YouTube SHOULD charge for 4K. Hear me out.

[mMontana]

A lot of the things in this video are lacking. This lead to a huge lack of context. And a lack of context makes the reasoning of Mr Sebastian way more viable than it is.

 

LMG, Floatplane inc and Creative Warehouse Inc. are companies of interest (to say the least) for the assumptions. Which are lacking of "counter opinions" and lacking about biases and advantages if Alphabet/Google will pull the trigger of the "paywall" on 4k. The colors of painting youtube and the content creators in this video are dangerly close to misleading. Again to say the least.

 

Mr Sebastian recorded this video before WAN show during friday, when "bragged" about don't lookin for any way to more founds for all the company of the group unless a "totally no strings attached" claused when provided money. It' a bit easier when you just told to all the people than one of biggest competitors of Floatplane should do the same thing about 4K (so more money)... I mean... scared of competition?

[swimtome]

2 hours ago, Der_Krampus said:

Hot take, I really don't think this is a hot take.

According to "Return YouTube Dislike" its 35k to 11k so roughly 80% dislike which is... if memory serves not bad according to Linus, at least in line with an average 'hot take'.  Although I do wonder how accurate it is (maybe @LinusTech will feel like sharing at some point the actual ratio at some point when he talks about the general response he got)

 

Overall I already knew what most of the arguments would be and overall I agreed - when YouTube announced this I was like 'eh whatever'.  I dont live on bleeding edge, I tend to go for value + a few more bucks when I get something.  My only 4K screen is a TV and I really struggle to see the difference unless its a cartoon / animated movie.  The differences are not going to be noticed (for me) on a YouTube video.  I might feel the difference when I finally get a huge OLED one day, but now is not that day and I'd much rather YouTube exist as it does now.

 

So hopefully YouTube can show they're trying to be somewhat good guys and listen to other constructive feedback that they can implement in exchange for having to retract this.  

[mynameisjuan]

This video really set off the crowd that feel entitled to a free service (in exchange for privacy) and all it's benefits, yet seem to have next to no basic understanding to economics. This same crowd is also the group that most likely has ad-blockers which results in little to nothing in return for their views.

 

@LinusTech has also missed a potentially major factor in their recent push for increased profits. While datacenter cost are incredibly high, another aspect to consider is the recent push in green policies and regulations, particularly the ones focused on organizations that consume a significant chunk of energy usage. Not only does this increase the cost on building new DCs, the drastically increasing energy cost over the past two years means they need to offset that cost some how. Be it the cost for renewables, cost to replace existing equipment for more efficient equipment or introduce another method of recouping cost via more ads or encouraging premium users.

 

Many parts of the US has seen upwards of 200% increase in energy cost over the past year or two and even more so in other countries and is only going up. A large portion of DC cost is in their energy bill and such a drastic and quick change can significantly impact a company. I do not know if this is still the case, but a few years back it was reported that YouTube is subsidized and if that is the case, their liability with investors means they need to make a move. Right now, their expenses are rising at rates far greater then their increase in revenue.

 

This does not only apply to DCs either. As a network engineer in the service provider field, this has also been impacting SPs. While energy cost is no where near the level that DCs, it's still significant enough.

 

While this may be shocking, but you can simultaneously despise a company's policies and decisions while also understanding the reasoning behind some of them.

[BondiBlue]

6 minutes ago, swimtome said:

so roughly 80% dislike which is... if memory serves not bad according to Linus

The current numbers on YouTube using the YouTube dislike extension put the video at roughly 75% likes to 25% dislikes. That's FAR more dislikes than the average LTT video normally gets. There are plenty of other "controversial" LTT videos (depending on how you define controversial) that don't have that many dislikes to likes. Also, keep in mind that the dislike count we see isn't entirely accurate since the actual data isn't publicly available anymore. 

 

And just for the sake of comparison, the current like and dislike counts on Floatplane as I type this are 400 likes to 17 dislikes. That's a roughly 4% dislike percentage compared to 25% on YouTube. Just something to think about. 

[dogwitch]

also peering at tier 2,3 and edge mile are also bw issues to.

i notice  local cdn was taken out due to hurricane.

cdn content had to be re routed .  i notice the lag time for content to load up.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

Wouldn't that blockiness be due to the YT Compression algo, and not anything LTT Did? 

oh my god, i was watching ON FLOATPLANE, READ!!!!

[Jtalk4456]

2 hours ago, Skipple said:

too soon man, too soon

[Zodiark1593]

Even with a Premium subscription, I seldom use 4K outside of my Vizio tv. 
 

I’m not necessarily in disagreement that 4K is not a game changer, YouTube should certainly be pushing AV1 more aggressively to improve video quality for everyone. This will lessen the need for increased bit rates, and improve the lower resolution settings. AV1 at 1080P tbh looks quite good, but only a few creators actually serve the codec. 
 

Audio quality has also been a point of contention that can be resolved cheaply. Another 80-160 kbps would be a big improvement here. 

[dogwitch]

1 minute ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Even with a Premium subscription, I seldom use 4K outside of my Vizio tv. 
 

I’m not necessarily in disagreement that 4K is not a game changer, YouTube should certainly be pushing AV1 more aggressively to improve video quality for everyone. This will lessen the need for increased bit rates, and improve the lower resolution settings. AV1 at 1080P tbh looks quite good, but only a few creators actually serve the codec. 
 

Audio quality has also been a point of contention that can be resolved cheaply. Another 80-160 kbps would be a big improvement here. 

true  but that little extra bw for audio ad's  up to trillions pretty fast.

[Nystemy]

It would be nice if the 720p resolution were offered with a bit fewer ads than the 1080p. And similarly for 480, and down.
If one watches at a lower bitrate/resolution, then one costs less to host. Even if Google's bandwidth costs are likely a bit cheaper than Floatplane's bandwidth costs. _{(Though, a lot of the bandwidth costs when one gets to the datacenter isn't really much more than the cost of maintenance, power and bidding for new IP addresses. But this all still costs actual money. Sending data is rather far from free and at the very large scale it is actually more economical to ship it by truck, unless latency matters that is.)}

 

Personally I have been contemplating moving over to Floatplane. But, I see a few major issues there....

The biggest is that there isn't a "general" membership. Floatplane is the video equivalent of Patreon, nothing directly wrong in that, but it would be rather wonderful if creators could set videos as "public", as in anyone who pays for Floatplane in general can watch the video as if Floatplane were any other video streaming platform. _{(Would both help with viewers finding new creators to follow, and also make floatplane more interesting as a viewer. And yes a "general" membership would likely add an additional cost to the user, but it could be opt in like any other subscription on the platform is.)}

 

Another downside I see with Floatplane currently is that there is practically little to no information on the site of what is there. No list of creators, no nothing. _{(Generally the site is a bit too LMG focused to be fair, it is likely time to spruce up the place a little, perhaps move the "LTT" related FAQ questions away from "general" and over to some more LTT specific page.)}

[swimtome]

21 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

The current numbers on YouTube using the YouTube dislike extension put the video at roughly 75% likes to 25% dislikes. That's FAR more dislikes than the average LTT video normally gets. There are plenty of other "controversial" LTT videos (depending on how you define controversial) that don't have that many dislikes to likes. Also, keep in mind that the dislike count we see isn't entirely accurate since the actual data isn't publicly available anymore. 

Yea dropped a bit more.  NiceHash comes to mind at 69% _nice .   I vaguely recall Linus claiming average video gets 90% likes, and 80% controversial but could be he was only saying 90% for controversial.  (I would love to build a wiki for the WAN show for this reason)

 

Quote

 

Also, keep in mind that the dislike count we see isn't entirely accurate since the actual data isn't publicly available anymore. 

Yea thats why I mentioned I would love Linus to reveal the actual number at some point so we can see how close to accurate it is.

 

Quote

And just for the sake of comparison, the current like and dislike counts on Floatplane as I type this are 400 likes to 17 dislikes. That's a roughly 4% dislike percentage compared to 25% on YouTube. Just something to think about.

 

Yea obviously not surprising FloatPlane tends to lean that way, we see it often (but not always) on WAN show.  By the same token its also quite possible that the same circles of people who would take the time to get Return Dislike extension or hacked app, are the types of people who would be annoyed by this change.

[Nystemy]

10 minutes ago, swimtome said:

Yea obviously not surprising FloatPlane tends to lean that way, we see it often (but not always) on WAN show.  By the same token its also quite possible that the same circles of people who would take the time to get Return Dislike extension or hacked app, are the types of people who would be annoyed by this change.

Yes, there is probably a very "healthy" amount of bias skewing the result as far as this topic is concerned.

 

But would be nice if Linus publish the actual dislike count in the WAN show, perhaps next week as to let the video reach its peak and shimmer out over a couple of days. Stating stuff too early can be missing a large portion of the crowd, since not everyone has time to watch videos and might only get around to it on the weekend post this weeks WAN show. _{(I for one find myself putting off watching through everything that is pending until I find time, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is much such people around too.)}

[saltcute]

I have pretty much got used to the paywall thing already. Chinese platforms have made that premium only back in like 2012, except back then, they charge for 720p HD in 2012, 1080p "UHD" in 2015, high bitrate (2000 Kbps in practice lmao) 1080p and 1080p60 in 2017, and 4k in 2020.
Fun fact: Until today, normal 1080p is still a premium only feature on a lot of Chinese platforms, with only one exception I'm aware of being Bilibili, whom only charge for high bitrate (2000 Kbps) 1080p and above.

[MSharpeWriter]

Time to throw my hat in...

 

Boosting the Number of Adverts is a really, really slippery slope.. I could see the UK regulator getting involved, which isn't going to be nice for Google's wallet. Plus too many adverts will drive users away, which is not what YouTube wants to do.

 

AV1 while is great.. It's too early to drop VP9 and some other encodings, as I don't think my T460 Thinkpad (with i5-6800U and integrated graphics) can do AV1 at 1080p.

[Ginger Penguin]

3 hours ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

speaking on bandwidth and "more resolution isn't always better", i was watching this on floatplane, on a 2012 13" MacBook Pro, which only has a 1280x800 display. therefore, there's no need for me to bump the res to 1080p (the max i have as i don't have the 4k tier, there's no point i don't have a 4k display), and look at this:

 

 

look at the blockyness of the background. i wish since Linus obviously knows that it matters that the 720p experience was actually good, because why else would you have it. i understand that setting it to 1080 on this computer is pointless, since it only has a 720p display effectively, but then the quality is so bad it looks more like 480 due to all the blocks..... ugh

Despite having 4K Floatplane for the last year (cut it back due to rising expenses in my country) I wasn't able to watch it for most of that time due to the outside of spec resolution they were using up until a couple of months ago so I had to watch at 1080 and it was always really blocky which I found surprising.

 

I had always heard that Floatplane 1080 was supposed to be analogous to YouTube 4K. And it really isn't. I would watch fully sponsored videos like Intel XTU on YouTube since there were no cut out sponsors anyway and it really was quite an obvious jump over the quality of 1080 Floatplane. And that really would be down to the bitrate.

[DuckManJoe]

Why was a solution where content creators pay for the option of uploading 4k content. Googles costs are form creators spamming 4k content without consequence not from people viewing said 4k content. Why allow google to play the victim (a multi hundreds of billion dollar company) and content creators get away blame free from an issue they directly contribute to. I’m not paying 12$ a month on top of Amazon, Netflix, paramount, Disney, Sky sports and BT sports subscriptions to fix an issue I had no part in causing.

[crazzp]

2 minutes ago, DuckManJoe said:

Why was a solution where content creators pay for the option of uploading 4k content. Googles costs are form creators spamming 4k content without consequence not from people viewing said 4k content. Why allow google to play the victim (a multi hundreds of billion dollar company) and content creators get away blame free from an issue they directly contribute to. I’m not paying 12$ a month on top of Amazon, Netflix, paramount, Disney, Sky sports and BT sports subscriptions to fix an issue I had no part in causing.

That's like asking employees of a company to cough up money to cover the company's cost to turn on the heater/air conditioning. 

[DuckManJoe]

3 minutes ago, crazzp said:

That's like asking employees of a company to cough up money to cover the company's cost to turn on the heater/air conditioning. 

Not really, It’s like asking for people who work within a company who use significantly more paper/ink than others to buy their own or write in smaller fonts / only use black ink

[crazzp]

10 minutes ago, DuckManJoe said:

Not really, It’s like asking for people who work within a company who use significantly more paper/ink than others to buy their own or write in smaller fonts / only use black ink

Which will piss any of them off since they are practically doing all that to benefit the company (also to their own) and yet now they are asked to pay? I'll leave straight away. 

Not related:

Also, calling India a non-English-speaking region is inaccurate. 

[DuckManJoe]

Just now, crazzp said:

Which will piss any of them off since they are practically doing all that to benefit the company (also to their own) and yet now they are asked to pay? I'll leave straight away. 

 

Also on topic, calling India a non-English-speaking country is inaccurate. 

I don’t think it will, Only creators really determined to post 4k content will have to pay. These creators usually have large audiences, take LTT, who tend to be doing quite alright on their expenses. Having fortnitemike32 limited to only uploading 1080/720p videos to his 10 viewers would benefit google without hurting the end consumer. 

[kumicota]

12 minutes ago, DuckManJoe said:

I don’t think it will, Only creators really determined to post 4k content will have to pay. These creators usually have large audiences, take LTT, who tend to be doing quite alright on their expenses. Having fortnitemike32 limited to only uploading 1080/720p videos to his 10 viewers would benefit google without hurting the end consumer. 

Agree creators aren't google employees, they just hoard google services for free and for clout money

[williamcll]

No, sod off I need more reasons to ditch 1080p

[SorryBella]

First off: Youtube frogs, welcome. Remember to read our community standards page to see how far you can broil linus over this video.

 

Secondly: Ive been waiting for this video to come out since his tease on twitter, and boy his point sure is as bad as i thought (in terms of convincing youtube audience) yet as reasonable and logical as it could get coming out of someone with an actual internal CDN knowledge. Im glad that Linus spoke out on this, and considering that "theoretical gain on a soon-to-be policy" speculation being as hard as it is (believe me, i follow too many politics), but god Linus needs a persuasion 101 sometimes.

[mynameisjuan]

3 hours ago, dogwitch said:

also peering at tier 2,3 and edge mile are also bw issues to.

i notice  local cdn was taken out due to hurricane.

cdn content had to be re routed .  i notice the lag time for content to load up.

Thankfully IX/IXP are common enough that is pretty much required for at least regional ISPs to be sustainable. IX/IXPs are much cheaper per Gbps which alleviates the cost of Tier 1 or Tier 2 peerings.

 

Because most throughput is via IXs, this allows investing most bandwidth for IX peerings rather than spending a factor of 10 or more for even Tier 2. As a reference, even when exploring quotes from multiple Tier 2s, the monthly cost ranged from ~$1,000/gbps on the very low end to ~$2-4,000/gbps on the high end. This may sound cheap for a provider, but even smaller regional ISP will easily push 100gbps across peerings.

 

This results in strained paths during outages (such as emergencies) where their non-IX peering are severely oversubscribed.

 

This actually relates to this topic as it's a huge contributer to this problem. Streaming services and their rapid growth put quite a bit of strain on available bandwidth and while they had peering cost, it introduced cost to other parties.

 

There has already been discussion amongst regulators at bringing back the previous PSTN "source pays" model. Essentially it means that bodies that source traffic (Netflix, YouTube, etc) should be paying/contributing to the cost, not the receiver (consumer).

 

This argument makes sense because while YouTube is paying for their peering cost, all providers along the path to the consumer are not compensated, yet are forced to pay for additional bandwidth. When you take into account that just Netflix and YouTube alone are over 60% of traffic, this means that a chunk of what you pay for internet monthly, is to sustain their throughput.

 

Because of this ongoing discussion, this may be another factor they're anticipating in addition to my previous comment. If this comes to light, this would introduce a massive cost to companies sourcing high throughput services.

 

Being in the SP space, I agree with some of it because providers are not this magical gold mine people think they are and YouTube getting a "free ride", but there is a lot of that needs to be done to not introduce cost to specific consumers.

 

[lieutent]

5 hours ago, BaidDSB said:

Bullshit. There's no reason for Google to given more profit.

 

Google will NEVER stop Youtube. its a big thing for them. They pull in record profits elsewhere, let them dump the money here.

 

Fuck off, shill

Linus was approaching the situation realistically. The way you're coming at it is extremely unrealistic. Google isn't just going to continue to eat the cost just as Amazon won't keep eating the cost of Twitch. Change WILL happen, one way or another. Subsidizing costs for YouTube with something completely unrelated is a ridiculously dumb business decision, even if they have the cash to do it.