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Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

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Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#81

Post by simjnd »

jeffbee wrote: post #28

Let's try it. 20 seconds to first start on a M2 mac mini, not amazing. Search takes about 3-5 seconds. Navigate to video another 3-5 seconds. No 4k. No casting. Can't change the playback speed. Can't jump on timeline with 0-9 keys. Doesn't sync to my other devices. Doesn't know about my membership perks, of course. After a few minutes I would say this is easily the worst way to watch YouTube short of printing the vid…

Exactly this. I also expected the app to have the shell UI downloaded locally and only fill it with fetched data, but the slow load times and blank pages make me think it really just is a browser. Somehow worse than your typical Electron app.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#82

Post by twiceaday »

Unai wrote: post #73
MBCook wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then watch with ads. That’s a fair choice. Why are you entitled to ad free viewing? “It’s only a few so it’s ok I take something for nothing” is not a legal concept I think would hold up in other contexts.

I don't think neither legality nor ad-free viewing entitlement are even factors in this conversation. What I'm entitled to is to do whatever I want with every bit of data I download through my browser. The day this stops being the way things are, is the day the web dies, and I can't believe anyone (particularly here) could be defending that. YouTube provides their data freely. You don't have to sign-up or accept a co…

Would you take fruit from an unmanned fruit stand that just has a sign of how much money to put into the box / venmo? They have no security and no way to "enforce" that you pay! It's not about stealing at all, it's about me doing anything I want and am not physically prevented from doing! If they don't like it they should hire staff!

Not every proper behavior is enforced. You are always free to be a jerk. And it's pretty goofy to tie that to arguments about total personal freedom. Get outa here. You're violating the social contract. You're using a loophole to get much better treatment than "normal" people and in fact you make their experience worse as they have to watch more ads to make up the cost of serving stuff to you.

Also, would the internet be better if everyone acted like you? I think it would be in a significantly worse place if it was never possible to show an ad on the internet, if everyone was as free as you. So you get a massive benefit from others not using their "freedoms?"

"Screw 'em. If they put a fruit stand in my town, I get to take anything I want from it. It's my town. I don't have to follow their "please pay me" signs. I've always been able to take anything I want in my town. Even back when nobody would bring anything over for 'sale.'"

Cringe

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#83

Post by nielsbot »

pkulak wrote: post #31
MBCook wrote: post #22

Or if you don’t want to see ads you could pay for it instead. Like an adult. Works great. They present a perfectly valid choice to you, and it works great. It’s a reasonable enough price (not great but reasonable), but it supports the creators you watch with part of your subscription money. Plus it has other benefits if you care, like free TV shows and movies and YouTube music. I don’t use that stuff but it is there.

And it you don’t want to pay, and can’t handle ads, don’t use the service. I don’t understand why people think they are entitled to any content they want, when they want it, for free.

It's not quite that simple--there isn't a good alternative to YouTube.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#84

Post by movedx »

Panzer04 wrote: post #25
movedx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a content creator with seven years experience, hundreds of videos and thousands of hours of content: just charge me a fee to host my videos. I'd pay $100/month, possibly more, to run a YouTube channel without. Why is running ads the _only_ choice? Why can't a creator opt to pay to host videos on their channel with limitations? $10/month? That's 30 videos in HD max. $100? 300 videos in 4K... etc. ... or whatever. A…

In fairness to Google, costs to host video would scale with viewers. Unless creators are willing to pay increasingly excessive costs as their viewerbass grows (which I doubt) some kind of per-viewer cost (like ads) needs to be charged. There's no guarantee creators can collect as much income without Google either. Google has proven they can get way more income from ads than pretty much everyone else, and even bug cha…

Then how are Vimeo doing it? They're fixed price.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#85

Post by movedx »

samldev wrote: post #26
movedx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a content creator with seven years experience, hundreds of videos and thousands of hours of content: just charge me a fee to host my videos. I'd pay $100/month, possibly more, to run a YouTube channel without. Why is running ads the _only_ choice? Why can't a creator opt to pay to host videos on their channel with limitations? $10/month? That's 30 videos in HD max. $100? 300 videos in 4K... etc. ... or whatever. A…

In this scenario you’d also have to pay for bandwidth since that’s the variable cost here. The more views you get, the more you pay. And obviously you wouldn’t get any money from YouTube for views since they aren’t making money from your videos. Genuinely curious, would you still go for it?

> In this scenario you’d also have to pay for bandwidth since that’s the variable cost here.

For Google? You think Google get a monthly bill for their bandwidth?

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#86

Post by movedx »

ozr wrote: post #23
movedx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a content creator with seven years experience, hundreds of videos and thousands of hours of content: just charge me a fee to host my videos. I'd pay $100/month, possibly more, to run a YouTube channel without. Why is running ads the _only_ choice? Why can't a creator opt to pay to host videos on their channel with limitations? $10/month? That's 30 videos in HD max. $100? 300 videos in 4K... etc. ... or whatever. A…

There are plenty of third-party video hosts out there that let you do this. Wistia, Vimeo, etc.

I know, and neither of them are the second biggest search engine in the world and have _all_ the traffic and viewers.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#87

Post by simfree »

movedx wrote: post #84
Panzer04 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness to Google, costs to host video would scale with viewers. Unless creators are willing to pay increasingly excessive costs as their viewerbass grows (which I doubt) some kind of per-viewer cost (like ads) needs to be charged. There's no guarantee creators can collect as much income without Google either. Google has proven they can get way more income from ads than pretty much everyone else, and even bug cha…

Then how are Vimeo doing it? They're fixed price.

The cost to serve the video file is much lower than what Google says it costs. Moving a terabyte of data is quite cheap to do, yet GCP, AWS and ilk continue to have eye-wateringly high data usage pricing.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#88

Post by simfree »

movedx wrote: post #85
samldev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario you’d also have to pay for bandwidth since that’s the variable cost here. The more views you get, the more you pay. And obviously you wouldn’t get any money from YouTube for views since they aren’t making money from your videos. Genuinely curious, would you still go for it?

> In this scenario you’d also have to pay for bandwidth since that’s the variable cost here. For Google? You think Google get a monthly bill for their bandwidth?

Most of Google, AWS and ilks traffic is moved over settlement free peering and fixed cost infrastructure: https://www.lightreading.com/cable-technology/level-3-seals-...

Whether 100TB or 1500TB of data are delivered to one ISP at one peering point in a given month has minimal effect, that 10Gbps, 100Gbps or larger port is a fixed cost that will exist regardless of traffic.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#89

Post by eesmith »

roenxi wrote: post #6

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may fr…

> There is an unwritten social contract here.

Is this the same unwritten social contract which means we shouldn't use a mute button on ads? After all, the TV company gets paid to send ads to us, and muting those ads means less ad effectiveness.

Don't use the toilet during an ad break either.

Nor use the +15 seconds functionality on video recorder playback to skip ads.

You can see how the social contract for my entire life include the option to avoid ads, and even with 'freeloaders', the broadcast TV business model worked.

YouTube started long after Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. ("the Betamax case") established time shifting as an allowed practice in the US. Their business model, based on any implied social contract, must therefore include that possibility, eg, that people may watch content via downloaders.

They could respond by, for example, placing ads directly in the downloaded video steam. This would mean less profit, but no social contract requires customers to keep a company profitable.

And it would be odd indeed if broadcast TV had a more effective business model in the face of freeloaders than online video.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#90

Post by create-username »

roenxi wrote: post #6

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may fr…

It’s not ads, it’s tracking and profiling to better manipulate you
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