Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
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
Catch me rawdoggin’ the information highway? No thanks
I prefer to call it the stormwater drain of the information superhighway
Hahahaha, dammit this should be top comment
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.
How about a decentralized, federated service instead of hoping a major corporation tries to “save” us?
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.
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
Except you don’t force licensing so you’ll get shut down immediately by some DMCA bullshit, by some asshole law firm.in another country probably.
Have you seen the sheer amount of data hosted by YouTube though? There’s no way any amount of hobbyists are going to hold a candle to that.
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.
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.
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.
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…
You are basically saying “Other than the most expensive and complicated parts” the rest is easy or unnecessary. Which isn’t necessarily accurate but still is being a bit dismissive of the problems at hand.
And one of the biggest criticisms of Peertube (aside from the dearth of content, which helpfully avoids the “expensive/complicated” parts) has been Discoverability. How do people watch your videos (or your playlist) if they don’t have a way of knowing that your videos even exist?
I think we missed each other. My overall point is that aside from the hosting/serving, other federated networks/services could pick up the slack. The Federated Youtube doesn’t have to mirror Youtube exactly, or even mirror functionality all-inclusively (ie with reccos and comments etc. built-in), but could lean on other federated servers to provide similar functionality.
As I said, comments could be a lemmy/mastodon thread. Recommendations or other discoverability could be other threads or maybe even a completely different service that hasn’t been created yet, I don’t know, but I do know that any reco algo needs to be open and subscribed to, not jammed down our throats and gamed. In the meantime, everyone’s got a search engine, right?
Ultimately I don’t live in this social media/open source/development space too much, I just saw a way for these things to be built/used together to achieve an effect, distributing dev and process overhead and load across all the networks. I don’t have any insight on the bigger, more pertinent, file distribution problem.
At best word of mouth or users sharing it on lemmy (etc.).
Good luck getting the niche stuff out of the bubble like it sometimes does with the algo.
The closest thing was around a decade ago, the popcorntime
That method is still around, it’s just called stremio and you use a plugin called torrentio to get the torrent streaming functionality that popcorntime offered.
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.
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.
peertube started with that idea. Unfortunately is poorly maintained, also because humans are inherently evil, it’s a nightmare to moderate.
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.
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.
I think Floatplane has more future but I don’t use either of them so I can judge.
Lifetime licenses are weird.
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.
Afaik they try to market it to otger creators but also sell tge llatform like IaaS.
The problem with any competitor is providing enough value to content producers to get them to make the move.
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.
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.
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.
Why not? Youtube was big before google bought it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s not a good analogy. It’s more like saying that whenever you go outdoors for a walk on the park or do grocery shopping, you have to give up 15 minutes of your time to “donate” blood to the rich.Edit: I just finished reading your whole comment. Sorry friend. We’re on the same page.
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.
I was quite content with tolerating banner ads. Then they became animated and it went downhill after that.
I’m fine with a variety of ads, but I really hate distracting animation. The current trend seems to be that every ad is animated, so every ad is blocked.
There never will be a YouTube competitor, it requires continuous investment from a multibillion dollar company.
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.
Download newpipe and never use YouTube again.
Can’t be used on desktop
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Antitrust laws are not enforced nearly as much as they should be, especially in tech.
Stop using Google’s products and continue using adblockers. Don’t come back at me with excuses. Otherwise, don’t complain.
The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content. I wish it weren’t that way but it is.
So they will continue to dominate until similar vast content can be created elsewhere.
The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content.
PornHub: uh, hello?
Funny!
Boom chicka wow wow….…Hey baby. Let me show you how to torque your nuts deep down inside my motor…Guitar solo…rocket launch video…
It would be interesting if PornHub started paying people for non-porn content. Because of their high traffic I assume they might be able to compete with YT…someday. It would be fun for them to try.
I just don’t see it happening. People have been suggesting they create “VideoHub”/“MediaHub” for years, as they’re the rare company established in free-access video and also able to compete on the basis of having a (presumably) profitable enough service to keep them afloat through any rough patch. Though I’ll certainly agree, it would be incredibly interesting.
I’m sure plumbing tutorial videos would thrive there. Maybe nature documentaries about great tits would work too. If you have a farm, you could also make videos of your ass and pussy. Some people have a huge cock, so filming that would obviously be a good idea.
Google only has power as we the people give it to them but using their services. Same with Reddit’s power and such. Not the people here as we have unfortunately unplugged, but admittedly, all the decentralized services have significantly less content and variety of content. We need more people to join us, but they seem happy to support the centralized services they hate.
The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube (ignoring all the bad bits they’ve added). PeerTube is nice to have around, but it’s not as fast and doesn’t have all the content as youtube. There’s also Nebula, which is alright. It’s not free and doesn’t have as much content, but it’s usually a higher quality.
You’re obviously right. But it’s funny to me; I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler. Instead of YouTube and Google Buzz, we ran RSS clients akin to Outlook and Thunderbird. They torrent and seed media we’re subscribed to while we’re at work or class. It’s saved on a home server. We walk in and simply toss it up on our desktop or TV. (Or maybe a mobile client streams from your home server over the Internet or over your home Wi-Fi if you’re at home )
And if you visited the website instead of YouTube’s recommendations, The creator just adds a few RSS feeds on the backend to pull thumbnails from, of other creators’ sites they enjoy.
Crazy how easy it is to daydream though, when I’m not the one putting the work in.
There was a world before YouTube. It grew from humble beginnings. Granted it didn’t have an incumbent to fight off, but it had all the server issues, bandwidth issues and similar.
The only thing that stops someone else doing it is the user base.
The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube
as good
I mean, assuming that’s exactly what people wan, “exactly youtube but cheaper”, then yeah it’s an impossible and thankless task to even try something of that scale. Instead it’s better to think of building youtube alternatives that are focused on one or two parameters that allow organizational optimizations. For example, much of the issue that people complain about is the storage, but a YT-alt that dedicates to eg.: archivism of old TV shows, that scan at best at 480p or 360p, wouldn’t need to spend that much in storage compared to a service that is trying to serve 4K UHD 120fps Subwoofer Surround; that combined with the topical focus suddenly makes it much more scaleable and approachable.
I’m always a bit shocked the worlds governments don’t start offering free email/hosting to their citizens. It’d give them a cheap way to surveil that was “opt-in” (but would probably catch a lot of dumb people) and everyone would have a “verified” email for official stuff too. It seems like a good investment to me.
What happened to dailymotion and vimeo?
More the commercial/pro side of things. They cost money.
What about Vimeo?
I’m also curious why people pretend it doesn’t exist when they say “there is no other video uploading platform like youtube”
Vimeo is expensive, I don’t know how it works today, but when I tried it, I had to pay to upload some videos.
ok, I think I had missed this crucial difference in the business model lol
Interesting! I had no idea.
I’m okay with the less amount of content. Frankly, I mindlessly spent hours scrolling through “content” on reddit, and feeling no satisfaction. At least the content here is more relevant.
More people would mean more memes and rage bait. No thanks.
I mean subreddits like Oculus and Virtual Reality and I am sure many other niches are missing on Lemmy or very quiet.
Oh yeah, that’s a good point.
The problem is the network effect. It’s hard to switch from YT if all your favorite channels and creators are there, but it’s also hard for them to switch if all the users are using YT. And because it’s many different people we cannot coordinate a simultaneous transition either.
That’s why i wen FF+ Duckduck + ublock and instead of reddit > Lemmy But i have to admit that YouTube is harder to replace then reddit and I’ve tried many alternatives.
I just got an email from YouTube, my premium price is going up by almost double…
If you subscribe to premium using an Indian IP address, for example, you’ll get it for like a buck a month
I did that for a month from Argentina, then Visa stopped working. I started a personal invidious instance and haven’t looked back.
a bit off topic but when you say personal instance where is it hosted? And if it is strictly personal, doesn’t google create the same profile for you which will be assigned in your IP if it is hosted in your house, or in your VPS’s IP if hosted elsewhere?
I have a VPN gateway VM that randomly chooses a VPN region.
interesting. thanks for sharing!
YouTube Music is no longer optional. It’s now bundled into the basic features of Premium and Google uses that to justify the insane price hike. Their argument is that it’s cheaper than before for the dozen-or-so people that had subscribed to both YT Music and Premium. All others now “save” on the YT Music subscription, the fact that nobody saves anything by paying for a service they don’t need is completely lost on them. Just corporate greed and pushing the monopoly a bit further, nothing to see here.
Paywalled article 🙃
This shows me a never ending stream of CAPTCHAs.
Your milage may vary - but in general just force a full refresh and it should clear up
The YouTube adblocker overlay and such doesn’t work if you’re in incognito mode. You’re welcome.
Stop begging them, stop using them.
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I simply open up YouTube+Ublock in Firefox on my smartphone.
I actually like the personalized video recommendations from being signed in sometimes, but I still don’t like my data being sold. I use both.
Same. Firefox +uBlock on mobile. The YouTube app actually kinda sucks. Never used it
My solution is (and for quite a long time was) to use NewPipe on mobile and Invidious on pc.
Adnauseam! Adguard for desktop loaded with anti AdBlock killer! Lifetime license available!
Sorry I have tourette’s syndrome
Adnauseam is great, but it also leaves some ads on pages.
Strict blocking
Literally the reason I started regularly using Firefox
I’ll be switching back to it.
Is there any real free alternative? And I mean free refered to freedom, I know PeerTube exists but finding a good/known instance to upload content knowing that the instance won’t go down is hard.
EDIT: I found maker.tube and hardlimit, the first one looks promising.
Opera GX + uBlock + ABP. I stopped seeing this shit a long time ago. (Opera de-googles where necessary, and has its own store. You can still install from other chrome stores, if something is not available in theirs)
Frankly though, Alphabet needs to start being made accountable for their own “de-privacy” behaviour, in the name of their own profits.
And on a side note, is it just me or did 404media just came out of nowhere, and is spamming “news” posts. I’ve read a few of them, and they seem more like opinion pieces, and less factual. They really seem to have little supporting evidence, proper content (the meat, proof, details) and the complete post content is paywalled.
Defederated world, can we please prioritise non-paywalled sites over monetised ones?
Why uBlock + ABP though? Isn’t uBlock alone enough? And why not Firefox instead of Opera as it’s also based on Chromium?
Yes, uBlock is enough for YT specifically. I run ABP for some sites that uB doesn’t catch. (and for that matter, I also run “Ghostery” as well.
But yes, for this specific posted topic, you are correct I don’t need the other blockers.
As for Firefox, I had been a long time user, but I went through the bullshit phase they created themselves. It was because they dominated and it created a lapse in diligence, on their part. First was the bloat, it is a browser but it got mental in size. Then there was the bloat in usage, what browser needs 50% of your 32GB RAM?? (These have probably been addressed today). But the straw that broke my back was the constant lapsing of certificate renewals that broke everything in firefox including all addons. That was the final straw for me. It was clear they were not interesting in maintenance, and I needed a working browser, not bleeding edge bullshit, and constant roadblocks.
Iirc adblock plus has been known to get bribed to allow certain ads through. I’m struggling to remember the details, but there was some controversy with them a while back. If you have ublock you don’t also need ABP, just update your filters on those sites that ublock “doesn’t work” on
