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Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

jeffgeerling.com

161–170 of 803 posts

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#161
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And still it's the "free-speech" USA that deports students for protesting against Israel war in Gaza and not UK. There's the wording of the law, and then there's the practice of the government. Most communist regimes in Eastern Europe had pretty nice constitutions. It's just that everybody knew it doesn't matter what the constitution says - you complain = you're off to the national variety of a KGB prison. When your…

lol free speech is for citizens

If that were true (which it isn't), when you don't get due process, they can just claim you aren't a citizen, and then—just as they have—'deport' (read: exile) you and claim there is no way to get you back when the "mistake" is found.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#162
Yeah YouTube are getting shittier by the day. I keep getting banners telling me that ad blockers aren't allowed on YouTube. Stuff is pretty unwatchable now without them.

Well fuck you I'll just download the videos with yt-dlp instead. If that stops working, I'll not bother.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#164
post #98

A bit off topic, but still: Why do we need YouTube and other "Video Hosting" platforms at all? Simply upload your video (webm, or MP4) to any static Webserver and embed in HTML5. Plays nicely and no adds. I don't get why some sites still embed their movies stored on YouTube.

Your use case is simplistic so it dismisses actual use cases. People make money on youtube through ads, you can't do that (as effectively) on your own server. This also ties with the analytics. Some organisations like the ready-made administration solution. Uploading files through ftp isn't for everyone. Youtube (and hosting platforms) has a nice ui to manage all the content, handles the user authentication etc. Band…

I think a bigger reason is all of those is the brand trust that YouTube has. If I, as an independent director, make a music video, or a 10-minute tutorial video, or a short cinematic film, and want it to be seen by tens of thousands of people this month, YouTube is where I'm posting it. If you can persuade me that there's a video URL that thousands and even millions of random strangers would be even more likely to click on than one that starts with YouTube.com, I'd be very grateful to know it. Even Vimeo is known to far fewer Gen Z viewers than it has been to Millennials -

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=v...

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#165
post #62
post #49

Since Youtube started to show me funny "TURN OFF THE ADBLOCKER!!!" notices, I just started slamming links in yt-dlp and watching them offline. No drawbacks so far.

It will become harder to ignore the possible retaliation Google can make against your/your family’s Google accounts.

Friendly reminder to enable periodic personal data extraction from google (Google Takeout) and back it up so you don't lose your digital life in the rare case of being blocked.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#166
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. Acc…

> According to which laws? This part at least seems to be no problem. Many platforms already follow and enforce different rules in different jurisdictions. > And who decides whether the video actually violates the law? There are myriad laws around the world, and somehow we manage to decide what's legal and follow the law, at least most of the time. This argument is absurd on the face of it: "we can't have a law becau…

>There are myriad laws around the world, and somehow we manage to decide what's legal and follow the law, at least most of the time. This argument is absurd on the face of it: "we can't have a law because laws are too difficult to follow and enforce".

Yeah, I agree that argument is absurd. I will also note I never made that argument, so I'm not sure where you got it.

You are also missing half my comment. "Just follow the law" is not a complete answer to the questions raised. Plenty of companies will still want to remove content that doesn't violate the law in certain jurisdictions such as pirated content. Should Youtube be obligated to host that content? What if the actual right's holder threatens to stop advertising unless Google removes that content regardless of local law?

I just don't know why people pretend this is a simple issue with a single straightforward solution.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#167
post #115
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will become harder to ignore the possible retaliation Google can make against your/your family’s Google accounts.

Would not be an easy one to swallow but I don't have a false expectation that these accounts are mine in any sense. They are Google's, and I'm just renting it paying with my personal data to feed the AdSense machine. Any day they might decide to do what they want with it, there might be a bug or a technical issue which will lock me out, and I doubt I would have a single way to influence it, the customer care or user…

If you care enough, back up your data - they have to hand it to you.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#168
post #59

This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed. From another comment: "Looks like some L-whateverthefuck just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software." This is exactly what YT did with Covid related content. Here in the UK,…

I think your position is quite simplistic and completely ignore all the issues around YT pushing all kind of scam/misinformation which has tremendous impact (EX: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226045/ or https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/12/youtube-i...)

Could try to separate the pure hosting part of YT from the recommendation but since the home page heavily mix recommendations and the subscription page see almost no usage (Technology connection mention 4% traffic), I'm not sure if it makes sense to still consider YT as simple hosting.

And last point I'll make, I believe the fact that their moderation is such a crap shot job is mainly a reflection that it's not a priority.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#169
post #63

I purposefully avoid demonstrating any of the tools (with a suffix that rhymes with "car") that are popularly used to circumvent purchasing movie, TV, and other media content, or any tools that automatically slurp up YouTube content. Can't figure out what tool Jeff is writing about.

[deleted]

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#170
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. Acc…

> a line somewhere for normal people to actually want to use the site. Youtube is a private company. They can make whatever additional moderation decisions beyond the law they want. Which are in no way based on what you want but are entirely based on what advertisers want. This control effectively answers every question you raised. In any case, Youtube is the size where it can grapple with all these questions you jus…

>Youtube is a private company. They can make whatever additional moderation decisions beyond the law they want. Which are in no way based on what you want but are entirely based on what advertisers want. This control effectively answers every question you raised.

This is effectively the same thing. Advertisers care because the users have different moral judgments on different types of content which impacts their opinion of the companies that advertise on that content. If users were happy seeing Ford ads on porn, Ford would likely be fine advertising on Pornhub.

>In any case, Youtube is the size where it can grapple with all these questions you just posed, but anyone else hoping to challenge their monopoly or otherwise host a small collection of videos, perhaps for a specific purpose or community, now effectively cannot.

I'm not sure where this logic leads. Are you suggesting that a company needs to reach a certain size before they can be expected to moderate their content?

>Who exactly started _this_ debate? Was there some recent outcry from the citizens that their lives have become unlivable due to the lax content restrictions on social media? Really?

Isn't this question answered by your first paragraph? Users and advertisers started this debate. There was definitely public pressure for Google to take down Covid discussions that mainstream sources believed were misleading. Was there consensus? Maybe not, but there was definitely a public debate about it.

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