The problem with any youtube competitor is that there is no way in hell they can cover the costs of the infrastructure required to host the same amount of videos youtube has and streaming them to the millions of users youtube serves daily.
Comment on YouTube's ‘War’ on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Ya I’ll never stop using ad blockers, the internet is essentially unusable without them. Mine still work on youtube but if the day comes that they don’t I’ll just stop using it. We need some competition here, things have gotten increasingly anticonsumer and the companies have gotten too comfortable doing and charging whatever they want
DarkenLM@kbin.social 8 months ago
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
How about a decentralized, federated service instead of hoping a major corporation tries to “save” us?
DarkenLM@kbin.social 8 months ago
I don't think even a decentralized service could hold a mass equal to youtube. That would require that either the owners of all instances pay from their own pockets with mostly no income to support it, or that every user paid up, which is not going to happen, at least not in a service like youtube.
netburnr@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some of us are data holders and have Gigabit internet with options to go even higher. Don’t count out the little guys ability to share massive amounts of data… been doing it since zip drives and CDs
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
That doesn’t address the issue of storage and compute power for streaming to the absurd amount of users.
There’s been attempts before and it all comes down to file transfer time and storage (because at the time the servers weren’t transcoding for streaming the file. Secondary issue of buy in, like what we see with niche communities staying on reddit instead of moving to the fediverse.
There already exist a number of projects out there like peertube. Take a look at how even the most popular instances are doing. It’s not well.
The closest thing was around a decade ago, the popcorntime or popcornflix or whatever it was called app/program that was just a nice front end for torrenting videos and watching them before they finished downloading. Each individual user was responsible for their own storage, network connection speed, and compute power to render the video for themselves. Each end user was also contributing back through helping others to download the file via standard torrenting p2p stuff.
So now you need a front end to host the magnet links to the files, and a robust set of seed servers so no video is ever truly lost. That still doesn’t cover a significant portion of youtube’s functionality like reccomendations, comments, allowing creators to edit/adjust videos after the fact.
Unlike reddit, youtube is technologically complicated and impressive. Hell, read up on some of the stuff Netflix has had to do to achieve reasonable streaming quality and speed on an insanely smaller curated library.
A decentralized federated solution is possible, but there’s a shit ton more that would have to go into this than just appealing to the concept.
r3g3n3x@lemmy.one 8 months ago
That still doesn’t cover a significant portion of youtube’s functionality like reccomendations, comments, allowing creators to edit/adjust videos after the fact.
Seems to me that anything beyond the actual hosting and serving of the video file is unnecessary to include by default in a federated video streaming solution. To drill down a bit, recommendations don’t need to be handled by an algorithm, the content creator can make their own list of videos or playlist - do we really want another reco algo passively controlling what we feed our minds? Comments could be something as simple as a mastodon or lemmy thread with the video as the OP. Content editing after the fact doesn’t seem like its that big a deal aside from computational and bandwidth overhead which would seem small compared to the task of serving multiple thousands of viewers at once.
Species8472@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Would you mind sharing some ‘essential’ articles to read about this? I know the principle of how Netflix works, but always interested in learning more.
DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
The closest thing was around a decade ago, the popcorntime
That is still around, it’s just called stremio and you use a plugin called torrentio to get the torrents functionality that popcorntime offered.
4am@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I’d rather the storage and retrieval is just kind of built in to the network itself (p2p) and companies like Google can just do search on it.
Make your money on ads, but keep it off my content if I don’t want to use your services. No need to vertically integrate so hard.
Turun@feddit.de 8 months ago
It’s still just as expensive, you’re just adding administrative overhead.
You’d also spread the cost to more people, true, but who would operate a server for free (based on donations, but if it’s federated why should I pay for that one server?). Also, do you trust all those people to keep operating the storage for years to come? Or are you done with losing access to videos, because someone lost interest in running their instance?
Storage and bandwidth costs for video on demand are so incredibly high, I don’t think we’ll get a federated alternative to YouTube any time soon.
PhreakyByNature@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Vipsu@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Honestly this feels like the only possible way to win against Youtube. Goal could be to just create standardized decentralized platform where number of different companies/organizations can host and serve their own content while still being searchable and accessible from single client application.
Major problem with Mastodon, Lemmy and Peertube is searching and browsing content from multiple instances is still difficult.
pascal@lemm.ee 8 months ago
peertube started with that idea. Unfortunately is poorly maintained, also because humans are inherently evil, it’s a nightmare to moderate.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
I think it could work if most users contribute to the maintenance cost of their favorite instance. It’s just like mastodon and lemmy, but everything costs more.
LPThinker@lemmy.world 8 months ago
One alternative that seems promising is Nebula. It only fills a small part of the role YouTube currently occupies, since it focuses on being a platform for high quality professional content creators to make unfiltered content for their audience, but it’s funding model seems to be much more honest, stable, and so far viable than an ad-supported platform or the other alternatives. I don’t think anything could realistically replace all facets of YouTube (and I think the internet might be healthier if it were a little bit less centrally-located). A self-sustaining, straight-forwardly funded platform like Nebule seems like the best path forward to me.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I think Floatplane has more future but I don’t use either of them so I can judge.
Lifetime licenses are weird.
LPThinker@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Interesting, I thought Floatplane only hosted LTT content. Nebula has a LOT of creators spanning a very wide gamut of highly content. It has been gaining momentum steadily for several years now.
That said, I’d be happy to see them both succeed. We need more competition, having all internet video (minus NSFW and some short-form) hosted on one platform seems neither sustainable nor ideal.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 8 months ago
So the answer is don’t. Let your clients help you. Like peer tube. If a video gets incredibly popular, then it will have lots of watchers at the same time. If it has lots of watchers at the same time, that means anybody who starts to watch it after those watchers have started will be downloading the video from the watchers and not from the server.
qarbone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The problem with any competitor is providing enough value to content producers to get them to make the move.
TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Eh, kinda. Tbh youtube didn’t use to be that way, it was just a place to upload your videos and search for other videos. Over time they grew it into a creator focused site much to the detriment of the quality of content imo. Like sure, creators are producing 4k videos with great lighting and yada yada yada, but they have to create so much content constantly that the videos favored by youtube’s algorithm are fairly soulless, low effort mass produced crap that looks shinier. Classic youtube was some dude with a heavy accent recording on a nokia potato a 25 second video that immediately showed you how to do exactly what you entered into the search bar.
qarbone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It was like that in an age that no longer exists, and can no longer exist. Things were generally decentralised as everyone was doing and hosting their own shit. And people were fine and accustomed to finding weird holes with a collection of strange content. The average user is now focused on convenience rather than exploring, especially as web content has come to supplant other forms of entertainment.
DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Yeah everyone talking about how many additional TB of data you need to host every hour - if content had to justify it’s existence on it’s own merits a lot less of it would exist and it’s quality would be dramatically superior.
knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Why not? Youtube was big before google bought it
The_Vampire@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Youtube had a space devoid of competition. The next guy doesn’t. If the next guy wants to compete, they have to have all the features of Youtube or people will complain. Many of Youtube’s current features cost money and weren’t present when Youtube started.
The space is also more regulated now that Youtube exists, meaning the new guy has to follow regulations which normally costs money. When Youtube started, those regulations didn’t exist, because Youtube didn’t exist.
Youtube got big by building a city in an open field surrounded by nothing but open fields. The next guy has to build a city directly next to Youtube, follow all the same laws as Youtube, and ask you not to drive into Youtube.
Ashyr@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Two reasons:
- Because no one else occupied the same space in a meaningful way.
- Low interest rates meant they were able to get massive investments without the burden of profitability.
Now you’d need to distinguish yourself from YouTube in a meaningful way as well as provide a sustainable revenue model, such as advertising, in order to gain access to a similar amount of venture capital.
DarkenLM@kbin.social 8 months ago
Did youtube at the time serve millions of users daily and stored a gargantuan amount of petabytes worth of videos?
Even if a competitor rises, they will need money somehow, and in this hell of a capitalist world, only big corporations have it.
xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
They were big through investors throwing money at a money sink for years. Youtube was losing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars a year for a long time, before it finally became profitable.
A new competitor wouldn’t get such favorable support from investors.
registrert@lemmy.sambands.net 8 months ago
I’ve used adblockers for like 15 years and I genuinely get disgusted when watching YouTube without it. There’s no way I’ll go back. I even do sponsorblock to remove in-video ads.
The unfortunate thing is that I’m willing to pay a reasonable price for a lot of content creators, just not via Google/YouTube.
A dollar per channel? I follow 104 content creators om YouTube through RSS. And many more if we count all the other platforms. I can’t afford that.
It’s a difficult situation for viewers, creators and providers. I don’t have an answer, but a stop-gap solution I’d be happy to see is like 480p max for adblockers, pay for HD+. That’s reasonable based on how much ad-dodgers impact YouTube from what I’ve gathered.
OrangeCorvus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I cannot watch a video from start to finish anymore. Thanks youtube. Almost every video is filled with bs fluff to reach the 8 minute mark. It annoys me greatly. Maybe also because I am in the industry and I learned in school to not use meaningless shit in my videos.
registrert@lemmy.sambands.net 8 months ago
I’ve not thought about them time markers in a long time. One that was kinda funny and bearable was Dave509’s twist.
I"I need to reach a certain time limit on my videos, so for a few more minutes I’ll just sit here, nod and say “I agree” and “I understand”. Feel free to share whatever with me…
Sits in absolute silence for 30 seconds while staring at the camera
Yes, I agree."
But I have noticed I’ve gravitated to longer form videos, 30m+, for the last few years. I guess it has a lot to do with the fluff.
We shall from now on call such content creators “fluffers”.
aceshigh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
i’ve gravitated to long form interviews, 8+ hours has nothing on me. i listen to them when i go to sleep or watch art videos.
Ser_Salty@feddit.de 8 months ago
The thing that gets me is how little creators actually get per individual ad view. Now, collectively, with tens of thousands and millions of views, they get a good bag. But my watchtimes of that minute worth of ads per video? Literally nothing. A fraction of a cent so small it doesn’t exist. I could watch a creator semi-regularly for like 2 years and my contribution to their income by watching ads would be in the single digits. I give them two bucks over Patreon or something just once and that’s worth as much as me giving up hours upon hours of my life watching ads. Now, I can’t afford to give literally everyone I watch more than once a dollar or two. But I give some money here and there to a couple I watch a lot. To make up for my using an adblocker.
Honestly, I’d probably get YouTube Premium if it wasn’t fucking Google behind it.
aceshigh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
i also have always used adblockers, but once i had to put in effort circumventing YT ads earlier this year, i discovered sponsorblock and added it. kind of funny that had it not been for YT being an ass, i would have been fine with other kind of ads.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Now that’s a solution.
Detecting adblock: 480/576p
Watching with ads: 720p/1080p/1440p Watching with Premium: 4K and high bitrate 1080p (and maybe 1440p?)
merc@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I guess if you don’t use ad blockers you somehow get used to it. It’s like someone whose job is 100% outdoors vs. someone who works indoors and then has to do a day working outside. The person who is used to cold, wind, rain, scorching sun, etc. stops noticing, even though it takes a toll on them too.
Every once in a while I end up using a browser without ad blockers enabled and it’s incredible to me that some people live like that. It really is almost unusable. Things jump around as ads load in. Ads / videos pop over the content you’re trying to use. The useful part of a page might be 60% ads: ads along the sides and breaking up the text. And then there’s the bottom area of the page which is an endless scroll of “related content” ads.
elbarto777@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s not a good analogy. It’s more like saying that whenever you go outdoors for a walk on the park or do groceries, you have to give up 15 minutes of your time to “donate” blood to the rich.
merc@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
No analogy is perfect. Yours gets at the reason for the ads – they want something from you and you have no chance to bargain or say no. Mine is more about how people can become accustomed to something that’s really unpleasant and after a while not really notice it.
My point is that to me (someone who blocks ads), trying to use the web without an ad blocker is extremely painful, and I find websites almost unusable. But, to someone who has never used an ad blocker, they’re used to the crap, and have developed some ‘immunity’ to the distracting images and work-arounds for the broken thing.
Anyhow, we’re on the same page. I just felt like explaining a bit better what I was getting at.
elbarto777@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I was quite content with tolerating banner ads. Then they became animated and it went downhill after that.
dunestorm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There never will be a YouTube competitor, it requires continuous investment from a multibillion dollar company.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nebula isn’t too bad, I like a lot of those informative creators and they collaorated and made a startup video hosting site, its essentially everything i want youtube to be. If more creators decided to do this it’s be great.
VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Download newpipe and never use YouTube again.
derpgon@programming.dev 8 months ago
Can’t be used on desktop
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 8 months ago
isotope@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Littleborat@feddit.de 8 months ago
Age restricted videos are a problem otherwise it’s great. I have it on an android TV box.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
For static ads there will eventually be visual adblockers which detect ads not from their source but because they look like ads. (The mandated paid advertisement notice helps).
There is the utility that journalists use to capture YouTube video. A version that captured video content and then filtered ads visually would be unblockable.
DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 8 months ago
AI will be good for that. For once it will benefit the people.
ubermeisters@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Catch me rawdoggin’ the information highway? No thanks
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I prefer to call it the stormwater drain of the information superhighway
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Hahahaha, dammit this should be top comment