Will youtube penalize creators who choose to use third party merchandising companies unaffiliated with youtube? After the stunt they pulled with Blender, I wouldn't trust them not to.
Everyone seems pretty up-in-arms over that, but the longer I sit on it, the less I really care. If Blender approaches some random company tomorrow for video hosting, and was presented with a contract that required ads to support the hosting costs and turned down the deal because of that, we wouldn't vilify that company, their business model requires hosting be paid for in some manner.
Everyone is treating Youtibe differently because a) it was previously free for Blender, and b) we're all used to it being "free" to host stuff on Youtube. In the end, that's irrelevant, because that's in the past, and there's no contract.
Really, Blender should just thank Youtube for the years of free hosting they got out of it, and seek a hosting solution that better fits their needs. Youtube is clearly heading a specific direction, and if Blender is very explicitly opting out of that design, it's to be expected eventually there would be a parting.
That's not to say we all should just be happy with Youtube and continue to watch and use it. If as a consumer you don't like advertising and aren't willing to pay for their ad-free service, avoiding it when possible is the clearest possible signal you can send that you want to support other types of content and revenue models. And as a bonus, we'll get an ecosystem which isn't so heavily weighted towards Youtube, and more options in general.
Blender leaving is a good thing. I wish there were a lot less cries along the lines of "the near-monopoly in video that I use doesn't want to host this company I believe in, I wish they would just host it!" and a lot more along the lines of "oh good, now maybe we'll see even more content being spread around so there's more competition."
This is like Apple emailing you, "hey, your free app is costing us too much money in bandwidth. Add IAP, or we're deleting your app in 24 hours."
If YouTube wants to require large channels to enable monetisation, it should standardise this policy, and give reasonable notice; not suddenly disabling a channel.
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Note that all of this is moot, because apparently Blender being disabled is an error: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
Is the implication there that "platform" means there's no rules? Because that's clearly not the case on any platform, and if there are rules, I'm not sure what specific difference you're trying to call out. I suspect it's something to to with freedom of choice or money, but I'm not exactly sure how to reply without knowing where you're going with that.
> Individualised, private requirements and restrictions for channels goes against all of that.
Just because we've only heard of one or a few cases, doesn't mean it's individualized. It could very well be that if oyu hit some threshold of content serving costs they require it be paid for in some manner.
If I wanted to upload every public domain movie I could fine and then heavily promote them, but refused all monetization by Youtube, should they be forced to allow that? Should they be demonized for disallowing what to their eyes is likely me clearly abusing their system?
> If YouTube wants to require large channels to enable monetisation, it should advertise this policy, and give reasonable notice; not suddenly disabling a channel.
If that's what you want, you want a contract. If you want a contract, you generally pay for the luxury. If you're running a business, or a professional organization of some sort, or even if you just want assurance things won't change on your, you get a contract.
Blender had to deal with a day of figuring out new hosting and changing some webpage links, and all they got in exchange was a few years of free very high quality hosting up to that point. Certainly, they got the short end of the stick, right?
> Note that all of this is moot, because apparently Blender being disabled is an error
Like I said, contracts. Whether it's an error or not, now Blender truly knows how important the video hosting is or is not to them, and whether it's worth switching still, or at a a minimum setting up a secondary video host they can switch to very quickly if needed, but costs very little or nothing until used.
Less upset likely, but still upset. My interpretation of most the comments I saw is that the immediacy spurred them to post their feelings, but their feelings seemed heavily weighted towards being upset by Google taking any action at all.
I think people are too caught up in it being a big company and an open source project. Really, it's just two parties, and if you can't substitute other examples and come to the same conclusion, there needs to be an examination of specifically what makes it different, and whether that's valid. If I colocated a server and had fairly cheap bandwidth costs and agreed to host someone's videos for free, if I then decided a year later that this is costing me far too much, how much time am I required to give that person before disabling the serving of the videos? Every moment they are still up costs me real money, and the other party has paid nothing, ever. I can be nice and give them some time, but my niceness costs me money. Should I feel bad for disabling hosting immediately? Presumably, if it was really important, they have a backup method for serving and weren't basing everything on some ad-hoc free service, right?
I would feel perfectly fine disabling hosting immediately for them. Why should I expect differently of Youtube?
> If it's such a problem for them, then why do they offer the option to disable ads in the first place?
Maybe for 99.999% of channels exposure and bandwidth aren't large enough to really matter, but they want to police that 0.001% and either move them towards being profitable (or closer to break-even), or get them off the platform? The correct way to handle a subgroup that small (or smaller even) may well be to change their behavior or get rid of them. The overhead of making special accounts types and keeping track of any special behavior they require as development goes on and any bugs that might produce could very well outweigh the benefits of that account type existing.
The truth is, there's no reason to expect Youtube will, or should continue any behavior they do today tomorrow, much less a year or more in the future, unless you're paying them on some contract which ensures this.
I'd like to agree with you, but video streaming platforms like YouTube are expensive - there's a reason we lack competition in this space outside a few niche players. Google is still probably losing money on YouTube, they're trying REALLY hard to monetize the platform as of late hence the introduction of YouTube Red/Premium/WhateverTheyRenameItNextYear and the "advertiser friendly" policies they've adopted for AdSense-monetized videos.
There's also a network effect that's developed on YouTube, and as much as I hate to admit it when I want to search for video content (reviews, how-to's, and a hell of a lot more) the first (and often only) place I search is in fact YouTube. Hell, I even pay for YouTube Premium so I can run uBlock without feeling guilty.
I'd love for there to be a proper competitor for YouTube, but truth be told I think it's easier to compete with Facebook.
Which is part of my point. If you find that nobody else can serve your content for as cheap, maybe that points towards the original host having a point in trying to find a way to pay for it.
> There's also a network effect that's developed on YouTube, and as much as I hate to admit it when I want to search for video content (reviews, how-to's, and a hell of a lot more) the first (and often only) place I search is in fact YouTube.
Well, I think we've had this problem before, and it was mostly solved with search engines. Google already returns Youtube and other hosted video content in searches. The only thing I think we'd really be losing is a more powerful recommendation system, but that's a small price to pay in my eyes.
> I'd love for there to be a proper competitor for YouTube, but truth be told I think it's easier to compete with Facebook.
I don't doubt it's easier to start a Facebook competitor. That said, I think its a lot easier to actually compete with Youtube, at least now that they are actually trying to monetize their platform. Creators have already been playing with other platforms, like Twitch. It only made sense to do so for a lot of people after Youtube started making specific changes and requirements of people that they chafed at. This announcement is both another option for creators, but also comes with it's own set of requirements. The minimum membership fee, for example, is quite a high, and some creators might find it's not the right price point for their audience. I support quite a few people through Patreon (not much in video though), and one of the features of that which I like is the ability to do specific amounts per month, or if the artist sets it up, an amount per item delivered, but with a cap. Some people will find this much more amenable to their needs, which is the market at work.