Some examples of what the OP means by "lost sovereignty" would be useful. I assume he means ability to monetize how he wants, or to avoid algorithmic claims against his work etc....but who knows - the author does not explain.
He had no intention to ever monetise the channel, but with YouTube's ToS update he had to agree that YouTube can monetise his channel even if he doesn't want it to.
Considering he's basically forced to serve ads he has no control over and he does not earn a cent from it, I'd say "lost sovereignty" holds true.
(It's still kind of wierd that YouTube doesn't support simply paying for their hosting.)
"Sovereignty" is a bizarre word here. It's a business deal. Nobody's ever "sovereign" in any exchange, it's either a good deal or not.
If he wants to pay for hosting himself, then go ahead, but no need to act like it's a question of "sovereignty". Nobody's a king here.
Lets turn that around. YouTube is a huge content provider that has 100 percent of their content provided FOR FREE and they feel that they can "monetize" it any way they see fit. There needs to be some balance. If enough people leave like this, there will be a credible competitor to YouTube and they'll never get those people back. Better yet, self hosting and federated services will start to become a thing and that could be an existential threat to Google itself.
But sure, they are free to do what they like on their platform. Doesn't mean it's always the best thing to do.
Not true. Creators can get paid for their video views and some make a living at it. Some of the content Google doesn't pay anything for, but tons of it (and most of the popular stuff) Google pays for on a per-view basis. It's not free to Google.
> There needs to be some balance.
That already is the balance, Google paying creators for the popular content.
Perhaps the business deal was too good before, and now it's merely good? Previously it was "acceptable" for them to store and host your videos for zero cost and show them without ads, and now you think it's "unrealistic" for them to finally cover those costs with ads?
On what basis? They has an old model, build up the success of the platform, then changed the model. On what basis can we judge the new model successful versus the momentum of the old model?
Literally the line that says "YouTube ads" in their quarterly report?
2020 Q1 was $4 billion, 2021 Q1 was $6 billion. [1]
Seems like wild success to me. But, you know, keep checking for the next few quarters if you're convinced Google is killing their golden goose. They've got some pretty smart business analysts and product people over there though, I wouldn't bet against them.
[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20210428_alphabet_10Q.pd...
[1]https://peertube.linuxrocks.online/videos/watch/6b779810-671...
It's really hard to paint youtube as the villain here and keep a straight face.
One wonders if youtube had an option for you to pay them to host videos for you without ads, if that would be popular. Of course then someone with a 1 million+ view video and a large bill would then start complaining..
You can always host yourself but you loose the audience youtube brings.
Ultimately though, the guy doesn't want his content monetised so he's removing it - that's his prerogative just as much as it is Youtube's for advertising however they please.
YouTube happens to be very good at advertising your videos and driving you viewers (just like, say, NBC was good at bringing viewers to Seinfeld).
does the means justify the ends? should this be allowed to ensure that the YT bottom line isn't red? I don't know; all I know is that the personal experience of the content creator got to such a negative point that they decided to forego all the benefits of YouTube and host elsewhere -- and that's really the only point that matters.
In broad strokes : you're right.
For the sake of a bit more nuance, i'd like to add that 'the control' isn't just given up by the user. 'The control' is promised by providers, and then slowly dwindled until some threshold is met where users are lost to competitors.
YouTube became popular because it gave creators just enough independence, while handling the technical stuff for them.
Now that the technical part is becoming increasingly easy to deal with, it stands to reason that YouTube must become more flexible, or lose market share.
Will G/YT be flexible enough to keep everyone happy enough to exist within their walled garden? Personally, I don't think so -- and people like the parent article are proving that point by packing up and taking their data elsewhere.
Discoverability is becoming less and less of an issue due to the pervasiveness of many different types and styles of social media; IMO that's YT's big advantage and I feel with anti-creator stuff like this stuff, along with YTs recommender being one of the biggest industry in-jokes on the planet -- they really squandered that advantage.
[1] https://peertube.linuxrocks.online/lazy-static/video-caption...