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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

WTF does this mean?

> And any creator who doesn’t sign the deal for YouTube Red will have their videos on the ad-free old-school YouTube hidden from view. That’s pretty harsh.

So YouTube is saying if you don't join their new subscription plan they will just not display your videos on YouTube?

Edit: Just heard back. Yes, this is exactly what happened, and it's now going into motion. If you are a YouTube creator and you don't agree to be a part of this new service, your channel will removed and your videos won't appear in search results. In other words, all of your videos are made "private" and you're pretty much dead.

View on HN

My understanding is, if you don't sign the deal, your videos won't show for people on the ad-free site.

How else could you implement this? If I buy a subscription for an ad-free site, it can't mean that it's ad-free except for videos posted by people who haven't signed the contract.

Right, I read it as your videos cannot be shown on the ad free site, since they wont be ad free. They should still show on the regular YouTube page.

Edit: Apparently I was wrong. There is another article on the front page stating they will be hidden on all forms of YouTube.

So in practice this means that if you pay for the subscription you get access to less content.

No, it means that to avoid the situation you just subscribed YouTube forced everyone to agree to be on the subscription plan or they'd effectively be kicked off of YouTube

If that's what happened then good, but it sounds like people who don't agree aren't getting kicked off youtube, they're just not shown to subscribers.

If I were a content producer, I don't think I'd like that policy, but as a consumer, it makes the service more usable, since I know that anything I can see on the ad-supported Youtube site would be available on the paid site.

Much better than the model that cable TV uses where when I look at the channel guide I can see all of the channels, including the ones that I haven't subscribed to, and it's not until I try to watch a show on one of them that I discover that I can't see it.

Yeah that is a pretty odd outcome.

Looks like they are actually strong arming everyone into allowing the ad free version so this outcome does not happen...I understand their reasoning, but is also pretty hostile at the same time. I would definitely allow it, and can't think of a good reason not to, but not giving people a real choice could be a problem.

If they agreed to share ad revenue, continue to share ad revenue. Subscribers don't see ads, so no ad revenue to share. Sign up to share subscription revenue at your convenience.

This was big news when it was first announced in 2014. This launch has been long in the making, you can find lots of articles that cover the complaints independents had about having their videos removed:

https://pando.com/2014/06/17/screwyoutube-people-are-finally...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/04/youtube-in...

There's also many blog posts floating around, just search YouTube record label deals.

Right, but back then it was a vague threat kind of looming over peoples' heads. Now it's "Sign this deal or we remove you from YouTube."

There was discussion here based on the contract presented to Zoe Keating. If you search her name here, there are a few articles that come up. Or, conversely, you could reach out to her and she may be willing to speak to her experience and understanding. (Note: I do not have any personal or professional relationship, I just followed her story somewhat as it was relevant to my status as an independent as well)

Zoe's seemed to be more about music specifically. As far as ads, she was going to be forced to have ads, not forced to remove them. http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i... Maybe this isn't the only thing she's written about YouTube though.

From what I understand, this only applies to people who are making money by displaying ads on their videos. So if you want to continue to make money on YouTube videos, you have to sign the new terms.

Just curious, but isn't this an understood risk as a publisher when your reach is almost entirely controlled by a single company? Do you guys have a Plan B if Youtube shuts you out?

This isn't something individuals can do, network effects mean we need more coordinated social movement away from these controlled systems.

Obviously the real solution is GNU MediaGoblin and federation.

but... what ar ethose

but surely creators can provide their media on different platforms, even without running their own?

I mean one of the earliest complaints I remember about Music Key was that it forbids this, but not all other services do.

Vimeo?

It means that videos by "partnered" creators who had their videos on the old ad-free site will no longer be shown, until they are migrated over to the new ad-free site by agreeing to the deal.

The sentence in the article is just ambiguously worded.

Take it easy and wait for more info. All you've got to on is one line in a 3rd party news article.

This isn't the first time Youtube has dramatically changed their terms, and forced creators to basically accept them or leave, though... so it is pretty easy to assume the worst when it comes to Youtube.

The way I understand it, you can still host your videos. You just won't get any revenues. That is completely fine by me.

Yeah it's Alphabet's site. You play by their rules. Don't like it? Well there's always other options.

I'm surprised Allred is back to HN[1] but I guess it's mostly to serve the ends of Glasswire.

[1]http://austenallred.com/im-done-with-hacker-news/

Lol, HN literally came out with the "avoid excessive negativity" rule later that day, but I admit HN is an often-bad habit I keep getting sucked into.

And as far as Grasswire goes, we're doing 500k uniques per month at this point, so even getting on the front page of HN wouldn't really move the needle for us. I mention it occasionally when I think it's relevant, but that's a tiny minority of my HN use.

Fair enough, but I'm pretty sure you missed the implication that I intended, as in you're perfectly fine with coming to HN as a source to assist with coming up with material for your readership. It sure felt like fishing for help the way you phrased the OP. While this response may be construed as negative, I'd prefer the categorization as "functionally cynical" because there is a difference.

Oh, I see. No, generally I try to share what the people in our newsroom have learned instead of the other way around. My parent comment was genuine frustration. BTW, I don't see your comments as out of line or overly-negative at all.

All good, yeah I can see how something really hot like this story would be great fodder both for your outlet, and the desire to get it right / accurate would be well served by consulting the HN massive. Keep on keepin' on sir.

what is wrong with this... youtube is proprietary brah

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