5 ms·

I get why people are mad that something that exists is changing, though at this point I've stopped being surprised when something that was free either stops bei

I get why people are mad that something that exists is changing, though at this point I've stopped being surprised when something that was free either stops being free or has the free offering diminished. This particularly was a very weird setup where if you didn't want a share of ad revenue, you got to use the service completely for free. While Google offers ad free YouTube to users, it'd be nice if they offered a way for creators to pay for YouTube hosting so they can continue to offer their channels ad free, with maybe a small discount based on the percentage of your user base with YouTube Premium.

everdrive 6y ago
Yep. You don't own Youtube, and you don't really have much control over content you wish to upload, or content you wish the view. And, this content can be removed or modified (by inserting ads) at any time. I think services are generally bad for consumers. (they can be quite good for businesses, though) If a consumer relies on a service, then they are beholden to any change made in that service. In other words, it's fine to enjoy Youtube, but just know that your enjoyment could be temporary, videos could be lost, and you could be shut out from the service.
- effingwewt 6y ago
  Completely agree the imbalance of the power dynamic has really gotten worse since the Reagan era. We really need stronger consumer advocacy. An aside- it's really jaded me that with the advent of the internet so many of us had these wonderful dreams of the things we could build and share the world over, and how it would change the world and be this revolutionary force. Well it was, just not for good. Every single good thing gets twisted and perverted in the hunt for the Almighty Profit. I remember my father complaining when I was young about money being the root of all evil, never be greedy, love your fellow man. But some time around his late 40s he became a republican, tax became theft, people he didn't know personally could fuck right off. This all coincided with his opening his business and got worse as it became more successful. The man who hated Reagan and Bush and my rich half of my family with a passion became a staunch Trump supporter. We no longer speak for other reasons but I use it as a reminder of what not to be. It's worked well for me, I'm not an abusive alcoholic, hopefully I wont become a selfish old curmudgeon over money either.
  - zigzaggy 6y ago
    You're singing my song. I really believed that information wanted to be free, and once people were exposed to it, they would become more free. But the information pool is being muddied, and that process is enriching technology companies. They were supposed to lead the charge to FREEDOM! But power corrupts. And honestly, it all sounds so idealistic now. It has become painfully obvious that the companies will not self-regulate. We've got to do something.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  > you don't really have much control over content you wish to upload Well, if it's your creative output, or public domain content, you are very much in control over what you do with it. You are not in control over the available channels to distribute content, though, and that's the big challenge. YouTube was a game changer because it allowed you to upload and share video for free... in an era where bandwidth and storage were prohibitively expensive. Combine that with every digital device having a camera and a mic, and you see how that led to an explosion of audiovisual content over the past 15 years. However... bandwidth and storage are still prohibitively expensive. If you'd put up an MP4 in HD quality on shared hosting or a VPS, and amassed a couple of tens of thousands of views over several hours, your host would be really quick to either shut you down, and/or invoice you for the bandwidth you used. Of course, there's no free lunch. Someone needs to pay. Showing ads to viewers is YouTube's strategy to recoup the expenses. Sadly, that diminishes the value of the content and it makes me less and less interested in opening up YouTube and clicking through a couple of short clips. Personally, I feel that it's up to content creators to pay for the privilege of getting hosted. In that regard, Vimeo's offering is interesting. [1] No advertising and more features depending on your plan. [1] https://vimeo.com/upgrade https://vimeo.com/upgrade Of course, doing that will impact your audience. In that regard, Vimeo isn't a social platform like it started, it's now more a B2B video platform, used by professional videographers or businesses who create professional video content. The last option is paying for YouTube Premium. But do I really want to pay 11.99$ a month for a massive library of relatively short clips of inconsistent quality produced by third parties the majority of whom don't receive a worthwhile reimbursement through monetization? In that regard, YouTube isn't Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime or DisneyPlus because of this huge quality problem. Finally, the original proposition of YouTube - being able to share video without restrictions - is what made it attractive for both content creators and consumers in the first place. Much like many other outlets that first appeared on the Web in the early 00's and followed that basic principle: offering information for free. > I think services are generally bad for consumers. Ultimately, the bigger issue is that hosting content never was free to begin with. Either you set up your own hardware and hook it to the network, or you lease it from someone else in some form (Serverless, VPS, shared hosting,...). The notion of "posting" content online has completely abstracted that away. The proposition of being able post and share content for "free" is what made billions flock to the Web. Of course, that's entirely unsustainable. Putting up paywalls everywhere and trying to sell monthly subscriptions does have its limits. Between Spotify, Backblaze, Netflix, VPS hosting, Dropbox, several newspapers,... there are only so many subscriptions that one can conceivable deduct from a monthy paycheck. In that regard, a reckoning might be due once the limits of these business models are reached.
oritsnile 6y ago
Honestly I'm quite surprised that it happened not sooner, considering how may gigabytes of video are uploaded each day, of which only a fraction makes YouTube money.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  In 2019 30,000 hours of content per hour was uploaded.
  - comprev 6y ago
    YouTube statistics are almost like astronomy when you try to comprehend how big the distances between planets are. 30k hours per hour!
    - acomjean 6y ago
      I had to try a little math to put into perspective.. $ bc -l 365*24 about 8760 hours in a year. so year years worth of videos are uploaded in a hour. I think I'm falling further and further behind.. Much like my music consumptions and reading.
treis 6y ago
This sort of thing needs to attract anti-competitive scrutiny at some point. Give away something for free, drive your competitors away, then raise prices is a text book anti-competitive move.
- andylei 6y ago
  youtube is still free
  - BiteCode_dev 6y ago
    Then we need to change the definition of free: you do pay, you pay by watching ads.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    You pay with your personal data and it is tax free for Google. This needs to be recognised as a loophole.
- jariel 6y ago
  Not really though. Discounting is fine, it's done everywhere. It's 'anti competitive' usually only in the context of international trade rules, when government subsidies business units to 'dump' on other countries. Changing your price over time for whatever reasons you want is generally fine unless you're price fixing or doing some kind of illegal type of price discrimination. The competitive bit comes in more due to the fact that G runs chrome and search and therefore will favour their own products, that's much worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
  - cowpig 6y ago
    This is plainly incorrect. It's called "Predatory Pricing"[1] and it's illegal. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp
    - 6y ago
acomjean 6y ago
>it'd be nice if they offered a way for creators to pay for YouTube hosting so they can continue to offer their channels ad free This. I work with a small art organization, and we've started to put our artists videos online (we couldn't have an event this year). Youtube makes it easy. but like flickr they put ads in and there is no way to get rid of them. If we could pay for the service we probably would. I'm not sure how much it would be worth though.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Vimeo serves the paid, ad-free video hosting niche. They're probably celebrating this latest announcement from YouTube. YouTube has the advantage of organic traffic and discovery, though. Nothing stopping you from uploading the video to both services for the best of both worlds.
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Vimeo is great but keep in mind that it's blocked in some countries, which could be problematic if you want your video accessible in those countries.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    This is like being on Play Store vs distributing the app yourself. You're paying a cut for the eyeballs and distribution Youtube provides. The alternative would be for you to pay Google their share of money they would've made if they had ads enabled on your channel, which would be proportional to how many views your video gets. It makes sense since these channels have their own in-video ads which they make money from, and Youtube isn't getting a cut of that, it's similar to how app stores don't allow apps to have their own monetization which bypasses theirs. That being said, having the creator payback Youtube depending on the number of views creates very weird incentives... If they were harsher, they would've disallowed in-video ads completely and force channels to use Youtube ads.

everdrive 6y ago

Yep. You don't own Youtube, and you don't really have much control over content you wish to upload, or content you wish the view. And, this content can be removed or modified (by inserting ads) at any time. I think services are generally bad for consumers. (they can be quite good for businesses, though) If a consumer relies on a service, then they are beholden to any change made in that service. In other words, it's fine to enjoy Youtube, but just know that your enjoyment could be temporary, videos could be lost, and you could be shut out from the service.

effingwewt 6y ago
Completely agree the imbalance of the power dynamic has really gotten worse since the Reagan era. We really need stronger consumer advocacy. An aside- it's really jaded me that with the advent of the internet so many of us had these wonderful dreams of the things we could build and share the world over, and how it would change the world and be this revolutionary force. Well it was, just not for good. Every single good thing gets twisted and perverted in the hunt for the Almighty Profit. I remember my father complaining when I was young about money being the root of all evil, never be greedy, love your fellow man. But some time around his late 40s he became a republican, tax became theft, people he didn't know personally could fuck right off. This all coincided with his opening his business and got worse as it became more successful. The man who hated Reagan and Bush and my rich half of my family with a passion became a staunch Trump supporter. We no longer speak for other reasons but I use it as a reminder of what not to be. It's worked well for me, I'm not an abusive alcoholic, hopefully I wont become a selfish old curmudgeon over money either.
- zigzaggy 6y ago
  You're singing my song. I really believed that information wanted to be free, and once people were exposed to it, they would become more free. But the information pool is being muddied, and that process is enriching technology companies. They were supposed to lead the charge to FREEDOM! But power corrupts. And honestly, it all sounds so idealistic now. It has become painfully obvious that the companies will not self-regulate. We've got to do something.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
> you don't really have much control over content you wish to upload Well, if it's your creative output, or public domain content, you are very much in control over what you do with it. You are not in control over the available channels to distribute content, though, and that's the big challenge. YouTube was a game changer because it allowed you to upload and share video for free... in an era where bandwidth and storage were prohibitively expensive. Combine that with every digital device having a camera and a mic, and you see how that led to an explosion of audiovisual content over the past 15 years. However... bandwidth and storage are still prohibitively expensive. If you'd put up an MP4 in HD quality on shared hosting or a VPS, and amassed a couple of tens of thousands of views over several hours, your host would be really quick to either shut you down, and/or invoice you for the bandwidth you used. Of course, there's no free lunch. Someone needs to pay. Showing ads to viewers is YouTube's strategy to recoup the expenses. Sadly, that diminishes the value of the content and it makes me less and less interested in opening up YouTube and clicking through a couple of short clips. Personally, I feel that it's up to content creators to pay for the privilege of getting hosted. In that regard, Vimeo's offering is interesting. [1] No advertising and more features depending on your plan. [1] https://vimeo.com/upgrade https://vimeo.com/upgrade Of course, doing that will impact your audience. In that regard, Vimeo isn't a social platform like it started, it's now more a B2B video platform, used by professional videographers or businesses who create professional video content. The last option is paying for YouTube Premium. But do I really want to pay 11.99$ a month for a massive library of relatively short clips of inconsistent quality produced by third parties the majority of whom don't receive a worthwhile reimbursement through monetization? In that regard, YouTube isn't Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime or DisneyPlus because of this huge quality problem. Finally, the original proposition of YouTube - being able to share video without restrictions - is what made it attractive for both content creators and consumers in the first place. Much like many other outlets that first appeared on the Web in the early 00's and followed that basic principle: offering information for free. > I think services are generally bad for consumers. Ultimately, the bigger issue is that hosting content never was free to begin with. Either you set up your own hardware and hook it to the network, or you lease it from someone else in some form (Serverless, VPS, shared hosting,...). The notion of "posting" content online has completely abstracted that away. The proposition of being able post and share content for "free" is what made billions flock to the Web. Of course, that's entirely unsustainable. Putting up paywalls everywhere and trying to sell monthly subscriptions does have its limits. Between Spotify, Backblaze, Netflix, VPS hosting, Dropbox, several newspapers,... there are only so many subscriptions that one can conceivable deduct from a monthy paycheck. In that regard, a reckoning might be due once the limits of these business models are reached.

oritsnile 6y ago

Honestly I'm quite surprised that it happened not sooner, considering how may gigabytes of video are uploaded each day, of which only a fraction makes YouTube money.

thdrdt 6y ago
In 2019 30,000 hours of content per hour was uploaded.
- comprev 6y ago
  YouTube statistics are almost like astronomy when you try to comprehend how big the distances between planets are. 30k hours per hour!
  - acomjean 6y ago
    I had to try a little math to put into perspective.. $ bc -l 365*24 about 8760 hours in a year. so year years worth of videos are uploaded in a hour. I think I'm falling further and further behind.. Much like my music consumptions and reading.

treis 6y ago

This sort of thing needs to attract anti-competitive scrutiny at some point. Give away something for free, drive your competitors away, then raise prices is a text book anti-competitive move.

andylei 6y ago
youtube is still free
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  Then we need to change the definition of free: you do pay, you pay by watching ads.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  You pay with your personal data and it is tax free for Google. This needs to be recognised as a loophole.
jariel 6y ago
Not really though. Discounting is fine, it's done everywhere. It's 'anti competitive' usually only in the context of international trade rules, when government subsidies business units to 'dump' on other countries. Changing your price over time for whatever reasons you want is generally fine unless you're price fixing or doing some kind of illegal type of price discrimination. The competitive bit comes in more due to the fact that G runs chrome and search and therefore will favour their own products, that's much worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
- cowpig 6y ago
  This is plainly incorrect. It's called "Predatory Pricing"[1] and it's illegal. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp
  - 6y ago

acomjean 6y ago

>it'd be nice if they offered a way for creators to pay for YouTube hosting so they can continue to offer their channels ad free This. I work with a small art organization, and we've started to put our artists videos online (we couldn't have an event this year). Youtube makes it easy. but like flickr they put ads in and there is no way to get rid of them. If we could pay for the service we probably would. I'm not sure how much it would be worth though.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Vimeo serves the paid, ad-free video hosting niche. They're probably celebrating this latest announcement from YouTube. YouTube has the advantage of organic traffic and discovery, though. Nothing stopping you from uploading the video to both services for the best of both worlds.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Vimeo is great but keep in mind that it's blocked in some countries, which could be problematic if you want your video accessible in those countries.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  This is like being on Play Store vs distributing the app yourself. You're paying a cut for the eyeballs and distribution Youtube provides. The alternative would be for you to pay Google their share of money they would've made if they had ads enabled on your channel, which would be proportional to how many views your video gets. It makes sense since these channels have their own in-video ads which they make money from, and Youtube isn't getting a cut of that, it's similar to how app stores don't allow apps to have their own monetization which bypasses theirs. That being said, having the creator payback Youtube depending on the number of views creates very weird incentives... If they were harsher, they would've disallowed in-video ads completely and force channels to use Youtube ads.