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YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

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Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#191

Post by learingsci »

stavros wrote: post #186
learingsci wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the monopolistic aspect and scale are the parts I’m most bothered by. I think we all agree dangerous chemicals should be regulated, but we lack this sensibility when it comes to many tech products. So far at least. Eventually we’ll catch up. Will there be the lingering legacy, the tech equivalent of super fund sites? Maybe.

I don't disagree that some of these apps might need to be regulated, because they're basically attention crack, but to me that's more TikTok and Instagram rather than YouTube.

I hear TikTok is on the decline, and arguably the forced change of ownership is a sort of regulation. Instagram is owned by meta who has an interest in not letting it overtake Facebook in terms of popularity I imagine. It seems like a sort of hedge against other platforms mostly, but I really don’t know much about any of these platforms tbh. I use YouTube very heavily, but have only used twitter, Reddit and tinder in the distant past. I’ve never been on Facebook, TikTok, snap, etc… To me, irc and usenet were greatly superior and I’m waiting for people to return to their senses.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#192

Post by raydev »

barnabee wrote: post #16

Background playback is a feature of the browser and operating system, not YouTube. Consumer laws should prevent Google doing this. We need an anti-DMCA to make circumvention, bypassing, or disabling of user’s device or OS features illegal.

Consumer laws should regulate free content delivery?

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#193

Post by raydev »

tpoacher wrote: post #130

Vote with your wallet. Tell your favourite content-creators to consider alternatives alongside youtube (like peertube), and promote the alternative platforms, until the network effect pays off.

Google gave an official response in the article: background play is limited to Premium users, so anyone experiencing this behavior is already not using their wallet.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#194

Post by mschuster91 »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #189
mschuster91 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme. One might also say it was unsustainable from the start, video is incredibly expensive to host and especially moderate. All we're seeing right now is the beginning of the end of the ad-financed world. Someone has to pay the bills in the end and advertisement spending is on the way down, more and more of it is going to influencers/TTL instead of traditional ATL/BTL marketing.

While that may be true, subscription services are a capitalist move that’s pricing premium well above profit margins. ‘YouTube is failing because free tier is too expensive to be offset by ads’ and ‘YouTube premium is overly expensive’ can both be true. Shareholders care about maximising profits now, not overall product longevity.

> While that may be true, subscription services are a capitalist move that’s pricing premium well above profit margins.

Agree in principle, but I'd raise the serious question if Youtube is profitable in the first place. Every minute, 500 hours of video are uploaded [1], so the storage growth given 1.5 GB/h is at least (not including compression, duplication across multiple DCs, edge nodes, whatever) 750 GB / minute, 45 TB / hour or 1.080 TB / day.

At 10 $/TB (and that is a figure from before the AI boom making all costs explode) they have to spend 10.800 $ per day just in HDD costs, on top of that comes the server hardware, racks, switches, datacenter construction costs, and then the cost of running all of that - electricity for the servers, cooling, internet egress bandwidth (in total, all video sites made up 65% traffic of the entire Internet pre-AI boom).

It is estimated that YT makes about 36 billion $ of revenue [3], assuming a split of 50/50 with creators [4] that means 18 billion $ end up in Youtube as gross revenue. From that, take off 10% for music licenses (estimated [5]), 25% for taxes (assuming for simplicity an average 20% corporate tax plus 5% VAT), that leaves 11.7 billion $. And that's... not that much, given that R&D, infrastructure investment, advertising expenses, costs of preferential deals with device manufacturers and phone carriers ("zero rating"), operational expenses (i.e. electricity, bandwidth) and headcount (moderation!) haven't been taken into account.

In the end, I think that unlike 2015 [6] Youtube is actually profitable - but barely, nowhere near close to the profit margins of Google Ads. Certainly not enough to appeal to the stonk markets and beancounters, and that is what drives the ever increasing push for ads and premium.

As a side question... I think what irks Google the most is that individual "influencers" can make millions of dollars in monthly income from sponsorships but Google sees nothing of that money at all.

[1] https://soax.com/research/how-many-hours-of-video-are-upload...

[2] https://www.tubefilter.com/2023/01/20/sandvine-video-data-ba...

[3] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/

[4] https://digiday.com/marketing/what-it-takes-to-get-paid-by-y...

[5] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/gema-ts-104.html

[6] https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-still-doesnt-make-go...

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#196

Post by lern_too_spel »

laserlight wrote: post #165
slig wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When there are enough paying customers, YouTube Premium will begin showing ads to them. We'll see. Until then, it's cheap and works fine.

It used to be cheaper and work finer.

It used to be cheaper, sure, but finer?

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#197

Post by icepush »

slumberlust wrote: post #154
icepush wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok all fulfil the 'whatever topic I am interested in this second, there are videos about it' property, though admittedly they do not have near as much meritorious long-form content as YouTube.

Damn, I didn't know you could watch your long videos on TikTok. When did this happen?

According to the first Reddit thread that appeared as a result when I searched on Google, March 2022.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#198

Post by keepamovin »

learingsci wrote: post #184
keepamovin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free doesn't emerge from the quantum vacuum of spacetime in the realm of digital products however. It's not a innate natural right, but a choice, of a provider at a given point in time. It might change. Cost might be levied. Cost should be expecdted in free exchange. Especially as a westerner! Aside from that - what age old institutions are wrecked by monopolies, or which ones are you talking about it? Genuinely curi…

From a software standpoint, the ones I think of are Tinder, Facebook, X, YouTube. Each has dramatically altered how we do things like how we stay connected with friends and family, court potential romantic partners, participate in public dialogue and learn. Arguably, rather than supplementing cultural institutions, they’ve to a large extent replaced what was with something more addictive or convenient. Fine. But I’d…

Yeah, I agree with the reading that these kind of large information pipelines are essentially some kind of institutions almost like public railways or water and electricity because they’ve become essential. I mean there’s a little bit more nuance because not everybody wants nor needs a Facebook or whatever but if you make the bucket big enough, it seems almost everybody uses something inside of it.

I see your point now about monopoly. It’s more sort of monopoly in the digital age and it’s pretty coherent what you’re saying, From the narrow point of view that you’re meaning here, and it is a significant point. I think the only solution in that case is you have to treat them as institutions and they have to be run for the public benefit - but saying that sounds ridiculous and I don’t think it could ever work so I guess our societies have to come up with some other solutions. But the problem, your point is referencing, is very real.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#199

Post by HDThoreaun »

rockskon wrote: post #70
jy14898 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates! There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.

Where is youtube complaining? Theyre just trying to stop you from using their service if you dont watch ads
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