YouTube Will Run Ads On Smaller Creators' Videos Without Paying Them (engadget.com) 136
YouTube has updated its Terms of Service to include a new section that gives it the right to monetize videos from channels not big enough to be part of its Partner Program. Engadget reports: That doesn't mean new creators can start earning from their videos right away, though -- YouTube said in a forum post explaining the changes to its ToS that non-YPP members won't be getting a cut from those ads. To become eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, a creator has to be living in a country where it's active, has to have 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months and has to have over 1,000 subscribers. YouTube only used to run ads on videos from channels that don't meet those criteria under special circumstances, such as if the channel was previously a YPP member. Going forward, though, the website can monetize any video, so long as it meets its ad-friendly guidelines.
In addition to this change to its Right to Monetize section, YouTube has also added "faces" to the kinds of information people aren't allowed to collect from its service. It explained that the website never allowed the collection of personally identifiable information, but it altered its language in the ToS "to be extremely explicit about what kind of data users" can't collect. YouTube is rolling out these changes in the US first, but they will be effective worldwide by the end 2021.
In addition to this change to its Right to Monetize section, YouTube has also added "faces" to the kinds of information people aren't allowed to collect from its service. It explained that the website never allowed the collection of personally identifiable information, but it altered its language in the ToS "to be extremely explicit about what kind of data users" can't collect. YouTube is rolling out these changes in the US first, but they will be effective worldwide by the end 2021.
More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ain't nothin' a megacorp won't do to turn them thumbscrews.
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+5 I haven't uploaded to my youtube channel for ages but I'll have to add some swearing.. or just say there is swearing to keep the ads off. (I'm not going to link my channels here).
Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
Anyone still into "building their own personal brand" rather than providing real value deserves to DIAF. Same as it's more modern bullshit descendants, the "influencers ".
Lazy, uncreative "creators" can join them.
If all these sub-monkeys are being abused by YouTube and Facebook, they really only have themselves to blame. They're no better than previous generations with their Amway and Tupperware multi-level marketing scams seeking to make easy money exploiting friends and family for personal profit.
I
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Instant demonetization.
Truth.
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So in your example, where are the creators not getting paid for the content that the company is monetising, exactly?
That's the principle at stake here: Google are making money on my work and not paying me. I don't see a parallel in your broadcast television analogy.
Nice red herring, but... no.
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This is like if the public access TV channel that broadcasts user-submitted content starts playing commercials. Stupid strategy, but not illegal.
Re:More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) There is no "cloud", it's someone else's computer which consumes electricity as any computer does (and hence generates an electricity bill)
and
2) Ad-revenue is a type of revenue that can dry up at any moment, for example during an economic crisis (caused by a pandemic or something).
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Even in the pandemic, I bet Google made a killing on political advertising. I don't know how their cloud offering is doing, but advertising and cloud computing are about as high-margin as a business can get.
My guess is that there is a lot of content that is not not broadly appealing, but collectively takes up viewing time from more lucrative videos. So even if people are watching more YouTube during the pandemic they are 1) skipping all the ads, 2) skipping the ads they've seen 20 times, 3) watching randos
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Youtube costs money to run. They deserve to be compensated.
You mean that YouTube hasn't been keeping a part of the ad money for itself all along until now?
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Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
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I'm of the same boat. If I had a video I wanted to publish and tossed it on my WordPress site, and it went viral, I'd be paying the ISP through the nose for all the download bandwidth. Hosting it on YouTube means that they handle all the CDN stuff for free, and people generally trust a YouTube link more than some unknown domain with videos that might not be just videos.
YouTube also is doing well, while alternative video sites seem to be on the ropes because of the high overhead of pushing that much bandwi
Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
Great point. It reminds me of Gunny from Full Metal Jacket when he unleashes all the epithets and goes on to say they are all equally worthless, since they had not yet risen to the point where they were worthy to serve in the corpse. Run ads before everyones shit. Maybe if they charged less for ads they could be less selective of whom to play ads for. In fact why even let the advertisers choose? Make that a premium charge. For X price we throw your ad up every 13,000th view that hour. Not any specific conte
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Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
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The bigger problem here is that youtube is pulling the Darth Vader "I have altered the deal, pray that I don't alter it further". It has established itself as the sole viable medium and long form video platform on the back of shared revenue deal, and now that it's the only game in town, it's altering the deal.
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I would agree fully if free and fair market was in play. The company alienating customers too much would lose market share.
Unfortunately end state of free market is not fair market but monopoly market. And that's where youtube is today. It monopolized the medium to long form video niche. There's no other viable platform left for users to go to. And it's well documented that monopolies changing rules arbitrarily utilizing their monopolistic reach harms the overall market when not regulated.
You can try to phr
Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
It won't last long. Ad unfriendly content will be either going away, or have to start paying for hosting. Google's shareholders need growth, and they are running out of places to get the next trillion from without expanding revenue and cutting unprofitable costs.
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Yes but broadcast TV also doesn't feature videos saying that N@zis are good, which is why you have ultra-fine control over the ads instead.
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Definition of irony: Slashdot not letting me post the word N@zi in a story about ad friendly/unfriendliness
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Re:More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:5, Informative)
They're legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders.
"Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." -- Supreme Court of the United States (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby)
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[example needed]
Which is this for-profit publicly traded corporation, nevermind many that does not pursue profit at the expense of everything else?
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Any of them that contibute to charity, which includes Google. Any of them that spend money to be carbon neutral, which includes Google. Any of them that avoid specific contracts (e.g. military) for ethical reasons.
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Charity is a nice way to reduce your taxes, so this is also profit oriented. Avoidance of specific contracts so that you don't alienate your other customers is from the same department. So, no.
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Charity is a nice way to reduce your taxes, so this is also profit oriented. Avoidance of specific contracts so that you don't alienate your other customers is from the same department. So, no.
Right, so as soon as a company makes a loss, everyone involved is arrested?
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Maybe they should - many times making "losses" can be a strategy to not pay dues - not only taxes, but also suppliers, etc. See, for example, some famous film companies which declare "financial losses" so that they don't pay script writers, actors, etc.
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"Charity is a nice way to reduce your taxes, so this is also profit oriented."
What are you smoking? If a company turns a profit of say $1 per share, they owe around $0.30 in tax (depending on the state), leaving $0.70 left over. If they donate any non-zero amount of cash then the post-tax profit is less than $0.70 per share.
Now companies can donate surplus assets and materials, though my understanding is that they can't legally deduct more than the depreciated value of assets. This can be more of a win pro
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"Charity is a nice way to reduce your taxes, so this is also profit oriented."
You can't beat the system by giving to charity. Otherwise, everyone would give 100% of their earning to charity.
Let's say you or a corporation are taxed at 25% of profits. And let's say you made $1M in profits. Then you owe $250k in taxes leaving $750k to spend on hooker and blow or whatever you like.
But what if you gave half that profit ($500k) to charity. Then you'd only owe taxes on the $500k you have left which totals to $125k
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Only the board of directors, and a handful of top executives are aware of exactly what the company is "pursuing" - most of them don't waste time on Slashdot, and if they do they are not likely to be allowed to or want to disclose the company pursuits here.
So this is an absolutely rubbish question. The statement "They're legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders." is sufficiently debunked by the SCOTUS statement to make this line of argument useless.
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They're legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders.
This overly broad excuse comes up all the time. They are not legally obligated to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Youtube does not produce content. Content creators take time and effort to make content. If they don't get paid, said content disappears and Youtube becomes useless. How's that shareholder profit now?
Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
Nah, there is always going to be some fame junky that jumps off the Balcony of an NCL ship as its pulling into Nassau just because they think it might go viral. The world is full of dumbasses. The content creators will just go to Patreon. YouTube decided a while back that any hunting/shooting content is completely demonetized. They still run a fuckload of ads and get 100% of the ad revenue despite cock-gobbling to AnyTown Moms to punish anyone who so much as says the word gun.
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It turns out, people will happily make content for free.
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I think this is pretty much one of the core issues facing the economy today. If a company actually wants to work or preserve a market, the crack of the whip of shareholder lawsuits and the sole focus on the next quarter is one of the reasons why there have been almost zero significant consumer level inventions in the past ten years, except perhaps the dockless scooters, or maybe AirPods.
In the past, companies could charge off R&D. This is why companies could make truly groundbreaking things, rather th
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They're legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders.
No they're not. They're obliged to work for the benefit of shareholders. Short term profit-grabbing can damage that; long term development which costs money can easily be justified under the law if the intent is, for example, to drive other people out of the market as Uber has been trying to.
And, of course, it would require shareholders to actually pick up the phone and start proceedings so in practise, if the shareholders are happy the company can do whatever it likes regardless of profits.
Re: More from the, Fuck You, Got Mine Dept. (Score:2)
There is no such law. And the emphasis on short term shareholder value is detrimental to long term survival, since money that should be invested in long term projects to build in resiliency of markets is instead stripped out to appease short term share.
We saw this with the US auto industry vs the Asian auto ind
Just swear a bunch in your video (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just swear a bunch in your video (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't actuallly matter. One of the channels I used to watch got demonetized for months, but it didn't stop Google running ads on it for all of that time. "Demonetized" just means the CREATOR doesn't get their cut: instead, Google goes from taking X% of the revenue to taking 100% of it.
What makes the scam even better is that a lot of the time an entire *channel* gets demonetized, rather than just a single video. So at that point Google gets all the revenue on the back catalog as well. The view count is much lower on old content, of course, but there's a lot more of it. (It's like the classic interest-rounding fraud: it may be tiny amounts, but by the time the occurrence rate is in the millions it gets meaningful very quickly).
You misunderstood me (Score:2)
There's "demonetized" like you're thinking and then there's "Advertisers won't let google run ads on my channel"
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Ah - a good distinction, and as you say, one that I didn't parse from your post.
However, I don't think it's actually a VALID point in this context. There will be advertisers that don't specify an exclusion list, and there will be advertisers that simply don't care. There are plenty of companies out there who are not just happy to, but often KEEN to, "support" YouTubers who are outright sociopaths, because the *content* doesn't matter to them: all that matters is that they can reach an audience.
So yeah, Disn
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That doesn't actuallly matter. One of the channels I used to watch got demonetized for months, but it didn't stop Google running ads on it for all of that time. "Demonetized" just means the CREATOR doesn't get their cut: instead, Google goes from taking X% of the revenue to taking 100% of it.
I don't think that's always true. China Uncensored and several other 'anti-china' channels have been demonetized for a long time, and Google puts 0 ads in their videos.
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I wonder if you could put in some swearing at a high enough frequency or low enough volume that no human would hear it but the AI would catch it.
Or maybe I could just insert a single frame in the middle that says "Serious medical conditions do not exist or are an elaborate hoax."
Taking a guess this was a long term plan... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if they had planned this for a long time. They heavily upped the requirements due to advertisers saying that their ads where been run on bad videos - and they where from smaller creators.
Now... that it has died down, they'll put the ads back on the smaller creators without giving them a cut - with all the changes they have made recently - this is going to be a big windfall for them - basically they would of more then doubled their incoming by not sharing the revenue from the ads - but they also play a lot more ads as well.
But I guess it's OK to do this, as the smaller creators which will be a decent portion of their ad views, won't be able to do anything about it - their individual voices are to small to raise an issue over this.
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I dunno about you but if I owned a platform that could put out as many ads as Google or Facebook I would say to the advertisers "You should be honored that I'm even speaking to you right now."
If you don't want ads to appear in your videos (Score:2)
Make sure it doesn't meet the ad-friendly guidelines.
My next videos:
- Funny fucking cat
- Fucking vacations in Amsterdam
- Let's play Monster Fucking Hunter
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Pron (Score:2)
in that case, "family-friendly" means tutorials on how to mke a family.
Pron
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Make sure it doesn't meet the ad-friendly guidelines.
My next videos: - Funny fucking cat - Fucking vacations in Amsterdam - Let's play Monster Fucking Hunter
How about... if you don't want ads to appear in your videos, upload them to somewhere you pay for hosting and therefore can control them.
When YouTube started up, folks wondered how they would pay for the hosting and bandwidth they gave people. Now people are acting like YouTube owes them something.
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It was a joke.
I actually have most of my personal videos shared as raw files self-hosted on a dedicated server I pay for. But YouTube is convenient so I have some of my videos on YouTube too. I guess I will take them down, I don't want to show ads to others.
And I also pay for YouTube (premium), so yep in a sense, they owe me something.
Replacing YouTube's recommendation algorithm (Score:2)
How about... if you don't want ads to appear in your videos, upload them to somewhere you pay for hosting and therefore can control them.
YouTube's recommendation algorithm recommends only other videos on YouTube, not videos on the producer's own website. Once a producer begins to upload videos to their own website instead of YouTube, through what other means can a producer arrange for the videos to reach new viewers? The IndieWeb wiki page about recommendation engines admits lack of a well-known solution: "IndieWeb examples: None currently." [indieweb.org]
AdBlockers! (Score:5, Informative)
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So the easiest way to get your family and friends to ad block youtube is to get them to install and use Opera. Maybe it turns out a Chinese company will spy on them instead of Google / Microsoft / Facebook. Big deal. No ads. No trackers. Big win.
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Opera takes Chromium and bakes in its own shady shit. And they are perpetually behind on security updates. It's irresponsible to recommend Opera.
Instead of Opera, people should be using something like Chromium + uBlock Origin.
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What does this mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
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So much for imaginary property.
Biggest stick still makes the boss. And that's all it is about.
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I don't like it either, but really, the channel owner is Google. If you want to be the real channel owner, you host your own video site.
I suppose this is little more than what one should expect when when a monopoly is allowed to grow unchecked and fully unfold and grow its ravenous sense of entitlement.
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Soon a company like Amazon with Twitch is going to spring into action and try to complete for the same content creators. Currently these video services are segmented and rather tailored to different creators and viewers, but thats just technical details, as the video delivery is the service, everything else is easily changed web dressing.
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There have been countless video sites over the years, competing for content creators. Vimeo and Dailymotion spring to mind. And countless withered and died. Because of the old circular reasoning: People use x because people use x.
(The dirty secret is to make people believe people use x until people actually use x. Which gives a large advantage to everyone with l large monetary advantage. As usual, if you want money, you need to have money.)
Must first stream live enough (Score:2)
Soon a company like Amazon with Twitch is going to spring into action and try to complete for the same content creators.
Last I checked, Twitch intends uploads to be secondary to live streaming. From Help > Video on Demand [twitch.tv]:
From Help > Twitch Affiliate Program FAQ [twitch.tv]:
This make
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AT&T's last hurrah before being eaten up was as a cell phone company, something they said they wouldnt do, moron.
You live in this fucking world where if there is a single sentence on the internet that agrees with your poorly conceived notations, you fucking just have to fucking reply, yes, even if that sentence is meaningless shit that not only can change, but fucking
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You think creators who don't like ads on their videos are moving to Twitch? Twitch, the site that actually prevents people from seeing your video while the ad runs, which runs more ads that anyone else, and has successfully defeated all ad blockers? They're by far the worst offender out there.
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Given Youtube is providing the service for free, it kind of makes sense. Servers and network bandwidth aren't free.
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Given Youtube is providing the service for free, it kind of makes sense. Servers and network bandwidth aren't free.
Your defense of YouTube's boundless sense of entitlement is misplaced. Content providers are creating the content at no cost to YouTube. Robbing these content creators of the choice of how to finance their activities is kind offensive. The relationship between content creators and YouTube is symbiotic, YouTube wants to make it parasitic. Contrary to what you seem to think, content does not come for free. It is content creators who spend money to create content and it is YouTube who gets it for free. If peop
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Your arguments do not address the point of the cost of hosting at all. Hosting the videos and broadcasting them all over the world is a service, which costs money to Youtube. They use ads to pay for the service, just like every other website on the planet. So far, they've been providing that service for free, and that was paid with the margin they had on the paid content. I do personally use Youtube to share videos (privately) with my family all over the world. It costs them money and they make none from it
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So YouTube provides this free service to people who want to upload videos for public viewing.
What would those people who don't want ads to run with their videos offer YouTube in exchange?
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So YouTube provides this free service to people who want to upload videos for public viewing. What would those people who don't want ads to run with their videos offer YouTube in exchange?
Users who then transition into watching some of the monetised content or even subscribe to escape the ads? People create YouTube content in their spare time and that alone benefits YouTube massively since YouTube/Google don't have to pay for any of it. Many channels consciously do not put ads in their content for a reason and finance themselves with Merch. Now YouTube claims the right to unilaterally pollute the content of these people with ads that only benefit YouTube. The more poignant question is, why w
This will hurt everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
This will have far worse effects than most people realize.
For YPP creators it will mean a significant loss of revenue.
Why?
Well there are a couple of reasons
Firstly, by effectively monetizing almost every video on the platform YT are massively increasing their inventory of ad-space. Without a corresponding increase in demand for ads that means there will be an over-supply situation and as we all know, the laws of supply and demand dictate that when supply exceeds demand, prices will drop. That means that YPP creators will see a lower CPM for the ads running on their videos. Result: money every month for YTPP creators. I suspect some of those who are marginally earning enough to make it a full-time job will give up and go back to flipping burgers (where the pay is better).
Secondly, since YT won't have to share *any* of the ad revenue when ads are placed on non-YPP videos, they will undoubtedly be using those videos as the preferred place to put high-CPM advertisements. Why give away 50% of your most lucrative ad revenue when you don't have to? This means that YPP creators will get "the dregs" of the advertising bucket. The lowest CPM ads will be run on YPP channels because that will cost YT less as a result of the revenue split involved.
For those channels who either choose not to run ads or are inelligible for the YPP there will also be nasty side-effects.
They will probaby lose view-time because you know that YT will load up their videos with as many ads (including those nasty mid-roll breaks every 2-3 minutes) as they can. They'll do this because YT gets to keep every cent of the revenue those ads generate. When a channel's view-time falls that channel is less likely to be promoted so the view stats will also fall. This makes it even less likely that these channels will grow enough to qualify for the YPP and thus they'll never get to share the ad revenues.
And let's not forget the effect this will have on those who simply "consume" YT content...
Up until now, we've been able to watch a good number of videos without ads -- either because the channel has chosen not to run ads or because they aren't qualified to enter the YPP. Forget that! Virtually *every* video on YT will now carry ads so you will have no option but to instal ad-blocker software (if you haven't already) or be driven mad by the relentless stream of unskippable mid-rolls.
In one fell swoop, Youtube has delivered a devastating blow to the YT ecosystem by disadvantaging *everyone* except Alphabet's bean-counters.
On the bright side, we can expect to see sites like Rumble, BitChute, Odessy and others pick up a lot of new creators and a much larger audience.
Youtube has once again proven that it has totally lost track of what a "fair value exchange" means when it comes to business.
I for one will be actively using other platforms to deliver videos to my 400,000+ subscribers and my next 120 million views are likely to come from those platforms rather than YouTube.
YouTube... your feet are bleeding!
Re:This will hurt everyone (Score:4, Funny)
Result: money every month for YTPP creators
Damn! I meant *LESS* money every month for YTPP creators!
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You make many excellent observations there, but you're almost completely missing the point, because the reality is one that's hard for you personally to accept.
> For YPP creators it will mean a significant loss of revenue.
What makes you think Google cares about a CREATOR's loss of revenue in the first place?!
> disadvantaging *everyone* except Alphabet's bean-counters.
And that's all that matters.
Google has repeatedly shut down channels with MILLIONS of subs, often on a whim. That's how important the cr
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Other sites won't gain any traction from this because YouTube isn't just a video streaming service, it's a social network. Channels and video are recommended based on what people with similar interests watch, and on which videos get the most interaction (likes/dislikes, comments, repeat views etc.)
Therefore to build your audience and get revenue you have to play the social game. The classic "like, comment and subscribe" mantra that is so often repeated. That gets your videos recommended.
Going to another sit
At the very least (Score:2)
Enter me in a drawing to win a gift card for Outback Steakhouse. (not serious, well maybe a little)
If the relationship isn't going to be a two-way street. I'd even consider one that is heavily biased in favor of the corporation. Then I can delete my videos and go somewhere else. Getting nothing means I have a lot of flexibility in how I choose to get nothing.
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Learn to grill your own damn steak. :)
(The secret is that it's two steps: Step 1: extremely high heat with a large heat reserve, to brown the outside. Step 2: Very low heat for a long time to not ruin the inside. Of course assuming that meat is from a happy cow with plenty herbs in its meadow, and carefully butchered and dry aged [which is a fermentation process].)
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I'd be happy to share my recipe for Santa Maria tri-tip if that were on topic. The secret is the dry rub and hot smoking. Serve with pico de gallo or optionally chimichurri, although the later is not exactly traditional.
Back to the original point, before the needless derailment. Meaningless gift cards are almost cliché in the business world. If you've ever gotten employee-of-the-month at some small business you'd know what I'm talking about.
Ignore their ad money. (Score:2)
It is dirty money. Built on manipulating your viewers to waste their money with creepy tactics.
Use Patreon and the like (Flattr, Kickstarter, ...) for all of your financing.
And if you are big enough, run your own servers. There are enough CDNs out there for when you need them.
Like free webhosting back in the llate 90's (Score:2)
There were lots but I remember FreeYellow was one where they offered no banner on your pages for a while then one day BAM banners on top and bottom then popups later one.
Youtube Buries Channels (Score:2, Informative)
pecunia (Score:2)
That is the businessmodel.
Why else do this?
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It costs money and resources to host videos (Score:2)
Content creators too have no obligation to post in you tube. There are ways to host your own site and dish out content.
The actual deal from YouTube is, "we provide all the necessary tools to create a channel and till you build viewership you get only free hosting. Once you reach a threshold, you get a cut."
If YouTube creates a way for conten
Looks for free lunch... (Score:2)
... doesn't find it ...