Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube
Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube
"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:
Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn't allowed on YouTube.
I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.
This wasn't my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!
In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)
So I thought, this case will be similar:
- The video's been up for over a year, without issue
- The video's had over half a million views
- The video doesn't promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally
Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.
Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"
Oh, it's dangerous and harmful all right : to their business model.
I think the big G is probably starting to get pretty nervous about self hosting. It absolutely is a threat to their existence. They are nothing without users.
There's a lot of us fed up with enshittification and every video that helps people break free of their capture is extremely dangerous to them. Seriously.
I think it may be less direct and it's troll companies and shitty AI.
Yeah, this is definitely a broken corporate system issue rather than a nefarious plot. Google takes down, demonitizes, and issues trikes for all kinds of bogus shit, their system is so incapable of nuance that "nuance" isn't even the right word anymore. There's no evil scheme to silence self hosting, just a horrible, miserably dysfunctional content moderation system that regularly trashes peoples livelihoods if it comes anywhere near prohibited topics.
If the mistake causes a big enough problem they cares about, like bad publicity via a large channel complaining, they'll probably fix it after a whole protracted mess of a situation. But if it doesn't cause a problem for them it doesn't get fixed. They just really suck at handling the scale of content they host.
And I might empathize that it's a hard thing to do, if they weren't an effective monopoly and a horrible company.
I agree with you and also YouTube’s real power is the network effect of literally everyone being there. I want so badly for something like Odysee to work but there’s just nothing there.
Some in the fediverse ask why I'm not on Peertube. Here's the problem (and it's not insurmountable): right now, there's no easy path towards sustainable content production when the audience for the content is 100x smaller, and the number of patrons/sponsors remains proportionally the same.
How is this preventing Jeff from also uploading his videos to PeerTube? It can literally be automated by PeerTube.
If the Linux Experiment can, then why not Jeff as well?
The thing is peertube wont grow unless the people aware of it start advertising and using it as an alternative. It takes collective investment in building the audience on an alternative for it to become viable.
Peertube has a major disadvantage, though. It does not come with prebuilt revenue stream to cover your hosting costs.
In other words, he would become the customer, not the product, which comes with the certain set of advantages and disadvantages.
edit: or he could spin up his own instance, which would result in him having one more fulltime job :)
If he had hosting costs, that would mean he's hosting his own PeerTube instance, which is definitely something big content creators should be doing. But he could start out with using Tilvids.com (like The Linux Experiment) or another PeerTube instance.
How does he backup his videos today? Wouldn't it make sense if you used your backup solution with your own PeerTube instance?
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There are a dozen other venues for revenue. We need to move, as a society, away from advertising as a business model. It has become detrimental to society.
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He's already hosting a ton of other things, obviously, so the additional load would likely be extremely minimal. And if he was accumulating a large load that would mean he was wrong about not being enough users.
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An easy peertube + Ghost spin for content providers could probably be a viable business model
It might be against YT ToS but he could have shorter versions on YT and say the full version is on PeerTube. Biggest issue rn is probably advertising. Most people wouldn't think to look on PeerTube, if they know it exists, so nobody wants to post to PeerTube. The Reddit API fiasco was a boon to Lemmy so this could be as well, but steps need to be taken while outrage is fresh.
Agreed. Im seeign a lot of new faces in peertube land. Its been a pretty good time.
I kinda want to do a "best of peertube 2025" and get a couple of 10 second clips together just for fun. Just like a "best of" with some collabs if possible.
I wish just by having my jellyfin server up media companies would actually get hurt, like fiscally hurt.
Every time a new episode is imported, a random tech higher up gets a cramp.
Oh if only...Minecraft injury noise
Amen!
This only shows that they are starting to take it seriously. Its a good thing thus happened. Lets the streisand effect take its toll and watch the change happen.
Btw, feel free to visit my peertube and watch some of my videos: https://peertube.giftedmc.com/videos/local
The Streisand Effect doesn't apply here. They're not making news about it, they're silencing content posts on their platform. If Google went out and started using takedowns on other platforms, that's when you start to get a compound media effect because site owners tend to broadcast to their readership; in this case, the only people who notice both the takedown and the cause is the author. And us, because OP told us, but we're tiny.
After so many people stayed on Twitter, and after companies like Apple reversed their policy and went back to advertising there, I've lost faith in any mass internet movement. Most users don't care, as long as they're getting free stuff, and most content providers insist on using it because of monetization. If that's where the content is, that's where the users will go.
Most users don't care, as long as they're getting free stuff
Sad, but very true in my experience. I find even my friends who work in software engineering and have exposure to the bad sides of what technology can do, just don't take any efforts to change. They addicted to Instagram, to Amazon, and everything else.
i understand your despair. I sympathize. Still, I think it is just a question of who has the longer breath. If you read about history and look at things off the beaten path (most western countries teach history in a way that silences critical voices) you will see that things are never obviously gonna change something or everything from day one.
Online protest alone wont do anything but things are changing. Just keep on keeping on.
Btw. take a look at !anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com and (for those who speak german) !antikapitalismus@lemmy.giftedmc.com for more movement stuff.
They've started telling people they're blocking content for anyone who use adblock. It also seems like they might be shadowbanning those who don't comply after a while(account can't play any videos, but works fine when logged out or on other accounts, but zero notification from them about any wrongdoing).
Thats great. I hope oppression goes through the roof. We absolutely need this to become worse and worse. System change does not come from positive news.
The best alternatives for creators to obtain revenue are Bandcamp and Odysee, they have an fair business modell. Certainly when YT said selfhosting is harmfull, it's only for their business modell, but if creators create their own pages with their work, it's not really a solution, it will be interesting only for direct fans.
problem with odysee is that it's full of nazis so nobody wants to use it. like literally, one of the first videos that comes up is from the nordic resistance movement. and since it's based on the lbry blockchain illegal content can't be removed, only hidden from the frontend.
Didn't see that specific one but the amount of conspiracy theory videos I saw immediately turned me off of that website. Now that I know that it's got a block chain backend even more lmao
Let's also not forget Google wants you storing your photos on Google Photos, listening to music on YouTube, buying / renting movies from the Google Store, and streaming from Google TV.
It isn't just YouTube. It's their whole ecosystem.
By the way, I have a NAS setup. Was it pricey? Sure. But it cost about what it would to watch the NFL this year, and should last several years.
Now I'm gonna self-host even harder
I will self host content that I pirate from youtube
They'd ban the RPi if they could too
Next they'll say "not giving your entire life savings to google considered harmful".
++++ for making people aware of Peertube.
I'm surprised YouTube still lets you list your PeerTube channel in your YouTube channel description.
I try to drive all my YT traffic straight to PT
I know peertube is the fancy right way to self-host videos, but does anyone just post movie files directly to their website anymore? Seems pretty easy to throw mp4s into a folder on your web server…
That's a pretty rough way to serve videos if you get popular. Peertube at least does some peering to help mitigate your server load.
Yeah the p2p nature of it means it scales really well if anything goes viral. Not to say throwing a video on some video tags in HTML isn't a bad idea.
i oughta upload a video in the vein of "it'd be a damn shame if someone mentioned that i'm hosting a peertube instance" lmao