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YouTube as Storage

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Re: YouTube as Storage

#131

Post by paulryanrogers »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #96
repeekad wrote: post #4

I once asked one of the original YouTube infra engineers “will you ever need to delete the long tail of videos no one watches” They said it didn’t matter, because the sheer volume of new data flowing in growing so fast made the old data just a drop in the bucket

Now that they can harvest it all for AI training, that decision was the cheapest and greatest thing they ever did. Imagine trying to pay for all that content, nobody on earth would be able or willing to supply it.

PeerTube is a thing. I like to think without centralized players like YT, that P2P supported federation may have gained a better foothold.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#132

Post by dotancohen »

UltraSane wrote: post #115
raincole wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The framing here is really weird. The volume of videos increasing isn't 'growth.' Videos are inventory for Youtube. They're only good when people (without adblocks!) actually watch them.

Yes. a video no one watches is a waste of storage.

Maybe not.

Maybe it could be used to train a neutral network. Maybe it contains dirt on a teenager, who might become a politician two decades from now. Maybe it contains an otherwise lost historical event.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#134

Post by [deleted] »

genidoi wrote: post #27
Jaxan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is inefficient. But youtube pays the storage ;-). (There is probably a limit on free accounts, and it is probably not allowed by the TOS.)

Right, you just pay daily in worrying when, not if, youtube will terminate your account and delete your "videos".

[deleted]

Re: YouTube as Storage

#135

Post by agnishom »

komali2 wrote: post #65
agnishom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a narrow understanding of value. Which do you think has more value to me? (a) I save some money by exploiting the storage loophole (b) The existence of a cultural repository of cat videos, animated mathematics explainers, long video essays continue to be available to (some parts of) humanity (for the near future).

This is assuming doing A has any meaningful impact on B. Anyway in this situation it's less that YouTube is providing us a service and more, it's captured a treasure trove of our cultural output and sold it back to us. Siphoning back as much value as we can is ethical. If YouTube goes away, we'll replace it - PeerTube or other federated options are viable. The loss of the corpus of videos would be sad but not catastr…

"Siphoning back as much value as we can is ethical."

I feel the same way. (Although, I am less sure of it.) However, I think backing up important parts of YouTube, as you have done, is a much better approach towards doing this.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#136

Post by fragmede »

tempestn wrote: post #126
donkeyboy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is amazing.

Would've been, once. These days I assume bentcorner asked their favourite LLM to generate a poem parodying Ozymandias about once-popular youtube videos.

or you could get over it and still enjoy it anyway. Like how Coke Zero tastes.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#137

Post by up2isomorphism »

YouTube is not a place you expect your data will persist. It can disappear, unavailable for any period of time. But if you don’t care if your data is available, why bother with this thing?

This is one of those seemingly “smart” but actually dumb idea.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#138

Post by lysp »

repeekad wrote: post #4

I once asked one of the original YouTube infra engineers “will you ever need to delete the long tail of videos no one watches” They said it didn’t matter, because the sheer volume of new data flowing in growing so fast made the old data just a drop in the bucket

I seem to recall reading that the HD variations may get removed leaving only 480p or lower for older unwatched videos.

The original upload would likely still be stored, but not available for viewing.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#139

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

HeliumHydride wrote: post #24
ranger_danger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anyone has ever compiled a list of channels with abnormally large numbers of videos? For example this guy has over 14,000: https://www.youtube.com/@lylehsaxon

There is a channel with 2 million videos: https://www.youtube.com/@RoelVandePaar/videos One with 4 million videos: https://www.youtube.com/@NameLook

AH! I've stumbled on that first fellas videos before! The videos aren't crazy complex but the sheer volume is impressive in a perverse kind of way.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#140

Post by pwdisswordfishy »

wasmainiac wrote: post #8
repeekad wrote: post #4

I once asked one of the original YouTube infra engineers “will you ever need to delete the long tail of videos no one watches” They said it didn’t matter, because the sheer volume of new data flowing in growing so fast made the old data just a drop in the bucket

I wonder if that still holds true? The volume of videos increases exponentially especially with AI slop, I wonder if at some point they will have to limit the storage per user, with a paid model if you surpass that limit. Many people who upload many videos I guess some form of income off YouTube so it wouldn’t that be that big of a deal.

> The volume of videos increases exponentially

Source?

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