I think it says a lot that we all just expect everything on the internet to be free. YouTube doing all this stuff to try and crack down on adblockers - yeah, we know it won't increase their revenue in any way, but can you really blame them for trying? I think it's probably not unfair to say YouTube is the most expensive website on the planet to run in terms of how much bandwidth they have to serve the entire globe.
Now, yes, Google can probably run YouTube for all eternity and keep it alive via their profits from everything else they do, but I mean, if we did not specifically have Google essentially sinking their infinite money into YouTube just because it's got a captive audience, it would basically Not Exist. The only truly sustainable, economical way to video hosting and streaming really is to paywall it, whether it be paid access for viewers or charging people to upload. So, basically, the Vimeo model.
And then we can talk about how capitalism shouldnt be making these kinds of things effectively impossible unless you're an international multibillion dollar tech firm but that's a whole other conversation. At a certain point the internet just can't be Free anymore. Shit costs money.
Anyways subscribe to Cohost Plus.
Speaking of shit costs money: YouTube forcibly demonetized my channel several years ago because it's not popular enough, the street goes both ways, if they make it harder for someone to get their foot in the door financially why should I respect their demands for me to view ads?
It feels sort of like I'm on crazy pills, because while simultaneously there's a discussion about they have to make money somehow, there's a complete loss of grasp on the Tech Bubble's key point of surface tension.
You can't grow forever, you can't speculate forever, you can't do any of this 'move fast break things' mentality without a critical eye on what the end of the line looks at and get away with it for long. In an unprecedented time of information technology capabilities and expansion of capacity, there was never much thought given to sustainability; more-over, few informed observers nearest to the decision makers seemed capable of considering what the failure of this infrastructure would mean.
In it's own humorous manner, the impossible figures of finance that are at the center of Alphabet's attitudes towards all of their enterprises reflect the mentality of the top performers in big business. Everything, literally everything, is pushed onto the consumer at a time when virtually all audience members are experiencing a financial squeeze.
If Google truly is looking at insane losses of ad revenue in the double digit percentage, it makes you wonder how much they're gambling on AI technology when their approach to Youtube is about as half-assed and ineffectual as ever.
That's sort of the key thing, right? Youtube provides a platform. They're a cable provider! They don't create any of the shows/videos/content but they:
- Demand to make money off other peoples' work
- Demand to make infinitely large and ever growing amounts of money off other peoples' work
- Demand to control S&P
- Demand to dictate all the terms by which the people who do all the work actually get paid at all (or don't)
They want to have every cake and eat it too, and then on top of that the ways they choose to make that infinitely growing amount of money are provably harmful to everyone who isn't Google! If there's no business model for Youtube that doesn't involve wielding monopoly power like a blunt instrument... Well, it probably shouldn't exist.
So yeah sub to Cohost Plus
Part of this is the idea that paying attention to ads is free.
It's not.
Ads are labor and demanding control over it is demanding control over your labor. Whatever 'well, rubber meets the road' thinking exists, the whole system can't be this way where google gets to lie to me to pay someone else a fraction of a fraction of a cent.
