lot. thats if they don't move their service to the google grave yard. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/

polski-g 6y ago

He should have half the content on YouTube then in the end say "click here to view the rest of this video". And it goes to bitchute.

deeblering4 6y ago

Hmm it’s almost as if G/youtube has a monopoly in the internet video space.

surge 6y ago

I was going to say, Vimeo directly targets the people that want video hosting, want to keep most of their rights and are willing to pay and have a more discerning or targetted audience. Just move to that.

HeavyStorm 6y ago

The main issue with YouTube isn't YouTube, but the lack of competition.