7 ms·

While I can easily understand people's aversion to tracking and advertisements, I think projects like this are really unsustainable. Storing videos, transcoding

• mario_lopez 5y ago
  This is my preferred option: Simply pay (in the worst case, a subscription, in the best case, a one-time fee) to get rid of the ads. If I spend more than 10 hours a week on a platform (e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Twitch), I will gladly pay to keep the ads away. I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.
  • macintux 5y ago
    > I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this. That's why I pay Fastmail: no ads, and no data harvesting.
    • toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Also a FastMail user. I don’t want to give a single dollar or as impression to Google.
    • roenxi 5y ago
      Given the direction Google is heading, it is quite unlikely but not unthinkable that they'll start locking the accounts / blocking the emails of people who spread "misinformation". It is a good time to have a commercial relationship with an email service. Less likely for politics to get involved.
  • dudus 5y ago
    Apparently there's a new version called google workspace individual. You keep an @gmail account pay a fee for some extra features. https://workspace.google.com/individual/ https://workspace.google.com/individual/ Not sure if it's fully launched yet.
    • mkmk 5y ago
      Calendly replacement, designed email templates, and video call collaboration features for $8/mo… interesting! So accustomed to Google’s “everything is free” approach that I’m curious to see how this does.
    • crooked-v 5y ago
      Neat. How long until they abruptly shut it down, though?
    • cassonmars 5y ago
      Doesn’t fix the problem where when you make all the services you depend on use your gmail address for validation and Google arbitrarily decides to shut your account down with no recourse or contact to resolve it, you’re just screwed. Stop letting Google eat the web.
    • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      My Gmail has been throwing up a “Workspace” splash screen when it launches. I think I’m paying a few dollars a year for Drive storage, so maybe they rolled me in to that.
      • dudus 5y ago
        I have that too but it's just google One. A different thing that only gives you extra storage, some photo editing features and some support. Google workspace individual seems like a different thing. Kinda confusing to be honest.
    • sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Do not buy any kind of gmail add on, subscription service, or anything. I did, and when Gmail turned off my billing (for my own protection), I lost the ability to send and receive emails, because I was exceeding my drive quota by 1,200%. I have to send them a passport photo (my ID is expired) and hope that they bless me with the ability to pay for additional storage again. But I realized it’s safer not to pay for anything.
  • nerdponx 5y ago
    It just sucks to know that even premium paying subscribers still get surveilled as aggressively as the free users. It's the same with Spotify, major news outlets, financial institutions, etc.
  • pg5 5y ago
    I switched from Gmail to using a Microsoft O365 business subscription with my personal domain name. I don't like the UX or the fact I can't append +<any string> to my address to have infinite test emails, but at least I'm paying for a product instead of being the product.
  • Rd6n6 5y ago
    Just use fastmail or ProtonMail
• MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  The emphasis of the project seems to be privacy, rather than ad-blocking, although it does block ads. The two are often intertwined.
• spiderice 5y ago
  I don’t think many people argue it is unfair for YouTube to show ads. They argue it is wrong for them to be tracked aggressively across the web. So where is the front end I can use to still give YouTube ad views without being tracked? I’m saying this as a YT premium subscriber.
  • judge2020 5y ago
    That's just an issue with it being associate with Google, though - recommendations are based on your viewing habits and that's done server-side. Most people use recommendations at least somewhat, and don't find absolutely all of the videos via just the subscription and search features.
  • lancesells 5y ago
    Think of how different everything would be if YouTube wasn't a part of Google. They would no doubt have ads but the entire Google universe wouldn't have access to the viewing habits of 2 billion people.
    • Pako 5y ago
      It also probably wouldn't exist anymore. last time I heard anything about it YouTube was in the red and only sustained with income from other Google services. (I might be wrong on that, if so please correct me)
      • ExtraE 5y ago
        Haven’t checked if this is a reputable source, but: https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/ https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/
      • IX-103 5y ago
        I heard that Google was able to get it to break even after a substantial investment to improve efficiency (custom ASICs for transcoding, machine learning models for prioritizing allocation of storage and computing resources). I think I agree that it probably wouldn't exist. Not very many companies would invest that much to just to break even.
• Terretta 5y ago
  The cost to subscriber is out of line with the expense to provider. Same is true of digital newspapers, magazines, etc., the subscription fees are way out of proportion to what they made from ads per reader in print or made in CPM online. While this might not matter for one publisher, it prevents users from accepting pay-for-use as an alternative model across the range of media they consume unless through an aggregate subscription like the one acquired by Apple. (While on the subject, the various ad-free streaming providers litter the offerings with more and more ads to the point you can’t trust your shows will indeed be ad free. It’s hard to say if this is on purpose to undermine and kill that model or not.)
• antonzabirko 5y ago
  I don't think fairness has anything to do with the endless push to drive profits higher. Which is what youtube must do.
• jraph 5y ago
  Well, I'm not fond of Google and I'm not willing to run it's proprietary code. I'd pay for the video hosting service but I'm actively avoiding Google in my life and would rather avoid giving it money. I also don't like ads and tracking. I'd normally boycott a Google service but YouTube is where the content is (network effect). These alternative frontends at least avoid part of the tracking (ads are already taken care of by uBlock Origin anyway) and the non-free Javascript code. With respect to the business model, I don't feel especially guilty, Google has way too much money and power and I'd rather have an unsustainable YouTube replaced by a federation of PeerTube instances with a power diluted across these instances. These alternative frontends could be seen as a temporary, partial solution while YouTube is up. On the technical side, they are way easier on underpowered devices than YouTube proper, including the PinePhone.
• gopiandcode 5y ago
  I'd argue that it's unfair for Google to use their market power in search to subsidise their video hosting products, thereby limiting the number of competitors, and then start forcing people to participate in their unethical privacy invasive ad network to consume video content online. Using services like this is a way to protest that injustice.
  • orhmeh09 5y ago
    How is it unfair that they invest their legitimately obtained profits into a new business? The people who are unsatisfied with this don’t know how hard it is to launch a search engine and plan wisely for the future they enjoy today. Just start a new search engine and then you can spend your money as you want, as you too are entitled to the sweat of your brow, just as Page and the other giants of our time are.
    • makeitdouble 5y ago
      Replacce “unfair” with “detrimental to the ecosystem” then. We’ll never get good alternatives if they have to compete with a player with infinite money. IRL dumping is illegal, arguably we are in a similar situation.
    • mst 5y ago
      The term for this is "predatory pricing" and was a big part of e.g. legal cases against Standard Oil who used it to crush competitors.
      • root_axis 5y ago
        The distinguishing quality of predatory pricing is that it's an unsustainable tactic used to push competitors out of the market before raising prices at a later time. It's not predatory pricing if the price never changes and in the case of YouTube the price to consumers has always been free, even before it was owned by Google.
        • Aissen 5y ago
• netr0ute 5y ago
  If you can't afford to keep videos with ads, then your business is junk to begin with.
• bogwog 5y ago
  > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them. The problem with that logic is that people don't just hate ads, they hate and/or distrust Google. People are not going to give money to a company they hate and/or distrust if they can avoid it. That's why it's important for businesses to not engage in unethical behavior/things their customers hate. Of course, in Google's case (and peers), they're largely immune to market forces thanks to years of anti-competitive behavior. So the consequences of being evil/unethical/shitty/etc are usually minor or non-existent. That's exactly why projects like this are good. Because it's the only way (a tiny subset of) consumers have (a negligible amount of) power to have an impact on bad business practices, since the usual "vote with your wallet" tactic doesn't work. And if creators lose ad revenue because people use a project like this, well, tough luck. In the short term, some of those might make less money or go out of business, but if this ends up changing (or bankrupting!) youtube, it will ultimately help creators in the long run if it means new business opportunities once the monopoly is gone and/or some of that bargaining power goes back to the consumers.
• 908087 5y ago
  You can pay for "ad-free" Youtube, but that still doesn't stop them from tracking your behavior/usage.
• mkroman 5y ago
  Unfortunately YouTube Premium is an extremely expensive solution just to remove ads :(
  • npteljes 5y ago
    Under which economy could it be considered expensive?
• zouhair 5y ago
  Beside ads the main problem I have with Youtube on my Desktop is I hate watching videos on a browser. I prefer using a dedicated video player like MPV.
• Beldin 5y ago
  Given previous incidents where renowned sites spread malware via ads (eg. bbc), accepting ads on your system is simply unacceptable from a security point of view. I've never heard of anyone being reimbursed by a website that unwittingly infected them. Websites that take responsibility for their ads, that's different. But those are very few and very far between. Right now, surfing without an adblocker is like going to a swinger party vowing not to use condoms. (Actually, I think your browser is already intimite with more domains upon one average visit to one average website than that...) So: block ads. It's basic Internet hygiene.
• perryizgr8 5y ago
  > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. This only removes the ads inserted by YouTube. Nowadays even moderately successful you tubers are inserting their own ads into their videos. This will not be skipped using youtube red.