Unless you're also throwing money at YouTube premium (etc), isn't this by definition unsustainable to do? So it's not really a viable long-term strategy either.

Like don't get me wrong, I don't want all the tracking and stuff either, but somebody has to pay those server bills. If it's not happening through straight cash then it's going to be through increasingly aggressive monetization and cost-cutting strategies.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, Reality-Norgur is well aware of that. Yet, I decided to let fantasy-Norgur take over for a bit ;)

[–] Moneo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'm often in conflict about ads. On one hand they are an absolute blight on society, being harmful at best and a nuisance at worst. On the other hand, what the fuck is going to pay for all this shit? We should just nationalize YouTube.

[–] thisisawayoflife@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Cities should be doing it, really. Along with municipal broadband and a laundry list of other things that should be done, but aren't...

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure what the ideal solution would look like, but I imagine that we're going to be seeing a lot more of this across the board for all "free" platforms.

Ads suck. They're a privacy/security risk in many cases. A lot of them are straight-up fraudulent, and there's little that the ad servers will do to correct these issues. But also, a vast majority of users will never pay for these services. And video platforms are prohibitively expensive for any other company to maintain.

PeerTube is great, in theory, but for the use-case that most people have in mind when they consider a video platform, it's not exactly filling in the voids that YouTube would leave if they were to close down or otherwise restrict access to their platform.

For me, there's a lot of creators that I watch who would not be able to continue producing the content that I enjoy if not for YouTube and their ad revenue systems. They could move to paid platforms, but would likely end up losing tons of money in the process, and would possibly have to discontinue content creation altogether as it would no longer be sustainable.

I pay for YT Premium so that I can have an ad-free experience while still supporting the channels I watch, which already makes me an outlier. But there is no way that I'd be able to afford to support even a quarter of the creators whose content I love if they were all to move to other platforms. This is a tough situation for everybody involved, and there's no clear better solution than "let the ad mongers continue mongering ads".

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

nationalize? A global platform? That spells trouble. Big time. I'm assuming you mean "making it owned by the U.S. government"... I as a German take offence to that!

[–] Moneo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I just mean we need a publicly version of YT. I am aware the logistics of this are ridiculous, the global nature of yt as you point out is a major hurdle. No country I'm aware of has even managed to nationalize their infrastructure so... ya.

[–] Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, nationalizing YouTube would work, or more so an Internal team, founded by all nations. Btw Germany has some sort of "Youtube", paid by people and not government founded. It's very limited as you can't upload and only watch. The content is also only what is decided by the owners. Theoretically we'd just need to expand that, to allow uploads and get money by more than just the German citizens. I always had that dream, as it would provide a fully ads free platform. Not sure why that isn't already a thing, as video platforms are an integral part of our society by now.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That's exactly what premium is. Ad insurance.