Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing • Hacker News Board

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#101

Post by ryanmercer » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

perfmode wrote: post #15

what is it about collective action that triggers contempt so quickly and automatically for those attempting to organize? many comments in this thread show contempt for the organizers in a way that is readily visible.

>many comments in this thread show contempt for the organizers

Go watch videos Jörg and channels like Taofledermaus made a year and a half ago that started this whole thing. Jörg was making videos on how to make extremely powerful crossbows that could defeat riot shields, stab-resistant armor etc and then got outraged when he got a strike and had some videos demonetized.

Same with Taofledermaus, a channel that makes improvized ammunition (firing nails, ball bearings, coins, etc out of shotguns towards dolls they refer to as Taylor Swift and other random objects). Taofledermaus flat out claimed YouTube was deleting views and likes and even uploaded a video trying to show 'proof' of the 'conspiracy'.

Those two channels, two of the first people fighting this fight, were demonetized because they were making dangerous improvised projectiles that advertisers didn't want to be a part of and then tried to claim it was a conspiracy and YouTube was trying to punish them.

Now these guys are getting a few bigger names on board after a year and a half of trying and making a big fuss about it.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#102

Post by anon1m0us » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

patrioticaction wrote: post #36

anon1m0us wrote: post #9

What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…

What is also both gross and sad is your contemptuous description of YouTube videos as being “Repackage scenes from movies, previews, upload documentaries, sport clips” Setting aside derivative works, which it sounds like you are attacking the value of, there is shit tons of purely original content on YouTube that carries a lot of negotiating power.

Repackaged content a huge part of yt's bread and butter. I acknowledge there are excellent content creators at youtube making their own stuff. That's who I was talking about in the first sentence of my OP. They should go somewhere else.

It's the same thing with Uber and airbnb, etc. Big corporations are making billions while those doing the real work that is valuable to the consumer are making pennies.

Sharecropping. This is not a new concept. It wasn't ever an equitable model and yet, here we are right back in it.

It feels like a lot of big corporations are taking advantage of a lot of people who hope to change their lives. It's a fraud. It's not ... right.

I want it to be right. It takes hours of filming, lots of equipment, courage, etc.

Each one of the content creators -- those creating original content -- are taking as much risk as the founders of YouTube, even more really in the big scheme of things and yet they and now Google are making billions, while the people they make those billions off of are making pennies.

Why does it work this way? I don't know why it works this way.

I might be having a philosophical break down atm or something, idk, but it feels like there's a huge fraud being perpetrated out there in internet land and I don't like it one bit.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#103

Post by pascalxus » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #39

mrec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet has turned to garbage. The ad-supported internet has turned to garbage. The academic and hobbyist internet is fine, and not that much different from the old days. The governmental internet depends a lot on where you are, but .gov.uk is really rather good, and vastly better at what it does than snailmail and Post Offices were in the old days.

I went to a government website the other day. 5 pages of forms I filled out several times. Each time on the final page, "system error, cannot proceed." I called the agency, they said, "You should print out the PDF, fill that out and bring it to our office." Can you believe that?? There aren't enough programmers to make the .gov stuff work right because FAANG is buying them all. So, I'm not sure you are right on that.

Your assumption that this is happening because those engineers are less skilled is completely wrong. I've worked at both private and govt. the problem in Govt is that resources just go towards the wrong projects. and things that could be fixed never do get fixed due to bureaucracy and regulations. engineers working for gov sometimes are forced to use the worst tools imaginable: often due to regulations (the tools/software used needs to be licensed or some other bs regulations).

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#104

Post by pwinnski » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #80

anon1m0us wrote: post #9

What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…

People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powerful. Isn't this a pattern with big tech companies and their walled gardens? "App devs thought they were starting a busines…

This is a pattern with every such environment I can think of. Most people are unlikely to stop at a random house on a street with a sign out front saying "Stuff for sale," and will instead meet that same seller with that same stuff at a flea market, because the flea market provides some small aura of respectability. But not a ton, so even more people will only shop at a "real store." The marginal cost of selling out of your house is essentially zero, but your market size is tiny. The flea market costs a little bit, but gives you a little bigger potential market. Getting into a retail store or a big online store like Amazon costs even more, but gives your a much bigger potential market. So as a seller, you do it, but of course all such outlets eventually try to maximize their own profits at the expense of the sellers, and so it continues.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#105

Post by anon1m0us » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

wtetzner wrote: post #52

peter_l_downs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, a lot of the amazing parts of the internet that people reminisce about are still there. The things that _have_ disappeared are often not technically complex or expensive to reproduce. Defeatism is boring, start building things and telling your friends about them.

I think the biggest change is that you can't easily find the good parts of the internet through Google anymore.

That's exactly right! It's like the only stuff I can find anymore are ehow.com, pinterest, houzz, etc. I feel more and more like searching through google is like perusing the covers of the magazines at the checkout aisle. Lots of low quality recycled content, filled with ads and referencing other content also filled with ads.

It's a huge drink the google kool-aid cult.

If you want to be on Google, you need to have adwords bringing people to your site, ads on your content, popups for the ad-targeters, click-bait at the bottom, tons of overlays.

Why is that all there is anymore, I don't get it.

What happened to the good content? Why can't I find it anymore?

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#106

Post by pwinnski » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

patrioticaction wrote: post #87

munificent wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. This will have almost no effect. YouTube does not have a quantity problem. They have enough content that every YouTube user could watch YouTube 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives and never see the same video twice. They wouldn't even have to go deep into their back catalog. Worse, viewers have relatively little attachment to any particul…

By that logic who needs YouTube when we can stare at the endless content of clouds moving in the sky.

This doesn't match the original statement, and doesn't reflect reality.

People leave YouTube all the time, and crowds don't tend to follow them anywhere. They just watch different YouTubers who fill a similar niche.

It's as if the cloud you were really enjoying blew away, but there were plenty of new clouds, so you didn't get into a car to follow the old ones.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#107

Post by buboard » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #92

This is mostly just people like Jörg Sprave and Taofledermaus types, that are angry their videos of making improvised weapons and improvised ammunition, getting demonetized or removed. This started early last year when Jörg got fed up with losing money and getting strikes against videos on his channel. For context he was most famous for his fantastically powerful homemade slingshots, he then started doing stuff like…

> ost advertisers don't want to touch a guy showing how to defeat riot shields with homemade crossbows

I 'm not sure anymore if "advertisers" dont want to advertise on non-mainstream or adult sites, or if it's just google imposing arbitrary standards on both their advertisers AND publishers. In the old times of TV there were brands that catered to specific, non-family friendly audiences (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol). With google's current policies, and monopoly on advertising, that section of advertisers and publishers is completely excluded.

I also don't get the point that "youtube is advertising, not video hosting" - they depend on both very much. By that reasoning TV should stop paying its anchors too.

> what that sort of exposure would cost them to achieve on their own domain and

They don't need to pay for hosting. There are already distributed platforms like bitchute. Each of them just needs to add one node to the system and the collective benefit would be huge.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#108

Post by anon1m0us » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

anticensor wrote: post #20

anon1m0us wrote: post #9

What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…

> only AdWords sponsored content appears in Google searches anymore. Wrong, AdWords sponsored results are promoted (just in a less obvious manner than before), but other websites also appear.

What I meant was that only websites that have google adwords embedded in their content show up in Google results. If you aren't generating revenue through google advertising blocks on your content, google doesn't show the content.

Google things new, updated content on large sites is more relevant, but it's not. That content is recreated from older content on the web that doesn't have ads on it.

I'm sure it's just that google requires more and more work from webmasters to easily find searchable content, meta tags, modern HTML, etc, but the way new content is being produced now is under the guise of ultimately getting the content reader to buy a product.

The old internet was, "Omg, I can share my knowledge with people." Now it's, "Omg, I can make money with ads."

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#109

Post by pwinnski » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #82

40acres wrote: post #72

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is…

It is pretty obvious that things like search results are manipulated to fit an agenda. Search Google Images for "white american family" and "black american family" and compare the results. You can replace "black american family" with indian or any other group and the results are similar. There are many interracial couples under "white american family" and none under "black american family". The only way I can explain…

That's the only way you can explain this? Really?

This is a popular exercise on the internet, but there are any number of explanations for this that are satisfied entirely by understanding how any search index works.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#110

Post by kjeetgill » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

jedimastert wrote: post #93

onemoresoop wrote: post #44

Did anyone ever thought of creating an external index of youtube videos so the recommendations are open source and aren't controlled by Youtube? Basically a table with links and other metadata

With the amount of raw footage coming from YouTube any given minute, I'm not sure there are many companies beyond Google that could do it.

The hardest part of that volume is is the footage itself. Sure archiving/serving footage may be hard, but if you just wanted to index all the titles/creators/metadata and maybe comments, I don't think it'd be that hard, in terms of volume at least.

Good clean access too it, especially if google is running any anti-scraping will be the harder part.