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I built a service around helping podcasters automatically convert their audio podcast into a YouTube channel. I went through tons of review with Google in order

• giancarlostoro 2y ago
  Their loss of additional content, traffic and ad revenue.
  • ta1243 2y ago
    The impact on google losing $10m of revenue is exactly equal to the impact of John Doe losing $10m of revenue In a competitive market John Doe would go to one of googles competitors. We don't have a competitive market. We have winner takes all market.
    • giancarlostoro 2y ago
      Sure, its $10m today, but think of all the other potential startups that they're doing this to, and how many millions they're throwing away, and billions over the long haul. Reddit, Twitter, and company all got big because they had open APIs and people were able to use them extensively for really creative things. I agree, Google has swallowed up the video streaming market unfortunately. I keep thinking back to how Vine was basically TikTok, and they threw it away.
      • nemothekid 2y ago
        >Sure, its $10m today, but think of all the other potential startups that they're doing this to, and how many millions they're throwing away, and billions over the long haul. Google made $300B last year. "billions over the long haul" is a lot of money, an unimaginable amount even, to you and I. But to Google?
        • quickthrowman 2y ago
          > Google made $300B last year. No, Google made $73.795B last year. Revenue is not profit, net income is profit and what you ‘make’ as a company. Revenue is not profit.
          • barbecue_sauce 2y ago
            I mean, they "make" both. "Make" does not imply profit. If you say a company "made" a revenue figure, then you mean it in the revenue sense. It's contextual.
            • quickthrowman 2y ago
              No, it’s not contextual. “Company X made $N billion dollars” only means one thing, net income.
              • nick7376182 2y ago
                Sorry bro it's contextual.
              • WesBrownSQL 2y ago
                100% contextual. In every business where I've been an executive, or had access to the budget, we talk "made" as gross revenue and EBIDA as a stand in gross profit and specifically call out net profit in internal meetings. For example, "We made 10 million with an EBIDA of 1 million and net of 200,000.00." Using EBIDA to talk to potential investors and as a guiding metric if we didn't have a well established gross profit formula that followed GAAP.
            • 2y ago
      • phone8675309 2y ago
        Those startups are their competitors. You don’t have to pay millions of dollars to acquire a competitor that was never started because of your inconsistent API policy. Google makes enough money that losing several currently non-existent revenue streams that are theoretically $10 million apiece isn’t hurting them. It’s hurting their users. Google is all about ads - why would they give a shit about the users?
      • Buttons840 2y ago
        It's a testimate to the health of our free market that the company throwing away millions, and billions over the long haul, is the overwhelmingly dominant market leader.
      • authorfly 2y ago
        Take it from someone who watched with interest, Reddit and Twitter did not get big due to open APIs. They got their first big steps before they even had APIs... In the first year of twitters launch it was in the news in the UK at 300k users in press releases about how it was a "new form of communication" etc... 2008 was actually when the original set of API-laden websites began to fade because with the recession, we could not have nice things be free so much. Many API services fell into disrepair in 2009, certainly the peak of APIs for the UK was around 2008. Check out Tom Scotts video on this for a picture of the open API internet many people thought would occur (and which did exist in some places until FAANG began to productise and dominate and use accounts across products which do not incentivize APIs). Yes it is true open network graphs/facebook etc had some API access, but the APIs before were more single purpose and numerous; facebook lets you explore their network and to some extent data, but that's not the same as the useful APIs that became restricted, paid or were cut in the aftermath of the recession.
    • littlestymaar 2y ago
      Competitive markets are by far more the exception than the rule. It's just not how capitalism works (because pretty much any competitive market is ripe for “consolidation”, which increases aggregate shareholders value by reducing competitive pressure). If you want competitive market in a capitalist economy, then you need very active state enforcement.
      • logicchains 2y ago
        >Competitive markets are by far more the exception than the rule it's just not how capitalism works Empirically this absolutely isn't the case; the majority of listed companies have fairly low margins, especially non-tech companies, which can be trivially seen from their financial statements. A low profit margin means a competitive market (because if it wasn't a competitive market the firm could raise its prices to obtain higher margins).
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
        • dambi0 2y ago
          Might there be other reasons to report lower profits?
        • littlestymaar 2y ago
          > A low profit margin means a competitive market (because if it wasn't a competitive market the firm could raise its prices to obtain higher margins). Not necessarily: if prices are elastic then even a monopoly can aim for low profit margin (in percentage) in order to increase profit. What matters is how much total profit are being made, margin only matters when measuring risk. Also, corporations are social structures, and low competition also encourage complacency in the corporate structure itself, which drives costs up and reduces profit margin.
          • zuckerma 2y ago
            [flagged]
    • damiante 2y ago
      I was thinking about how to solve this given that one of the primary problems is that of fast, global content distribution. I like the idea of paying people in crypto as part of a ledger transaction to host and serve content, like bittorrent with a crypto payment. Unfortunately I can't also think of a way to prevent such a system from being abused to distribute harmful media such as CP. I guess it's not like this isn't a problem with BitTorrent today though.
      • akudha 2y ago
        Regulation might here - something like minimum mandatory 3 months notice for shutting down the API keys. Considering the average age of our politicians, I doubt they’ll understand what “API” is, much less be willing to take on giant tech corporations even if they did understand the problems
        • ElFitz 2y ago
          > […] much less be willing to take on giant tech corporations […] I’d argue that, on the contrary, it seems to be all the rage lately.
          • akudha 2y ago
            Not really. There is a big difference between making noise and actually doing something about the power of big tech.
            • xp84 2y ago
              Yeah, what’s popular is actually to crap all over the first amendment by mandating private companies to allow whatever each politician’s special definition of “free speech” is (but of course probably also not allowing whatever the politician’s definition of “dangerous misinformation” is). As for the actual anticompetitive power of big tech, absolute crickets.
            • ElFitz 2y ago
              And yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164240 It isn't much, but I'd like to see that as a start.
    • fsckboy 2y ago
      >The impact on google losing $10m of revenue is exactly equal to the impact of John Doe losing $10m of revenue no, it's not, see declining marginal utility of wealth https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12309/concepts/diminishing-marginal-utility-of-income-and-wealth/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12309/concepts/diminishin... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility...
    • SenHeng 2y ago
      Attempted to build a similar thing a few years ago when living in Tokyo. Provide a selection of restaurants within a 1km radius and automagically provide 3 recommendations based on my preferences. We had multiple API providers available, Tabelog, Gurunavi and Hotpepper, all required a paid developer license. We still needed to use the Google maps API to get the user's current location though. This was also just when Google Maps suddenly raised their API pricing. After spending a couple of weekends building a working prototype, we stopped as we couldn't justify the cost of paying multiple API providers for basically 3 guys looking to save 10 mins deciding where to get lunch. Also, this kind of app is a common theme if you frequent meetups in Tokyo. There's always at least 1 person that has built such a thing.
      • xp84 2y ago
        > We still needed to use the Google maps API to get the user's current location though. I’m sure as somebody who actually built a prototype, you understand the situation better than me, but I’m curious: why would just getting the user’s lat/long require anything you’d pay for? Wouldn’t the OS or browser provide that to you?
        • SenHeng 2y ago
          Oops. I meant that we were using the maps/places API to get lat/long of the restaurants using the street address from the other API providers, then using that to calculate a 'N mins walk away'. We were just testing the abilities of the various APIs. Google was the only that provided travelling time estimates.
• ceejayoz 2y ago
  We went through a three-week Facebook API shutdown due to a clear glitch - Meta support couldn't go outside the script, or escalate in any way beyond "a supervisor will email you". Only resolved when our CEO found some VP at Facebook on LinkedIn and got them to escalate it internally. (The dev community thread is full of people still impacted, so I think they literally just edited our app's flags directly.) Even tried to invoke GDPR's rights to be exempt from automatic decision making, but their privacy questions email address responds with "nope fuck off" to those.
  • asveikau 2y ago
    Basically any hope of solving a problem with a Meta property is to know employees who can escalate your issue. Sometimes your friend at Meta also needs to argue with the bug owner to not close it frivolously.
    • User23 2y ago
      I've heard that serving them process is another way to talk to a human being.
    • oblio 2y ago
      It's the same with Google.
      • zerkten 2y ago
        Within the customer service industry, they'd claim a great "deflection rate". That's a metric that all of these large companies hold around any kind of help/support channel that may involve humans because people are a cost. It's often covered by some kind of satisfaction metric based off post-issue surveys, but fundamentally, if you just go away that's success. There are often complaints here about what amounts to bean counting affecting other aspects of business. Customer service at larger scale is costly so attracts a section of very analytical leaders. They don't get, or ever prioritize, the human elements. It's only when satisfaction numbers are bad, or another exec outside of customer service takes action, that things improve. The scale part kills the customer. You can have great support at one size. Once you grow then leadership, structure, and the culture change. These analytical leaders don't want to carry over the culture and structure because it comes at a cost. It really needs force and support from outside of customer support leadership to maintain it.
• misiti3780 2y ago
  open source your code ?
• bingohbangoh 2y ago
  Couldn't you have bypassed them and used `yt-dlp` or something similar? Why get Google/YouTube's permission at all about this?
  • leros 2y ago
    I was creating YouTube channels and uploading videos to them on behalf of my users. That requires using the YouTube API.
    • dudus 2y ago
      Can you let the user bring their own API key?
      • leros 2y ago
        No. The default API quota is not large enough to upload videos. You would have to contact Google, explain your use case, and jump through several hoops to get the quota increased... which is a huge process.
      • PokestarFan 2y ago
        I once tried using a Python library to upload videos with an API key. All videos uploaded got forced private due to "spam".
        • leros 2y ago
          Yeah. Uploading legit videos is non-trivial. And if you ever upload the same video twice (which you think you might do during testing, right?), it's a violation of their terms and they disable your access.
  • indrora 2y ago
    reread: The project was going in the other direction, From a pure audio source to a Youtube video.
• actionfromafar 2y ago
  Cool idea, I was almost about to do the same app/service. I didn't know it could end like that. (Naive, I know.)
  • leros 2y ago
    Have you seen https://repurpose.io https://repurpose.io? They existed before I started working on my service and they do the same thing.
    • bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      Do you know if there is any open source tools in this field that a programmer can work with/automate, I have mainly textual and graphic content, a little bit of video, but thinking to branch out to podcasts and music soon, unfortunately the other products supporting text seem pricey and geared to big teams. on edit: obviously I can write my own, but I am hoping for a project that has already done a bunch of things that I can extend for my needs, as writing my own would be at the point where it would be more cost benefit to purchase.
• chillfox 2y ago
  I used to not bother with APIs and instead use selenium to drive the websites. It neatly avoided all of the politics around API access.
  • bitwize 2y ago
    That may be a CFAA violation, a felony in the United States. See Ryanair DAC v. Booking Holdings, Inc.
    • chillfox 2y ago
      Good thing I am not an American, don't live in the US and have no intentions of visiting then. (I gave you an upvote, I don't think your comment deserve to be nuked for bringing up a possible legal risk)
    • traviswingo 2y ago
      This literally made me lol. Not sure if it’s true. I might be true. But come on!
    • leros 2y ago
      That's because Booking was also committing some type of misrepresentation and taking revenue away from Ryanair through their browser automation. Even then, the infraction was sooo bad that they got a $5k fine. I think the hiQ Labs vs LinkedIn case is a better representation that scraping is generally allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
      • CamperBob2 2y ago
        When it comes to CFAA violations, corporations get a $5K fine, while individuals get hounded to suicide.
        • jascination 2y ago
          Start a company then do my nefarious work under that, got it!
• nvy 2y ago
  >Lesson learned. And that lesson is don't base your business model around playing in someone else's waled garden.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • pino82 2y ago
    Precisely that. Funnily, if I understood correctly, he already had that lesson with Facebook. Let's see what comes next...
• throwaway2037 2y ago
  Are you based in EU? If yes, then I would a complaint letter to the competition bureau. And you can CC Google offices in your country.
• authorfly 2y ago
  Same experience, slightly different. It made me realise why some parts of an MBA (e.g. strategic place/partnership/spring boarding from a brand) actually have value I never saw before for tech companies. There are essentially king makers in certain fields - either by their apathy at first-movers, or their choice on who they allow to continue.
• ktosobcy 2y ago
  If only we weren't living in a world run by abusive mafia... o_O
• herbst 2y ago
  My first Saas was built around Facebook, Twitter and Reddits API. Facebook broke like monthly and required random updates, sometimes documented, sometimes not. Zero support. Twitter worker flawlessly until I hit some limits and there was no way to increase them because I didn't hit some other limits. No way they would talk to me. Reddit just worked until I gave up. What I learned is to never again do any business based on someone else.
  • gorbachev 2y ago
    > What I learned is to never again do any business based on someone else. That's a little dramatic, don't you think? Supply chains are a core of many (most?) businesses out there. They depend on others to get their business done. No supply -> no business. What you probably meant is not building a business based SOLELY on irreplaceable business relationships. Unfortunately in a lot of cases involving the tech giants and little startups, there are no alternatives.
    • herbst 2y ago
      More or less, however I really try to not build on anyone else ever again. I can't find a single dependency in my serious money generating chain right now that isn't replaceable with a similar product within a few minutes or hours if necessary. My most recent project didn't even last a full year as there was no replacement that worked for me for ChatGPT in that moment. It was built to die, a gamble essentially. I wouldn't waste my time for things like this if I didn't had the end calculated in already.
  • grobbyy 2y ago
    A good lesson, but a more nuanced one is to do sure diligence. There are companies I would never build my business around (Google, Oracle, etc.) for a variety of reasons. There are ones I know I can trust (at least until they change). There are many where I need a contract. Change is also a constant, and there are plenty of good companies give bad, and a few in reverse. So due diligence is an ongoing process. That dramatically raises the price of SaaS, so I use it much less than mainstream industry practice, but much more than zero.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• doh 2y ago
  I am curious if you would be interested to retry the idea? I might have an in with the YouTube team. I feel like it's a shame to let this go. Would you be open to chat? Please reach out r@pehul.com
• pino82 2y ago
  My sympathy is veeery limited. But once you have an app that does the exact opposite, please tell me!! And, just in that particular case: I'm veery okay if that would be a cloud service.
  • leros 2y ago
    YouTube to podcast is way easier than the other way around. I'm sure solutions already exist.
• p3rls 2y ago
  I run a webapp that uses the YouTube API too. I believe I am entirely in compliance with YouTube's terms and policies, but I was flagged for some bullshit as well and got the boilerplate responses. So what I decided to do was hide it for logged out users so it looked like that specific feature was entirely removed to the dudes in India that review this stuff... One year later and my fingers are crossed we don't get another audit.