Well I am not a big fan of Google, but sounds about right to me. They are a private company, thus are allowed to select which content exists on their platform.
And society has no obligation to give Youtube/Alphabet indemnification for the content they present to users. If Youtube wants to curate their content more power to them. And people can pressure their representatives to update the DMCA to strip safe harbor provisions from service providers who don't allow unpopular but legal speech on their platform. There's no reason a social media site should be allowed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in inkind donations to their preferred political party.
I think we need a good YouTube alternative. Sure, there are lots of them out there. But one people actually use. YouTube is the best place to find so many things: creator videos, music, clips from TV shows, and years and years of videos to build up an immense library.
Any YouTube alternative needs to take one of these niche areas and pick at it.
Yes, only another business model would solve this issue.
> How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
Peer-to-peer torrent-like distribution. Of course, then you'll have the problem where the system will be full of pirated content, illegal content, etc, and you'll get to enjoy attention from police and regulators.
Not to mention that anything unpopular will be poorly distributed and harder to access than popular stuff... which kinda defeats the point really. YouTube loves popular stuff because it makes money.
So, what you're saying is that it's useless to the people complaining about their videos being demonetized, or not getting a firehose of algorithmic marketing.
No, that self-hosting option doesn't replace Youtube. A lot of techies seem to have a blind spot as to the real value Youtube provides to content creators and video uploaders: $0 hosting costs for unlimited audience.
No self-hosted tech stack or home-based network appliance to stream videos can offer that same financial deal.
Techies seem to only see the technical stack and the protocol to host a video. The intimate knowledge computers is actually misdirecting you away from the real strengths of Youtube. Instead, look at Youtube the same way a non-techie content creator would. My previous comments trying to explain this:
For those treating youtube as a business - you are right that you trade upfront risk ( the only thing you lose is your time ), a promotion platform and the ability to scale, for reduced slice of any revenue and loss of control.
However people making money on youtube are a significant minority.
Most uses are not that use.
So in terms of non-commercial sharing - I already pay for my internet connection and fibre 'upload' speeds ( from home-out ) are very under-utilized.
Also usage isn't metered - the limit is maxbandwidth X time.
So the only risk here is being too popular - which is frankly unlikely!
If you wanted to scale - p2p is an option - the issues around illegal content etc - that can be fixed if you have identity and permissions built in - the people who share are identifiable and you only choose to peer people/content you approve.
Imagine it being like a retweet - with just the same legal consequences, but with just the same potential to reach millions - but without a single company in control...
I said this about Twitter during the days of ubiquitous fail whale pages. The problems are branding and money. One needs to create a brand, and market it effectively. It needs funding to pay for hosting and traffic.
After the spamming-emotes-got-your-gmail-deleted controversy, which is absolutely outrageous and indefensible, I've heard a lot of people interested in doing this.
I'm also very close to making some sort of self-hosted Twitch type thing. A lot of streamers are getting caught up in Twitch's bullshit policies. Someone I follow wore their workout clothes on stream after they finished a workout and wanted to make their normal stream time. Twitch banned her for 30 days because that's supposedly inappropriate. I think it's time to cut them out of the loop and make streaming decentralized. The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.)
All you need is some software to run it all and a standard way of paying the streamers across the decentralized network. Probably a good application for cryptocurrency. People are crazy about their favorite streamers, and would probably be willing to learn how to use something other than a credit card to subscribe. Emotes are already decentralized with things like BTTV and FFZ. So it could work. I just don't see how I would personally make any money, so I haven't pursued it much. But the days of requiring some megacorp like Google or Amazon to be able to distribute video are over -- this area is ripe for disruption.
But I think as much as content creators love to hate on their platform, they do love the free audience. A lot of people got their start when "the algorithm" finally recognized them, and they turned their hobby into a day job. I'm not sure it could ever work with a centralized gateway that collects metadata and suggests new creators to users. But maybe it's OK if we put the money and the servers in the hands of the creators, and let discovery be an additional bonus. And maybe running that could be profitable; you get a $1 commission for sending a new subscriber their way.
I dunno, just some random thoughts... but this all sounds more and more reasonable every day. People lost access to their email for chatting in a streamer's chat. That's CRAZY.
I think workout clothes depends on what it is. Wearing a sports bra is surely different from wearing a T-shirt. Before we assume malicious intent by twitch it should be worth specifying what streamer was wearing.
I don't think Fareeha was out of line. I've watched people stream Overwatch from their pool, and Twitch didn't mind at all even though the (male) streamer was completely topless.
My point being, to say "random twitch streamer was booted for clothing" without any context is much different from "a female wearing a revealing outfit was streaming". I'm merely asking for context before we get pitch forks out.
> The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.)
I stopped reading here because you're clearly out of touch.
Netflix's infrastructure is probably drastically simpler and easier to build. They don't have any of the problems that make caching hard: few/no consistency challenges, and they probably can fit their entirely library in a single server's RAM.
Netflix creates caching boxes inside the local ISP which reduces both latency and bandwidth requirements for top content. These only store the most popular content.
Its not enough to have a competitor. All of the features we have come to dislike about YouTube are a natural consequence of the pressures it faces. High volume implies moderation by machine along with all of the negative side-effects. Bandwidth, storage, and arithmetic costs imply advertisements with all of their negative side-effects. A large library implies a recommendation engine with all of its negative side-effects.
To be a viable long-term alternative, a competitor will have to break at least one of those fundamental constraints.
On top of all that, the videos have to be discoverable. If you think Google will ever rank your YouTube competitor above results from YouTube, then we should talk about a bridge I have for sale.
The one thing that's been proven time and time again, building a new community from the outcasts of a larger mainstream community does not end with a high quality community.
If you're worried about the power tech companies have gained, and you're using that as the sole reason to build a new community, it's not going to become something better. If you want to compete with Youtube, You have to have something that is fundamentally more appealing on a mainstream level than their product.
That really leaves out that both left and right wing ideologies have found a way to use the technology effectively for their own means. The platform itself isn't some niche platform.
Can't you just throw up a website and serve mp4 files? YouTube doesn't owe it to anyone to serve videos, it's just one way to consume video content online. If you want to move off platform, the technology and services are both open and widely available.
I tried switching to vid.me but then they shut down because they weren't make money. Considering that YouTube still allegedly operates at a loss to Alphabet, it will be pretty hard for a viable competitor. Maybe something distributed like PeerTube has a chance.
That's the thing that most people don't understand, though.
Most people complaining about YouTube's hosting policies don't actually have a problem with YouTube's hosting policies.
You can upload almost anything you want - as long as it's not illegal, infringes on copyright, or violates the most serious cultural taboos (nudity, etc). YouTube's hosting policies are fairly lax, and allows a lot of borderline content.
However, a lot of content exists on the gray edges of those borderlines. And YouTube allows you to upload things in that gray area. What it won't do, is drive audiences towards them, and it won't pay you for uploading it.
When people complain about YouTube being unfair to them, what they are actually complaining about, is that YouTube isn't paying them money, or driving audiences to them.
If those people were willing to wait for audiences to find them, or weren't motivated by profit, they wouldn't be complaining.
Discoverability on the Internet is borderline nonexistent. There is no place people regularly go that would present them with foreign websites hosting content to their interest - there is too much money to be made in isolating and siloing users into the major consumptive hubs that already dominate.
I'd be willing to bet if you self-hosted a video blog your only viewers would be bots crawling it, anyone you directly shared a link with, and anyone they shared the link with. And those "share chains" peter out really fast if the content is not broadly applicable / viral worthy. It needs to get "likes" on social media to spread. That severely limits the kinds of material you can even try to make if you want anyone to actually see it, even if there might be millions of people in the world interested in the subject.
It depends on what audience you're aiming for. People seem to do well on Instagram or TikTok, for short and extra short videos I suppose. Not sure how well IGTV is doing but it seems successful to me so far, based on my impressions using IG. It could be a viable competitor for YouTube.
Sadly the internet is a highly privatized place. Entities like YouTube must curate their content at least to the degree that they do not violate law or fail to make a profit. It would be nice if we had the data equivalent of the post office. That is to say, a service that is completely content neutral and bears no legal liability for anything transmitted across it.
Why sadly? That is the only reason it still works well (parts that have remained private and free from government intrusion).
Do you think the government can create a better YouTube? Or force YouTube to do as you wish while remaining gratis and not introducing quotas and similar restrictions or limitations?
I just realized an equivalent of a public library but for user-submitted videos would actually be amazing.
With the same privacy protections that come with checking out a book from the library, the concept of it running at a cost, and the first amendment protecting the content of the website.
Do they really need to make that explicit in the terms of service? I thought it was obvious that I didn't have the right to make Google/YouTube pay for hosting and serving a video just because I created it.
Or could this be a prelude to a culling of videos starting in the first quarter of next year? I would say that now is the time for a wannabe competitor to YouTube to get ready to step into the breech but if I'm not mistaken, YouTube has never made money despite YouTube's attempts to sell advertising content. I could see a future where it's going to cost (not much, but more than zero) to host and serve videos on YouTube.
> I would say that now is the time for a wannabe competitor to YouTube
Yes, but how does the new upstart try to get traction from under an avalanche of useful shills that will start to smear them as "NaziTube"?
Edit/Addendum: Do you honestly think a new upstart would enjoy an "understanding press" in their "growing-pains years" like our current incumbents did?
I do. Media love an underdog story, especially when the underdog is taking on the companies that are costing them revenue.
I suspect the "NaziTube" nicknames (did this happen somewhere? Or is it more of a hypothetical example) are because upstarts don't have the resources to ensure Nazi videos are blocked. Thus, they become a breeding ground for that pernicious type of scum that has been evicted from the larger, better resourced, systems.
Forget the nazi shit for a minute: I doubt a youtube competitor upstart could get away with the sort of flagrant widespread copyright violation that was once common on youtube. Youtube itself got away with that for a few years, but can that stunt be replicated? I doubt it.
Good point. OTOH, there wasn't as much amateur digital content back then -- pretty much anything I wanted to watch was owned by a larger company. Nowadays, hobbyists and retirees and all kinds of people own the rights to content that I would want to see.
The environment has changed a lot, and it might not be a prerequisite to copy YT's growth model.
Unfortunately, that becomes a reason not to support YouTube alternatives if one doesn't actually want to create a breeding ground for that content that cannot practically be moderated.
Among quite a significant portion of the vocal participants in social media anyone right of Bernie is a nazi. They call orthodox jews (Prager, Shapiro), lefty academics (Haidt, Peterson, Weinstein), and liberal gays (Rubin) Nazis.
It would if it had a legitimate new take on the video hosting problem and wasn't just "YouTube, but for free speech", which would immediately become "YouTube, but for Nazis".
Folding Ideas (on YouTube) had a solid video about VidMe, which is a case study in how NOT to do this:
Possibly the more interesting question is "How will they attract advertisers when their content is an avalanche of Nazi-sympathetic videos?"
It's hard to compete with YouTube if your revenue model is ads and your content is "The stuff that YouTube wouldn't touch." Most of the ad industry doesn't want to associate with that content; that's part of the reason YouTube doesn't want to touch it. So a competitor going the road of trying to host that content would probably need to find a revenue model that isn't ad-based, for starters. That's gonna be a challenge (subscription-based model for Nazi-sympathetic content? ;) ).
You are correct; I completely discounted porn (which is also picking up the advertisers that YT sheds).
But porn sites generally aren't going to be hosting pro-Nazi garbage because their advertisers also don't want to be associated with it. Reduces to the same problem. It does, perhaps, point to a possibility; much as the porn sites gain on the fact that YT filters both the content and the advertising it allows on the network, one could imagine a hyper-niche site that is combining content YT kicks off with another (non-porn) category of advertisers YT kicks off.
Looks like I hit a nerve! which is shame b/c there are some good comments from people who understand that the tech landscape today is a lot different from "way" back in 2005/6; which means making a new YouTube today isn't so much a technical problem as much a political one.
It may be technically easy but you still have to deal with network effect, bandwidth costs, and a multitude of the legal issues before we even get to political issues. There already exist alternatives to Youtube that solve various aspects of this. Peertube, BitChute, Mega, heck there's no reason one couldn't use the the tech behind popcorntime for setting up something useful and legal. You still run into network effect every time.
Yep, I agree it's Network Effects every time, which is why I was trying to make the point (badly I guess) that it's easy to kill any upstarts' chances of getting any kind of network effects when they're immediately called out as a cesspool (I used "NaziTube" as a descriptive buy ya'll know what I mean).
I remember in those early days how TechCrunch (under Arrington) did a great job easing concerns and guiding the narrative to be favorable for those startups, which I just don't see happening today... but then I guess he got stock options for some of that xD
I think this is just like those “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” signs you see at B&M businesses sometimes. Sure, it’s stating the obvious, but it gives the business owner something to point at when they want to boot someone.
They do in fact have a right to refuse service to anybody. But that doesn't mean they have a right to refuse service for any reason. Some sorts of reasons are forbidden, for instance discriminating on the basis of race.
It depends on the country. In France for instance if a business exposes something for sale they have to sell it to any customer. They cannot withdraw the sell, nor refuse to sell.
> Le refus de vente à un particulier est prohibé par la législation. Cette interdiction est posée par l'article L121-11 du Code de la consommation. Elle s'applique aussi bien aux ventes de produits qu'aux prestations de services.
This loosely means that not accepting a sale to a individual is forbidden. The law covers goods and services (article L121-11 of a code for "consumption" (includes sales)).
There are "special cases" when a seller can refuse to sell and they were specified by courts. Some examples:
- no more items in stock (one cannot force a seller to get more stocks of a given product)
- enormous amounts of a given good
- customer who poses a danger to the seller (violence, insults)
- customer who is known to be unable to pay
- customer who would like to buy illegal goods in his context (e.g. alcohol for underage customers)
Generally speaking, there must be a very, very good reason to decline a sale. "No shirt, no shoes, no service" is not one of them (to take your example - because walking without shoes or shirt is allowed in France)
Well, the sense that I've gotten until recently is that they were way more open to dissenting views. YouTube was a place where anyone could host anything as long as it didn't violate any law (DMCA, etc.). It even meant hosting videos of whose ideas were just down right crazy. But recently IMHO they've gotten too political for their own good. And to your point yes, it was obvious they have editorial control over everything but unless it was breaking the law they were going to let all voices speak.
How else should they have handled Alex Jones' Sandy Hook insanity? Like, that becomes innately "political" because Jones has positioned himself that way. But he was peddling insane conspiracy theories regarding Sandy Hook being a false flag, with all of the families who lost their kids being crisis actors, subsequently calling his audience to action.
That is a hard position to be in, because they were effectively platforming targeted harassment. In addition to that, videos stating that Omar married her brother are still upon YT, as are flat earth explanations. One is a "harmless" conspiracy theory that ends up as a gateway into absurd things like Pizzagate, while the other is libelously spreading lies about a member of congress.
Where's the line? Because it doesn't appear as if there's one we all agree on.
Right. But, as a public company, should their position be to leave the harassment up until the court finishes up with its process, promoting its continued spread?
Because what do they gain from leaving this stuff up? It hurts people. If their stated goal is to be a bastion of free speech, that's one thing. But they're not doing that. They're providing a service. Passively hosting and platforming harassment definitely doesn't fit in with their initial "don't be evil" ethos.
okay, but you're opening the door to youtube being the arbiters of truth; once it starts going down that road, political agents take a keen interest in controlling it. it's a question of values.
absolutely. I don't think there's an easy answer here, but it poses an interesting question regarding a company's willingness to balance the idea of a true and open forum vs once bound by some set of ethics.
I think it would be fine to say "as long as it isn't illegal (harassment, CP, copyright violation, etc. are not legal, so it falls under the umbrella), then let it be".
If it is something that isn't entirely clear (e.g., CP is pretty clear-cut, but harassment might not be), let the courts decide and make a decision based on what the courts say.
It sounds painfully obvious and simple, but I have a feeling I am definitely missing something important here, because that sounds way too easy.
I could make a video and state that Sandy Hook was a false flag and these parents are crisis actors. I don't have followers and influence, so my video wouldn't get many views and likely wouldn't instigate a call to harassment or violence.
But someone like Jones with a following did do that, and those families have gone through extended hell because of it.
The same is true with trying to spread lies about Omar marrying her brother. This is still commonly repeated across all mediums. Is it not an issue because she's a public figure? She receives death threats due to these types of veiled racism.
Should I be allowed to host a video openly slandering and lying about someone simply because I don't have enough people who follow me or because I'm not directly saying "attack this person"?
I feel like there's a lot to consider with their position. What do they gain by platforming hate speech and conspiracy theories? It affects their reputation (to some degree), but they still make some money off of the advertising.
For the record, I don't think Google should be policing content. But there are slippery ways to get around TOS. The "I'm just asking questions" defense muddies things, and people like Jones know that.
>Should I be allowed to host a video openly slandering and lying about someone simply because I don't have enough people who follow me or because I'm not directly saying "attack this person"?
"Slander" is a legal term, and if someone feels like they were slandered through a youtube video, they are welcome to go through that legal channel, just like if they were slandered by someone on the street or through phone or elsewhere. That's the kind of matter that courts were designed for, so it would make sense to keep that issue there. We don't need bajillion private "courts" to dish out their own "totally not self-serving" flavors of justice, we should be using the one we pay taxes for and that has grounds in the federal judicial system.
This should increase the friction to the point where we don't have as many takedowns of videos that are not doing anything wrong, while still allowing for offenders like Alex Jones to get the justice they deserve and get their videos removed.
You do raise a good point because what Jones said about Sandy Hook caused a lot of folks to lose their mind. However he cannot be held at fault for that. Unless someone calls for direct violence against someone else they shouldn't be held at fault. When they cross that line (and in doing so they are breaking the law) then they should be held liable. For the record I think what he did with SH and other topics have been atrocious but I'm all for the market silencing him.
When it breaks established law, then that's the line.
> Do they really need to make that explicit in the terms of service? I thought it was obvious that I didn't have the right to make Google/YouTube pay for hosting and serving a video just because I created it.
You would think most people understand this. However there is a political movement in America to force social networks to host people's vulgar or derogatory opinions in the name of the "first amendment," which technically never applied to privately funded social networks in the first place.
Lots of people would never think of walking into a Target and posting illiterate political meme's on the wall. But that's almost exactly what you're doing by making Facebook and YouTube spread your hate.
First amendment apply to the government and anything that functions equivalent to the government. Its that second part that court has made decisions going both way, and the question got mentioned as recently as this year when Trump twitter account got declared to function equivalent as any other official government forum. In that specific case the twitter account of the US president was deemed such, but the whole of twitter was explicitly not judged on.
Beside that, a lot of people talk to media about first amendment they often then go to court raising anti-discrimination laws. Those laws are much more broader and can be applied to private funded companies. When it comes to international companies there is also free speech as defined by the EU and that one do not make a distinction between company and state in the same way as the first amendment. The distinction between free speech (US first amendment), free speech (EU human rights) and free speech (US anti-discrimination) are all fine legal technicallities, but limitation in one does not give private funded social networks free range to do whatever they want.
You agreed that your posts would be moderated when you signed up. Should Facebook be eternally available to host people's timeline? Who pays for that? Why should I innovate the next big thing if someone in a different country is going to hold me legally responsible to support it forever?
And the ruling doesn't mean Twitter has to host Trump's Tweets forever or guarantee service. If he breaks their TOS they will ban him. They have a right too.
What the ruling means is that the government has a responsibility to archive his Twitter posts and that he himself cannot restrict access to it, as president.
The root issue here is that the thing people want-- a video hosting site that is free, preserves uploads forever (by contrast with Twitch, which has limited VOD support), has few to no ads, and doesn't algorithmically police copyright-- is just impossible. It can't be operated at a profit. Google is in a better position than anyone to leverage YouTube into profitability-- they have an ad network to take advantage of all the viewership data they get, they own so much fiber and control so much network traffic that they can leverage better rates on bandwidth costs, and they have the expertise of cloud-scale operations-- and they still can't do it: by all accounts YouTube has never made money. And if Google can't, no one can.
People who think that this policy change is going to lead to some kind of exodus to a YouTube competitor are fooling themselves. There's no one else in the game and there never will be; it's economically impossible.
> The root issue here is that the thing people want-- a video hosting site that is free, preserves uploads forever (by contrast with Twitch, which has limited VOD support), has few to no ads, and doesn't algorithmically police copyright-- is just impossible.
It's worse than that. What you've listed is what the viewers want.
What the content creators want is all of the above, but to also get paid money, and to receive free marketing for their content.
This is interesting. Do you know for sure that YouTube actually runs on literally the same disks as the Google search index? Because I used to work for Bing and they definitely did not let any other services share hardware with the search hotpath. Serving search results was a case where every millisecond counted (even delays below the threshold of perception caused a stat-sig drop in revenue), and so even suggesting that the index should share disks with e.g. OneDrive would've gotten you laughed out of the room.
I have a feeling we will see a similar (but much slower) cycle with online video as we do with online image hosting.
Every few years a new image host pops up since the incumbents are getting so terrible, they promise the world and get popular until one day they need to start paying for the service and introduce ads, then they stop hotlinking, offer pro accounts, and need to manage takedowns and illegal content.
Soon they look the same as the service they were meant to replace. And then like clockwork, someone comes along who thinks they can do it better, and it all starts over.
I can easily see this playing out with video, but much slower due to everything being bigger, and due to the network effects that at least YouTube currently has.
I love the Internet Archive, but sometimes I suspect they keep their hosting costs down by having a website that isn't always easy to use; particularly when it comes to content discovery. If you know what you're looking for, their search engine generally works reasonably well enough. But if you don't know what you're looking for, youtube is much better at suggesting content.
This is not always a bad thing, as "content discovery" is inherently, well, contentious.
And of course the focus on video downloads and away from typical VOD streaming might also be described as making the website "not very easy to use", at least compared to YT. But it also functions to align user behavior, e.g. by heavily discouraging the pointless filler and "high production values" (HD, 4K, HDR etc.) that are rampant on YT itself.
Those of us who aren't happy with this should pay for Vimeo or use some other way to host our vids, but it's easier to moan and ask the government to force YouTube to do as we please, than to do take responsibility for our content.
Although I have been too lazy to address YouTube annoyances at least I have not been calling for government coercion and violation of YouTube shareholders' property rights.
Why isn't YouTube charging for membership yet? The way I see it, if they simply charged all of their users $7.99/month to use the service they could eliminate a lot of their problems.
I mean we pay for Netflix, for HBO, for HULU... why not for YouTube? I would rather pay for the service then see/hear about all the creators backlash from their policies. Policies that seem to be derived from the fact that YouTube needs to make money, just a thought anyhow.
HBO, Hulu, and yes, even Netflix all have content with much, much higher production values than Youtube. Are you really going to pay $7.99/month for one-person-talking-into-a-camera style content? I certainly wouldn't.
If there's a creator I really like, I'd rather support them directly on Patreon, anyway. Why should I pay Youtube and give Google a hefty cut of that revenue?
For one person? You only watch one channel on YouTube? I watch hundreds of channels on YouTube and if it meant making the lives of content creators easier then yes I would pay/month for that. Of course, it would have to mean making the lives of content creators easier. Currently you can pay so you don't have advertisements but apparently that's not making the lives of content creators easier.
I'm paying for YouTube premium / YouTube Red to avoid the YouTube inserted ads. I'd much rather pay YouTube and the content producers than watch ads.
I wish this also meant that it avoided the content producer in-video ads. It would be nice if there was a way for content producers to have their own inserted ads (that could be avoided by paying them), so they would stop having in-video ads.
They do. I pay $10/mo for YouTube Premium and it literally pays for itself because otherwise I’d be watching at least an hour of unskippable ads per month.
Sure, alright, I forgot about Premium but apparently it's not making it any easier for the content creators. What I was thinking was eliminate the free version of YouTube entirely. Then, setup a system that is more healthy for creators with the revenue they generate from memberships. Perhaps it wont work but if that's the case perhaps YouTube just wont work.
I agree with others in this thread, we should have more options for where to watch user created content.
With that in mind, can someone at Netflix please figure out a way to enable user created content?
Your customer base is ready for this. You don't need to focus exclusively on creating your own content. You've got the tech in place to support it. Many popular channels on Youtube would be right at home on Netflix. Take a note from Amazon, you don't need to be a book store when you can do much more.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadAny YouTube alternative needs to take one of these niche areas and pick at it.
You will accomplish exactly nothing.
The pressures that make youtube act the way it does aren't going to be significantly different for another provider.
How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
https://about.d.tube
> How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
Peer-to-peer torrent-like distribution. Of course, then you'll have the problem where the system will be full of pirated content, illegal content, etc, and you'll get to enjoy attention from police and regulators.
Of course, it doesn't have an ad or patronage model built in.
See https://solid.inrupt.com/about
No, that self-hosting option doesn't replace Youtube. A lot of techies seem to have a blind spot as to the real value Youtube provides to content creators and video uploaders: $0 hosting costs for unlimited audience.
No self-hosted tech stack or home-based network appliance to stream videos can offer that same financial deal.
Techies seem to only see the technical stack and the protocol to host a video. The intimate knowledge computers is actually misdirecting you away from the real strengths of Youtube. Instead, look at Youtube the same way a non-techie content creator would. My previous comments trying to explain this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939392
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19940180
However people making money on youtube are a significant minority. Most uses are not that use.
So in terms of non-commercial sharing - I already pay for my internet connection and fibre 'upload' speeds ( from home-out ) are very under-utilized.
Also usage isn't metered - the limit is maxbandwidth X time.
So the only risk here is being too popular - which is frankly unlikely!
If you wanted to scale - p2p is an option - the issues around illegal content etc - that can be fixed if you have identity and permissions built in - the people who share are identifiable and you only choose to peer people/content you approve.
Imagine it being like a retweet - with just the same legal consequences, but with just the same potential to reach millions - but without a single company in control...
In the last few days all of the iPads at the school I work at have begun showing the following error when attempting to open YouTube links in safari:
"Sorry for the interruption.
You are seeing this message because your current network has been identified as using non-authorized applications to access YouTube."
The only way I've found around it is to use their app, or solve the reCAPTCHA puzzle every time.
Some actual competition in this space would be wonderful.
I said this about Twitter during the days of ubiquitous fail whale pages. The problems are branding and money. One needs to create a brand, and market it effectively. It needs funding to pay for hosting and traffic.
So how does one disrupt YouTube?
I'm also very close to making some sort of self-hosted Twitch type thing. A lot of streamers are getting caught up in Twitch's bullshit policies. Someone I follow wore their workout clothes on stream after they finished a workout and wanted to make their normal stream time. Twitch banned her for 30 days because that's supposedly inappropriate. I think it's time to cut them out of the loop and make streaming decentralized. The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.)
All you need is some software to run it all and a standard way of paying the streamers across the decentralized network. Probably a good application for cryptocurrency. People are crazy about their favorite streamers, and would probably be willing to learn how to use something other than a credit card to subscribe. Emotes are already decentralized with things like BTTV and FFZ. So it could work. I just don't see how I would personally make any money, so I haven't pursued it much. But the days of requiring some megacorp like Google or Amazon to be able to distribute video are over -- this area is ripe for disruption.
But I think as much as content creators love to hate on their platform, they do love the free audience. A lot of people got their start when "the algorithm" finally recognized them, and they turned their hobby into a day job. I'm not sure it could ever work with a centralized gateway that collects metadata and suggests new creators to users. But maybe it's OK if we put the money and the servers in the hands of the creators, and let discovery be an additional bonus. And maybe running that could be profitable; you get a $1 commission for sending a new subscriber their way.
I dunno, just some random thoughts... but this all sounds more and more reasonable every day. People lost access to their email for chatting in a streamer's chat. That's CRAZY.
Here is a summary of the situation: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/overwatch-streamer-hit...
I don't think Fareeha was out of line. I've watched people stream Overwatch from their pool, and Twitch didn't mind at all even though the (male) streamer was completely topless.
It's very arbitrary and unfair.
I stopped reading here because you're clearly out of touch.
I'm happy to give you a phone number to call to get your 10Gbps transit circuit set up at that price, even though I don't work there anymore.
Unless of course you mean "$1000/mo, after several million in upfront costs".
I'd only imagine someone like Netflix, who has existing infrastructure, to actually create a profitable video site.
You either vastly underestimate the size of their library, or vastly overestimate the maximum amount of RAM a single server can hold.
To be a viable long-term alternative, a competitor will have to break at least one of those fundamental constraints.
If you're worried about the power tech companies have gained, and you're using that as the sole reason to build a new community, it's not going to become something better. If you want to compete with Youtube, You have to have something that is fundamentally more appealing on a mainstream level than their product.
Most people complaining about YouTube's hosting policies don't actually have a problem with YouTube's hosting policies.
You can upload almost anything you want - as long as it's not illegal, infringes on copyright, or violates the most serious cultural taboos (nudity, etc). YouTube's hosting policies are fairly lax, and allows a lot of borderline content.
However, a lot of content exists on the gray edges of those borderlines. And YouTube allows you to upload things in that gray area. What it won't do, is drive audiences towards them, and it won't pay you for uploading it.
When people complain about YouTube being unfair to them, what they are actually complaining about, is that YouTube isn't paying them money, or driving audiences to them.
If those people were willing to wait for audiences to find them, or weren't motivated by profit, they wouldn't be complaining.
I'd be willing to bet if you self-hosted a video blog your only viewers would be bots crawling it, anyone you directly shared a link with, and anyone they shared the link with. And those "share chains" peter out really fast if the content is not broadly applicable / viral worthy. It needs to get "likes" on social media to spread. That severely limits the kinds of material you can even try to make if you want anyone to actually see it, even if there might be millions of people in the world interested in the subject.
Do you think the government can create a better YouTube? Or force YouTube to do as you wish while remaining gratis and not introducing quotas and similar restrictions or limitations?
With the same privacy protections that come with checking out a book from the library, the concept of it running at a cost, and the first amendment protecting the content of the website.
Or could this be a prelude to a culling of videos starting in the first quarter of next year? I would say that now is the time for a wannabe competitor to YouTube to get ready to step into the breech but if I'm not mistaken, YouTube has never made money despite YouTube's attempts to sell advertising content. I could see a future where it's going to cost (not much, but more than zero) to host and serve videos on YouTube.
Yes, but how does the new upstart try to get traction from under an avalanche of useful shills that will start to smear them as "NaziTube"?
Edit/Addendum: Do you honestly think a new upstart would enjoy an "understanding press" in their "growing-pains years" like our current incumbents did?
I suspect the "NaziTube" nicknames (did this happen somewhere? Or is it more of a hypothetical example) are because upstarts don't have the resources to ensure Nazi videos are blocked. Thus, they become a breeding ground for that pernicious type of scum that has been evicted from the larger, better resourced, systems.
The environment has changed a lot, and it might not be a prerequisite to copy YT's growth model.
It's a vicious cycle.
Folding Ideas (on YouTube) had a solid video about VidMe, which is a case study in how NOT to do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI
It's hard to compete with YouTube if your revenue model is ads and your content is "The stuff that YouTube wouldn't touch." Most of the ad industry doesn't want to associate with that content; that's part of the reason YouTube doesn't want to touch it. So a competitor going the road of trying to host that content would probably need to find a revenue model that isn't ad-based, for starters. That's gonna be a challenge (subscription-based model for Nazi-sympathetic content? ;) ).
Um, there is an established industry that manages this just fine.
But porn sites generally aren't going to be hosting pro-Nazi garbage because their advertisers also don't want to be associated with it. Reduces to the same problem. It does, perhaps, point to a possibility; much as the porn sites gain on the fact that YT filters both the content and the advertising it allows on the network, one could imagine a hyper-niche site that is combining content YT kicks off with another (non-porn) category of advertisers YT kicks off.
Gun manufacturers come to mind.
But yeah, not much else.
Certainly no one's gonna pay for the usual suspects' videos.
I remember in those early days how TechCrunch (under Arrington) did a great job easing concerns and guiding the narrative to be favorable for those startups, which I just don't see happening today... but then I guess he got stock options for some of that xD
Unfortunately the sources are in French (see for instance https://droit-finances.commentcamarche.com/faq/23970-refus-d...).
From that source:
> Le refus de vente à un particulier est prohibé par la législation. Cette interdiction est posée par l'article L121-11 du Code de la consommation. Elle s'applique aussi bien aux ventes de produits qu'aux prestations de services.
This loosely means that not accepting a sale to a individual is forbidden. The law covers goods and services (article L121-11 of a code for "consumption" (includes sales)).
There are "special cases" when a seller can refuse to sell and they were specified by courts. Some examples:
- no more items in stock (one cannot force a seller to get more stocks of a given product)
- enormous amounts of a given good
- customer who poses a danger to the seller (violence, insults)
- customer who is known to be unable to pay
- customer who would like to buy illegal goods in his context (e.g. alcohol for underage customers)
Generally speaking, there must be a very, very good reason to decline a sale. "No shirt, no shoes, no service" is not one of them (to take your example - because walking without shoes or shirt is allowed in France)
(EDIT: clarity)
That is a hard position to be in, because they were effectively platforming targeted harassment. In addition to that, videos stating that Omar married her brother are still upon YT, as are flat earth explanations. One is a "harmless" conspiracy theory that ends up as a gateway into absurd things like Pizzagate, while the other is libelously spreading lies about a member of congress.
Where's the line? Because it doesn't appear as if there's one we all agree on.
Because what do they gain from leaving this stuff up? It hurts people. If their stated goal is to be a bastion of free speech, that's one thing. But they're not doing that. They're providing a service. Passively hosting and platforming harassment definitely doesn't fit in with their initial "don't be evil" ethos.
I think it would be fine to say "as long as it isn't illegal (harassment, CP, copyright violation, etc. are not legal, so it falls under the umbrella), then let it be".
If it is something that isn't entirely clear (e.g., CP is pretty clear-cut, but harassment might not be), let the courts decide and make a decision based on what the courts say.
It sounds painfully obvious and simple, but I have a feeling I am definitely missing something important here, because that sounds way too easy.
I could make a video and state that Sandy Hook was a false flag and these parents are crisis actors. I don't have followers and influence, so my video wouldn't get many views and likely wouldn't instigate a call to harassment or violence.
But someone like Jones with a following did do that, and those families have gone through extended hell because of it.
The same is true with trying to spread lies about Omar marrying her brother. This is still commonly repeated across all mediums. Is it not an issue because she's a public figure? She receives death threats due to these types of veiled racism.
Should I be allowed to host a video openly slandering and lying about someone simply because I don't have enough people who follow me or because I'm not directly saying "attack this person"?
I feel like there's a lot to consider with their position. What do they gain by platforming hate speech and conspiracy theories? It affects their reputation (to some degree), but they still make some money off of the advertising.
For the record, I don't think Google should be policing content. But there are slippery ways to get around TOS. The "I'm just asking questions" defense muddies things, and people like Jones know that.
"Slander" is a legal term, and if someone feels like they were slandered through a youtube video, they are welcome to go through that legal channel, just like if they were slandered by someone on the street or through phone or elsewhere. That's the kind of matter that courts were designed for, so it would make sense to keep that issue there. We don't need bajillion private "courts" to dish out their own "totally not self-serving" flavors of justice, we should be using the one we pay taxes for and that has grounds in the federal judicial system.
This should increase the friction to the point where we don't have as many takedowns of videos that are not doing anything wrong, while still allowing for offenders like Alex Jones to get the justice they deserve and get their videos removed.
When it breaks established law, then that's the line.
You would think most people understand this. However there is a political movement in America to force social networks to host people's vulgar or derogatory opinions in the name of the "first amendment," which technically never applied to privately funded social networks in the first place.
Lots of people would never think of walking into a Target and posting illiterate political meme's on the wall. But that's almost exactly what you're doing by making Facebook and YouTube spread your hate.
Beside that, a lot of people talk to media about first amendment they often then go to court raising anti-discrimination laws. Those laws are much more broader and can be applied to private funded companies. When it comes to international companies there is also free speech as defined by the EU and that one do not make a distinction between company and state in the same way as the first amendment. The distinction between free speech (US first amendment), free speech (EU human rights) and free speech (US anti-discrimination) are all fine legal technicallities, but limitation in one does not give private funded social networks free range to do whatever they want.
You agreed that your posts would be moderated when you signed up. Should Facebook be eternally available to host people's timeline? Who pays for that? Why should I innovate the next big thing if someone in a different country is going to hold me legally responsible to support it forever?
And the ruling doesn't mean Twitter has to host Trump's Tweets forever or guarantee service. If he breaks their TOS they will ban him. They have a right too.
What the ruling means is that the government has a responsibility to archive his Twitter posts and that he himself cannot restrict access to it, as president.
People who think that this policy change is going to lead to some kind of exodus to a YouTube competitor are fooling themselves. There's no one else in the game and there never will be; it's economically impossible.
It's worse than that. What you've listed is what the viewers want.
What the content creators want is all of the above, but to also get paid money, and to receive free marketing for their content.
Search on the other hand is high IOPs.
As you scale out your HDD storage fleet its great to have the benefit of putting a Low IOPs high storage with a High IOPs low storage.
Every few years a new image host pops up since the incumbents are getting so terrible, they promise the world and get popular until one day they need to start paying for the service and introduce ads, then they stop hotlinking, offer pro accounts, and need to manage takedowns and illegal content.
Soon they look the same as the service they were meant to replace. And then like clockwork, someone comes along who thinks they can do it better, and it all starts over.
I can easily see this playing out with video, but much slower due to everything being bigger, and due to the network effects that at least YouTube currently has.
Of course monetization by video creators is left to out-of-band mechanisms, such as crowdfunding via the likes of Kickstarter and Patreon.
And of course the focus on video downloads and away from typical VOD streaming might also be described as making the website "not very easy to use", at least compared to YT. But it also functions to align user behavior, e.g. by heavily discouraging the pointless filler and "high production values" (HD, 4K, HDR etc.) that are rampant on YT itself.
Those of us who aren't happy with this should pay for Vimeo or use some other way to host our vids, but it's easier to moan and ask the government to force YouTube to do as we please, than to do take responsibility for our content.
Although I have been too lazy to address YouTube annoyances at least I have not been calling for government coercion and violation of YouTube shareholders' property rights.
I mean we pay for Netflix, for HBO, for HULU... why not for YouTube? I would rather pay for the service then see/hear about all the creators backlash from their policies. Policies that seem to be derived from the fact that YouTube needs to make money, just a thought anyhow.
If there's a creator I really like, I'd rather support them directly on Patreon, anyway. Why should I pay Youtube and give Google a hefty cut of that revenue?
I wish this also meant that it avoided the content producer in-video ads. It would be nice if there was a way for content producers to have their own inserted ads (that could be avoided by paying them), so they would stop having in-video ads.
With that in mind, can someone at Netflix please figure out a way to enable user created content?
Your customer base is ready for this. You don't need to focus exclusively on creating your own content. You've got the tech in place to support it. Many popular channels on Youtube would be right at home on Netflix. Take a note from Amazon, you don't need to be a book store when you can do much more.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502162
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21500325