We need to slowdown YouTube and get an alternative that is viable for people and creators. The problem in this case is creators and brands, almost no creators would continue doing videos if there’s no money at the end
The problem with money being involved is it’s an invitation to spam crap everywhere.
One of my relatives has recently taken up “AI travel videos” and “AI cute videos” as a “hobby”. No doubt based on the first thing that came up when I searched for those things, a video titled “make $10,000 a month spamming up YouTube with your AI slop”.
Oh, and it needs you to buy the AI slop generating tools that they happen to sell. How convenient!
I mean, this also happened with broadcast TV, where we suddenly went from like 4 channels filled with programs and things competing for space, to 200 channels, where the rush was on to fill the gaps between the adverts as cheaply as possible with reality show tat. And that’s all YouTube is now.
The other problem is storage and bandwidth.
There is the PeerTube network, which works like Lemmy.
This is one the best YouTube alternative but needs to be adopt massively
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Nah a little alt right content is entirely too much.
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See that’s the cute thing.They can have their free speech right there, but freedom also means the for most people obvious choice not to associate with nazis and other similiar troglodytes.
And as you said yourself, it already seems to be a popular hole for said miscreants, so why even bother with it.
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free speech is important
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that one should willfully fraternize with idiots lol Troglodytes should be shunned, nothing wrong about that.
I’ve seen the effects on invidious these past days. 8 in 10 instances have been broken. Google is putting some serious work into shutting alternate frontends down. Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.
Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.
Or how desperate google execs are to get even the tiniest bump in revenue.
LINE MUST GO UP AT ALL TIMES
GrayJay is the only one that seems to still work without issue but it’s getting updates very regularly.
Invidious and YouTube piped (and LibreTube) by default load the videos server-side, as opposed to GrayJay, NewPipe or Smarttube.
It has advantages (mostly that your IP address is not shared with YouTube, and it allows users from countries where YouTube is blocked to still access it) and inconvenients (much harder to keep up when YouTube actively seeks to block them).
I’m honestly surprised peertube has lasted as long as it has as it is
It still lasts because there’s no easy way YT can offer their own content without the video being available as a file stream (through CDNs at googlevideos subdomains). If they centralize everything to a single, controlled domain (so to allow things as one-time HTTPS request, better session checking and so on), they’d lost the capability of load balancing allowed by the decentralized nature of CDNs. YouTube downloaders (and, by extension, third-party YT frontends such as Invidious) exploit this CDN aspect to download the videos.
It’s common to see Invidious instances momentarily blocked. The blockage can’t last forever for two reasons: firstly, IPs (especially IPv4) changes due to how ISPs offer IPv4 addresses through CGNAT, so the instance IPv4 (generally domestic servers) will eventually change (often to a completely different IPv4 range) and YouTube won’t know that the new IP is a former “offender”. Secondly, as IPv4s works through CGNAT, Google can’t keep the bans forever because this IPv4 will be eventually rotated to another client from ISP that’s completely unrelated and unaware of how their IPv4 was a former address for a downloader. It’s like how Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/Facebook/phone-required services can’t really keep a permanent ban for a specific prepaid number (especially on countries like Brazil, where ANATEL allows for phone number rotation when the mobile plan is cancelled), because the number will be potentially owned by another person with nothing to do with the former owner.
So, in summary, Google can either end with YouTube CDNs (ditching their load balancing), or they can try to implement an innovative way to keep load balancing while serving the request one-time only, or they won’t be able to do nothing but to perpetually catch themselves drying ice cubes.
Maybe a stupid question, but how do paid streaming services avoid that issue?
Not the OP, and I don’t actually know, but paid streaming services differ from YouTube in that everyone who accesses the content is paying for the service. On one hand, you can validate that everytime a video is served, it’s served to a paying user. On the other, you are receiving revenue directly from consumers to fund the infrastructure to store and serve the videos.
YouTube, on the other hand, stores significantly more content, for free, and can be accessed for free, without being signed in.
The “without being signed in” part of YouTube is now no longer completely true. I tried to watch a video tutorial at work the other day and it wouldn’t play because I wasn’t signed in and so “they couldn’t be sure I wasn’t a bot”. I’m not signing into any personal stuff on my work computer, or wasting time creating a “work” Google account, so I guess YT can no longer be a place where I can get helpful programming info.
That might have been because of your IT team. You can absolutely watch YouTube videos without being signed in. I do it all the time.
Is this the reason why SmartTubeNext keeps breaking on my TV? The updates come pretty quickly but it’s getting annoying cause my $1800 OLED has the processing power of a $50 Chinese Android phone and thus takes forever to install updates.
50$ Chinese android phone is faster tho
It really is maddening how slow these expensive ass smart TVs are. Updating the software at all is often enough to make them nearly unusable
Not to mention the hilariously tiny storage space. My TV came out in 2022, and has 8 freaking gigabytes of storage space. That’s right, eight. Before I removed all the pre-installed bloat with ADB, it barely had enough space left to install one app fresh out of the box. It’s like these smart TV manufacturers expect people to only use the built-in apps and nothing else ever.
I’m a YouTube creator, part of the partner program, and I also manually upload to TILvids. The videos I make generate about $100-$300 a year through the partner program, so I’m not a professional by any means. It feels like they’re trying to keep creators from leaving by putting up small roadblocks that limit our reach beyond the platform. Given PeerTube’s non-profit model, I see it as a potential future for content sharing. Though there are a few rock stars on YouTube, most of the creators on that platform make little to no money from publishing videos. There are more people like me than Linus Media Group.
get newpipe and ublock origin if you want to screw with google:
It’s about time we try to de-google.
YouTube and my existing Gmail is the only thing tying me back. And the occasional Google maps. I don’t even use the rest of their services anymore
And Waze :(
THat sounds great! Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something… Youtube is also very hard… It’s a vicious circle, “Youtubers” try to host their content elsewhere but nobody is looking. While some users also want to get rid of the youtube platform, but since most people are still and keep watching on YouTube, the content creators keep uploading there…
Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something
Except for the fact that you’ll need to update your email address in so many places.
If you do move to a different provider, make sure you use your own domain. It’s way more professional, and it lets you move to a different provider in the future without having to change your email address again. I’ve had one of my email addresses for a bit over 20 years across a bunch of different providers.
The paid version of Protonmail lets you have up to 3 custom domains. MXRoute and FastMail let you use your own domain too. MXRoute supports unlimited domains and addresses; you’re just limited by total disk space.
If the email address is important to you, it’s better to use a paid service since it’ll usually give you proper support and an SLA.
Except for the fact that you’ll need to update your email address in so many places.
Which is actually a good thing. Might sound scarry and counterintuitive at first, but is the right way to go.
Especially with a custom domain, (can be smth cheap for 2 bucks a year) and using aliases for all the different places… like onlyfans@mydomain com… this prevents other malicious services from sending spam to your main email adress, since you can just delete the alias.
Which is actually a good thing. Might sound scarry and counterintuitive at first, but is the right way to go.
My point was more that if you do change email address, you should change to your own domain, since then you won’t have to change it again in the future :)
using aliases for all the different places…
Yeah this is great. I use a catchall email so anything @ my domain goes to me.
catchall
yeah… me too… thankfully no one tried to bruteforce, at least not for now 😅
All of us together!
I agree. But to be very honest, de-googling is very important but not always very easy. So I did personally move away already from Gmail. I also now host my own Nextcloud instance, which I use for my agenda as well as contacts. Meaning I also don’t sync or store contacts or anything in Google. I don’t use any cloud services for storage either, again Nextcloud (self hosted) solved that for me.
Then I was never using ChromeOS, so that helps, I’m only using Linux. However, I do have an Android device. It’s really hard to get rid of that, maybe a custom ROM, is that valid? Anyhow, and last but not least Google search, Google images, Google maps, etc. I don’t want to go from Google Search to another big Microsoft corp, so moving to Bing is a no go. That also means all those meta search engines is also not a good alternative, which includes: DuckDuckGo, ecosia and alike… Qitchain, presearch or Yacy isn’t working for me either. It’s just not good enough.
Thus finding a good search alternative is hard! I’m actually considering as a software engineer to build my own.
yt-dlp remains unaffected for now.
yt-dlp is only affected when YT changes their algorithms (breaking yt-dlp data scrapping capabilities) or when it’s used frequently with the same IP address (leading to automatic IP blockage). If you’re using yt-dlp sporadically, it shouldn’t be affected.
I’ve hit that blockade before. Pushing yt-dlp over Tor usually does the trick.
“Google shouldn’t be allowed to operate as a loss leader” - Reddit and Lemmy
“Paying for the service? Fuck that” - Also lemmy and Reddit.
Amazing. As if these communities are made with thousands of people having different opinions.
And here’s mine: since Google used their position to essentially destroy any competition in this area, why should be my duty to protect their revenue? Even if I can afford to pay their services, I won’t and will actively discourage anyone else from doing so, by installing uBlock, ReVanced, NewPipe, SmartTube, GrayJay etc.
It’s not your duty at all but it’s funny when you guys bitch about it with such fervor. It comes off as incredibly entitled.
You can have a diverse community that has a large majority opinion. And what I said is certainly the prevailing opinion.
And to answer you about your personal view: You are stealing the right to distribution and taking money away from both corporations but more importantly creators. And I’ve seen the rates of direct donations eg patrons . It’s not ideological for most people, it’s about getting content for free.
Are you donating to every channel you are watching? I doubt it. Even the people who care mostly only donate directly to one of two top patrons, while still consuming many many more.
If you are actually donating, then good for you, I congratulate you for living what you preach and have zero qualms. But you would be a statistical edge case.
Why give money to YouTube when I can give it to my favorite creators, and the developers of the alt yt clients/mirrors I use?
Because you have not set up that agreement and the vast majority of people don’t pay outside of ads or a singular monthly sub.
The next best thing is nebula which has 600,000 monthly subs at $5. Which means a maximum payout pool of 18M a year.
Look at the number of users vs donations. The only reason this place works is low traffic and low bandwidth. The vision you describe would be great but it’s not going to happen. ESPECIALLY once users are forced to pay rather than getting shit for free.
You don’t need all, or even most users money. Plenty of people make enough money off of the portion of their fanbase that pays them to not only survive, but thrive and grow.
You don’t need all, or even most. You don’t need this to be the norm for it to be sustainable.
Oh right, in the magical world where people are giving their money away. The majority of content creators would of left your platform. But it’s okay it’s easy to steal their right to distribution and handwave it away as not a problem.
This isn’t some magical world, this is how most open source software projects and even online content creators make their money.
Creators make way fucking more from patron than AdSense, even if its only a percentage of their audience. Do you know how much fucking watch time it would take to match the $5 a month I give to several of my favorite producers of online video?
A lot more than either your or I have time for, certainly more than the content they create.
You need only a sliver of your audience to pay, and platforms like patron prove this works.
The fact you’re baffled by even a small percentage of people donating to gratis projects says a lot about how you value volunteer labor, and its pretty fucking sad.
The large majority of open source tools that are used in mass have significant commercial backing.
Yes many users could make more money from patron only. Very few do in the tall world. Their primary source of income is YT. Because people don’t use the patrons.
What are you fucking on about lmao? Most channels that run a patreon, use it as their main source of income unless they also sell merch.
Everyone from giant channels like Linus Media Group, to medium and small-sized ones like Technology Connections, and Cathode Ray Dude.
I mean pretty much everyone I watch that has talked financials has mentioned how important patron is.
Some of them like Botgrinder literally for the most part, only make money through patreon because of YT’s restrictive demonetization guidelines. Yet despite the lack of ad-revenue the guy is able to live off of a 50k sub channel where he pretty much smokes weed and flies FPV quads.
As for FLOSS, that heavily depends the projects. Huge ones used by corporations sure, but who’s footing the bill for newpipe, Yt-dlp, Jellyfin, Pihole, And pretty much every video game emulator ever written? People like you (probably not considering your attitude), and me.
