Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by rolph » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #634

rolph wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no i think YT uses an AI to categorize and vet media based on standard rubrick, at a pace that exceeds a human collective by orders of magnitude. they know about it as soon as you post it.

The reason we're having this discussion this on this particular post because YT's AI is not infallible. There isn't a "standard rubric" - just automated correlation-based scoring derived from labeled training data. In this case, the AI learned that media piracy and self-hosted setups are correlated, but without actual judgement or a sense of causality. So YT doesn't truly "know" anything about the videos despite the…

automated correlation-based scoring derived from labeled training data, would be the standard rubric

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

#642

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:59 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #547

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

Mhmm, so would it be fine for a private platform not allowing say, Muslims on their website? Especially a platform as big as YouTube? I mean, it's essential to their rights to be able to do that, I guess? Like I understand your point, but this argument is usually not actually useful. Especially since it's usually not coming from "free speech absolutist" types, so it always comes off as a bit disingenuous. Unless you…

> Mhmm, so would it be fine for a private platform not allowing say, Muslims on their website?

Depends on the sense of “private”.

If it is, private in the sense that it is a platform run by a Christian Church for the use of organizations affiliated with that Church, and not offering information dissemination to the general public, sure.

If its a private business offering platform services to the public at large but specifically excluding Muslims, then it is potentially engaging in prohibited religious discrimination in a public accommodation. Unlike religion, political viewpoint is not, federally, a protected class in public accommodations, though state law may vary.

(OTOH, under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and similar laws in many states, and case law based on and in line with the general motivation of such laws, laws including state public accommodation laws, are being looked at more skeptically when they prohibit religious and religiously-motivated discrimination, as an impairment of the religious freedom of the discriminating party, in theory irrespective of the religions on each side, but in practice favoring discrimination by Christians and against non-Christians, so possibly the Muslim exclusion would succeed even in a public accommodation.)

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

#643

Post by swed420 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 6:59 PM UTC

captainbland wrote: post #421

Corporate content streaming giant thinks you shouldn't just do it yourself. Honestly this should be obvious but it's nice to have people highlighting concrete examples as people never want to hear this kind of thing.

Reminds me of this BS

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/facebook-flags-l...

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

#644

Post by lurk2 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #631

lurk2 wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is an immense amount of the highest quality video content you can find on YouTube, and the trend has only accelerated in the past few years. This has not been my experience.

All right. Where can I find a larger library of high quality documentary, educational and instructional videos? I'm happy to pay for any service which can compare, just like I pay for YouTube Premium. I tried Curiosity Stream and Nebula, both they couldn't compare.

> Where can I find a larger library of high quality documentary, educational and instructional videos?

The question isn’t whether or not YouTube has this content, it’s if it would have proportionally more or less of this content in the absence of a profit-sharing model. The chief problem I have with social media is that the kind of organic content I want to see was already out there before some people decided they wanted to make a career out of it; it’s just a lot harder to find now because there are professionals who know how to play to the algorithm. This works on a mass market level, and I don’t begrudge people for enjoying the content, I just personally wouldn’t call it “high quality.”

It was the same during the SEO boom in the early 2010s; the internet went from a place where novelty was a regular occurrence to one where you reflexively scroll past the first paragraph of every article because you know it doesn’t have the information you’re looking for.

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

#645

Post by LocalH » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #371

w14 wrote: 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,…

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

Why should "YouTube" as an entity enjoy freedom of speech? They're a platform for user-generated content. Outside of outright illegal content (which is even tenuous sometimes, I'd like to reserve this for the worst of things), they shouldn't be able to pick and choose which UGC they are willing to allow. They're the modern "town square". They're effectively a monopoly in this day and age (yes, there are other video hosting platforms, but YouTube has the largest share of all by far, and are de facto the place people expect to find video UGC).

Serving video with high availability to millions of people is hard. Few organizations, that aren't already flush with capital, are going to be able to replicate that at any sort of scale.

I'm tired of big corporations using their might to override individual freedom of speech. Once you reach a certain size, you should have to make moderation a more personal thing. Instead of taking videos that aren't illegal in and of themselves down, they should have to empower the user to moderate their own feed. Of course, this is incompatible with the modern drive to use these platforms to push content in front of people, instead of letting them curate their own experience.

I don't have all the answers, but the "corporations = people, and thus corporations have freedom of speech" angle has done a lot of damage to the rights of individuals.

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

#646

Post by bigbadfeline » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #371

w14 wrote: 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,…

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

> A decently functioning anti-trust system...

Unfortunately, it's a tall order in the current political environment for the same reason open source funding isn't forthcoming, these are just parts of a bigger problem which is best discussed elsewhere.

With that said, you're absolutely right in your assessment, this is approximately what needs to happen in order to improve the current sorry state of media and public discourse. Sadly, as evidanced by the other replies to your comment, the public at large simply doesn't get it and the situation is even worse with the structural changes needed to make a real solution possible.

It's a vicious cycle that results in ever worse media, and not only media. The current public spat between the two smartest people in the world (by mass media metrics), garnished with public blackmail attempts and private-social media channels, is a jaw dropping proof of dysfunction but ofcourse the media presents it as casual entertainment.

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

#647

Post by luhn » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:10 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #398

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

I think their real edge is a practically free and practically infinite bandwidth/capacity global CDN setup. There's no real technical reason for this still to be the case, but bandwidth costs are significant for people relying on other services to provide such. Or they're cheap and slow/capped. This is the main reason I think alternative sites have a hard time competing. Play anything on YouTube from anywhere and if…

Yeah, anybody can make a half-baked CDN, but Google has PoPs inside ISPs across the world [1] and competing with that is essentially impossible.

[1] https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en

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

#648

Post by carlosjobim » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:11 PM UTC

swed420 wrote: post #639

carlosjobim wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube had plenty of content on it before the partner program was launched, and the content was better. It's not even comparable, not by a long shot. There is an immense amount of the highest quality video content you can find on YouTube, and the trend has only accelerated in the past few years. The ratio of good to bad content was better in the past, but that doesn't matter to the watcher. You subscribe to good s…

> It's not even comparable, not by a long shot. There is an immense amount of the highest quality video content you can find on YouTube, and the trend has only accelerated in the past few years. Both of you need to define what you mean by quality or you're going to keep talking past each other. I agree with the person you responded to though: blind profit motive on platforms like youtube destroys quality and fills th…

Quality is in the eye of the beholder, but I'm not talking about video resolution or refresh rate. I'm talking about documentaries, educational, and instructional content foremost. But really it doesn't matter, because whatever your definition of high quality content is, you're going to find the best of that on YouTube and nowhere else.

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

#649

Post by swed420 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #648

swed420 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not even comparable, not by a long shot. There is an immense amount of the highest quality video content you can find on YouTube, and the trend has only accelerated in the past few years. Both of you need to define what you mean by quality or you're going to keep talking past each other. I agree with the person you responded to though: blind profit motive on platforms like youtube destroys quality and fills th…

Quality is in the eye of the beholder, but I'm not talking about video resolution or refresh rate. I'm talking about documentaries, educational, and instructional content foremost. But really it doesn't matter, because whatever your definition of high quality content is, you're going to find the best of that on YouTube and nowhere else.

> you're going to find the best of that on YouTube and nowhere else.

If the trend Jeff describes continues to worsen, I wouldn't be so sure of that.

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

#650

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #371

w14 wrote: 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,…

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

> Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities.

Here's some text from Section 230 of the CDA:

> (c) (2) Civil liability

> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

> (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)

...

> (e) (1) No effect on criminal law

> Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18, or any other Federal criminal statute.

Now in this case, you have YouTube, a service with obvious market power, taking down content promoting a competitor to YouTube. There are Federal criminal antitrust statutes.