5 ms·

Hmm, it's such a shame that we have a single point of failure for so much of internet culture, not to mention people's actual creative lives. This is one of th

Hmm, it's such a shame that we have a single point of failure for so much of internet culture, not to mention people's actual creative lives. This is one of the reasons I started using youtube-dl. I wanted to create an independent backup of all my favorite creators and contributors in the event that they have to leave or delete their channels. This content should belong to everyone. I wish I could trust that all my favorite videos will be there forever, but this is just not the case. Removing the comments on music videos already hurt a lot.

fsflover 5y ago
> Hmm, it's such a shame that we have a single point of failure You should consider using PeerTube instead, which is federated.
thethimble 5y ago
Sorry I have the opposite perspectives as you: I don’t want to visit independent creators’ websites to find their content - all with different UIs, etc. YouTube gives me a clean, centralized way to access content where I know I will be able to stream 4K and view content offline. This feels massively more convenient to me than having to maintain a catalog of offline videos… While I think we all agree that centralization of control isn’t great, the consumer gets tremendous value from centralization and this value doesn’t get talked about enough. Finally your assertion of “this content should belong to everyone” is idealistic. Who is going to pay to store and stream this content? What about the copyright of the actual content creators?
- pmlnr 5y ago
  > all with different UIs, etc. Let me introduce you to the concept of RSS and news/feed readers: https://aboutfeeds.com/ https://aboutfeeds.com/
  - pavel_lishin 5y ago
    That's fine for discovering that an artist has put out a new video, not necessarily great for actually visiting their site and figuring out how to play it.
    - nimih 5y ago
      RSS seems to have worked out quite well for audio content, viz. podcasts; there doesn't seem to be any technical reason why it wouldn't work equally well for video media.
      - asdff 5y ago
        I personally use it for video media as well. One hit on my keyboard and the RSS item opens up mpv with the video playing. Computers are built to parse text, no reason to do it by hand sifting through websites with your mouse.
    - account42 5y ago
      Figuring out how to play (or download) a video from a website URL is exactly what youtube-dl does.
- lolbrels 5y ago
  And they are saying when your clean centralized way to access content begins restricting and deleting that content, you no longer have access to it. With youtube-dl you can maintain that footage regardless. Sure it's a pain to catalog and store video files, but trusting YouTube is a naive long term plan because I've seen entire channels with hundreds of videos wiped clean with no way to find them again. YouTube is supposed to be free content so it should belong and be available to everyone, I don't think that's idealistic I think that was it's entire purpose...you pay with screen time and ads. I don't think Google is having any funding issues. I found the parent comment to be passive and agreeable. Not sure how you came away from it with so many things to disagree about.
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  > Finally your assertion of “this content should belong to everyone” is idealistic. Who is going to pay to store and stream this content? What about the copyright of the actual content creators? That’s ironic because YouTube beat Viacom in 2013 because “this content should belong to everyone” not us so you can’t sue YouTube go sue the users.
- bruiseralmighty 5y ago
  I think you make a good point that centralization provides a lot of value today. However, if the protocols that youtube used where open-source then it would be easier to create generic user interfaces open to all content makers. Similar to what another poster said about RSS feeds. I think one of the deeper critiques you and several others have made is that someone still has to pay for storage and streaming. Today I am paying. I bought the additional hard disk to store this on. In addition to my time and effort to collect the files. In the future I would pay some amount each month to stream what I have if it gave me access to everyone else's (essentially staking my video files). I don't mind paying for a good peer-to-peer service. In fact I feel that I am losing a lot more by staying with a legacy system. Hence backing up the videos I like even though I have no method of distributing them.
  - ivan888 5y ago
    In my dream world where I have the energy (and time) to devote to writing software outside of work I would love to build something that satisfies this need. p2p creative content sharing which is user friendly so people can just run it and start sharing their work while also helping to distribute the work of others
  - thu2111 5y ago
    Well maybe. But the YouTube "protocol" keeps changing. The problems yt-dl has are related to trying to keep up with the protocol's enormous surface area and, as we can see here, sometimes changes have to be made quickly in response to legislation.
javajosh 5y ago
You can't produce value around content without artificial scarcity. In this case, Google/YT centralizes distribution and access, so that in order to consume content you must pay a fee (watch ads, provide personality data, etc.) This has both good and bad sides to it. On the good side, it means people can make money as YouTube creators. This subsidizes the enormous volume of content that makes the creators no money. On the bad side, you have a SPOF, and those failure modes can be many and varied. In this case its unwarranted age restrictions, but more usually its fraudulent DMCA take downs, various algorithmic shenanigans, and of course censorship (which can be good or bad, actually). But you can't have one property (value producing artificial scarcity) without the other (a central point of failure). The real question is: can content creators host their own content such that they can derive value from it? Will users consume that content, and pay for it, somehow? Theoretically it's possible, but the technical barriers are quite high. YT has capitalized on massive economies of scale to reduce the technical barriers to hosting and monetizing content to zero. This same pattern is repeated again and again: connect computer to the internet, then specialize that computer's software to do one thing really well, attract users/makers, use your control of the platform to extract value from users (inject ads, membership fees, data brokers, etc), profit. The hope is that the value to society outweighs the cost, and honestly I think that's actually the case! I just hope more people get clear-eyed about the trade-offs for-profit internet services make to be viable.
- account42 5y ago
  > You can't produce value around content without artificial scarcity. Patronage or crowdfunding can work even if the content is released publically.
bsdetector 5y ago
I suppose the next step will be to turn on DRM for age-protected videos, which few will even notice since Widevine is installed everywhere. Soon after they'll turn it on for all videos, making it nearly impossible for normal people to save any videos and making it illegal to do so in the US. If there's anything you care about seeing in the future, proactively download it now at the highest quality while it's still possible to do so.

fsflover 5y ago

> Hmm, it's such a shame that we have a single point of failure You should consider using PeerTube instead, which is federated.

thethimble 5y ago

Sorry I have the opposite perspectives as you: I don’t want to visit independent creators’ websites to find their content - all with different UIs, etc. YouTube gives me a clean, centralized way to access content where I know I will be able to stream 4K and view content offline. This feels massively more convenient to me than having to maintain a catalog of offline videos… While I think we all agree that centralization of control isn’t great, the consumer gets tremendous value from centralization and this value doesn’t get talked about enough. Finally your assertion of “this content should belong to everyone” is idealistic. Who is going to pay to store and stream this content? What about the copyright of the actual content creators?

pmlnr 5y ago
> all with different UIs, etc. Let me introduce you to the concept of RSS and news/feed readers: https://aboutfeeds.com/ https://aboutfeeds.com/
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  That's fine for discovering that an artist has put out a new video, not necessarily great for actually visiting their site and figuring out how to play it.
  - nimih 5y ago
    RSS seems to have worked out quite well for audio content, viz. podcasts; there doesn't seem to be any technical reason why it wouldn't work equally well for video media.
    - asdff 5y ago
      I personally use it for video media as well. One hit on my keyboard and the RSS item opens up mpv with the video playing. Computers are built to parse text, no reason to do it by hand sifting through websites with your mouse.
  - account42 5y ago
    Figuring out how to play (or download) a video from a website URL is exactly what youtube-dl does.
lolbrels 5y ago
And they are saying when your clean centralized way to access content begins restricting and deleting that content, you no longer have access to it. With youtube-dl you can maintain that footage regardless. Sure it's a pain to catalog and store video files, but trusting YouTube is a naive long term plan because I've seen entire channels with hundreds of videos wiped clean with no way to find them again. YouTube is supposed to be free content so it should belong and be available to everyone, I don't think that's idealistic I think that was it's entire purpose...you pay with screen time and ads. I don't think Google is having any funding issues. I found the parent comment to be passive and agreeable. Not sure how you came away from it with so many things to disagree about.
aiisjustanif 5y ago
> Finally your assertion of “this content should belong to everyone” is idealistic. Who is going to pay to store and stream this content? What about the copyright of the actual content creators? That’s ironic because YouTube beat Viacom in 2013 because “this content should belong to everyone” not us so you can’t sue YouTube go sue the users.
bruiseralmighty 5y ago
I think you make a good point that centralization provides a lot of value today. However, if the protocols that youtube used where open-source then it would be easier to create generic user interfaces open to all content makers. Similar to what another poster said about RSS feeds. I think one of the deeper critiques you and several others have made is that someone still has to pay for storage and streaming. Today I am paying. I bought the additional hard disk to store this on. In addition to my time and effort to collect the files. In the future I would pay some amount each month to stream what I have if it gave me access to everyone else's (essentially staking my video files). I don't mind paying for a good peer-to-peer service. In fact I feel that I am losing a lot more by staying with a legacy system. Hence backing up the videos I like even though I have no method of distributing them.
- ivan888 5y ago
  In my dream world where I have the energy (and time) to devote to writing software outside of work I would love to build something that satisfies this need. p2p creative content sharing which is user friendly so people can just run it and start sharing their work while also helping to distribute the work of others
- thu2111 5y ago
  Well maybe. But the YouTube "protocol" keeps changing. The problems yt-dl has are related to trying to keep up with the protocol's enormous surface area and, as we can see here, sometimes changes have to be made quickly in response to legislation.

javajosh 5y ago

You can't produce value around content without artificial scarcity. In this case, Google/YT centralizes distribution and access, so that in order to consume content you must pay a fee (watch ads, provide personality data, etc.) This has both good and bad sides to it. On the good side, it means people can make money as YouTube creators. This subsidizes the enormous volume of content that makes the creators no money. On the bad side, you have a SPOF, and those failure modes can be many and varied. In this case its unwarranted age restrictions, but more usually its fraudulent DMCA take downs, various algorithmic shenanigans, and of course censorship (which can be good or bad, actually). But you can't have one property (value producing artificial scarcity) without the other (a central point of failure). The real question is: can content creators host their own content such that they can derive value from it? Will users consume that content, and pay for it, somehow? Theoretically it's possible, but the technical barriers are quite high. YT has capitalized on massive economies of scale to reduce the technical barriers to hosting and monetizing content to zero. This same pattern is repeated again and again: connect computer to the internet, then specialize that computer's software to do one thing really well, attract users/makers, use your control of the platform to extract value from users (inject ads, membership fees, data brokers, etc), profit. The hope is that the value to society outweighs the cost, and honestly I think that's actually the case! I just hope more people get clear-eyed about the trade-offs for-profit internet services make to be viable.

account42 5y ago
> You can't produce value around content without artificial scarcity. Patronage or crowdfunding can work even if the content is released publically.

bsdetector 5y ago

I suppose the next step will be to turn on DRM for age-protected videos, which few will even notice since Widevine is installed everywhere. Soon after they'll turn it on for all videos, making it nearly impossible for normal people to save any videos and making it illegal to do so in the US. If there's anything you care about seeing in the future, proactively download it now at the highest quality while it's still possible to do so.