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> 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 vi

by 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.
      - labawi 6y ago
        There was a time when downloading movies took hours, or even days. Nowadays, you can stream via popcorn time for basically free¹. As for CPU, storage - I don't think 10+ different formats at extreme compression are a hard requirement. Youtube ads are good, as people will have incentive to use peertube and similar. ¹ You need some seeds, but they don't need Tbps pipes.
        ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
        >There was a time when downloading movies took hours, or even days. Nowadays, you can stream via popcorn time for basically free¹. And a willingness to steal...
        labawi 6y ago
        For the record, argument was of declining distribution costs for content you presumably have the right to share, e.g. created yourself.
        mmastrac 6y ago
        Copyright infringement isn't theft.
        ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
        Illegal copying? Call it what you will, if you had paid for the Dark Knight, WB would get $5. Instead they get $0. It's illegal and if everyone did it, movies would not exist.
  - moogly 6y ago
    No, the real reason they don't go on their own is because of the massive user base.
- Aunche 6y ago
  Youtubers take a 55% cut of ad revenue, which is about 1.8 cents per view. Youtube takes a 45% cut, but part of that is to subsidize the videos that currently don't have ads, so let's say 20% of current ad revenue is a reasonble price of Youtube removing ads from a single video. For a video viewed a million times, it would cost a creator $6545 (.018 x 20/55 x 1,000,000) to keep the video ad free. I can't imagine anyone willing to pay that much to keep their videos ad-free.
belengthy 6y ago
Or YouTube could provide a way for creators to remove ads. There is a membership program so people can directly support specific channels, but it has no option to remove ads for members. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7544492?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7544492?hl=en
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Members still see ads? That's incredible. I just naturally assumed channels would be ad-free for paying members, since that's how it works on Twitch.
Supermancho 6y ago
> That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon. Youtube has been promoting that you can do that since 2008 - https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/ - so maybe "entitled" isn't the word. It's expected because the capability has been promoted. However, in the same article you'll note this little tidbit: In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  > Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. The article you posted doesn't mention that YouTube is promoting ad-free hosting that the creator doesn't have to pay for.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    > The article you posted doesn't mention that YouTube is promoting ad-free hosting that the creator doesn't have to pay for. The article from 2008 doesn't mention that butterflys might be appearing across the video randomly either. How is what they didn't specifically say (or imply) relevant? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I thought the messages from that far back was interesting, which hedged toward this eventual practice.
    - RandallBrown 6y ago
      I thought you you were saying that YouTube has been marketing ad free video hosting since 2008 and the article was the evidence of that. I must have misunderstood.
- freyir 6y ago
  The article seems pretty upfront that ads may be played on videos uploaded to YouTube. “Free” means he doesn’t need to pay for hosting, and he doesn’t.
prvc 6y ago
Precisely. If he's selling ad-free versions, he can just host them himself.

by Aunche 6y ago

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.
    - labawi 6y ago
      There was a time when downloading movies took hours, or even days. Nowadays, you can stream via popcorn time for basically free¹. As for CPU, storage - I don't think 10+ different formats at extreme compression are a hard requirement. Youtube ads are good, as people will have incentive to use peertube and similar. ¹ You need some seeds, but they don't need Tbps pipes.
      - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
        >There was a time when downloading movies took hours, or even days. Nowadays, you can stream via popcorn time for basically free¹. And a willingness to steal...
        labawi 6y ago
        For the record, argument was of declining distribution costs for content you presumably have the right to share, e.g. created yourself.
        mmastrac 6y ago
        Copyright infringement isn't theft.
        ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
        Illegal copying? Call it what you will, if you had paid for the Dark Knight, WB would get $5. Instead they get $0. It's illegal and if everyone did it, movies would not exist.
- moogly 6y ago
  No, the real reason they don't go on their own is because of the massive user base.
Aunche 6y ago
Youtubers take a 55% cut of ad revenue, which is about 1.8 cents per view. Youtube takes a 45% cut, but part of that is to subsidize the videos that currently don't have ads, so let's say 20% of current ad revenue is a reasonble price of Youtube removing ads from a single video. For a video viewed a million times, it would cost a creator $6545 (.018 x 20/55 x 1,000,000) to keep the video ad free. I can't imagine anyone willing to pay that much to keep their videos ad-free.

belengthy 6y ago

Or YouTube could provide a way for creators to remove ads. There is a membership program so people can directly support specific channels, but it has no option to remove ads for members. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7544492?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7544492?hl=en

kevingadd 6y ago
Members still see ads? That's incredible. I just naturally assumed channels would be ad-free for paying members, since that's how it works on Twitch.

Supermancho 6y ago

> That just comes off as entitled. Youtube is providing free bandwidth, hosting, and advertising for his patreon. Youtube has been promoting that you can do that since 2008 - https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/12/youtube-the-platform/ - so maybe "entitled" isn't the word. It's expected because the capability has been promoted. However, in the same article you'll note this little tidbit: In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.

RandallBrown 6y ago
> Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. The article you posted doesn't mention that YouTube is promoting ad-free hosting that the creator doesn't have to pay for.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > The article you posted doesn't mention that YouTube is promoting ad-free hosting that the creator doesn't have to pay for. The article from 2008 doesn't mention that butterflys might be appearing across the video randomly either. How is what they didn't specifically say (or imply) relevant? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I thought the messages from that far back was interesting, which hedged toward this eventual practice.
  - RandallBrown 6y ago
    I thought you you were saying that YouTube has been marketing ad free video hosting since 2008 and the article was the evidence of that. I must have misunderstood.
freyir 6y ago
The article seems pretty upfront that ads may be played on videos uploaded to YouTube. “Free” means he doesn’t need to pay for hosting, and he doesn’t.

prvc 6y ago

Precisely. If he's selling ad-free versions, he can just host them himself.