Here’s the thing about YouTube. From the very beginning, it was a video-hosting platform. Users create content. They upload the content to YouTube’s servers. Other users view the content, and upload their own. A simple formula, no? That’s why their pre-Google slogan was “Broadcast Yourself”. The thing is, storing video data long-term is expensive. This is where Google comes into play, because, unless you’ve got Google’s money, you cannot afford to store literally 100s of Yottabytes of video data, not for very long, anyway. Even if YouTube becomes a “mostly-worthless relic”, there’s nobody who can readily replace it. I suppose someone could create a fediverse version of it where you simply upload your own content to your own server and then sell (or give) access to other users, but it would be slow to start, and small as not everyone can afford their own server to host their content on. Or, a service that aggregates videos by scraping them from from video servers that it has access to, creating a hub for users to enjoy the content made by other users that is stored on their own servers.
Yeah. As with many things, “Can this make money?” is not the same as “Is this a nice thing to have around?” and the disconnect between the two when capitalism tends to assume they’ll be the same thing, is a source of unhappiness in many ways.
Funnily enough, one of the things Reddit’s PCM community tried to push was the concept of nationalizing YouTube because “it’s a public service.”
They thought the average browser was too stupid to ask why all these Nazis wanted that, where all of a sudden the 1st Amendment actually comes into play, and now you can’t take down their blatant misinformation and hate speech.
For me, I think the problems all started when creators themselves wanted to be paid for the content they created. When “content creator” started becoming a legitimate profession. YouTube was always going to need to have ads. They started adding more ads when creators started to establish themselves and want paid for the work they do. Don’t get me wrong, creators should absolutely get paid for their work. But there were better ways to ensure that those who made quality content got paid for it AND keep the servers that host their content up and running than embracing full enshittification.
EDIT: You can downvote me all you like, but it does little to change the fact that once the costs started increasing to more than simply keeping the lights on, they started looking for places to put ads. Like the meme itself says, They could have had one skippable ad at the start of the video and just passively made income that way, but then their operating costs went up when it was determined that the pay for content creators should come directly from the platform’s coffers.
Here’s the thing about YouTube. From the very beginning, it was a video-hosting platform. Users create content. They upload the content to YouTube’s servers. Other users view the content, and upload their own. A simple formula, no? That’s why their pre-Google slogan was “Broadcast Yourself”. The thing is, storing video data long-term is expensive. This is where Google comes into play, because, unless you’ve got Google’s money, you cannot afford to store literally 100s of Yottabytes of video data, not for very long, anyway. Even if YouTube becomes a “mostly-worthless relic”, there’s nobody who can readily replace it. I suppose someone could create a fediverse version of it where you simply upload your own content to your own server and then sell (or give) access to other users, but it would be slow to start, and small as not everyone can afford their own server to host their content on. Or, a service that aggregates videos by scraping them from from video servers that it has access to, creating a hub for users to enjoy the content made by other users that is stored on their own servers.
Yeah. As with many things, “Can this make money?” is not the same as “Is this a nice thing to have around?” and the disconnect between the two when capitalism tends to assume they’ll be the same thing, is a source of unhappiness in many ways.
Funnily enough, one of the things Reddit’s PCM community tried to push was the concept of nationalizing YouTube because “it’s a public service.”
They thought the average browser was too stupid to ask why all these Nazis wanted that, where all of a sudden the 1st Amendment actually comes into play, and now you can’t take down their blatant misinformation and hate speech.
Hmm that’s pretty fucking clever for complete choads.
Good point, i never thought about that angle. Looks like the only option is self hosting then.
For me, I think the problems all started when creators themselves wanted to be paid for the content they created. When “content creator” started becoming a legitimate profession. YouTube was always going to need to have ads. They started adding more ads when creators started to establish themselves and want paid for the work they do. Don’t get me wrong, creators should absolutely get paid for their work. But there were better ways to ensure that those who made quality content got paid for it AND keep the servers that host their content up and running than embracing full enshittification.
EDIT: You can downvote me all you like, but it does little to change the fact that once the costs started increasing to more than simply keeping the lights on, they started looking for places to put ads. Like the meme itself says, They could have had one skippable ad at the start of the video and just passively made income that way, but then their operating costs went up when it was determined that the pay for content creators should come directly from the platform’s coffers.