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YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#61

Post by madiathomas »

vkizl wrote: post #33
madiathomas wrote: post #21

I skip all YouTube adverts that are longer than 15 seconds and never click on any advert when searching. I am probably considered "commercially unviable", even though a company I own 100%, pays Google thousands of dollars every year to use Google Suite and Google Cloud Engine. I don't see a reason for my personal account to be commercially viable.

I haven't watched an ad on youtube in like ten years. They are probably very upset at me.

Unfortunately I watch YouTube on a smart TV. I have no way of blocking their adverts. I can only wait for skip button and skip.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#62

Post by Retric »

varelaz wrote: post #31
joosters wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt these kind of users cost YouTube all that much. What I guess they are worried about are people who upload controversial videos who then run adverts alongside them, and those advertisers get very upset about the content that they are being associated with. That's the kind of thing that can really cost YouTube money & effort (they might have to have a real person take phone calls from the annoyed advertiser, sh…

I think as everywhere 90% of money Youtube gets from 3-10% of content. That looks like cost optimization. They spend money for requests (displaying video) and storage. Even if storage is 30% of their cost and they can remove 10% of biggest never displayed videos they can save 3% of overall costs, which is huge improvement on very concurrent market. Video ads right now the most expensive and most fast growing market.

I doubt storage of extremely unpopular videos is a significant cost for YT. Their revenue is ~25 billion per year. Assuming with redundancy they are paying say ~1,000$ per 8TB added per year. People are uploading 500+ Hours of video every minute. Assuming that’s mostly 30fps 4K video we are talking 50 Mbps * 60 * 500 * 1 year ~= 0.75 Billion per year or ~3.3% of revenues. (50 Mbps seems like an overly generous average.)

Not free, but cutting off say 10% of uploads to save ~0.3% is not going to help their bottom line much as they would lose out on some viral videos and future stars in the process. Plus, there are minimum view requirements before revenue sharing. Worse they could easily lose their spot as the default location for video uploads long term.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#63

Post by utf985 »

k_sze wrote: post #44
utf985 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this a good thing? Obscure and/or old archive footage which usually doesnt get that many views is one of the best things about YT.

I’d argue that YouTube is a for-profit business. They have every right, within legal bounds, to do whatever makes economic sense to them. If you want an archive, go with archive.org. But even then, nothing is free. If somebody thinks a footage deserves to be archived and preserved, somebody needs to pay for the cost anyhow, e.g. via donations.

As a user I am not interested in YT's profits. However, what I am interested in is being able to access useful content. For all intents and purposes, YT has become the central place for people to upload such footage and of course the prospect of its removal is worrying to me. There are vast amounts of indispensable knowledge and information uploaded to YT that is far from being deemed as profitable to Google and as such are under risk of being permanently and irreversibly lost. Hence my confusion at the OP's description of the situation as "a good thing".

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#64

Post by PuffinBlue »

varelaz wrote: post #28
madiathomas wrote: post #21

I skip all YouTube adverts that are longer than 15 seconds and never click on any advert when searching. I am probably considered "commercially unviable", even though a company I own 100%, pays Google thousands of dollars every year to use Google Suite and Google Cloud Engine. I don't see a reason for my personal account to be commercially viable.

Google uses CPM or even kind of vCPM model for videos mostly AFAIK, so if you see more than 5 seconds of the ad, advertisers will pay for it.

Pretty sure it's 30 seconds before it's counted as an add view. Those un-skippable under 30 seconds are always paid.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#65

Post by madiathomas »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #64
varelaz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google uses CPM or even kind of vCPM model for videos mostly AFAIK, so if you see more than 5 seconds of the ad, advertisers will pay for it.

Pretty sure it's 30 seconds before it's counted as an add view. Those un-skippable under 30 seconds are always paid.

When I encounter an unskippable advert, I refresh the browser or report it as inapprporiate. I don't want to be forced to watch an advert.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#66

Post by IGotThroughIt »

utf985 wrote: post #50

So let's say you have an old YT account that you don't use anymore tied you your gmail account and there a few dozen family holiday videos you uploaded years ago to show friends (which was kinda the original purpose of YouTube) and completely forgot about. Does this mean that one day you might wake up with access to your gmail completely blocked off because an algorithm on YT decided that your channel is not profitab…

I think they're considered to be isolated services. You can have a gmail account without having a youtube account.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#67

Post by windexh8er »

pilif wrote: post #27
windexh8er wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense. Anyone can watch YouTube without an account. So even if they terminated a consumer using adblocking it wouldn't change anything for Google. This is likely targeted at users publishing a lot of low quality video that get few views. If they enforce this my guess is we see backlash around free speech and the like. This seems like a perfect way for Google to curate "good" content in the eyes of t…

> This doesn't make sense. Anyone can watch YouTube without an account. So even if they terminated a consumer using adblocking it wouldn't change anything for Google. there are means to identify (and block) unique users without them needing to have an account. Heck, there's even means to identify the usage of an ad-blocker and/or youtube-dl and to refuse to provide the video for such cases.

I see the point but that's a cat and mouse game. Google would invest far more resources to block those users than it was worth.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#68

Post by malka »

k_sze wrote: post #44
utf985 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this a good thing? Obscure and/or old archive footage which usually doesnt get that many views is one of the best things about YT.

I’d argue that YouTube is a for-profit business. They have every right, within legal bounds, to do whatever makes economic sense to them. If you want an archive, go with archive.org. But even then, nothing is free. If somebody thinks a footage deserves to be archived and preserved, somebody needs to pay for the cost anyhow, e.g. via donations.

Youtube being a monopoly on videos, is a de facto public service.

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#69

Post by ralonso »

IGotThroughIt wrote: post #66
utf985 wrote: post #50

So let's say you have an old YT account that you don't use anymore tied you your gmail account and there a few dozen family holiday videos you uploaded years ago to show friends (which was kinda the original purpose of YouTube) and completely forgot about. Does this mean that one day you might wake up with access to your gmail completely blocked off because an algorithm on YT decided that your channel is not profitab…

I think they're considered to be isolated services. You can have a gmail account without having a youtube account.

Not entirely true. Take the recent controversy around YouTuber Markiplier having users' accounts shut down (including both YouTube and Gmail) for spamming his YouTube livestream chatroom.[1]

I also did a quick search and it's been a while since both Gmail/Google accounts and YouTube accounts are tied to one another.[2][3]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/markiplier-youtube-fans-heis...

[2] https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/1692/how-do-i-un...

[3] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/69961?hl=en

Re: YouTube might terminate your access if not profitable for Google

#70

Post by aabbcc1241 »

malka wrote: post #68
k_sze wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that YouTube is a for-profit business. They have every right, within legal bounds, to do whatever makes economic sense to them. If you want an archive, go with archive.org. But even then, nothing is free. If somebody thinks a footage deserves to be archived and preserved, somebody needs to pay for the cost anyhow, e.g. via donations.

Youtube being a monopoly on videos, is a de facto public service.

There are alternatives. We just need to use them if we care a little about it. e.g. your own web server (e.g. blog) / p2p network (e.g. zeronet / dtube) or even 'the modern social network' (e.g. facebook / twitter)
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