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>The bigger issue I see is the desire to link everything to a phone number. Yep, I've had my youtube account since before Google bought youtube in 2006. Just t

>The bigger issue I see is the desire to link everything to a phone number. Yep, I've had my youtube account since before Google bought youtube in 2006. Just this week I noticed that I am no longer able to put URLs in the descriptions of videos I upload to youtube. I have to "verify" by giving them my phone number before any clickable URLs are allowed in descriptions. But apparently all URLs are clickable URLs. Additionally, even videos I uploaded in 2008, if I go to edit their descriptions now and I originally included a URL, I cannot submit it. Phone number "verification" is nasty. I suppose this is the end of my almost 2 decades of using youtube to host videos. As for email spam prevention, I've run my own mailserver with a domain since 2011. I give each service an actual unique email address and then just catch-all emails sent to my domain. It works great.

account42 4y ago
> I suppose this is the end of my almost 2 decades of using youtube to host videos. As a user I can only hope that more people do stop using YouTube, preferrably choosing something that serves video files directly instead. > As for email spam prevention, I've run my own mailserver with a domain since 2011. I give each service an actual unique email address and then just catch-all emails sent to my domain. It works great. This works but only because running your own mail server is too uncommon for anyone to care about. If it was more common, the advertisers or other privacy violators would specifically check for catch-all domains and then strip the entire local part of the email for your user id.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think youtube's hegemony is past; it WAS the main point to upload your videos at some point because storage and bandwidth was expensive, and on-demand video conversion difficult and resource-intensive. But nowadays anyone can host videos on a $5/month shared server, with software to handle things like video conversion. Youtube pivoted from "just" hosting videos to a community though, to the point where you won't get any views unless you are on youtube and play by their rules and network effects.
- dreen 4y ago
  Depends on the videos, I think if you want someone to watch your 1080p@60fps without stutter like they do on youtube anywhere in the world you need edge architecture designed for video no? If so, I'd like to know the service which can do that for $5.
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    For static video you pretty much just need to serve it in a format browsers support with the correct MIME types, and make sure you have enough bandwidth. Where it gets hairy is when you want to do live streaming…
    - dv35z 4y ago
      Any suggested tech stack for this? I posted a similar question to this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34384732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34384732
      - 5- 4y ago
        > tech stack linux? a $5 vps running any webserver and an sftp client on your phone will do.
    - nerdbert 4y ago
      This really doesn't work very well for a great many users. You can have all the bandwidth in the world, but the magic that Youtube does is mainly dealing with the users' bandwidth, for example, it switches video resolution on the fly when it notices that frames are going to have to be dropped soon.
      - account42 4y ago
        If only browsers would natively support adaptive quality video streaming. Perhaps we should ask the biggest browser vendor to implement that, surely they won't have any conflict of interest there.
wpietri 4y ago
Just to explain this a bit: > to put URLs in the descriptions [...] Phone number "verification" is nasty Spam is a huge problem for any large platform with free accounts, and there aren't a lot of good options to prevent it. One set of mitigations is around increasing the cost of an identity. Email addresses are infinite and free, but working phone numbers are limited and usually cost money. So gating spammer-desired activities on phone numbers makes sense from their perspective. They could get a similar effect by requiring a credit card number, but people hate that even more. If you'd like to work around this, I'd suggest getting another number for just this. Google Voice will give you one for free, and the Burner app will do it for $5/month if you sign up via web. Or in my case, my ISP gives me a free landline number with my internet service, which is great for this sort of thing.
- account42 4y ago
  Advertising and tracking a bigger problems than spam IMO. The most ridiculous part of this phone-verification BS is that many companies (e.g. Twitter, Discord) let you create an account without it but will then demand a number at some point later. This only hurts real users because spammers can just switch IPs and create a new account that they can use for a while. > Google Voice will give you one for free And what information do you have to give Google for that number so that you can avoid giving your phone number to Google?
- Retric 4y ago
  Jumping through hops like this is a bad idea. If you disagree with their business practices don’t use them. Beyond the moral argument, it’s easy to be in a situation where you get locked out because you no longer have access to a temporary phone number etc.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    I get your point, but I have to pick my battles. I disagree with quite a lot of business practices. If I wanted ethical purity under capitalism, in short order I'd be subsistence farming and living the grim life of a preindustrial peasant. Which would be then giving up any power I might have to change the system. That strikes me as even less ethical, however pure it might be. Heck, if I wanted ethical purity, I wouldn't be here contributing free content to YC. But I think the net good outweighs the net harm, so here I am.
josephcsible 4y ago
https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO... > 1. Some people do not own phones, or do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked. Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential, and whenever possible try to provide a fallback to accommodate these users. What a bunch of hypocrites.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential And note that a phone number is the number for calling a telephone, not some jumped-up pager. They want a mobile number so they can send you SMS messages. I hate SMS, and I deplore it's use as a part of any kind of security protocol. If you don't intend to speak to me, you don't need my phone number. If you do, then my (VOIP) landline will serve you fine.
  - kps 4y ago
    > If you don't intend to speak to me, you don't need my phone number. I would amend that just a little: If I don't intend to have you speak to me, you don't need my phone number.
- jefftk 4y ago
  > What a bunch of hypocrites. Is "your policies must be fully consistent with any advice given in any of your open source repos" really a standard we should hold big companies to? Because if we treat open-sourcing a text file of recommendations as the company making a statement or commitment to that effect, companies will be way more limited in what they allow their engineers to make public this way. With chilling effects that go beyond semi-humorous recommendations. ("Do you really want to try to open-source this library? You know how frustrating Legal and PR can be to deal with...")
  - account42 4y ago
    I don't think we should avoid calling out companies for their bs even if that means they might avoid doing some other less shitty things.

account42 4y ago

> I suppose this is the end of my almost 2 decades of using youtube to host videos. As a user I can only hope that more people do stop using YouTube, preferrably choosing something that serves video files directly instead. > As for email spam prevention, I've run my own mailserver with a domain since 2011. I give each service an actual unique email address and then just catch-all emails sent to my domain. It works great. This works but only because running your own mail server is too uncommon for anyone to care about. If it was more common, the advertisers or other privacy violators would specifically check for catch-all domains and then strip the entire local part of the email for your user id.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I think youtube's hegemony is past; it WAS the main point to upload your videos at some point because storage and bandwidth was expensive, and on-demand video conversion difficult and resource-intensive. But nowadays anyone can host videos on a $5/month shared server, with software to handle things like video conversion. Youtube pivoted from "just" hosting videos to a community though, to the point where you won't get any views unless you are on youtube and play by their rules and network effects.

dreen 4y ago
Depends on the videos, I think if you want someone to watch your 1080p@60fps without stutter like they do on youtube anywhere in the world you need edge architecture designed for video no? If so, I'd like to know the service which can do that for $5.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  For static video you pretty much just need to serve it in a format browsers support with the correct MIME types, and make sure you have enough bandwidth. Where it gets hairy is when you want to do live streaming…
  - dv35z 4y ago
    Any suggested tech stack for this? I posted a similar question to this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34384732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34384732
    - 5- 4y ago
      > tech stack linux? a $5 vps running any webserver and an sftp client on your phone will do.
  - nerdbert 4y ago
    This really doesn't work very well for a great many users. You can have all the bandwidth in the world, but the magic that Youtube does is mainly dealing with the users' bandwidth, for example, it switches video resolution on the fly when it notices that frames are going to have to be dropped soon.
    - account42 4y ago
      If only browsers would natively support adaptive quality video streaming. Perhaps we should ask the biggest browser vendor to implement that, surely they won't have any conflict of interest there.

wpietri 4y ago

Just to explain this a bit: > to put URLs in the descriptions [...] Phone number "verification" is nasty Spam is a huge problem for any large platform with free accounts, and there aren't a lot of good options to prevent it. One set of mitigations is around increasing the cost of an identity. Email addresses are infinite and free, but working phone numbers are limited and usually cost money. So gating spammer-desired activities on phone numbers makes sense from their perspective. They could get a similar effect by requiring a credit card number, but people hate that even more. If you'd like to work around this, I'd suggest getting another number for just this. Google Voice will give you one for free, and the Burner app will do it for $5/month if you sign up via web. Or in my case, my ISP gives me a free landline number with my internet service, which is great for this sort of thing.

account42 4y ago
Advertising and tracking a bigger problems than spam IMO. The most ridiculous part of this phone-verification BS is that many companies (e.g. Twitter, Discord) let you create an account without it but will then demand a number at some point later. This only hurts real users because spammers can just switch IPs and create a new account that they can use for a while. > Google Voice will give you one for free And what information do you have to give Google for that number so that you can avoid giving your phone number to Google?
Retric 4y ago
Jumping through hops like this is a bad idea. If you disagree with their business practices don’t use them. Beyond the moral argument, it’s easy to be in a situation where you get locked out because you no longer have access to a temporary phone number etc.
- wpietri 4y ago
  I get your point, but I have to pick my battles. I disagree with quite a lot of business practices. If I wanted ethical purity under capitalism, in short order I'd be subsistence farming and living the grim life of a preindustrial peasant. Which would be then giving up any power I might have to change the system. That strikes me as even less ethical, however pure it might be. Heck, if I wanted ethical purity, I wouldn't be here contributing free content to YC. But I think the net good outweighs the net harm, so here I am.

josephcsible 4y ago

https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO... > 1. Some people do not own phones, or do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked. Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential, and whenever possible try to provide a fallback to accommodate these users. What a bunch of hypocrites.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential And note that a phone number is the number for calling a telephone, not some jumped-up pager. They want a mobile number so they can send you SMS messages. I hate SMS, and I deplore it's use as a part of any kind of security protocol. If you don't intend to speak to me, you don't need my phone number. If you do, then my (VOIP) landline will serve you fine.
- kps 4y ago
  > If you don't intend to speak to me, you don't need my phone number. I would amend that just a little: If I don't intend to have you speak to me, you don't need my phone number.
jefftk 4y ago
> What a bunch of hypocrites. Is "your policies must be fully consistent with any advice given in any of your open source repos" really a standard we should hold big companies to? Because if we treat open-sourcing a text file of recommendations as the company making a statement or commitment to that effect, companies will be way more limited in what they allow their engineers to make public this way. With chilling effects that go beyond semi-humorous recommendations. ("Do you really want to try to open-source this library? You know how frustrating Legal and PR can be to deal with...")
- account42 4y ago
  I don't think we should avoid calling out companies for their bs even if that means they might avoid doing some other less shitty things.