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Comment by Fischgericht | Hacker News Reader

Actually it's the other way round.

Content creators only get something if they have more than 1000 subscribers and are currently active.

More than 90% of the content I watch on YouTube has been uploaded years ago, and was provided to YouTube FOR FREE by the "content creator". And back then in exchange you could watch those videos ad-free, too.

Then Google has changed the rules of the game in a dirty way. People who have provided the content during the last 18 years aren't paid, it's Google pocketing the ad revenue.

I am more than willing to pay for Netflix, where original content paid for by the streaming service is provided.

But I am NOT willing to pay $14 to be able to watch a 15 year old 5 minutes clip on YouTube ad-free, that was provided to them free of charge.

I would be willing to pay something to cover their traffic cost. Maybe $3 per month or so.

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I agree but also if Google didn't host those old videos, you wouldn't be able to watch them unless you have downloaded them and stored on some long term storage solution.

One could also say that YouTube is part of the cultural heritage of the world, and since Google or rather Alphabet had a money printing machine, this content should be freely available to anyone.

Recently they've pushed annoying in page ads on my Adsense sites, despite them being disabled. Soon I'll have to either add a cookie wall or not have ads served in EMEA & UK.

Alphabet knows that its business model is in danger. Closed off spaces like Facebook or Discord are where people hang out. The forum culture has been condensed into Reddit and a few minor forums. Blogs are all SEO trash with content like the 7 best xyz you never knew existed or "he went out into the garden and then he saw..."

In any case, there are too many ads on YouTube and I'm not paying, especially because they make it hard to download the content off YouTube, actively hindering, slowing yt-dl (I know other solutions exist, cat mouse game). So yeah, they know of the value of that content.

The real question is, why is egress so expensive?

I fully agree to the sentiment that YouTube is part of the cultural heritage of the world.

Frankly, if Google would be taking it down, or start deleting all that old content where copyright ownership is unclear, we would lose one of the biggest archived on video history.

A radical way would be to split YouTube into the "archives" part, run by a non-profit, and the "new videos where content creators are paid" commercial site.

I don't think egress is expensive. After all, with a couple of exceptions they have neutral peerings with pretty much any ISP on this planet. And the ~$30B of revenue should be more than enough to handle storage and traffic cost.

AFAIK Google does not list the actual profits that YouTube makes, but I'd assume it's a very very profitable business - again, if you compare this to Netflix, Disney+ etc, who all have producing original content as the highest cost item on their balance sheets, they must be a pretty nice position.

So anyway, as said: I am willing to pay for original content that YouTube themselves are paying for. But I am not willing to pay for anything that was and is provided for free to them.

> More than 90% of the content I watch on YouTube has been uploaded years ago, and was provided to YouTube FOR FREE by the "content creator".

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a normal usecase. The common default usecase is people are following large content creators and watch fairy modern videos.

Also, you're missing an important point. They are hosted and served for free, as well. While it's not that much cost to host and serve a single video, YT has to host and serve years and years of user generated content. You're paying for the fact that they don't have an aggressive retention policy and videos that old are indexed, stored and served, almost instantly.

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