My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.
My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.
Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.
There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.
So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?
#tech #technology #Google #enshittification #youtube #video @technology #capitalism #film #television #cinema #art #arts #SocialMedia #business #economics
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
The same thing that's happened with numerous print newspapers around the world. When they downsize, sack the backroom staff, and move to shopfronts they dump - literally - those priceless collections of photographs, negatives, and, yes, glass plate negatives, as though they were old office furniture.
@Throsby @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology I wonder how much of this is captured by the local library? There was a time I could check old newspaper content on microfiche.
@kneworldodor @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
We do have that. The libraries scrupulously keep copies, but not necessarily physical media.
@Throsby @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology old microfilm will get vinegar syndrome if it isn’t stored properly and if it is older acetate microfilm. Eventually it will become unusable. It’s expensive to replace just one reel of microfilm. Old newspaper clippings will all eventually crumble. I believe librarians and archives are the best place to save our history and culture. Unfortunately they are often not well-funded.
Ask any Dr who fan. The BBC did this as well back in the day......
Also, there's this one guy who's auto-uploading auto generated videos of stackoverflow questions and answers on youtube, like every few seconds. I think I saw it on one of DistroTube videos.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology As a professional video editor with an add’l interest in audiovisual archiving, I spend a lot of time discussing how it’s not in my clients’ best interest to put their media legacy into YouTube/Google’s hands. Not only is it a compressed version, which isn’t good for repurposing (editor hat), there’s absolutely no guarantee it’s going to be there for the long-term (archivist hat). If they want to use it as a delivery platform, fine. It’s not an archive
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=yKNbhMCB_3g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Unless the public puts literally billions of dollars into funding and expanding public libraries to catalog all this video media into numerous publicly owned gigantic server farms that maintain the capacity to upgrade digital storage indefinitely, all video media is doomed to stay with privately owned capitalistic multinational corporations that are influenced by foreign governments to censoring various things at will, and all video media is destined to die forgotten and overwritten by future shitty memes and useless influencer garbage.
Should be govt supported online libraries. Not under regular copyright rules (but they aren't allowed to profit or redistribute it either) but for potentially culturally relevant content that is 5 or more years since publication.
@BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas
We should all contribute to a global, distributed, federated, and resilient database, keeping a disk at home and (securely!!) sharing it with the world.
I wonder if the technology is already there?
#DigitalPreservation #GlobalCooperation
@gvlx @BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas The @internetarchive would be happy to accept your donation (I give regularly). Their scope is global, though based in the #UnitedStates, and they're not affiliated with #government or any #Capitalist #corporation. As well as their continuous #WaybackMachine web scraping they also have #Video and #Text archives plus some niche things like the #CoverArt archive.
https://archive.org/donate
@gvlx it's https://ipfs.tech/
@BaroqueInMind @pluralistic @technology @ajsadauskas
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Then we will quickly learn which people were prudent enough to keep backups, and which were not.
#datahoard
@AlexanderKingsbury @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Agreed! It's an important point of redundancy. If it's worthy, should be stored and distrubuted even if the most popular way is unavailable (I say)
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Anyone who's put all their precious eggs in one basket controlled by someone/something else is a fool.
@Judeet88 @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology I swear, most any writer or student pre-cloud will tell you this. Always find multiple ways to save the things most important to you.
@tomjennings @technology @pluralistic @ajsadauskas It's important to note though that some boards acquired community wikis and archives way sooner, like /tg/.
In part because faithfully and accurately memorizing entire homebrew sourcebooks is not a reasonable prospect.
@tomjennings
Yeah, memorizing is exactly not archiving. 🤷♂️
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
In fact it is pretty much the opposite.
Which is ironic considering how essential and critical are communal stories and histories and lore passed from generation to generation since time immemorial
@tomjennings @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology And then he went to work for Google.
Archive.org is where a lot of these videos are getting archived.
They don't have the space to archive it all. No one does. It's the reason it has grown so big without real competition.
No one can do it.. or at least make money doing it.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @tsturm Unfortunately, we’re probably going to find out.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology This is why it's important to own one's own content and only post it to social media, etc., as a secondary copy.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology There's always @internetarchive . If you want a place to preserve your videos, and you don't require #monetization, upload them.
The #WaybackMachine might already capture your videos, but you don't need to take the chance, and their Video library is better curated.
https://archive.org/details/movies
@ajsadauskas
That's actually a problem.
There is no backup for this collective memory outside the servers of this company.
@pluralistic @technology
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Can I SHOUT LOUD ( to far too many people still covering their ears ! ) *TOLD YOU SO* ! ACTUALLY IS ALREADY HAPPENING ! .. "Oh it's always going to be on the internet to download when I need it" .. NO IT'S NOT !! How many times YT for whatever reason took down something or forbidden you to see in full or .. What's going to happen ? That when they'll really need money they'll start say PAY OR WE TAKE ALL DOWN .. and content will vanish from YT !
@ajsadauskas
That's why #peertube is so important! Everyone should be migrating or at least mirroring there ASAP... It will happen.
@pluralistic @technology
@lps @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology When YT’s “musk kitchen sink” moment happens, I’ll switch over
For now there’s a few things missing, like HDR, and current leadership at YT is surprisingly understanding how to keep an ecosystem fertile
But already I know to actively maintain a backups folder of all my uploads. Which is interesting — so do they. YouTube preserves every upload, and has periodically reprocessed the originals to higher quality (less downgrades).
@ckent @lps @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology If you have a backup of all your video's anyway, why not upload it to a peertube server too? By keeping you content exclusively available on YT you actively strengthen Google's video monopoly.
@AstaMcCarthy @ckent @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
This is a very valid point. If you do create content that you intend to share to an audience, it's quite easy to find an affordable or free instance to simply mirror your content.
Once it's setup, it will sync automatically with no additional effort, and we can ALL celebrate that we are not feeding the monsters.
It is very much an ethical choice, and I think we can all agree we need to slay those beasts.
@lps @ckent @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Personally I would go one step further and invert that. So primarily publish on free and open platforms and sync from there to less free places. See https://indieweb.org/POSSE
@AstaMcCarthy @lps @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology I’m all down for that, especially for non-video. For video I’ll have to self-host as if it’s Web 1.0 because PeerTube will reprocess and mangle my videos.
@ckent @AstaMcCarthy @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
There is an option, if you do self-host peertube, to retain the original resolution if no other options are selected. I'm not sure if that avoids transcoding, which I think is what you're looking for.
@lps @AstaMcCarthy @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Hmm I looked into this a year ago. But from this screenshot, it’s only talking about resolution. I’m after bit-depth and colourspaces, and yes you’re very right about avoiding transcoding.
I throw a lot of CPU/GPU at my encodes, more than other people would. And so I’d prefer it if others wouldn’t transcode it. I’m happy to live within some rules — just tell me a CBR or VBR maximum …
@lps @AstaMcCarthy @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Everything I’ve been doing in the last 12 months is HDR experiments
I’m starting 2 new channels soon, and one of them will be SDR only so I think I can publish that onto PeerTube easily
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology It'll go where Orkut went.
Why is everyone @-ing the same group of people in this post?
I think they're replies in mastodon?
I was wondering the exact same thing. Nobody uses ats and hashtags on Lemmy, but on Mastodon, that’s the only way to tie the conversation fragments together. This is just ActivityPub doing its thing. Welcome to the Fediverse.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] There are ways to download from it with tools like
yt-dlp(no Premium account needed), at least for now. I am not sure what the legal position is with re-distribution (possibly depends on the video) but I would suggest this as a good way to archive a backup of content you value offline.@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] It also fetches them without ads so it's a good way to watch on my TV where those aren't blocked.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Youtube is basically my entertainment. I do not have cable or TV of an kind. I am very selective in my viewing. If you appear to be a decent human ie: not racist, not misogynistic, not fascist or nazi I will probably watch anything you have to offer. If you are an asshole I will block you.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Some of it is saved by public services (for content in french, by INA).
@bortzmeyer @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology we can't have one service archive everything, maybe even @internetarchive … But could we make a service/browser plugin to tell if a video is archived already somewhere and propose where to add it? If it's in French -> INA, and so on…
@bortzmeyer @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @internetarchive Maybe there's some collaboration possible with SearxNG? (I recall writing the INA search addon)
@[email protected] Minor correction: "becomes unprofitable" should be "becomes insufficiently lucrative".
Furthermore, how much revenue Google needs to make from each of its properties including Youtube keeps going up quarter after quarter thanks to insatiable shareholder appetite.
It's like sending a citizen each day to the nearby dragon to get it to leave you alone, but over time the price keeps going up.
@[email protected] @[email protected]
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Curious if you are aware of anyway of downloading one's content off YouTube for this all but inevitable moment?
@VoxofGod @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology 4k videodownloader is great for downloading everyones content <3
Yt-dl.
Command line tool, works on all desktop OS's, can handle things in batch, download full playlists, etc.
I believe the current up to date/maintained fork of it is yt-dlp
I use Downie (on Mac) but there’s a video downloader app for every platform. It doesn’t download the ads either 😉
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
"So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?"
Things improve.
Youtube does not have a monopoly because it's the only video app installed on your computer, but because it's the one everyone uses.
Plenty of people have tried to compete, but Youtube was good enough. Others had good reasons to try but concluded that Youtube was good enough.
When Youtube is no longer good enough, they get to show they can do it better.
Google search is worse, because it hasn't been good enough for a long time, but somehow every competitor has decided to be worse. Altavista 25 years ago beat what Google search is today, I can't imagine Microsoft being unable to afford to bring Bing up to Altavista levels.
It is not a natural law that things will eventually improve. It takes deliberate effort and money and an environment where this improvement is possible. Especially a video hosting site takes a lot of capital. And if powerful actors has a literal stranglehold on the market, then it can be virtually impossible even for obviously better alternatives to gain a foothold.
@uienia
I was answering a question about what happens when it becomes unprofitable for "powerful actors that have a literal stranglehold on the market" to keep pumping money into maintaining that strangehold.
I expected it to be obvious that the first thing that happens is that they stop doing so. THEN there is room for others to improve things.
I mean you've described entropy. It takes great effort to prevent accumulated order from falling back into the chaos from whence it came.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Hear hear! That Do No Harm motto seems to have become increasingly flexible...
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
"If"?
@jeroen @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @fanf @brewsterkahle And THAT Is why commercial companies want to destroy archive.org
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
There are archives everywhere already. The problem is that these ventures are publicly funded, and municipalities are broke, and the national government squeezes public services in favor of other expenses. Here's one dataset of Archives locations in the USA: https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=6cc5e9301e28453cba9737f7e8d284df&extent=-125.6236,25.3089,-68.8902,52.8456 - We need to support public archival instututions that have already existed for decades. & not put all eggs in the IA basket.
@jeroen @ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology @fanf @brewsterkahle
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Or Elon Musk takes over?
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology Needs to be nationalised; or more precisely, converted to a non-profit body.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology i think it already is unprofitable, just that they haven’t decided (how) to act upon that fact.
On the other hand, is hosting it all become more or less expensive over time? If server costs are getting lower faster than the amount of stuff people upload grows, they could well keep it just to know what every person online wants to watch (and show ads, I guess).
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
What, you don't have a personal archive of your youtube favorites?
Better start the backup now?
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
Why I am still buying music to own.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology truth!
YouTube as 'too big for ethics' and also 'too big to compete with' is terrifying AF.
Nothing can replace YT and it's success or failure is in the hands of one unscrupulous company.
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology
@ajsadauskas @pluralistic @technology and I have a vimeo account, and I keep "meaning to try" to use it....there's even good stuff on there! It's affordable if it's pay-to-view! But no....
I’m not worried about it. You don’t need YouTube in your life.
If it bothers you this much you may be spending entirely way too much time on your computer.
The problem here is not about any one persons YouTube habits. It's that we've been pouring so much into it as a group that if it goes away it'll be torching even more history. The Internet has a bad problem with losing things and it is already making finding old data difficult. This is especially noticable with games or even more specifically mods. Morrowind mods have a long and vibrant history of being lost forever because the hosts kept changing and archives going under. There are many games and mods I played as a kid that are gone now and forums talking about them that are also gone. YouTube is a single point of failure for a ton of video history and losing that history is generally considered to be A Bad Thing ™️
@ArmoredThirteen @Coreidan Agreed. My worry is not even that youtube will do a big conspicuous wipe of things (though they might). It's that they'll quietly start deleting low view count content from accounts who don't log in much leaving people wondering if they were misremembering that they used to be able to access certain content