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They still are a benefit to YT in that they’re strengthening YT’s network effects and not helping a fledgling competitor hit a critical mass of videos, comments
by AlchemistCamp 3y ago
They still are a benefit to YT in that they’re strengthening YT’s network effects and not helping a fledgling competitor hit a critical mass of videos, comments and viewership.
MS and Adobe had similar logic for not going after piracy very hard in certain markets. They wanted users on their platform, even when they couldn’t get them all to pay.
- kazinator 3y agoInvidious is a essentially a fledgling competitor, which uses YouTube's video storage. Invidious users are not on the YouTube platform. Or maybe have one toe on the platform, or something like that. YouTube is by far the dominant video hosting platform in the world; I'm guessing they probably don't feel they require the network effects from alternative systems that bypass their UI and API. They provide a site and app that are used free-of-charge by billions, and get all the network effect they need from those. If going after piracy of locally installed software were comparably simple, easy and cheap, similarly to blocking an IP address, everyone would do it. Mainly it's not done against individual users because it's prohibitively expensive. Once the users have defeated the anti-copying measures in the software executables, they have gotten away with it. You'd have to send cops to their house to seize the warez.