YT API requires keys and they know exactly what is going on here and can shut it down in a heartbeat if they want to. This is exactly what happened to apps built on top of Twitter APIs back in the day.
I am very grateful to the developers of NewPipe for providing me with a painless way to experience the content produced by creators that I like, and which also respects my freedoms and my privacy. It is unfortunate that YouTube has an effective monopoly on its market, and that a lot of the content is not available elsewhere -- I'd much rather watch content served by a platform which respects its users, but unfortunately that is not really possible today. So in the meanwhile, I am happy that I don't have to support a nasty company with a nasty business model.
I'm curious to know what exactly would you do differently if you were to make a replacement for Youtube.
> If Youtube used P2P, it still wouldn't solve many of the issue people have with Youtube.
What issues in particular are you talking about and how would P2P fail to resolve them?
Firstly, no one in this comment thread has claimed that PeerTube can solve all of the issues of YouTube. Privacy-oriented folk, and some FOSS advocates see it as a potential solution. Further, I do not personally use PeerTube, but I do use Mastodon and have read about PeerTube in passing.
Another major component of PeerTube aside from the P2P video is the decentralization aspect powered by ActivityPub, which is also used by Mastodon. So not only are the videos decentralized themselves, but so is the service; you can joined one PeerTube instance, and view videos that other instances can also view. If you grow unhappy with the administration of your current instance (maybe they added ads to the page, or maybe they are privacy-invading), you can simply move to another but still have access to the same videos.
In addition, since the videos are P2P, this reduces the server loads on each respective instance and thus lowers the baseline cost of having to host every video uploaded. This could reduce the need for ad revenue to keep the servers running.
If Pewdiepie switched to Peertube, that would be a problem for Google. But probably not for Felix.
> It’s then up to the creator to decide how/if to monetize their content.
And this is why the creators gravitate to youtube. The real tangible service google provides is an automated ad sales rep. That's not an easy job, roughly 0% of creators would succeed at this on their own.
> Just like the old days.
My guess is that this still exists and never even stopped growing. It's just that youtube grew so much faster that it's easy to miss. Again, because youtube is most creators' only good chance at monetization (not that its their only option for hosting).
Perhaps we could call it the world wide web?
There is a big problem in your model. But before that let me address the reason why the current model is better. You are right that the intermediary company is profiting out of your and content creator's backs. That is true. But that is not the complete picture. The company is also paying for hosting the content. In essence, the money that advertisers pay is split in the following way:
1. Content Creator
2. Content hosting
3. Company gets the remaining chunk
Now here is why the current model is better: you can watch all videos on Youtube for free. Discovery is an essential part of how Content Creators are discovered. Now if you put all these Content Creators behind a paywall how are you going to decide if the Creator is worth supporting or not? And even if the Content is good, is s/he going to stick around for long? How many can you support? 10? 100? 1000? There is a limit isn't it? And what happens if the Content Creator stops releasing more content? Eventually subscribers will unsubscribe (stop payments). Then what happens to the Content? Will it remain hosted? Who is going to pay for the cost of hosting content that no one is watching? You won't be able to pay more than X$ amount because you feel that is what the Content Creator is worth to you. An advertiser is different. An advertiser is driven by motive of making profits. If s/he finds that advertising with a particular Content Creator is lucrative s/he spends way more than X$ that you contribute. In essence, the advertiser values the Content Creator more than you will ever be able to. Because you are consuming content from the creator - that is where your link with the creator ends. The ad agencies are making profits from the creator. That is the big difference! You are not motivated to pay more and more to the creator right? Advertisers are! And that will only continue to increase the more quality content the Creator puts out. And even if the Creator decides to take a break, advertisers will still continue to pay for a spot in his/her content as long as people are watching it (which they have discovered because Youtube is free). Would you pay for a Creator if s/he takes a break for 6 months to a year?
Advertising right now monetizes even 10 year old videos. However irrelevant that video might be for today's scenario you still have people watching extremely old videos and advertisements running on it with the Creator getting passive income. So even though a Content Creator might get a lesser chunk of the overall payment in the short term s/he would recover everything and a lot more over the longer term. But if s/he starts taking payment for Content then it will only continue until s/he is posting content. Once that is stopped people will leave the creator in droves. Then that content becomes a deadweight! The platform will never allow content to just sit around stale with no one paying for it. The platform will have no choice but to remove it.
Plus, the democratised ad platforms have led to random scummy people running their disgusting scams on forex trading or get rich quick schemes, or tech products that don’t work etc. being able to get in my face while I’m at home relaxing. I’d want to see that problem fixed.
Example: I love Apple products, I’ve watched dozens of hours of Apple product reviews - and I often like what I see, and end up buying. But I still “Skip ad” on Apple ads - because ad content really sucks!
So as a modern civilisation we must find a way to sell products better than the current state of the art in the ad industry.
I am assuming you work at a company or have startup of your own. Either ways your company would never get orders without some form of advertising. I know it sucks but that is the only way to reach potential clients. Banning advertising will end up having a major cascading effect where companies that rely on advertising (nearly every company does) would get shut down leading to huge unemployment. I rather ads be regulated than banned completely!
The only effect banning advertising will have is that businesses will have to find another way to attract customers.
As for companies not existing without advertising are you serious? Billboards or some other passive advertising could still be possible,or how about we all opt in to services we want to hear about.
Companies have existed before modern advertising and will exist after.
Good for you. Use an ad blocker.
> The only effect banning advertising will have is that businesses will have to find another way to attract customers.
There is no better way in the 21st century than online advertising. Nothing even comes close. You want to remove online advertising, you will have to remove 80% of the companies that exist today as well causing huge unemployment.
> As for companies not existing without advertising are you serious? Billboards or some other passive advertising could still be possible,or how about we all opt in to services we want to hear about.
You possibly can't be serious. Do you know how much it costs to run an ad on a billboard? It is the second most expensive form of advertisement after TV ads! Technology has enabled us to reach people in better ways. If you want to revert back to ancient ways of advertising why not go all the way back to stone age where there was no form of advertising and everything was done through barter system?
> Companies have existed before modern advertising and will exist after.
Yes they have. But there were no trillion dollar valued companies pre-modern advertising. That is also a fact! You want to go back to printing ads in newspapers, using billboards and TV/radio ads? Not all companies can afford it. Majority of the advertisers (in terms of numbers and not revenue) are small mom and pop shops and startups. They do not have the capital to invest in these avenues. What you are suggesting is regression not progress!
Plus like 90% of YouTube channels I'm following mirror their content to their own subscription service (https://watchnebula.com/), and I'm happily paying for that instead of paying for YouTube Premium.
But more importantly, the main reason I use NewPipe is because it has basic features that the official YouTube app doesn't provide -- playing videos in an overlay and in the background (so you can lock your screen and continue playing the video). You can get this incredibly basic feature if you pay for YouTube Red, which seems to indicate the only reason this feature isn't provided for the free version is spite. And that is the benefit of free software.
It's because YouTube's music agreements prohibit it on mobile platforms to prevent it competing with Spotify et al.
If your only source of revenue is Youtube, you probably have to worry about Google more than this kind of clients taking away your earnings.
YouTube is a corporate for-profit walled garden platform. Corporate entities put massive effort into designing complex and subtle policies for these platforms in order to drive first and second order effects that sustain them and extract value from them. It is absolutely not the job of random user to spend any effort figuring out whether their actions are in support of the particular platform policies. In fact I'd go so far as to say that YouTube is monopolistic and unethical and users should do everything they can to subvert it.
(For the record, I pay for YouTune Premium which directly contributes to content creators on YT).
Of course, I don't even use NewPipe for its lack of ads. If Google improved their own app, maybe I'd go back to it.
NewPipe uses Google resources; WINE itself only uses resources on your personal computer.
That's a good thing.