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YouTube as Storage

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Re: YouTube as Storage

#21

Post by Jaxan »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #17

I don't get how it works. > Encoding: Files are chunked, encoded with fountain codes, and embedded into video frames Wouldn't YouTube just compress/re-encode your video and ruin your data (assuming you want bit-by-bit accurate recovery)? If you have some redundancy to counter this, wouldn't it be super inefficient? (Admittedly, I've never heard of "fountain codes", which is probably crucial to understanding how it wo…

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.)

Re: YouTube as Storage

#22

Post by arjie »

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

Videos do disappear, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1ioz4x1/is_it_...

Searching hn.algolia.com for examples will yield numerous ones.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547

https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhazuyn...

Re: YouTube as Storage

#24

Post by HeliumHydride »

ranger_danger wrote: post #10
wasmainiac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: YouTube as Storage

#25

Post by vasco »

j-bos wrote: post #16

This ia really cool but also feels like a potential burden on the commons,

That great commons that are the multi trillion dollar corporations that could buy multiple countries? They sure worry about the commons when launching another datacenter to optimize ads.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#26

Post by szundi »

vasco wrote: post #25
j-bos wrote: post #16

This ia really cool but also feels like a potential burden on the commons,

That great commons that are the multi trillion dollar corporations that could buy multiple countries? They sure worry about the commons when launching another datacenter to optimize ads.

[dead]

Re: YouTube as Storage

#27

Post by genidoi »

Jaxan wrote: post #21
thrdbndndn wrote: post #17

I don't get how it works. > Encoding: Files are chunked, encoded with fountain codes, and embedded into video frames Wouldn't YouTube just compress/re-encode your video and ruin your data (assuming you want bit-by-bit accurate recovery)? If you have some redundancy to counter this, wouldn't it be super inefficient? (Admittedly, I've never heard of "fountain codes", which is probably crucial to understanding how it wo…

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".

Re: YouTube as Storage

#28

Post by Kwpolska »

arjie wrote: post #22
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

Videos do disappear, though. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1ioz4x1/is_it_... Searching hn.algolia.com for examples will yield numerous ones. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 https://bsky.app/profile/sinevibes.bsky.social/post/3lhazuyn...

Of course videos disappear for copyright, ToS violations, or when the uploaders remove them. They do not disappear just because nobody watched them.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#29

Post by agnishom »

vasco wrote: post #25
j-bos wrote: post #16

This ia really cool but also feels like a potential burden on the commons,

That great commons that are the multi trillion dollar corporations that could buy multiple countries? They sure worry about the commons when launching another datacenter to optimize ads.

You are right, but YouTube is also a massive repository of human cultural expression, whose true value is much more than the economic value it brings to Google.

Re: YouTube as Storage

#30

Post by komali2 »

agnishom wrote: post #29
vasco wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That great commons that are the multi trillion dollar corporations that could buy multiple countries? They sure worry about the commons when launching another datacenter to optimize ads.

You are right, but YouTube is also a massive repository of human cultural expression, whose true value is much more than the economic value it brings to Google.

Yes, but it's a classic story of what actually happened to the commons - they were fenced and sold to land "owners."

Honestly, if you aren't taking full advantage within the constraints of the law of workarounds like this, you're basically losing money. Like not spending your entire per diem budget when on a business trip.

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