• Excrubulent
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    11 months ago

    No. This is why if a service loses sight of its core value proposition, it dies.

    If youtube is actually successful in killing adblocking on their service - which I suppose a server-side timer could actually do - then they will only succeed in killing their relevance, just like so many social media seem to be doing right now.

    I pay for services like a debrid and VPN, because they provide me with the services I need. For very few dollars a month I can get 4K streaming from their servers 24/7. That is all hosting should cost. If the fediverse version of youtube, peertube, became mainstream then collectively people should have absolutely no problem maintaining those costs from the users’ side.

    Once that happens and mainstream video streaming is part of the fediverse, I think the network effect that governs social media might snowball until eventualy centralised social media is a thing of the past.

    Do not pay for youtube, whatever you do. Let them die.

    • Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You think too much of the average person. This sort of thing might affect you, but it won’t affect your friend’s 8 year old brother or his parents who just want a convenient way to watch pewdiepie

      • AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Perhaps, but you can only crush so much blood from a stone and the masses are slowly becoming destitute.

      • Excrubulent
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        11 months ago

        Social networks don’t succeed or fail on casual viewers alone. Youtube is a video sharing site, not a content producer. If they get so toxic that the content producers start finding alternatives, then the casual viewers won’t all leave right away.

        If it gets so bad that big creators, like pewdiepie, have alternatives that grow in relevance and youtube loses its critical market share then it will eventually lose the casual viewers too, especially if those alternatives aren’t up to their eyeballs in ads.

        We saw this with digg losing its place to reddit, where they sold out their content to publishers. Content got thinner and worse until the vast majority of users left for reddit.

        This may not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. For reddit it was the API lockdown, for twitter it’s… well I could point to any number of individual decisions but let’s just call them Elon Musk. Facebook hasn’t quite hit that tipping point yet I don’t think.

        With youtube I can easily see this being part of a string of decisions to promote publisher content over user content. They’re already selling views which could really sink them in the end.

    • Vlyn@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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).

      • Excrubulent
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • Vlyn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            $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.

            • Vlyn@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Not sure what kind of shit take that is if you bought a $70 game recently (Baldur’s Gate 3, even I’m waiting for a sale and money is not tight for me), you have cats and probably a Nintendo Switch with Zelda, that’s just what I read on the first page of your profile. So you obviously have money to spend on entertainment, like most adults.

              $20 is clearly too much just to get rid of ads (though it also gets you YouTube Music, like Spotify), but I was talking about content creators who can easily afford this. And most people spend hours on YouTube, probably more time than they use Netflix if we’re being honest.

              I don’t like Google either, but at some point they need to make money. That’s the simple truth. If everyone used adblockers we’d see a lot more content locked down behind a paywall. It is what it is. Then you either pay or you find some other source of content.

              And let’s be real, people pay for entertainment. If I go outside and throw a stone it would probably hit someone with a Netflix/HBO/Disney+/Spotify/Prime or whatever subscription. It’s difficult to find a person who doesn’t have Netflix for example. If Google forces this through YouTube will just be another subscription service (or you get ads). Or they start limiting uploads to save on cost, which would actually kill their platform (as probably 99% of uploaded videos are barely or never watched, around one hour of video per second is getting uploaded right now).

            • Vlyn@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              demanding they pay for a service that is worse than what adblockers already offer

              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.

              whilst also running a business that relies solely on critical mass of users rather than any actual value that youtube themselves can uniquely provide

              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.

              • Excrubulent
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                11 months ago

                I pay a very small fee for debrid and VPN servers that offer exactly the same server 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.

                • Vlyn@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  I pay a very small fee for debrid and VPN servers that offer exactly the same server capacity with enormous bandwidth and virtually no downtime.

                  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.

                  • Excrubulent
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                    11 months ago

                    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?

    • focusedkiwibear@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      lol this post is nothing more than a tantrum from a leech of a service they’re too cheap to pay for and scrabbling for reasons other than said cheap-ness

      you may get likes on the internet for this wholly selfish take but we all know it’s nothing more than that.

      • Excrubulent
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        11 months ago

        It’s just devastating when you invent unwholesome motivations for my words to attack as an alternative to attacking the ideas themselves.

        My ego is in tatters.