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(c) pay money to the company that spends extraordinary amounts of money to host and serve you these videos while simultaneously paying creators, carrying the cr

by xNeil 3y ago

(c) pay money to the company that spends extraordinary amounts of money to host and serve you these videos while simultaneously paying creators, carrying the creator economy, helping companies advertise their products and recommending you videos you may like, while giving you the ability to watch these video from any browser of your choice.

leereeves 3y ago
They spent extraordinary amounts of money to capture the market and drive competitors out of business. It's called predatory pricing and it should be punished, not rewarded.
lolinder 3y ago
(d) pay for Nebula, which is run by creators for creators, and get ad-free content (including sponsorships removed from the videos) while simultaneously supporting the development of smaller YouTube alternatives rather than feeding the beast.
- KANahas 3y ago
  I signed up for a one year Nebula subscription after one of my favorite YouTubers posted a discount link. I wanted to support him, and I found the price to be fair. In the few months I’ve been subscribed, I’ve found that the library is much much smaller than I’ve expected. I knew it wouldn’t be YouTube, but I did expect a bit more. The other big pinchpoint I’ve found with Nebula is the lack of comments. Yes, certain parts of YouTube have been known in the past to have a pretty toxic comment section, but the content I watch tends to have valuable, constructive comments that I look forward to reading. Nebula does not support comments at all, and I think that’s by design. Even if they supported comments, I doubt it has enough momentum to have valuable discussions at this point.
  - pests 3y ago
    I had a similar experience with their small library. I honestly had no need to subscribe for a second month because there was nothing left to watch.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    If you care enough about someone's videos to have discussions about them, something like Discord seems like a much better platform for those discussions than a video's comments section. The value of YouTube comments is the ability to easily link to specific mm:ss timestamps, and that could be had with a chat service that creates a thread for each video and auto-links text of the form mm:ss (as well as a "copy video link with timestamp" option on the video host).
    - tentacleuno 3y ago
      I don't know. Saying Discord, a chronological text service, is a good replacement for YouTube comments is like saying Matrix would replace Hacker News. The main advantage of YouTube comments is being able to gauge the temperature of a video. If the top comment's bad, the video probably isn't great. Combine that with dislikes and you have a semi-decent QC system. (re: dislikes, Return YouTube Dislikes is a great extension.)
      - JoshTriplett 3y ago
        If the top comment is bad, the video author probably doesn't delete comments.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        What is your point? They didn't say the video is good if the top comment is good.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
I pay people who make videos (and various other creative folks) directly. I don't want to help companies advertise their products, and "recommendations" are garbage that I literally never want. Just show me my subscribed channels in chronological order and nothing else.
- bad_user 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    The many folks making money from direct support/subscriptions/etc are evidence to the contrary. Folks who can't make a living that way aren't necessarily able to make a living from ads, either; either way you need a large number of viewers/readers/etc, though the direct subscription model also works with a small number of dedicated viewers/readers/etc, which ads don't.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Then stop giving people free stuff. If you send us ads, we'll delete them.
55555 3y ago
I agree with you. And as a webmaster, am amazed at what YouTube must spend on bandwidth. But just yesterday the CEO and Founder of Cloudflare commented on HN: “At scale, bandwidth is effectively free.” He’s no dummy. Which is it?
- blinzy 3y ago
  The cost isn't just bandwidth, but also: - infrastructure (memory, CPU, disks...): all of which must deal with the huge amounts of data they manage (500+ hours of video uploaded every minute). - personnel cost (developers, SREs...) (almost) all of whom have substantial salaries that support the gigantic scale (1 billion+ hours of content viewed every day)
- robjan 3y ago
  Same as renting vs owning. Eventually you become the company laying the undersea cables and incremental increase in bandwidth utilisation effectively costs zero but you still have to pay to own and maintain all this infra.
akoboldfrying 3y ago
It's astonishing to me how seldom this point is acknowledged by people who I otherwise judge to be intelligent and well-informed. The company, which has never hid that it is a commercial enterprise and not a charity, offers two options for users to pay to view its content: with their cash, or with their attention. The result? Endless bitterness for not providing said content completely free. Ironically the most tremulous bitterness comes from people who go to work each day at companies just like this company, and who expect to be compensated for the value they provide.
- pests 3y ago
  Yep. Then instead of a boycott or avoiding YT - a herculean amount of time and effort is spent trying to find ways to still use YT. "They're bad. They're evil. Ads are unethical.", followed by /me plays next video
  - leereeves 3y ago
    If someone objected to the way electricity is generated, would you demand they live without electricity to prove their sincerity? YT worked hard to become a monopoly, so they should accept the limitations and pushback that comes with being a monopoly. (IOW, as a monopoly they shouldn't be allowed to say: these are our terms, take it or leave it.)
    - _wf2l 3y ago
      you will never fight the libertarian mindset on hacker news, you argue about monopolies and they just hear "winners"
      - pests 3y ago
        People would have to agree they were monopolies first to even argue about that. Please explain to me how YouTube is the sole supplier of a good or service and how they use high barriers of entry to prevent potential competitors from joining? How do Vimeo, Dailymotion, TikTok, Twitch, Rumble, etc continue to exist?

by xNeil 3y ago

leereeves 3y ago

They spent extraordinary amounts of money to capture the market and drive competitors out of business. It's called predatory pricing and it should be punished, not rewarded.

lolinder 3y ago

(d) pay for Nebula, which is run by creators for creators, and get ad-free content (including sponsorships removed from the videos) while simultaneously supporting the development of smaller YouTube alternatives rather than feeding the beast.

KANahas 3y ago
I signed up for a one year Nebula subscription after one of my favorite YouTubers posted a discount link. I wanted to support him, and I found the price to be fair. In the few months I’ve been subscribed, I’ve found that the library is much much smaller than I’ve expected. I knew it wouldn’t be YouTube, but I did expect a bit more. The other big pinchpoint I’ve found with Nebula is the lack of comments. Yes, certain parts of YouTube have been known in the past to have a pretty toxic comment section, but the content I watch tends to have valuable, constructive comments that I look forward to reading. Nebula does not support comments at all, and I think that’s by design. Even if they supported comments, I doubt it has enough momentum to have valuable discussions at this point.
- pests 3y ago
  I had a similar experience with their small library. I honestly had no need to subscribe for a second month because there was nothing left to watch.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  If you care enough about someone's videos to have discussions about them, something like Discord seems like a much better platform for those discussions than a video's comments section. The value of YouTube comments is the ability to easily link to specific mm:ss timestamps, and that could be had with a chat service that creates a thread for each video and auto-links text of the form mm:ss (as well as a "copy video link with timestamp" option on the video host).
  - tentacleuno 3y ago
    I don't know. Saying Discord, a chronological text service, is a good replacement for YouTube comments is like saying Matrix would replace Hacker News. The main advantage of YouTube comments is being able to gauge the temperature of a video. If the top comment's bad, the video probably isn't great. Combine that with dislikes and you have a semi-decent QC system. (re: dislikes, Return YouTube Dislikes is a great extension.)
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      If the top comment is bad, the video author probably doesn't delete comments.
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        What is your point? They didn't say the video is good if the top comment is good.

JoshTriplett 3y ago

I pay people who make videos (and various other creative folks) directly. I don't want to help companies advertise their products, and "recommendations" are garbage that I literally never want. Just show me my subscribed channels in chronological order and nothing else.

bad_user 3y ago
[flagged]
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  The many folks making money from direct support/subscriptions/etc are evidence to the contrary. Folks who can't make a living that way aren't necessarily able to make a living from ads, either; either way you need a large number of viewers/readers/etc, though the direct subscription model also works with a small number of dedicated viewers/readers/etc, which ads don't.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Then stop giving people free stuff. If you send us ads, we'll delete them.

55555 3y ago

I agree with you. And as a webmaster, am amazed at what YouTube must spend on bandwidth. But just yesterday the CEO and Founder of Cloudflare commented on HN: “At scale, bandwidth is effectively free.” He’s no dummy. Which is it?

blinzy 3y ago
The cost isn't just bandwidth, but also: - infrastructure (memory, CPU, disks...): all of which must deal with the huge amounts of data they manage (500+ hours of video uploaded every minute). - personnel cost (developers, SREs...) (almost) all of whom have substantial salaries that support the gigantic scale (1 billion+ hours of content viewed every day)
robjan 3y ago
Same as renting vs owning. Eventually you become the company laying the undersea cables and incremental increase in bandwidth utilisation effectively costs zero but you still have to pay to own and maintain all this infra.

akoboldfrying 3y ago

It's astonishing to me how seldom this point is acknowledged by people who I otherwise judge to be intelligent and well-informed. The company, which has never hid that it is a commercial enterprise and not a charity, offers two options for users to pay to view its content: with their cash, or with their attention. The result? Endless bitterness for not providing said content completely free. Ironically the most tremulous bitterness comes from people who go to work each day at companies just like this company, and who expect to be compensated for the value they provide.

pests 3y ago
Yep. Then instead of a boycott or avoiding YT - a herculean amount of time and effort is spent trying to find ways to still use YT. "They're bad. They're evil. Ads are unethical.", followed by /me plays next video
- leereeves 3y ago
  If someone objected to the way electricity is generated, would you demand they live without electricity to prove their sincerity? YT worked hard to become a monopoly, so they should accept the limitations and pushback that comes with being a monopoly. (IOW, as a monopoly they shouldn't be allowed to say: these are our terms, take it or leave it.)
  - _wf2l 3y ago
    you will never fight the libertarian mindset on hacker news, you argue about monopolies and they just hear "winners"
    - pests 3y ago
      People would have to agree they were monopolies first to even argue about that. Please explain to me how YouTube is the sole supplier of a good or service and how they use high barriers of entry to prevent potential competitors from joining? How do Vimeo, Dailymotion, TikTok, Twitch, Rumble, etc continue to exist?