this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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You do realize the average person watches YouTube on their TV or their phone, with ads? You are not the target audience for Google.
So I fully expect YouTube to kill adblocking at some point and they might lose what? 10% of users? Of which 5% either come back to watch ads or pay the subscription because all the content is on there?
I'm 100% pro adblocker, the internet is a mess without, but it's stupid to think YouTube wouldn't cut you off the moment you don't provide any benefit to their service (For example despite adblocking you might give Superchat money to streamers, or join Streamer memberships).
Audience is only part of the equation, arguably not the largest part. How many content creators use adblock? The big ones already know how completely meaningless ad revenue is because youtube doesn't pay them enough and they are already aware of how easy it is to block ads. Also they're more likely to be using youtube on a desktop because they use one to create, and they also are more aware of the alternatives like revanced. A lot of big creators have spoken out over the years in favour of adblocking.
If youtube makes it impossible for creators to use their own platform they'll leave in droves, and they will have the voice to encourage their audience to follow. Youtube isn't the main voice on their own site, the creators are.
Another thing this will impact is the ability for creators to collaborate, since they would have to watch others' ads in order to see their videos.
Once that happens, the audience will naturally follow. That's how social media sites have failed in the past. They've pissed off the power users to the point they finally left, then the content declined, then users followed.
Youtube is making the same mistake all capitalist entities do, of mistreating the people who actually make the product they're selling. It's a fundamental contradiction that only leads to decline in the end, it's just a matter of when. This may not be the straw that breaks the camel's back, if this isn't it, then something down the line will be.
Dude, it's at most 20 bucks a month to get rid of all ads (with YouTube music on top). Any creator who has some following can pay that from pocket change. The big content creators (1M+ subscribers) pull in millions with a mix of ad money and sponsorships. And it would be a business expense on top for them..
Creators are the last person to actually care about YouTube forced ads, it's their job, they can afford it easily.
The only ones really impacted are power users, people who use adblock right now to watch. Which would also include me. But what do you want to do? There is no other platform, if they block adblockers I either have to watch ads or finally pay them money. I'm not going to leave for another platform because there is none. Twitch is there, sure, but it's only for livestreams and awful for VODs.
$20/mo would have kept me fed for the better part of a month a couple years ago. Money has almost never not been tight, often to the point of being inhumane.
If they start forcing ads, I'll just do what I used to do when I didn't have home internet and start downloading videos instead. Which is nicer to be able to hold onto anyway. If someone doesn't like me "stealing," they can fucking pay me.
Youtube constantly screws over and underpays the people who create all of the content that makes their site possible whilst also demanding they pay for a service that is worse than what adblockers already offer whilst also running a business that relies solely on critical mass of users rather than any actual value that youtube themselves can uniquely provide. That could never backfire.
Or you could say they have tolerated adblockers until now and allowed you to use their service without a paywall. Yes, it sucks, we're used to blocking ads, but it was like having free lunch.
There have been plenty of other platforms who tried to do what YouTube did, they all failed. YouTube provides a massive infrastructure, about one hour of video is getting uploaded to their servers every second. And it must be kept around, so the amount of data only goes up. A total nobody can upload a 100 hours of video and YouTube will gladly accept that and still make those videos available 5 years from now.
To say they don't provide a relatively unique (or at least very difficult) service is insanity.
I pay a very small fee for debrid and VPN servers that offer exactly the same sserver capacity with enormous bandwidth and virtually no downtime. Plenty of services exist that can do what Youtube does. Peertube is a fediverse youtube that is based on a P2P model that lessens those burdens significantly, and it will grow with its users.
The thing that makes youtube dominant is the same thing that makes other social media platforms dominant: users and creators.
They are squeezing those users and creators as much as they think they can without completely alienating them and forcing them to find a better alternative. Once they pass the tipping point and an exodus begins, history shows they will only worsen things and accelerate the process.
The thing about the game of "how much closer can I fly to the sun without losing everything?" is that they will inevitably lose. You can moralise all you want, the reality is that they are getting closer and closer to losing every day. When they get there, you can blame whoever you want, it won't change anything.
Did you just compare your small private server with YouTube's infrastructure? Jesus Christ.
Google had already been paying about 2 million a month for bandwidth in 2015 or so.
I work for a larger company as a software developer, even with a billion in gross sales, there is absolutely no chance to provide even a tenth of YouTube's service. Especially for free (without paywalls). The company would go bust in two years.
I didn't, I compared globe-spanning networks of servers that serve millions of people every day to youtube. Those two things don't seem that different to me. They scale with user numbers just fine.
I mean you work for a larger company as a software developer, and you don't understand the concept of debrids and VPNs? Are you sure you're not deliberately missing the point of what I'm saying?
VPN has absolutely nothing to do with hosting a video platform, no clue why you even bring it up.
Debrids is just a file download service, isn't it? But even if it was a video hosting platform, a single server would never be enough. You need at least two (as a fall back). Then you need dynamic scaling for bigger user numbers, which works just fine for CPU and RAM (or even GPU resources), but doesn't work for storage. So you need extra storage somewhere all servers have access to, but when it comes to videos you'd be paying millions in no time.
So you need your own cheap storage and datacenters around the world. And CDNs on top to serve your content worldwide (otherwise the experience would suck on another continent if your server is too far away).
Look up how Google does it, they have their own data storage centers. And if your video is crappy and you're a nobody, it probably gets stored in a slower location on-demand. So it also loads slower. But if your video is in high-demand with millions of views it gets pushed into a more accessible location (and gets higher priority for CDNs). It's not just hosting, there is a massive amount of logic and software behind the stack.
You have demonstrated a complete inability to grasp what a VPN does, what a debrid service does, that they already do the things you've mentioned, and you have yet to acknowledge peertube even exists. I brought it up, multiple times, for a reason.
I have to ask at this point, are you curious to understand my position? I don't see much point in continuing to explain it to you if you're not.
I am struggling to understand yours. There doesn't seem to be a coherent idea that you're driving towards other than to tell me I'm wrong, which isn't a position as much as an antiposition. If you have a position, I would appreciate you explaining it clearly.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/4Q3ZXQZZlcE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.