If rolled out widely, this would make web browsers and third-party YouTube clients without a DRM license unusable for YouTube playback, download, etc. This would include almost all open-source web browsers and almost all third-party YouTube clients. Archive link to reddit post about this
Agreed!!
Why? Because of the hosting cost? Where is Youtube getting this for cheap?
I mean, I could see PeerTube being an alternative if there was better discoverability, better tools for creators to monetize their work, and there was a huge influx of people moving over to PeerTube as well as starting their own instances in order to spread out the hosting and make it less expensive for everyone involved. YouTube isn’t getting it for cheap, they’re just financed by one of the world’s largest companies and have huge amounts of revenue.
Yeah, If content creators (at least 1 in 10) ran their own instance, I think PeerTube could be a pretty good alternative and the cost would be split between instances.
More than 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute (reference). The cost of operating this system is astronomical. Building a competing platform is entirely out of reach unless you have nation-state levels of wealth.
YouTube’s costs are effectively subsidized by Alphabet (Google). All of the restrictions being implemented are about trying to make YouTube profitable, especially by protecting the ad revenue stream.
How much of that is low effort garbage?
My guess would be 490h of those 500h
I don’t think Peertube needs to be come as bloated as Youtube is, because Youtube is…there’s people making good stuff on Youtube, among “host this video on Youtube and then embed it on our website” and “TTS robot voice reads Tumblr post over Minecraft jumping course Zoomer crack” to “most Hollywood movies, 2 minutes at a time with the bad words censored” to…whatever. The Peertube answer to a lot of that becomes “pssh, host your own video.”
A lot of the stuff that’s on Youtube just…doesn’t need to be hauled out of the slush pile to build something thriving.
99.999% +/- 0.001
Oh sure, almost all of it. But that doesn’t make things any easier to operate - it leaves you with basically 2 options:
Manually review every submitted video - which is literally thousands of individual video files per minute - so you need a massive staff of people who are paid to sit and watch absolute trash for their entire workday and then decide what is and isn’t worth watching for other people - which is censorship - so not only are you incurring a massive operating cost but you also have to write some standard policy to handle the ethical issues of potentially suppressing free expression, and hopefully come up with some consistent guidelines you can get all of your employees to understand and follow (vs. just using their own individual personal judgement on what videos are good or not - imagine the proverbial Karen as a YouTube censor). A lot of those people are also going to end up watching some terrible shit and require long-term support for PTSD.
Automatically evaluate every submitted video with software - again thousands of videos per minute, and you want a software system that not only recognizes offensive material (within cultural context) but also can make value judgements about whether a video is “low-effort garbage” - which is such a vague concept that if you asked ten people you would get thirty different answers. Plus you also need to build an entire secondary server farm that doesn’t help you store or stream the video content, but just watches and evaluates every uploaded video, and probably runs some kind of incredibly energy-intensive AI model to do it.
YouTube is of course implementing versions of both, and also relying on end-users to report bad content that slips through.
That’s assuming a centralized, non-federated platform like Youtube. We’re talking about Peertube and how it may have to run differently from Youtube in order to function. I think Peertube could, as an overall platform, accept less crap than Youtube kinda has to. And I think it would be done by moderating who gets to post on which instance.
Take MakerTube for example. It’s a themed instance, they are only open to uploaders who do something arty and/or crafty. You have to apply for an account there, and if you want to post space documentaries, they’ll probably suggest you go somewhere else. That right there takes a lot of burden off of MakerTube’s admins for moderation. I’m imagining a few dozen other themed instances that operate similarly, for video game related content, science communication and infotainment, music, sports, whatever.
Some stuff I’m pretty sure everyone will agree we can just…not do on Peertube:
At some point I think you can winnow it down to “Hey there’s a lot of good stuff on PeerTube” without allowing every shit for brains conspiracy theorist live stream in 4k until someone presses the report button.
That’s why they been forcing more and more aggressive ads, and In order to drive up revenue more ad reach, they allow significant amount of right wing content to become more prevelant.
Youtube is already profitable. Has been for like 5 years
Source? Because they list YT earnings, but afaik, have never said “this was a profit of ### dollars”
Heresay from 5 years ago
Yea Youtube spend billions per year to host videos, plus paying all sponsors and the top content creators. I don’t think peer will match what Google supports. Also you don’t want trash like beast or sniperwolf migrating to those sites too