When you have a goose that produces a reliable daily supply of golden eggs do you:
- keep collecting your daily egg
or - see if giving it a good kick or two gets you more eggs
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Technology
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As YouTube increases the number and length of ads, the amount of traffic behind blockers rises accordingly.
This is also just... a function of the evolving digital space. The consolidation of the internet ownership sphere and the modernized APIs/coding tools afford server-side content warehouses more and more power over what the end user receives.
Because AWS owns all the fucking rack space, because ISP monopolies are the defining feature of western net access, and Microsoft force-feeds people their proprietary interfaces, we're moving away from the point where clients control what they display and closer to the point where everything's just a dumb-terminal for big business.
We're effectively backpeddling from Web 2.0 to Terrestrial TV.
Youtube most likely never made any money. Hosting these vast amounts of video is expensive. Google stopped telling us how much they money youtube made them lose. You would think they would start bragging when they could make a profit off of it.
That being said, this still sucks of course.
Although they don't profit directly from youtube, it's a strategy they take to impede competition from arising and keeping their name as the main one. It's the kind of strategy only multibillionaire companies can do, and, in my opinion, something that should be restricted, because it affects smaller businesses to the point of becoming inviable.
More notably, its a strategy they can do when borrowing costs are functionally zero.
A lot of this shit is just the consequence of Fed Rate Policy. No more cheap money means these loss leaders are actually being expected to generate profit, not to just act as clearing houses for propaganda.
As fill-in ads are a vector for computer viruses and other malware I for one will NOT be disabling my ad blocker unless YouTube is willing to provide a lifetime subscription to something like Life Lock and make me whole for anything lost to whatever malware arrives as a part of an ad.
Where else can I watch sci-show, Linus-tech-tips, and all the other channels I subscribe to?
Just use newpipe. It's youtube without the ads. Doesn't have casting support, but it allows you to download the videos. You can also listen/download to the audio of videos, without fetching the video.
Newpipe will probably be blocked as well if youtube is doing this. Honestly not sure why youtube hasn't blocked yt-dlp and others already.
It's not easily block able as it scrapes the YouTube website. They'd have to stop having a website for that to happen.
I'm surprised it took them this long
They have really gone all out on the whole enshittification process during the past couple of years, haven’t they?
Just wait until they figure out how much more $$$$ they can make by putting all content behind microtransactions:
Imagine a world where, instead of grappling with complex tokens and crypto jargon, you have a digital wallet connected to your Web browser. This wallet would automatically handle microtransactions as you browse and consume content, creating a seamless and simplified experience, reminiscent of exchanging tokens at a funfair or arcade
This transition to the Great Paywall isn't just about the monetization of content; it's about balancing the scales and recognizing the value of content creators in the digital ecosystem. In the next chapter of the Web, users aren't just passive consumers but active participants whose attention carries tangible value.
Let's not forget that, if we do go down the microtransaction hell of an internet path, we'd be screwing things up big-time for the coming generations...
We did the Twitter to Mastodon migration. Now we are doing the Reddit to Lemmy/kbin migration. When are we doing the YouTube to Peertube migration?
That's impossible or at least very difficult, right now. Video content is very expensive. LBRY is the only feasible option.
Or people could just host their own peertube instance with banner ads instead of preroll/mid video ads and maybe add a donation/subscription system.
add a donation/subscription system.
At this point you could just subscribe to YouTube.
I pay for a youtube premium family plan. Best money I spend monthly. I want to support the youtube creators that I watch, I don't have to see ads (I block them anyway), and I get a music service included.
Does any of that money really goes to creators?
I do not have first hand knowledge, but I have heard that premium viewers are much more valuable to a channel than ad supported views. I also support channels I enjoy through Patreon as well. I would much rather pay and be a customer than do "free" services where my info is just the product for corporations.
Then I’m going to begin not fucking watching YouTube.
There is a federated version of YouTube...
But storing video is a massive challenge, way harder than dealing with a Lemmy or Mastodon instance.
My rational mind realises it’s such an expensive system to run that it’s reasonable for them to charge or show ads. The problem is they’ve been extremely aggressive with ads and pushing subscriptions, to the point where I’m pretty resentful of the idea. Plus they’ve neglected so many things (like allowing aggressive copyright predators and refusing to implement sensible human-based appeals processes) that they really should have dealt with and instead embraced an algorithm that I’m pretty sure is at least partially responsible for the radicalisation of large groups of people.
I.. don’t mind paying for shit. I just don’t want to give them money.
Also: wow there’s federated video sharing? Bet that’s not cheap to run.
even google is having difficulty storing video.
oh boy, I wish youtube kills itself like reddit is doing right now so decentralized alternatives can become widely adopted
YouTube is a bit of a different animal.
YouTube allows creators to monetize content - so there's a sense of shared success. Channels from Tom Scott or Captain Disillusion are amazing, because their production in part relies on that revenue model.
YouTube also understands that without paying for popular content, you won't get the consistent cavalcade of medium content from people that want to earn a living or notoriety through YouTube. And that include anything from videos of cats falling over, blogs about life in remote places, DIY home improvement or niche guitar technique lessons.
Meanwhile on Reddit, if a user gets thousands of upvotes and a million page views for a short story they wrote exclusively for the platform, Reddit won't pay them a cent. The very thought is laughable.
The other thing to consider is that the technology just doesn't exist for there to be a viable 'federated' YouTube. YouTube has 800 million videos - many in HD and many are hours long. That's a big ask in terms of storage and maintenance - even several thousand videos.
Video compression has a long way to go before that changes. For now, it makes sense for leave that storage to the companies with resources.
Text, however... well, all of Wikipedia can fit on around 20 gigs - 60 million odd articles. And for the record, that can pretty much fit on an iPod from 2002.
I do wish that YouTube wasn't a monopoly. Twitch is the only thing that's close, and it has it's own special lane for live streaming. Back in the old days, there was some competition - including Google Video. But that went away when Google bought YouTube. I guess there's Vimeo, but they've got a very different approach.
I mean, the Justice Department is suing Google for monopolizing ad tech - and I think we could see antitrust laws used in the next few years to breakup YouTube. Maybe the successor companies would federate - like when Bell was broken up into what became Verizon and ATT - who now directly compete for customers.
@pinwurm @manned_meatball I wonder if if Nvidia Video Upscaling and similar tech could also help 480p videos turn HD. That could help bandwidth reduction but it isn't a solution as much as a workaround.
I think the day will come when YouTube caps uploads or stops them entirely. Maybe limiting user's uploads for videos that don't get high viewership. Eventually this model can't go on forever, I can't even comprehend how it's profitable currently.
YouTube is very profitable.
Targeted ad revenue is massive - and Google owns both the platform and ad delivery system (AdSense). As well, YouTube Premium and YouTube TV exist.
YouTube Premium has 50 million subscribers.
YouTube TV is great for live sports and has something like 6 million subscribers now (compared to Comcast who has around 15 million TV subscribers). It's only going up. At $73/mo, that earns them $5.25 Billion a year in subscription fees alone.
While they have high expenses, they're rolling in money.
As data compression gets better and hardware becomes cheaper - YouTube's operating costs get cheaper... which means bigger paychecks for execs.
I actually do not understand the widespread hostility that people have toward this kind of thing. I watch a lot of content on YouTube, and I don't want to see ads, so I pay for premium. I watch a lot of content on Twitch, and I don't want to see ads, so I pay for turbo. Hosting a major video streaming website isn't cheap. It's not like these things are unreasonably priced. If you hate the ads so much, then why not pay for the service that the platform is offering you, and for the content that creators are providing on it? And if you don't watch often enough for ad-free viewing to be worth a few bucks a month to you, then why get so worked up about having to sit through an ad every now and then?
I hate ads with a passion due to my experiences in the marketing industry and will go out of my way to never watch any. I also don’t want to pay for random internet content, especially not to companies on the stock market. (Though I do use Patreon a bit for some content creators)
Can‘t explain it much more than that. If youtube locks me out due to that, so be it. I don‘t get worked up either, I simply state my opinion on it where I please and if I‘m not wanted I leave. That‘s about it.
And if you don’t watch often enough for ad-free viewing to be worth a few bucks a month to you, then why get so worked up about having to sit through an ad every now and then?
There is an awkward gap where most services (not just YouTube) don't offer reasonable pricing for consuming small amounts of content. So if you consume a lot of YouTube, the subscription price is justified. If you consume very little YouTube, you can probably suffer through some ads. But if you're somewhere in the middle, there isn't a great option.
YouTube probably makes fractions of a cent off of ads on a single video it shows me, but I can't pay fractions of a cent to watch one video.
I'd consider this to actually be a pretty widespread problem across the internet, where it's frustratingly difficult to buy small amounts of content for a reasonable price. It's either the subscription or nothing for a ton of services.