YouTube is a mysterious monopoly

> What was unique about YouTube is YouTube did not have to pay for content. People made acceptable quality content and uploaded it to YouTube for free.

They still do. The vast majority of YT content is not monetized by creators, often not even eligible for it in the first place. Further, some big-ticket content creators hedge their bets, uploading to backup platforms, trying to shift to Patreon, etc.

The main thing is that viewers only ever go to YouTube, a learned habit. This is where they listen to music, where they get their news, where the algorithm suggests them related videos, where they can search for tutorials and reviews for gear, etc.

But TikTok shows that you can disrupt that simply by offering a video format that is different in some way and thus not gated by the same muscle memory.

I don't know. TikTok was able to take on Youtube. May have even won by now if the government hadn't intervened.

YouTube has recently have had massive, competitive attacks on their business and have had to quite drastically amend their offerings.

TikTok, SnapChat and instagram has all had huge success in their short form formats.

It’s not unheard of, that even millennial couples, will spend and evening together in bed scrolling TikTok instead of watching tv together.

While the battle is far from over, had YouTube not reacted, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these mobile first competitors would have started experimenting with long form content by now.

Youtube relies on human creators.

Youtube will be disrupted by AI created, better content.

Who builds AITube? AITok?

TikTok disrupted YT and gained over a billion MAU.

> On YouTube: as I mention in the piece, I think the service is excellent as a consumer, and I pay for Premium

Why? Because the tools that allow them to take almost 50% of the revenue (they say you earn) have low friction?

I would say the opposite. There is no customer service. There are endless legal pit traps that allow larger channels and companies to predate on smaller ones alongside the AI channels, which lead to the same end. The entire point of the platform is to push as much advertising as possible, while mutating a user's search habits. Ironically, this leads to videos becoming borderline useless for many use cases, without taking them off youtube. This is not a good platform.

I'm sure I feel this way because I don't have a bunch of content I'm afraid of being yanked from the platform. Another "benefit" of having a big youtube presence, is I would be forever worried about implied retaliation.

I host videos on my own server and there's Vimeo and Mux. I guess you're saying it's the free-as-in-beer service that has a social network and recommendation network attached to uploaded videos.

Linus Tech Tips has also noticed some really odd view to like ratio stuff happening recently as well. They discuss it in last weeks WAN show.

Something is going on.

Structurally there's only a few ways disruption can happen to a platform that has existing centralized hosting of metadata and centralized hosting of data. Either the disruptor also centralizes both, decentralizes just the data or decentralizes both.

The second isn't viable in most real world cases until something changes the huge expense of decentralized CDN fetching. My gut says that the third would be on the losing side of almost every network effect.

Hmm,

One of the things that is notable about Youtube is there was once competition (Vimeo and Daily Motion) but they effectively outdistanced it. A bit like Amazon and Ebay. There are related things semi-competing like Twitch.TV etc, also, of course.

I suspect that the situation with the earlier video providers is that they were "bleeding cash" for many years until the process finally reversed - if they were the winner (again like Amazon).

I think this long capital investment process is what means that no one wants to or expects to step into the ring with a large, successful player. It took that player a long time to learn to be successful, that player will fight you to keep their relative monopoly and you will have to risk a lot of money.

Youtube content creators are effectively Youtube's suppliers. Youtube is squeezing and its "normal" - squeezing suppliers is part of the monopolist's playbook. Its unfortunately convenient for Youtube that people have been willing to make good quality video for nearly nothing since the tools to do so became cheaply available.

Why there is "no competition" for Nvidia, Amazon, Youtube, etc. Not that I like the situation but it's not an "unnatural" situation.

ArchiveTeam is working on backing up selected channels/videos to the Internet Archive, where they can also be watched via their Wayback Machine. You can help them decide what is culturally or historically important enough to save.

ArchiveTeam generally is an interesting project I highly recommend people read about.

Their YouTube project can be seen here: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/YouTube

And you can learn how to get involved (by running a virtual machine appliance) here: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior

Video quality apparently slightly degrades as youtube constantly re-encodes/processes things and there's at least one well-known example of a Neil Cicierega video being completely unplayable https://twitter.com/neilcic/status/911080613733580801?s=20 (not this specific video, but this has happened in the past)

You should be locally saving any video you ever think you will want to watch again. Many of the videos I enjoyed in college of regular people just making stuff for fun (when being a content creator wasn't a thing) have been taken out by reruns of copyright searching bots and creators turning 30 and being embarrassed by what they posted in their 20s. One musical artist I followed decided to take down all of their old content because their latest album wasn't getting enough plays.

I save everything with replay value now, especially music.

On a personal level, you don't need the entire platform to go down to notice the bitrot. Over half of my "Watch Later" and other playlists from 8(?) years ago are now "deleted/private" videos.

Anything can disappear in this modern era. Thankfully YouTube is not DRM protected yet and you can do something about it. Any media company can take any video offline and your access to it will be gone. Same for ebooks, not only those tied to your account, but I was thinking, what if Overdrive/Libby terminate the access to particular library.

I have been personally archiving the channels with content I enjoy. I know that doesn't help the general population…

The steady state idea that most people have about civilization is just not applicable once there is oil-dependent information technology.

Either we go up and eliminate the oil dependence but acceleration eats YouTube in a transformative way, or we go up and eliminate the oil dependence but societal fission eats YouTube in a catabolic way.

I think the idea is that they operate as a black box and work in mysterious ways, not that it's mysterious how they became a monopoly.

I don't thinks it's quite that simple, there are other factors as well:

There are significant network effects. Content creators use youtube because there are a lot of viewers watching content there, and viewers use it because there is lots of content there. Since YouTube already dominates the market, it is extremely difficult for another platform to compete, even if it was better in every way.

Google can promote YouTube using its other monopolies/oligopolies. Most notably, google search prioritizes videos on YouTube over other videos. Also, being able to pay for video ads and search ads with a single vendor is probably actractive for ad space buyers.

Google also already has its own CDN, which probably reduces the cost of distributing the content.

Also youtube is big enough that they can get cache servers in isp datacenters for the popular content - it saves the isp the cost of a bigger pipe so deals not offered in general exist. (Netflix also has this with some - or at least they were working on it years ago)

At the rates I use video, my CDN doesn't care I'm distributing video bits, so at my end of the use spectrum, video bandwidth costs no more than the CDN fees I'm already paying. But yes, that won't work for Netflix or Disney+.

If the quantities of money paid to all the YouTube freelance advertisers is anything to go on, a video platform having their own ad network would itself be highly profitable.

>Competing with YouTube is certainly possible,

It is, but it's hard to gain the same audience share for all the reasons you mention.

Just ask Dailymotion, Vimeo, Twitch, Odysee, Peertube, Rumble, Kick, BitChute...

> and there's a lot of fun technical work

Maybe it's just me, but I don't find such kind of work "fun". I would have a constant feeling of "well, we are simply trying to mimic what YT did, maybe we should just hire someone that worked there and do the same, instead of going through the same inevitable mistakes".

YouTube already has a very big albeit usual competitor - PornHub.

Agree, another point is that video content making is a space full of grifters, unlike other form of media.

Take Kick for example, made to compete against Youtube and Twitch, but ended up with mostly people who are banned by those 2 platforms for a good reason. "Kick streamers" is now a negative words.

So new players on this field has to be specific about curating the people posting on their platforms.

In the UK we have the venerable BBC which is struggling with the revenue model, cost of broadcasting and much else. I am not a fan but I think that under new leadership they could do the disruption.

In what way?

Youtube is not social media. Nobody makes new friends whilst on YT. However, broadcast TV in the olden days before satellite TV and video recorders provided a shared conversation for the whole nation. You could spark up a conversation by asking a friend if they saw something on the TV during the previous evening. Nowadays people say DON'T TELL ME, I HAVEN'T WATCHED IT YET with no further conversation possible without changing topic.

A video platform could build community by letting people know if their friends and family have enjoyed watching the same programmes. Also possible is a mechanism whereby you can have a schedule made just for you. I have two YT faves, one which is fun (parasocial relationship) and another which is intellectual. If it is early in the evening and I am possibly relaxing with food then I will want the former, not the latter. On a daily basis I could have what we had in the olden days, light entertainment in the early evening and stuff that requires some brain cells later.

Revenue is always interesting and the state broadcasters in the English speaking world might as well pool resources and supply content people enjoy as soft propaganda on a free basis with no adverts. If the CDNs are in place with everything cached with a little bit of P2P, the cost model for delivery could be improved on.

nah its too late honestly, if big tech didn't want or care to make competing platform

how can you expect company that has less resource make an alternative ???? I still remember when microsoft throwing money to make mixer (twitch alternative) and yet it failed miserably

tiktok is close as we can get honestly, but youtube also expand toward shorts

> I feel that the FTC might have been better off trying to separate YouTube from Google rather than Chrome.

On what joy? The biggest mistake that DoJ did was asking to court to divest Android & Chrome. Judge took grave offense at that (read the court's opinion) and there's a school of thought that said it distracted from the whole thing.

Once you start being imprecise, all your arguments fall apart.

I am so fascinated by the different worlds everyone lives in.

I haven’t watched a video hosted on YouTube in years. But I hate amateur video. I never watch anything that I can possibly get through reading.

So in my tiny corner of user space, it’s really as if YouTube doesn’t exist except as an annoying thing Google puts at the top of searches I have to scroll past, reminding me to configure this device to use a different search engine.

Youtube is such a dominant and ubiquitous monopoly that it is almost easy to forget about it as a monopoly because there is so little competition to contrast against and to even remind you that there ought to be. I've wondered for years why it gets so little attention vs so many of the other tech giants that do have more competition.

Well managed? Not so sure about that.. the fact that UMG can harass content creators unchecked is a problem, and it's not just UMG abusing the copyright strike system.

Also, the amount of highjacked accounts and the length of time to regain control is absurdly long.

And Shorts. I wish I could disable Shorts from my feed.

What is the "product"?

A website? ("platform" for advertising) A website's users? ("you are the product") Paid subscriptions? (insufficient revenue to sustain operations)

If YouTube is a "product" does that mean US products liability laws apply? (Please support your answer with facts not opinions)

History so far has shown website popularity varies over time

https://hosting.com/blog/the-most-visited-websites-every-yea...

Would anyone today claim that, for example, Yahoo.com was "extremely well managed"? Yahoo was #1 for many years. Change is inevitable

It is hilarious to see people obsessed with targeting virtually anything for "disruption" until their favorite website becomes the target

In any organisation there is always room for improvement. Monopoly power reduces, perhaps even eliminates, incentive to improve

For some definition of well, that includes forcing shorts on everyone and getting most of the youth addicted to your product.

I don't know it's constantly kicking youtubers I subscribe to off the site, and removing videos. It would be nice if it were more censorship resistant

I agree that it is a mostly well managed product, but I can think of a lot of things when it was in the news for something bad. Most controversial is probably the increase in the amount of Ads, unskippable ads, then there was multiple problems with Youtube kids, e.g. how bad people get really bad videos there. There was an outcry when the dislike button was removed, and so on..

YouTube comment section can offer more like reddit. Where extended multiple level discussions can happen on the video with user profile and karma and all.

I agree, it's one of the few last places on the Internet where the content is not just rage bait or AI slop. These things are trying to creep in but so far they failed to dominate unlike other places.

My issues with YouTube are usually limited to some UI problems. I think I can even list them all:

1) Thumbnails autoplay but the disclaimer about paid content is so large that often I click to watch the video and get the paid content info page.

2) Translates stuff depending on my browser language and IP. Very annoying

3) The add to queue button sometimes doesn't work and just plays the video right away. Very annoying

4) When I'm listening to songs, sometimes I just let it auto play the next song it picks and often it picks 2 hours long video of songs sticked one after another. Very annoying

5) The share button adds som ID that I have to remove every time, it's probably to track my sharing behavior. Annoying

6) When chromecasting, tapping on a video or receiving it through airdrop used to give me an option to add it to the queue or play it right away. Now just plays right away. Annoying

7) If I navigate from a page and go back I'm presented with a different page and often the video I noticed previously isn't there.

Besides that, I think I don't have much issues with YT. Best money spent on a premium subscription ever.

> they should have forced them to spinoff YouTube and other non-search monopolies google has that are insanely profitable.

I dont think I follow the logic. Having a successful business is not grounds for "forcing" to spin out. Airpods are extremely successful, and does that mean it needs to be a separate company? MacBooks are extremely profitable, so should they be a different company? Azure is widely popular, should they be too?

My first thought when I read AI search was that people might use it for instructions rather than tutorials and troubleshooting videos.

My pet theory is the war on ad blocking aka manifestv2 deprecation: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...

I wouldn't think google search is a significant source of views anyway. Last I saw, the top platform for youtube usage is TVs.

Anecdotal, but for a while it felt like YouTube had decent content on whatever I was looking for. I trusted product reviews on there ever so slightly more than text content because of the relatively higher cost of producing videos. Nowadays there’s a glut of low quality stuff. Anything from low-effort videos to outright text-to-speech, non-videos that snare you using a promising thumbnail. The search results only surface about 5-10 relevant videos followed by things that have specious relevance. On top of that, they jammed Shorts into prominent screen real estate. It screams “hey while I’ve got you here, about a few of these distractions!”

So, I stopped going there as much. They stopped respecting visitor intentions. Just like every other platform, they just want to keep you on the site for as long as possible sifting through a feed of dopamine slop.

Apparently very few people use the subscriptions list and rely on the videos they subscribe and watch to appear on the Youtube homepage. And youtube changed what videos they put there. Instead of new videos by people you watch and related ones they show:

videos you just watched

videos you watched 10 years ago

auto dubbed videos on topics you are not interested

clickbait videos with 10 views

anything, but what you are used to watching

As TFA says, you can't even be sure what constitute "a view" and if Youtube keeps that consistent.