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“This space is ripe for disruption”. On the contrary I feel like YouTube is extremely well managed. For an application that is this ubiquitous and this well kno

“This space is ripe for disruption”. On the contrary I feel like YouTube is extremely well managed. For an application that is this ubiquitous and this well known, it seems to work pretty well. I can’t remember the last time it was in news for something bad. Sometimes the answer really is: it is well managed product.

qweiopqweiop 1y ago
For some definition of well, that includes forcing shorts on everyone and getting most of the youth addicted to your product.
guardian5x 1y ago
I agree that it is a mostly well managed product, but I can think of a lot of things when it was in the news for something bad. Most controversial is probably the increase in the amount of Ads, unskippable ads, then there was multiple problems with Youtube kids, e.g. how bad people get really bad videos there. There was an outcry when the dislike button was removed, and so on..
beeflet 1y ago
I don't know it's constantly kicking youtubers I subscribe to off the site, and removing videos. It would be nice if it were more censorship resistant
- simianwords 1y ago
  It’s an extremely hard problem to solve unfortunately. The political tides keep shifting. One day it’s unthinkable to non censor a gender critical video. Another day it is okay. The YouTube management has to be adaptive enough to work in the small window that society allows at that time.
  - infamia 1y ago
    It isn't society they're kicking people off of YouTube for, it's whatever their advertisers do or don't want at any given moment. The advertising companies are their customers, and everyone else is just grist for the mill.
    - simianwords 1y ago
      What advertisers want is downstream from society
      - immibis 1y ago
        Downstream from rich society FWIW. They aren't changing ads to cater to people without money.
  - account42 1y ago
    YouTube censors a lot more than it is legally required to.
- pezezin 1y ago
  I am subscribed to more than 70 YouTube channels, and I have never seen any of them getting kicked out, and the only videos that get removed are due to some bullshit music copyright claims. If you see Youtubers getting kicked out constantly you might be subscribing to some weird stuff...
  - beeflet 1y ago
    I am subscribed to ~270 channels through newpipe and I get "failed to fetch subscription" like maybe once a month only to see the channel is dead (usually temporarily). If you are just using youtube's app directly you won't notice when they get delisted. I just scrolled through my subscriptions and it's mostly music, comedy, gaming, entertainment, and science channels. I always assume it is for DMCA or for saying curse words. Every once and a while it will be because they said something politically incorrect or used the wrong chemicals or showed a gun or something. I think that pretty much anything except for porn and gore should be allowed. I am just scrolling and I think that this video is a good example of a vid that only lasts about a month on the site, even though it should be allowed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1B_EdVnKFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1B_EdVnKFg It has "guns", it has "drugs", it has political figures, and it has minecraft so therefore it must qualify as a children's video. This channel is basically a magnet for getting wrongfully demonetized and banned by AI or some guy working in an indian call center. But 12 years ago this would be a normal video. Another example I can think of is "youtube poops" which are unconventional mashups of copyrighted content. They constantly get taken down and need to be reuploaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwgPraTb_64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwgPraTb_64
    - pezezin 1y ago
      I wonder about the influence of the language. I regularly watch videos in English, Spanish (my mother language), and Japanese (my girlfriend's language). English-speaking channels are usually more "polite" in the way they speak, while Spanish-speaking channels are way crazier, using expressions that no American would dare to use xD Regarding Japanese, I don't understand enough to have a judgement, but Japanese people are usually very careful and non-confrontational.
jdprgm 1y ago
Youtube is such a dominant and ubiquitous monopoly that it is almost easy to forget about it as a monopoly because there is so little competition to contrast against and to even remind you that there ought to be. I've wondered for years why it gets so little attention vs so many of the other tech giants that do have more competition.
- pembrook 1y ago
  YouTube has the highest monopoly tax in all of tech. They take 45% of YouTube premium subscription revenue. That’s higher than the App Store (30%), Spotify (30%), and any other content marketplace on the internet. I think they get a free pass for now because they allow creators to monetize with their own native ads within videos. If I had to guess, this may become a point of contention in the future…
  - bitpush 1y ago
    Serving video infinite times is vastily different to serving apps once for installation.
    - pembrook 1y ago
      It’s not 45% of revenue expensive. The fact that we’ve accepted such ridiculously high profit margins from tech companies is simply due to their network effects monopolies, and the impossibility of competing with them. Just look at any other marketplace business with more competition, like say a grocery store or any brick and mortar retail. Their net margins are often sub-5%. Physically shipping goods across the world is far more expensive than delivering video. Only other monopolies, like Governments, can get away with charging 45% taxes. Having known a few Youtube employees and also a few federal government employees, I would say the low stress, low effort, low fear of layoffs, low work output expectations are...ahem...similar.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > It’s not 45% of revenue expensive. Youtubes profit margin isn't that high so it is pretty close to that, it took a long time for it to get profitable even with Google ads, unlike the digital stores that serves customers for basically nothing compared to how much revenue they bring in. Twitch also takes around that much from streamers and they still aren't profitable since it costs more to serve the streams than they make.
devmor 1y ago
I don't think "the news" matters here as much as how it works, and it really doesn't work that well if you compare it to how it used to work. If I open the Youtube app on my phone, I have to click through 3 menus before I can even see the newest video from the users I'm subscribed to, and then I have to watch 2 ads that change the entire layout of the app to present me more information about those ads - or I can pay $30 a month to skip those ads. If I have spotty connectivity, I also can't buffer a video to watch anymore. I have to wait for some minimal percent to load, watch that part, then wait again. If I skip ahead, the earlier part is lost and has to be re-buffered. Furthermore, not of immediate consequence to me, but still insufferably annoying is that creators I follow are regularly suspended from earning income on YouTube due to false copyright strikes, or saying a "bad word" that has no clear enforcement guidelines and seems to be different from person to person or day to day, and thus have begun to produce less content or found other platforms to move their videos to first. It's pretty terrible, from my point of view. It's a bad service where a good service used to be, surviving on the dregs of goodwill and familiarity from its heyday.
SapporoChris 1y ago
I do not have a youtube account. I never sign in. If I go to watch a video and I get confronted with a puzzle to solve then I immediately close my browser and go do something else. This has led to a personal trend of using youtube less frequently.
- simianwords 1y ago
  Fair price to pay for hosted content no? Either watch ads or pay for the subscription.
  - mc3301 1y ago
    Would this model work? Creators themselves PAY to upload/host something. Their in-video ads are what allows monetization. No adds at all from youtube. Uploading COSTS money, maybe a few dollars. Creators make their money solely from sponsors or selling/advertising something themselves.
    - simianwords 1y ago
      serving video costs money not just uploading. so there has to be fixed and variable costs - but if that is accounted for then it could work but we are putting all the risk on the creator.
    - deleted 1y ago
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    - deleted 1y ago
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    - Jensson 1y ago
      That model already exists, it is called the internet. There you pay for hosting and advertisements and everything, and you also get all the revenue. It isn't very popular since the internet doesn't advertise your content for you, youtube do that so its much easier for content creators to get big on youtube. Also it is free to upload on youtube, so small creators start there, small creators later grow to big creators and stay on youtube.
deleted 1y ago
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mrtksn 1y ago
I agree, it's one of the few last places on the Internet where the content is not just rage bait or AI slop. These things are trying to creep in but so far they failed to dominate unlike other places. My issues with YouTube are usually limited to some UI problems. I think I can even list them all: 1) Thumbnails autoplay but the disclaimer about paid content is so large that often I click to watch the video and get the paid content info page. 2) Translates stuff depending on my browser language and IP. Very annoying 3) The add to queue button sometimes doesn't work and just plays the video right away. Very annoying 4) When I'm listening to songs, sometimes I just let it auto play the next song it picks and often it picks 2 hours long video of songs sticked one after another. Very annoying 5) The share button adds som ID that I have to remove every time, it's probably to track my sharing behavior. Annoying 6) When chromecasting, tapping on a video or receiving it through airdrop used to give me an option to add it to the queue or play it right away. Now just plays right away. Annoying 7) If I navigate from a page and go back I'm presented with a different page and often the video I noticed previously isn't there. Besides that, I think I don't have much issues with YT. Best money spent on a premium subscription ever.
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  so much this you tube is close to perfect using third party clients, like PipePipe. it automatically skips paid adverts in the video. not even a shadow of actual ads. background music only. etc. but now they are adding those dumb features, such as translating titles, as if i'm a peasant who don't speak several languages. so lame.
conradfr 1y ago
> I can’t remember the last time it was in news for something bad It was a few days ago for the AI auto-filter and also Beato copyright claims.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  That's fairly menial compared to other tech company drama. Facebook livestreaming shootings, ChatGPT telling kids to kill themselves, etc.
vintermann 1y ago
Oh? I remember countless times it's been in the news (well, our news) for copyright abuse, appeals processes that are either an AI pretending to be human or a human pretending to be AI. The de-facto only way to clear up rampant abuse like mass claiming of videos over use of public domain music, is to have clout in social media. Then there's the issue of AI slop channels, and pre-AI slop directed at children like the infamous Elsa and Spiderman spam. Every so often they also are in the news for AB testing some anti-adblock measure. And people used to adblock who see it with ads for the first time in a while seem to always be shocked at the level of ads for pure fraud or malware. YouTube seems to be a terrible place if you put anything up there that you actually care about. But I agree on one thing: it's not "ripe for disruption". Google sank so much losses into it for so many years just to have this monopoly, so it's not going to be easy to replace.
euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago
Sometimes the answer really is: it is a monopoly and it doesn't matter what they do. They have all the eyeballs. All creators that got fucked over YT stay on the platform if their accounts are restored. And who can blame them, where are they going to go, Vimeo?
faangguyindia 1y ago
YouTube comment section can offer more like reddit. Where extended multiple level discussions can happen on the video with user profile and karma and all.
- eimrine 1y ago
  They do have karma! Once upon a time I have insulted some bot account by the most insulting word possible (some foreign analog of f-word) and a lot of interesting thing happened in the same day and still happens during maybe one year. I become shadowbanned on most of my favorite big channels (chat posts in streams are visible to only me). Also most of my comments in comment section under videos become visible only if press "sort by" then "recent", this action is not just sorting comments but it recounts the number of comments and reveals comments of persons like me! I believe there are positive cases of karma when a person becomes moderator.
SirFatty 1y ago
Well managed? Not so sure about that.. the fact that UMG can harass content creators unchecked is a problem, and it's not just UMG abusing the copyright strike system. Also, the amount of highjacked accounts and the length of time to regain control is absurdly long. And Shorts. I wish I could disable Shorts from my feed.
- busymom0 1y ago
  I only use YouTube via safari browser and have hidden shorts and community posts using Userscripts.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
What is the "product"? A website? ("platform" for advertising) A website's users? ("you are the product") Paid subscriptions? (insufficient revenue to sustain operations) If YouTube is a "product" does that mean US products liability laws apply? (Please support your answer with facts not opinions) History so far has shown website popularity varies over time https://hosting.com/blog/the-most-visited-websites-every-year-since-1995/ https://hosting.com/blog/the-most-visited-websites-every-yea... Would anyone today claim that, for example, Yahoo.com was "extremely well managed"? Yahoo was #1 for many years. Change is inevitable It is hilarious to see people obsessed with targeting virtually anything for "disruption" until their favorite website becomes the target In any organisation there is always room for improvement. Monopoly power reduces, perhaps even eliminates, incentive to improve
bawolff 1y ago
I think if anyone disrupts it, its going to be over money. Either reducing the number of ads (they really have increased quite a lot) or give a bigger piece of the advert pie to creators. The problem is that if youtube is ever threatened its trivial for them to do both those things, and they can almost certainly outlast any up and coming competitor in a price war.

qweiopqweiop 1y ago

For some definition of well, that includes forcing shorts on everyone and getting most of the youth addicted to your product.

guardian5x 1y ago

I agree that it is a mostly well managed product, but I can think of a lot of things when it was in the news for something bad. Most controversial is probably the increase in the amount of Ads, unskippable ads, then there was multiple problems with Youtube kids, e.g. how bad people get really bad videos there. There was an outcry when the dislike button was removed, and so on..

beeflet 1y ago

I don't know it's constantly kicking youtubers I subscribe to off the site, and removing videos. It would be nice if it were more censorship resistant

simianwords 1y ago
It’s an extremely hard problem to solve unfortunately. The political tides keep shifting. One day it’s unthinkable to non censor a gender critical video. Another day it is okay. The YouTube management has to be adaptive enough to work in the small window that society allows at that time.
- infamia 1y ago
  It isn't society they're kicking people off of YouTube for, it's whatever their advertisers do or don't want at any given moment. The advertising companies are their customers, and everyone else is just grist for the mill.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    What advertisers want is downstream from society
    - immibis 1y ago
      Downstream from rich society FWIW. They aren't changing ads to cater to people without money.
- account42 1y ago
  YouTube censors a lot more than it is legally required to.
pezezin 1y ago
I am subscribed to more than 70 YouTube channels, and I have never seen any of them getting kicked out, and the only videos that get removed are due to some bullshit music copyright claims. If you see Youtubers getting kicked out constantly you might be subscribing to some weird stuff...
- beeflet 1y ago
  I am subscribed to ~270 channels through newpipe and I get "failed to fetch subscription" like maybe once a month only to see the channel is dead (usually temporarily). If you are just using youtube's app directly you won't notice when they get delisted. I just scrolled through my subscriptions and it's mostly music, comedy, gaming, entertainment, and science channels. I always assume it is for DMCA or for saying curse words. Every once and a while it will be because they said something politically incorrect or used the wrong chemicals or showed a gun or something. I think that pretty much anything except for porn and gore should be allowed. I am just scrolling and I think that this video is a good example of a vid that only lasts about a month on the site, even though it should be allowed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1B_EdVnKFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1B_EdVnKFg It has "guns", it has "drugs", it has political figures, and it has minecraft so therefore it must qualify as a children's video. This channel is basically a magnet for getting wrongfully demonetized and banned by AI or some guy working in an indian call center. But 12 years ago this would be a normal video. Another example I can think of is "youtube poops" which are unconventional mashups of copyrighted content. They constantly get taken down and need to be reuploaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwgPraTb_64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwgPraTb_64
  - pezezin 1y ago
    I wonder about the influence of the language. I regularly watch videos in English, Spanish (my mother language), and Japanese (my girlfriend's language). English-speaking channels are usually more "polite" in the way they speak, while Spanish-speaking channels are way crazier, using expressions that no American would dare to use xD Regarding Japanese, I don't understand enough to have a judgement, but Japanese people are usually very careful and non-confrontational.

jdprgm 1y ago

Youtube is such a dominant and ubiquitous monopoly that it is almost easy to forget about it as a monopoly because there is so little competition to contrast against and to even remind you that there ought to be. I've wondered for years why it gets so little attention vs so many of the other tech giants that do have more competition.

pembrook 1y ago
YouTube has the highest monopoly tax in all of tech. They take 45% of YouTube premium subscription revenue. That’s higher than the App Store (30%), Spotify (30%), and any other content marketplace on the internet. I think they get a free pass for now because they allow creators to monetize with their own native ads within videos. If I had to guess, this may become a point of contention in the future…
- bitpush 1y ago
  Serving video infinite times is vastily different to serving apps once for installation.
  - pembrook 1y ago
    It’s not 45% of revenue expensive. The fact that we’ve accepted such ridiculously high profit margins from tech companies is simply due to their network effects monopolies, and the impossibility of competing with them. Just look at any other marketplace business with more competition, like say a grocery store or any brick and mortar retail. Their net margins are often sub-5%. Physically shipping goods across the world is far more expensive than delivering video. Only other monopolies, like Governments, can get away with charging 45% taxes. Having known a few Youtube employees and also a few federal government employees, I would say the low stress, low effort, low fear of layoffs, low work output expectations are...ahem...similar.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > It’s not 45% of revenue expensive. Youtubes profit margin isn't that high so it is pretty close to that, it took a long time for it to get profitable even with Google ads, unlike the digital stores that serves customers for basically nothing compared to how much revenue they bring in. Twitch also takes around that much from streamers and they still aren't profitable since it costs more to serve the streams than they make.

devmor 1y ago

I don't think "the news" matters here as much as how it works, and it really doesn't work that well if you compare it to how it used to work. If I open the Youtube app on my phone, I have to click through 3 menus before I can even see the newest video from the users I'm subscribed to, and then I have to watch 2 ads that change the entire layout of the app to present me more information about those ads - or I can pay $30 a month to skip those ads. If I have spotty connectivity, I also can't buffer a video to watch anymore. I have to wait for some minimal percent to load, watch that part, then wait again. If I skip ahead, the earlier part is lost and has to be re-buffered. Furthermore, not of immediate consequence to me, but still insufferably annoying is that creators I follow are regularly suspended from earning income on YouTube due to false copyright strikes, or saying a "bad word" that has no clear enforcement guidelines and seems to be different from person to person or day to day, and thus have begun to produce less content or found other platforms to move their videos to first. It's pretty terrible, from my point of view. It's a bad service where a good service used to be, surviving on the dregs of goodwill and familiarity from its heyday.

SapporoChris 1y ago

I do not have a youtube account. I never sign in. If I go to watch a video and I get confronted with a puzzle to solve then I immediately close my browser and go do something else. This has led to a personal trend of using youtube less frequently.

simianwords 1y ago
Fair price to pay for hosted content no? Either watch ads or pay for the subscription.
- mc3301 1y ago
  Would this model work? Creators themselves PAY to upload/host something. Their in-video ads are what allows monetization. No adds at all from youtube. Uploading COSTS money, maybe a few dollars. Creators make their money solely from sponsors or selling/advertising something themselves.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    serving video costs money not just uploading. so there has to be fixed and variable costs - but if that is accounted for then it could work but we are putting all the risk on the creator.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jensson 1y ago
    That model already exists, it is called the internet. There you pay for hosting and advertisements and everything, and you also get all the revenue. It isn't very popular since the internet doesn't advertise your content for you, youtube do that so its much easier for content creators to get big on youtube. Also it is free to upload on youtube, so small creators start there, small creators later grow to big creators and stay on youtube.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mrtksn 1y ago

I agree, it's one of the few last places on the Internet where the content is not just rage bait or AI slop. These things are trying to creep in but so far they failed to dominate unlike other places. My issues with YouTube are usually limited to some UI problems. I think I can even list them all: 1) Thumbnails autoplay but the disclaimer about paid content is so large that often I click to watch the video and get the paid content info page. 2) Translates stuff depending on my browser language and IP. Very annoying 3) The add to queue button sometimes doesn't work and just plays the video right away. Very annoying 4) When I'm listening to songs, sometimes I just let it auto play the next song it picks and often it picks 2 hours long video of songs sticked one after another. Very annoying 5) The share button adds som ID that I have to remove every time, it's probably to track my sharing behavior. Annoying 6) When chromecasting, tapping on a video or receiving it through airdrop used to give me an option to add it to the queue or play it right away. Now just plays right away. Annoying 7) If I navigate from a page and go back I'm presented with a different page and often the video I noticed previously isn't there. Besides that, I think I don't have much issues with YT. Best money spent on a premium subscription ever.

1oooqooq 1y ago
so much this you tube is close to perfect using third party clients, like PipePipe. it automatically skips paid adverts in the video. not even a shadow of actual ads. background music only. etc. but now they are adding those dumb features, such as translating titles, as if i'm a peasant who don't speak several languages. so lame.

conradfr 1y ago

> I can’t remember the last time it was in news for something bad It was a few days ago for the AI auto-filter and also Beato copyright claims.

Gigachad 1y ago
That's fairly menial compared to other tech company drama. Facebook livestreaming shootings, ChatGPT telling kids to kill themselves, etc.

vintermann 1y ago

Oh? I remember countless times it's been in the news (well, our news) for copyright abuse, appeals processes that are either an AI pretending to be human or a human pretending to be AI. The de-facto only way to clear up rampant abuse like mass claiming of videos over use of public domain music, is to have clout in social media. Then there's the issue of AI slop channels, and pre-AI slop directed at children like the infamous Elsa and Spiderman spam. Every so often they also are in the news for AB testing some anti-adblock measure. And people used to adblock who see it with ads for the first time in a while seem to always be shocked at the level of ads for pure fraud or malware. YouTube seems to be a terrible place if you put anything up there that you actually care about. But I agree on one thing: it's not "ripe for disruption". Google sank so much losses into it for so many years just to have this monopoly, so it's not going to be easy to replace.

euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago

Sometimes the answer really is: it is a monopoly and it doesn't matter what they do. They have all the eyeballs. All creators that got fucked over YT stay on the platform if their accounts are restored. And who can blame them, where are they going to go, Vimeo?

faangguyindia 1y ago

YouTube comment section can offer more like reddit. Where extended multiple level discussions can happen on the video with user profile and karma and all.

eimrine 1y ago
They do have karma! Once upon a time I have insulted some bot account by the most insulting word possible (some foreign analog of f-word) and a lot of interesting thing happened in the same day and still happens during maybe one year. I become shadowbanned on most of my favorite big channels (chat posts in streams are visible to only me). Also most of my comments in comment section under videos become visible only if press "sort by" then "recent", this action is not just sorting comments but it recounts the number of comments and reveals comments of persons like me! I believe there are positive cases of karma when a person becomes moderator.

SirFatty 1y ago

Well managed? Not so sure about that.. the fact that UMG can harass content creators unchecked is a problem, and it's not just UMG abusing the copyright strike system. Also, the amount of highjacked accounts and the length of time to regain control is absurdly long. And Shorts. I wish I could disable Shorts from my feed.

busymom0 1y ago
I only use YouTube via safari browser and have hidden shorts and community posts using Userscripts.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

What is the "product"? A website? ("platform" for advertising) A website's users? ("you are the product") Paid subscriptions? (insufficient revenue to sustain operations) If YouTube is a "product" does that mean US products liability laws apply? (Please support your answer with facts not opinions) History so far has shown website popularity varies over time https://hosting.com/blog/the-most-visited-websites-every-year-since-1995/ https://hosting.com/blog/the-most-visited-websites-every-yea... Would anyone today claim that, for example, Yahoo.com was "extremely well managed"? Yahoo was #1 for many years. Change is inevitable It is hilarious to see people obsessed with targeting virtually anything for "disruption" until their favorite website becomes the target In any organisation there is always room for improvement. Monopoly power reduces, perhaps even eliminates, incentive to improve

bawolff 1y ago

I think if anyone disrupts it, its going to be over money. Either reducing the number of ads (they really have increased quite a lot) or give a bigger piece of the advert pie to creators. The problem is that if youtube is ever threatened its trivial for them to do both those things, and they can almost certainly outlast any up and coming competitor in a price war.