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Comment by valvar | Hacker News Reader

If I want to support a content creator, I do so by donating to them directly, not by allowing a massive and (in my personal opinion) evil company to profit both of my and their backs. Not to mention that both seeing ads and using the official YouTube app is quite unpleasant.

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.

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Honest and serious question, if Youtube were to shut down tomorrow, do people think that whatever alternative (or even better, competing alternatives) would have a different model?

I'm curious to know what exactly would you do differently if you were to make a replacement for Youtube.

I believe, based on conversations I've had, that the target audience of NewPipe overlaps with the target audience of solutions such as PeerTube, Mastodon, and other FOSS, privacy-centric alternatives.

I'm the target audience of NewPipe and also the target audience of Bandcamp, which is by far my preferred way of giving money back to the artists

Does PeerTube pay people? Or is the assumption that creators should get all their revenue from external sources?

PeerTube is not a company, it's an open source implementation of a peer-to-peer video sharing platform. Any person or company that wants to can pick it up and build a commercial platform on top of it. Whether that includes advertising or not is up to them.

Sure, but my point is that this doesn't answer my question. I wasn't asking which technology would the next company use. If Youtube used P2P, it still wouldn't solve many of the issue people have with Youtube.

The assumption is: yes, the content creators who host their videos via P2P solutions like PeerTube would have to rely on external sources such as Patreon, or in-video sponsorships, or as another user pointed, use the built-in donations feature.

> 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?

This very thread is about an ad-free client for Youtube. How would P2P change ads?

You dodged my question, but I could try to answer yours.

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.

It would solve all of them, because people would control their own video. Unless you're defining the "problem" Youtube solves as "Google gets revenue and then shares it back to some degree."

If Pewdiepie switched to Peertube, that would be a problem for Google. But probably not for Felix.

You don't have to look very far. This very thread is about an "ad-free, open-source Android YouTube client". How would P2P change anything about ads being shown?

Yes. Before youtube we just sent each other video files directly, posted them on our own websites, or found them with p2p software, all of which worked fine. Web services are traps promising ease of use, while actually aiming for lock in based on network effects. That so many people think the centralized third party hosting and bundled viewing software are critical to the general functionality just goes to show how insidious they've become.

So much of what you write is true, yet ignores a vital value that the centralised websites do provide: discoverability. Not only does YouTube provide (sub-mediocre) search over all the [mb]illions of videos it hosts, it also is a hub: if I'm looking for a particular video/clip ("Leyla's Beans Advert from Futurama") the hub is the first place I'm going to search. These are really hard problems in usability that we need to solve to make a p2p/fediweb viable and attractive to use.

For sure, and discoverability/aggregation is critical if Free solutions are to gain mindshare while competing with proprietary ones. I was just responding to what would replace Youtube if it went away due to lack of surveillance revenue, pointing out that we've had workable video sharing long before Youtube.

So this is your design ? Have mkbhd zip his file and send it to his million subscribers ?

Not who you asked and I’m not up to date when it comes to the world of video streaming but personally I’d prefer a web where content creators would have to pay to distribute their content. Pay as in have some server, domain, bandwidth and whatnot. It’s then up to the creator to decide how/if to monetize their content. Just like the old days.

In addition to vimeo as a sibling commenter mentioned, there are probably at least a dozen services offering video hosting catering to all sizes of customers.

> 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).

We would not have any of the creators we had today. You're gatekeeping not only in the developed world but also in the developing world. A slew of people would be discouraged to even start given that they don't have money for bandwidth, servers, domains. Such a parochial, insulated view.

Sounds like Vimeo.

Sounds like a great use-case for torrents.

Like a podcast? It works for audio. As another poster has pointed out torrents could make distribution more efficient.

A decentralized video service powered by P2P, with content creators retributed by donations and/or ads and sponsorships inside videos.

Does this exist?

There's PeerTube: it's federated, downloads can be p2p, you can ask for donations (built-in) or write your own plugin for ads.

Let's make it linkable and embeddable, and anyone could run a server.

Perhaps we could call it the world wide web?

> If I want to support a content creator, I do so by donating to them directly, not by allowing a massive and (in my personal opinion) evil company to profit both of my and their backs. Not to mention that both seeing ads and using the official YouTube app is quite unpleasant.

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.

All this is a reasoned argument - but advertising really sucks, it’s either overtly irritating you or covertly brainwashing you with visuals and voices you would never naturally care to see.

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 agree with all your points. I would prefer more control over what ads are shown rather than blanket ad ban. There is no alternative way for companies to reach customers. Supporting Content Creators is not the same though. It just benefits two people in the equation: Content Creator and Consumer. This is not viable longer term as it depends on the Consumer being able to pay for the content offered by the Creator! And how does the Consumer make money? Through either a job or having his/her own enterprise.

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!

Companies dont have a God given right to exist, nor to intrude upon me with ads, targeted or not, nor are they entitled to my attention. I could not possibly care less what the company wants.

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.

> Companies dont have a God given right to exist, nor to intrude upon me with ads, targeted or not, nor are they entitled to my attention. I could not possibly care less what the company wants.

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!

Right on point. I use new pipe mostly as a vote against ads. If we all did, maybe it will put an ends to this form of ads at least.

If we all did, there won't be any small companies or startups. The only ones that will survive will be the big guys who will scoop up small players as much as possible. You will be rendered jobless along with many of your colleagues. Whether you like it or hate it, every single company today depends completely on online advertising for reaching customers/clients. I am not saying it is perfect. But there is no alternative which is as ubiquitous as online advertising! Every other form of advertising shuts out the smaller player from ever being able to compete. You can start online advertising with as little as 10$. Which other medium gives you that ability? For a cash-strapped startup this is a lifeline!

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