this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
69 points (97.3% liked)

Technology

34573 readers
470 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] donio@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

When you have a goose that produces a reliable daily supply of golden eggs do you:

  1. keep collecting your daily egg
    or
  2. see if giving it a good kick or two gets you more eggs
[–] Zifnab25@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] XLRV@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] kuresov@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

"The ~$10MM in profit we booked last year is not enough!" The curse of infinite growth.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] waspentalive@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

[–] beatniak@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] blank_sl8@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] KindnessInfinity@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's not easily block able as it scrapes the YouTube website. They'd have to stop having a website for that to happen.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] manned_meatball@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

oh boy, I wish youtube kills itself like reddit is doing right now so decentralized alternatives can become widely adopted

[–] burak@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Right there with you on that one. The biggest problem is video hosting is a pain in the rear, particularly at such a grand scale. Hopefully, video hosting platforms will go niche, thus reducing bandwidth costs for each platform and "YouTube" will be the whole federation.

[–] pinwurm@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] RoqueNE@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Decentralized services also cost money to operate. Servers, bandwidth, developers. Where is the money for that supposed to come from?

[–] dan@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Then I’m going to begin not fucking watching YouTube.

[–] veloxization@yiffit.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The tricks YT doesn't want you knowing about...

NewPipe

Piped

Invidious

[–] champion@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago
[–] kadu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is a federated version of YouTube...

But storing video is a massive challenge, way harder than dealing with a Lemmy or Mastodon instance.

[–] dan@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nigh7y@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They have really gone all out on the whole enshittification process during the past couple of years, haven’t they?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] ram@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

You can watch any YouTube video on Invidious, Peertube is a federated alternative to Youtube, Odysee is a blockchain based Youtube alternative that kicks back to creators and users, and many creators use Nebula as a subscription platform that directly pays them.

[–] Richardisaguy@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, good luck making watch das trough newpipe

[–] hugz@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The great thing about using free open-source software is the immunity from corporate shenanigans.

[–] datendefekt@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, all the open-source Reddit clients are pretty drastically affected by Reddit's shenanigans.

[–] hugz@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

RedReader isn't actually. Reddit granted them an exemption, partially because it's FOSS

[–] petriborg@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Damn straight - they can take my NewPipe from my cold dead hands :-)

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Alphabet killbots have been dispatched to your location. Remember to enable sponsorblock in the settings.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] LostCause@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When will companies finally understand that some people won‘t watch ads no matter what tricks they employ. I‘d rather watch no video at all than a single ad. If that is their goal, fine.

[–] SuperZutsuki@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

And the percentage of people using ad blocking has to be crazy low. I've never seen another person in public with ad blocking. Every time I happen to see someone watching youtube, there's ads playing.

[–] albert@lemmy.sysctl.io 5 points 1 year ago

Just FYI for anyone reading: Invidious and Piped are great YouTube mirrors, and Piped even blocks in-video sponsor sections!

[–] landordragen@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

YouTube is the only Google service I use on a regular basis. Happy to leave them behind if they continue with this type of behavior.

It would be less convenient, but it is what it is and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s ads.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

Seems like it's profit squeezin season on every major platform.

[–] Unsigned@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Rumblestiltskin@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

[–] liberatedGuy@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's impossible or at least very difficult, right now. Video content is very expensive. LBRY is the only feasible option.

[–] Roman@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] FederalAlienSmuggler@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

add a donation/subscription system.

At this point you could just subscribe to YouTube.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] PavelKorchagin@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Great, now YouTube is being further enshittified.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I feel like extensions are pretty savvy for fixing this. If not, I will waste less time on YouTube. Hell, why not another big site getting over my limit for hoops that are worth jumping through vs value I get.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] authed@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I'm surprised it took them this long

load more comments
view more: next ›