3 ms·

>If everyone stops riding the subway, the city will lose the same amount of money and the subway will be underfunded. If everyone stops skiing and instead decid

by pb7 3y ago

>If everyone stops riding the subway, the city will lose the same amount of money and the subway will be underfunded. If everyone stops skiing and instead decides to build snowpeople in their back yard, the resort will go out of business. If no one shows up for the music festival, the artist will make zero dollars. So there will be no more subway, no more ski resort, no more music, and in this case, no more YouTube. Is that what you want? It's theft because you're not paying your fair share of the usage of the service. If the system remains in balance, you're either stealing from all other users (because they have to pay more for the recipients to earn the same amount), or stealing from YouTube/content creators (because they make less per view but the costs are higher).

danShumway 3y ago
> and in this case, no more YouTube. It would be unequivocally good for the Internet if Google didn't have a monopoly on independent online video hosting. > If the system remains in balance, you're either stealing from all other users (because they have to pay more for the recipients to earn the same amount), or stealing from YouTube/content creators (because they make less per view but the costs are higher). This is incoherent. By this logic if I take a car into the city I am stealing from the railroad. I'm either stealing from all of the riders (because the railroad will need to increase fares so that fewer riders cover the same service) or stealing from the service (since they'll have reduced revenue from running the same number of trains). Heck, by that logic if I build a competing product to another company and its users switch to my product, then I've stolen money from the other company. It's nonsense. "I could have made more money if you didn't do that" does not work as a definition of stealing. There are in fact ethical considerations around watching content for free -- even in instances where a creator might be giving explicit permission to watch that content for free, and certainly in instances where they want/need compensation. There's a reason why we try to fund Open Source projects even though they have licenses giving content away for free. There's a reason why we try to fund creators and give them steady revenue streams even in the instances where we know we won't be watching many of their videos for a month. People do have a moral duty to (when possible) support creators that are building things they care about. Those ethical considerations are real, but they are orthogonal to theft. Theft is not merely deprivation of revenue.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > It would be unequivocally good for the Internet if Google didn't have a monopoly on independent online video hosting. So true. It should never have been permitted to get to this point.
- pb7 3y ago
  Pay or find a different place to watch videos soon.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    :shrug: Google gets far too much value out of having a stranglehold on indie video hosting to shut down. I wish other services would take their place to be honest. But no, they're not going to close down Youtube. Even operating at a loss, Youtube cements a lot of power and influence for Google that they're not going to give up. I do hope you're right though.
    - pb7 3y ago
      I meant because they’re going to break ad blockers. YouTube isn’t going anywhere. Absolutely nothing will change if all the people that block ads are booted from the site except reduced costs. Sounds great!
      - danShumway 3y ago
        :shrug: Quite frankly, I'm doubtful that Youtube is ultimately going to do anything that will threaten their monopoly regardless. If enough people are blocking ads that it's seriously hurting Youtube's revenue, Youtube is not going to risk those users going somewhere else -- because the point isn't just to make money, it's to cement a monopoly position over video hosting. That means being a dependable place where when a video is hosted, uploaders can be confident it'll be viewable. I could very well be wrong about their internal calculations about that, it depends on whether Youtube sees an actual risk of users going elsewhere (and whether there are enough people blocking ads in the first place for them to care one way or another). It'll be interesting to see what Youtube ultimately does. > except reduced costs. This in particular is funny though. I would not hold my breath that Youtube premium is going to get cheaper. That's not going to be a thing :) Youtube premium is not priced around the cost that it takes to keep Youtube running. It's priced around what the market will bear, just like every product is. The only thing that's ever going to make Youtube's pricing or payout model change is competition. That is the only thing that ever makes price go down. If Twitch starts offering better hosting options than it currently does, or Nebula somehow manages to take off, or there's some completely random mass-migration to Peertube (unlikely), then maybe you'll see prices go down.

by pb7 3y ago

danShumway 3y ago

> and in this case, no more YouTube. It would be unequivocally good for the Internet if Google didn't have a monopoly on independent online video hosting. > If the system remains in balance, you're either stealing from all other users (because they have to pay more for the recipients to earn the same amount), or stealing from YouTube/content creators (because they make less per view but the costs are higher). This is incoherent. By this logic if I take a car into the city I am stealing from the railroad. I'm either stealing from all of the riders (because the railroad will need to increase fares so that fewer riders cover the same service) or stealing from the service (since they'll have reduced revenue from running the same number of trains). Heck, by that logic if I build a competing product to another company and its users switch to my product, then I've stolen money from the other company. It's nonsense. "I could have made more money if you didn't do that" does not work as a definition of stealing. There are in fact ethical considerations around watching content for free -- even in instances where a creator might be giving explicit permission to watch that content for free, and certainly in instances where they want/need compensation. There's a reason why we try to fund Open Source projects even though they have licenses giving content away for free. There's a reason why we try to fund creators and give them steady revenue streams even in the instances where we know we won't be watching many of their videos for a month. People do have a moral duty to (when possible) support creators that are building things they care about. Those ethical considerations are real, but they are orthogonal to theft. Theft is not merely deprivation of revenue.

wkat4242 3y ago
> It would be unequivocally good for the Internet if Google didn't have a monopoly on independent online video hosting. So true. It should never have been permitted to get to this point.
pb7 3y ago
Pay or find a different place to watch videos soon.
- danShumway 3y ago
  :shrug: Google gets far too much value out of having a stranglehold on indie video hosting to shut down. I wish other services would take their place to be honest. But no, they're not going to close down Youtube. Even operating at a loss, Youtube cements a lot of power and influence for Google that they're not going to give up. I do hope you're right though.
  - pb7 3y ago
    I meant because they’re going to break ad blockers. YouTube isn’t going anywhere. Absolutely nothing will change if all the people that block ads are booted from the site except reduced costs. Sounds great!
    - danShumway 3y ago
      :shrug: Quite frankly, I'm doubtful that Youtube is ultimately going to do anything that will threaten their monopoly regardless. If enough people are blocking ads that it's seriously hurting Youtube's revenue, Youtube is not going to risk those users going somewhere else -- because the point isn't just to make money, it's to cement a monopoly position over video hosting. That means being a dependable place where when a video is hosted, uploaders can be confident it'll be viewable. I could very well be wrong about their internal calculations about that, it depends on whether Youtube sees an actual risk of users going elsewhere (and whether there are enough people blocking ads in the first place for them to care one way or another). It'll be interesting to see what Youtube ultimately does. > except reduced costs. This in particular is funny though. I would not hold my breath that Youtube premium is going to get cheaper. That's not going to be a thing :) Youtube premium is not priced around the cost that it takes to keep Youtube running. It's priced around what the market will bear, just like every product is. The only thing that's ever going to make Youtube's pricing or payout model change is competition. That is the only thing that ever makes price go down. If Twitch starts offering better hosting options than it currently does, or Nebula somehow manages to take off, or there's some completely random mass-migration to Peertube (unlikely), then maybe you'll see prices go down.