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This is fine and dandy, and it's what I've done for a long while, but Google/Alphabet can and will pull the plug on it eventually. Folks, it really is time for

This is fine and dandy, and it's what I've done for a long while, but Google/Alphabet can and will pull the plug on it eventually. Folks, it really is time for us to either adopt a federated alternative like PeerTube, or improve it until it becomes a suitable alternative.

kevincox 3y ago
That's the nice thing about subscribing via RSS. You can seamlessly follow different creators no matter what platform they are on. This greatly reduces platform lock-in and over time makes it feasible for creators to move off of YouTube. If everyone just uses YouTube subscriptions and the YouTube homepage (or push notifications) then they are not easily able to start following people publishing on other platforms.
lolinder 3y ago
Full federation would be nice, but just using alternative, smaller platforms makes a huge difference in reducing YouTube's stranglehold. About half the people I follow are on Nebula, which is a surprisingly solid platform that provides a lot of good redundancy for educational YouTubers. As an added bonus, creators remove sponsorships from Nebula videos, so unlike YouTube Premium it really is completely ad free.
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  >but just using alternative, smaller platforms makes a huge difference this does not scale. bandwidth costs will crush small platforms and they will eventually be absorbed into bigger ones.. the only exit is closure (especially from a rouge patent troll or DMCA lawsuit) or buyout. see justin.tv as an example edit: all costs will crush you. you need a mod team to prevent runaway piracy and child porn. you need a security team to prevent attacks. you need a network team to try to minimize bandwidth loss. video delivery is not a cheap game, so i'm not really sure how free platforms will survive
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Does everything need to scale? I personally quite enjoyed the web back in the day where most communities were running on tiny boxes managed by a single hobbyist. > you need a mod team to prevent runaway piracy and child porn. Nebula doesn't because it's an invite-only platform. The creators are all part of an old-school social network and can vouch for each other. > video delivery is not a cheap game, so i'm not really sure how free platforms will survive So don't be a free platform! Nebula is doing just fine at serving me and many like me. Most of the creators I follow make a solid living on Patreon, with Nebula and YouTube ads just layered on top. The idea that every app must be free and must scale to ~every human being on the planet is killing the internet.
    - ardfard 3y ago
      > Does everything need to scale? I personally quite enjoyed the web back in the day where most communities were running on tiny boxes managed by a single hobbyist. It's just not only matter of scale. I follow content creator that posted some of his content on his personal website. but man, the user experience is night and day compared to youtube. loading video is slow, cant fast-forward before hit buffering, also no content discovery either. Paying for Youtube premium is no-brainer because i just get more value of it compared to even Netflix.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        Scale isn't a binary switch—Nebula's UX is very comparable to YouTube's, better in some ways. There's a space in the middle—between one guy's personal site and Google—where the platform has enough resources to get a decent experience.
- judge2020 3y ago
  Everyone who is actually mad about the ad blocking is either a teenager (with no money) or won't pay for YT Premium anyways, regardless of how much value they get out of it. Why would these people pay for a Nebula/Curiosity Stream subscription?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Hi! I block YouTube ads and will stop watching YouTube if they disable ad blockers, but I am currently paying for Nebula. AMA.
    - judge2020 3y ago
      Why watch YouTube with an ad blocker if you understand that those who make videos, and the one that hosts the video, require payment in exchange for access to the content?
      - distract8901 3y ago
        For any number of reasons, I'm not willing to put up with Google's advertising or business practices. I also don't want to give google any money because a) they really don't need it and b) google only gives a fraction of the ad revinue to creators. Why use YouTube then? There really isn't much of an option. Some creators I subscribe to don't post anywhere else. Some do post on peertube or LBRY, so I'll watch there if available. I view it the same way I view piracy. I'd be willing to pay for more media if it were available, from a company that won't spy on me, without DRM, and my money went to the people that made the thing instead of some rent seeking business sitting between me and them. I don't have a problem paying for stuff, I have a problem with paying Google specifically. And ultimately my use of ad blockers accounts for an infinitesimal fraction of a percent of any one creator's ad revinue. It costs Google a lot of money to serve the video, and the creator earns only very slightly less. If there's a sponsored segment (as there always is these days), that more than makes up for the disparity. It hurts Google and is virtually unnoticeable to the creator. Sounds good to me.
        3y ago
mvdtnz 3y ago
You're welcome to go to Peertube right now, nothing stopping you. Content creators won't follow you, of course, because they (rightfully) want to get paid for their work. How do you plan to compensate content creators on Peertube?
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  I think creators lived in a sweet spot. I might be a minority, but I would rather stopa watching YouTubers. It is not that their content is worth my money. It may be worth my time, but not necessarily money.
- myaccountonhn 3y ago
  Nothing stops you from having ads in the video directly.
- prox 3y ago
  It’s surprising how little people pay for content. Not saying they are obligated to, but take the instance of a channel you really like, quality content. When you see the stats you can see sometimes a 1000x difference in paying customers (take for instance a youtuber with a patreon or YTsubscription) So you really like a channel, and I am assuming not all are poor, that is a big difference. I wonder what the friction is here. (As someone who is very aware of the effort some creators put in)
- BuyMyBitcoins 3y ago
  >” How do you plan to compensate content creators on Peertube?” This task falls on the creators, not the viewers. There are already several options such as sponsorship, merchandise, patreon, asking for donations, et cetera.
  - phantomathkg 3y ago
    But for sponsorship, aren't people using sponsorblock as well?
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Other options include Youtube Premium and Youtube ad views, both of which turn out to be far more reliable sources of income.
ChatGTP 3y ago
How is Peertube moderated ? I’d prefer not to have to watch gore and child porn occasionally to self moderate. This is the hidden cost of all these platforms, the moderators have PTSD from this shit.
nirui 3y ago
My thoughts are the same. Take look what happened on Reddit and Twitter, where many people were trying to improve the platform by developing apps for them, then the platform steps in and slammed it all down (probably due to conflict of interest). My conclusion is that contributing to the "daemons" might just not be worth it for both the devs and the users. Google/YouTube is a relatively good actor during the entire shenanigans, but they certainly got a high enough chair to bare the lost of few users. And if you look the current financial and employment situation, they and their employees/C*Os might even got motivations too. The environment has changed, maybe it's time to go back to the fundamentals, and maybe something new and better can come out of it.

kevincox 3y ago

That's the nice thing about subscribing via RSS. You can seamlessly follow different creators no matter what platform they are on. This greatly reduces platform lock-in and over time makes it feasible for creators to move off of YouTube. If everyone just uses YouTube subscriptions and the YouTube homepage (or push notifications) then they are not easily able to start following people publishing on other platforms.

lolinder 3y ago

Full federation would be nice, but just using alternative, smaller platforms makes a huge difference in reducing YouTube's stranglehold. About half the people I follow are on Nebula, which is a surprisingly solid platform that provides a lot of good redundancy for educational YouTubers. As an added bonus, creators remove sponsorships from Nebula videos, so unlike YouTube Premium it really is completely ad free.

grepfru_it 3y ago
>but just using alternative, smaller platforms makes a huge difference this does not scale. bandwidth costs will crush small platforms and they will eventually be absorbed into bigger ones.. the only exit is closure (especially from a rouge patent troll or DMCA lawsuit) or buyout. see justin.tv as an example edit: all costs will crush you. you need a mod team to prevent runaway piracy and child porn. you need a security team to prevent attacks. you need a network team to try to minimize bandwidth loss. video delivery is not a cheap game, so i'm not really sure how free platforms will survive
- lolinder 3y ago
  Does everything need to scale? I personally quite enjoyed the web back in the day where most communities were running on tiny boxes managed by a single hobbyist. > you need a mod team to prevent runaway piracy and child porn. Nebula doesn't because it's an invite-only platform. The creators are all part of an old-school social network and can vouch for each other. > video delivery is not a cheap game, so i'm not really sure how free platforms will survive So don't be a free platform! Nebula is doing just fine at serving me and many like me. Most of the creators I follow make a solid living on Patreon, with Nebula and YouTube ads just layered on top. The idea that every app must be free and must scale to ~every human being on the planet is killing the internet.
  - ardfard 3y ago
    > Does everything need to scale? I personally quite enjoyed the web back in the day where most communities were running on tiny boxes managed by a single hobbyist. It's just not only matter of scale. I follow content creator that posted some of his content on his personal website. but man, the user experience is night and day compared to youtube. loading video is slow, cant fast-forward before hit buffering, also no content discovery either. Paying for Youtube premium is no-brainer because i just get more value of it compared to even Netflix.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Scale isn't a binary switch—Nebula's UX is very comparable to YouTube's, better in some ways. There's a space in the middle—between one guy's personal site and Google—where the platform has enough resources to get a decent experience.
judge2020 3y ago
Everyone who is actually mad about the ad blocking is either a teenager (with no money) or won't pay for YT Premium anyways, regardless of how much value they get out of it. Why would these people pay for a Nebula/Curiosity Stream subscription?
- lolinder 3y ago
  Hi! I block YouTube ads and will stop watching YouTube if they disable ad blockers, but I am currently paying for Nebula. AMA.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    Why watch YouTube with an ad blocker if you understand that those who make videos, and the one that hosts the video, require payment in exchange for access to the content?
    - distract8901 3y ago
      For any number of reasons, I'm not willing to put up with Google's advertising or business practices. I also don't want to give google any money because a) they really don't need it and b) google only gives a fraction of the ad revinue to creators. Why use YouTube then? There really isn't much of an option. Some creators I subscribe to don't post anywhere else. Some do post on peertube or LBRY, so I'll watch there if available. I view it the same way I view piracy. I'd be willing to pay for more media if it were available, from a company that won't spy on me, without DRM, and my money went to the people that made the thing instead of some rent seeking business sitting between me and them. I don't have a problem paying for stuff, I have a problem with paying Google specifically. And ultimately my use of ad blockers accounts for an infinitesimal fraction of a percent of any one creator's ad revinue. It costs Google a lot of money to serve the video, and the creator earns only very slightly less. If there's a sponsored segment (as there always is these days), that more than makes up for the disparity. It hurts Google and is virtually unnoticeable to the creator. Sounds good to me.
      - 3y ago

mvdtnz 3y ago

You're welcome to go to Peertube right now, nothing stopping you. Content creators won't follow you, of course, because they (rightfully) want to get paid for their work. How do you plan to compensate content creators on Peertube?

renegat0x0 3y ago
I think creators lived in a sweet spot. I might be a minority, but I would rather stopa watching YouTubers. It is not that their content is worth my money. It may be worth my time, but not necessarily money.
myaccountonhn 3y ago
Nothing stops you from having ads in the video directly.
prox 3y ago
It’s surprising how little people pay for content. Not saying they are obligated to, but take the instance of a channel you really like, quality content. When you see the stats you can see sometimes a 1000x difference in paying customers (take for instance a youtuber with a patreon or YTsubscription) So you really like a channel, and I am assuming not all are poor, that is a big difference. I wonder what the friction is here. (As someone who is very aware of the effort some creators put in)
BuyMyBitcoins 3y ago
>” How do you plan to compensate content creators on Peertube?” This task falls on the creators, not the viewers. There are already several options such as sponsorship, merchandise, patreon, asking for donations, et cetera.
- phantomathkg 3y ago
  But for sponsorship, aren't people using sponsorblock as well?
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Other options include Youtube Premium and Youtube ad views, both of which turn out to be far more reliable sources of income.

ChatGTP 3y ago

How is Peertube moderated ? I’d prefer not to have to watch gore and child porn occasionally to self moderate. This is the hidden cost of all these platforms, the moderators have PTSD from this shit.

nirui 3y ago

My thoughts are the same. Take look what happened on Reddit and Twitter, where many people were trying to improve the platform by developing apps for them, then the platform steps in and slammed it all down (probably due to conflict of interest). My conclusion is that contributing to the "daemons" might just not be worth it for both the devs and the users. Google/YouTube is a relatively good actor during the entire shenanigans, but they certainly got a high enough chair to bare the lost of few users. And if you look the current financial and employment situation, they and their employees/C*Os might even got motivations too. The environment has changed, maybe it's time to go back to the fundamentals, and maybe something new and better can come out of it.