@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Needs to be nationalised; or more precisely, converted to a non-profit body.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology i think it already is unprofitable, just that they haven’t decided (how) to act upon that fact.
On the other hand, is hosting it all become more or less expensive over time? If server costs are getting lower faster than the amount of stuff people upload grows, they could well keep it just to know what every person online wants to watch (and show ads, I guess).
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
What, you don't have a personal archive of your youtube favorites?
Better start the backup now?
YouTube as 'too big for ethics' and also 'too big to compete with' is terrifying AF.
Nothing can replace YT and it's success or failure is in the hands of one unscrupulous company.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @fanf that is why @brewsterkahle created https://archive.org -- support them so we can keep an archive of important things, otherwise commercial companies will restrict and control the information in the future, and those who write the last are the real winners...
@jeroen @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @fanf @brewsterkahle And THAT Is why commercial companies want to destroy archive.org
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Hear hear! That Do No Harm motto seems to have become increasingly flexible...
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology and I have a vimeo account, and I keep "meaning to try" to use it....there's even good stuff on there! It's affordable if it's pay-to-view! But no....
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology BTW, enough media will be lost in the future due to DRM versions that will no longer be supported at a certain moment.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Well, Google will tell you to download your material before a certain date, and then just clear their servers...
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] There are ways to download from it with tools like yt-dlp (no Premium account needed), at least for now. I am not sure what the legal position is with re-distribution (possibly depends on the video) but I would suggest this as a good way to archive a backup of content you value offline.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] It also fetches them without ads so it's a good way to watch on my TV where those aren't blocked.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
"So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?"
Things improve.
Youtube does not have a monopoly because it's the only video app installed on your computer, but because it's the one everyone uses.
Plenty of people have tried to compete, but Youtube was good enough. Others had good reasons to try but concluded that Youtube was good enough.
When Youtube is no longer good enough, they get to show they can do it better.
Google search is worse, because it hasn't been good enough for a long time, but somehow every competitor has decided to be worse. Altavista 25 years ago beat what Google search is today, I can't imagine Microsoft being unable to afford to bring Bing up to Altavista levels.
Things improve.
It is not a natural law that things will eventually improve. It takes deliberate effort and money and an environment where this improvement is possible. Especially a video hosting site takes a lot of capital. And if powerful actors has a literal stranglehold on the market, then it can be virtually impossible even for obviously better alternatives to gain a foothold.
@uienia
I was answering a question about what happens when it becomes unprofitable for "powerful actors that have a literal stranglehold on the market" to keep pumping money into maintaining that strangehold.
I expected it to be obvious that the first thing that happens is that they stop doing so. THEN there is room for others to improve things.
Archive.org is where a lot of these videos are getting archived.
They don't have the space to archive it all. No one does. It's the reason it has grown so big without real competition.
No one can do it.. or at least make money doing it.
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