Google is reportedly experimenting with forced DRM on all YouTube videos
Google is reportedly experimenting with forced DRM on all YouTube videos
youtube’s been testing various ways of limiting access, both for downloaders and real users with adblockers most fucked up experiment being forced DRM for ALL videos, even those that are licensed as CC: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12563 feels like it will only get worse from now on 🫠
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
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This is fine. I actually encourage this. Let the market decide whether it likes this.
The issue is that hosting costs for videos are insane. There's nowhere else to turn except for Youtube (unfortunately PeerTube is so far off being a reasonable alternative). I would love to see some more competition, but I don't see it happening in the close future. The sad state of things is that 90% of the population won't care if their favorite MrBeast video has DRM.
That's why I encourage YouTube taking ever more extreme steps to extract their user's worth. If they just take it far enough, there is a chance actual competition might show up.
The sad state of things is that 90% of the population won't care if their favorite MrBeast video has DRM.
Agreed!!
(unfortunately PeerTube is so far off being a reasonable alternative)
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.
Because of the hosting cost? Where is Youtube getting this for cheap?
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:
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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.
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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:
- shorts that are just 1 or 2 minute clips from movies or TV shows almost definitely not uploaded by the copyright owner. Official Fediverse answer: This is probably illegal, GTFO.
- videos that are not intended by the uploader for public consumption. There are people who upload to Youtube and just keep videos private as a kind of cloud storage. Official Fediverse answer: Go to Best Buy and buy a hard disk you fuggin freeloader.
- Product marketing or instructional videos. Concrete example: Dbrand (Canadian company selling vinyl wraps for phones and such) hosts their "how to install a skin on an iPhone 14" videos on Youtube. Official Fediverse answer: Host that shit on your own instance.
- Automatically generated or AI brainrot slop, to include TTS robot reading Tumblr stories over some colorful video game footage: Official Fediverse answer: Host that shit on your own instance.
- Already established creators with a decade of back catalog and likely a decent set of in-house infrastructure for video storage and editing: Strongly consider hosting your own instance please, or maybe contract with several friends in your specialty and go in together on an instance.
- "Influencers" that do shit like "take a bath with 1 of every bath bomb sold by Candles N Such": Host that shit on your own instance.
- "Muh Free Speech" Host that shit on your own instance.
- National propaganda, religious proselytizing or other scams: Go drown yourself in the toilet like the lump of shit you are.
- Just a webcam pointed at something forever: Probably just don't do that.
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.
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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
Hosting costs are high yeah but they are much more reachable if you scope down to "host what you actually need to emit" rather than "try to be a cheap copy of youtube" - the latter is simply pre-setting yourself for failure.
Are a "creator" that focuses on music mostly, or on archiving old TV footage, or recordings of old videogames, or stick animations? You don't need to store everything or even most of everything in 4K 120fps in your peertube, you can just do 480p with 96k VBR (or heck, even 360p with 64k VBR in some cases) and it will be fine! Let the clients who want to upscale upscale on their end. For every minute of 4K video you can host like, almost half an hour of 360p. Similarly a creator who focuses on music dumps only needs the music tracks, not a video track of any kind (just ta video thumbnail will do).
They have been attacking adblocks for the last 10 years, unless they do what twitch does, they aren't stopping it.
The more unusable/unbearable they make YouTube, the sooner users will start looking into alternatives.
I quit twitch exclusively because of the ads
I yt-dlp'd a video off Twitch a couple of days ago with no problem - what am I missing?
What's your ideal outcome, pray tell?
I hope for a reddit type situation, where YouTube enshits itself to a degree that using and developing alternatives becomes attractive enough to finally break its monopoly.
I think realistically the only way that happens is if we somehow figure out how to do video with massively less bandwidth, or just move to indie platforms at far lower bandwidths. Would you be happy with potato quality video if it meant no broligarch monopolist BS? I might.
but we have figured it out, peertube exists specifically to solve the bandwidth problem.
Every viewer helps upload the parts of the video they have in browser cache, so with more viewers you have more people distributing the load, and so the origin server only experiences a fraction of the increased load.
if we somehow figure out how to do video with massively less bandwidth
Start with making videos smaller! Most (about 99%) video on the internet doesn't need to be 4K or even 1K; stuff like "head talking about product" content creators can just be 480p or even 360p without issue. That eases bandwidth issues a good lot.
I fully agree, but those sorts of videos often don't need to exist. A few pictures and some writing would be preferred.
Oh for sure, they totally don't need to exist (in particular the "head talking to promote product" kind). But if they are to exist anyway, it's easier on the selfhosters if they keep them small, which means fewer arguments against setting up your own instance (or joining in to some sort of coöp instance) which helps promote Peertube and this kind of sharing in general.
That said, I would not be opposed to 144p / 3gp from the old Nokia days.
Everyone gets a chip in their brain and we're all used as cloud storage.