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TBH I’m not sure if a platform like YouTube will ever exist in a non-commercial way. Many creators that I follow reached a level of professionalism that comes with significant costs. You need expensive cameras, microphones, lights, high-end computers, drones, personnel costs for cutters and people that help with research. They have travel costs, sometimes rent for offices etc. All that just to produce the content.
On top, there are significant costs for hosting. I mean YouTube is hosted on multiple data centers rather than a bunch of servers or even home computers. Already Lemmy, which is mostly text and pictures, is a decent financial burden to instance owners. Not to mention the time for moderation and administration. And even here, in a place full of hardcore FOSS supporters, it’s not like admins are drowned in donations.
If YouTube ads and product placements are the only source of income for content creators, then the only alternative would be that consumers directly pay for the content and the platform. Or that such a platform would be paid by some state / taxes. Both of which don’t sound very realistic to me.
Many creators that I follow reached a level of professionalism that comes with significant costs. You need expensive cameras, microphones, lights, high-end computers, drones, personnel costs for cutters and people that help with research. They have travel costs, sometimes rent for offices etc. All that just to produce the content.
Not everybody needs that. You can still produce good content without spending thousands of dollars on all of that. In fact, swinging the level of professionalism too far can alienate an audience. It’s all about manufacturing authenticity.
On top, there are significant costs for hosting. I mean YouTube is hosted on multiple data centers rather than a bunch of servers or even home computers. Already Lemmy, which is mostly text and pictures, is a decent financial burden to instance owners. Not to mention the time for moderation and administration. And even here, in a place full of hardcore FOSS supporters, it’s not like admins are drowned in donations.
I agree. PeerTube is neat, but I don’t think it’s there yet. Even with peer-to-peer options, it doesn’t really work when there are more video posters than viewers.
If YouTube ads and product placements are the only source of income for content creators, then the only alternative would be that consumers directly pay for the content and the platform.
You mean Patreon? YouTube ads are no way to make a living, so Patreon has taken over as the revenue source for most creators. Eventually, they want more money and start taking product offers, trying to sell you G-Fuel or whatever disreputable product lands in their inbox.
Is there a credible source for the costs of hosting? Wikipedia is listing similar ad revenues as you did but no info on the costs. YouTube has 2.7 billion users that watch in average around 11 hours of videos a month. If 2 billion USD/y would be sufficient to host all that that’d be just 0,74 USD/user*year or 0,06 USD per month. That sounds really cheap considering that you have to pay for storage, traffic, backups and redundancies (at least I never heard of significant outages or data loss on YT).
Does anyone have a credible source on the number of employees YouTube has? If you search for that you fine vastly different number from just 2k to 189k employees.
It’s a cope by lemmings trying to justify why they deserve to watch lagfree, adfree, hd videos, by thousands of creators on demand anywhere in the world for free.
TBH I’m not sure if a platform like YouTube will ever exist in a non-commercial way. Many creators that I follow reached a level of professionalism that comes with significant costs. You need expensive cameras, microphones, lights, high-end computers, drones, personnel costs for cutters and people that help with research. They have travel costs, sometimes rent for offices etc. All that just to produce the content.
On top, there are significant costs for hosting. I mean YouTube is hosted on multiple data centers rather than a bunch of servers or even home computers. Already Lemmy, which is mostly text and pictures, is a decent financial burden to instance owners. Not to mention the time for moderation and administration. And even here, in a place full of hardcore FOSS supporters, it’s not like admins are drowned in donations.
If YouTube ads and product placements are the only source of income for content creators, then the only alternative would be that consumers directly pay for the content and the platform. Or that such a platform would be paid by some state / taxes. Both of which don’t sound very realistic to me.
Not everybody needs that. You can still produce good content without spending thousands of dollars on all of that. In fact, swinging the level of professionalism too far can alienate an audience. It’s all about manufacturing authenticity.
I agree. PeerTube is neat, but I don’t think it’s there yet. Even with peer-to-peer options, it doesn’t really work when there are more video posters than viewers.
You mean Patreon? YouTube ads are no way to make a living, so Patreon has taken over as the revenue source for most creators. Eventually, they want more money and start taking product offers, trying to sell you G-Fuel or whatever disreputable product lands in their inbox.
I read somewhere that AWS hosting would cost $2bn/year vs advertising revenue of 30bn/year
Is there a credible source for the costs of hosting? Wikipedia is listing similar ad revenues as you did but no info on the costs. YouTube has 2.7 billion users that watch in average around 11 hours of videos a month. If 2 billion USD/y would be sufficient to host all that that’d be just 0,74 USD/user*year or 0,06 USD per month. That sounds really cheap considering that you have to pay for storage, traffic, backups and redundancies (at least I never heard of significant outages or data loss on YT).
Does anyone have a credible source on the number of employees YouTube has? If you search for that you fine vastly different number from just 2k to 189k employees.
It’s a cope by lemmings trying to justify why they deserve to watch lagfree, adfree, hd videos, by thousands of creators on demand anywhere in the world for free.