
Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide - gargron
https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/
======
Joeboy
So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to
agree to have their videos monetized.

I'm not clear if they want that because of bogus copyright claims, EU
legislation etc, or just because they favour making money over not making
money?

Edit: Either way looking for alternatives seems like a good idea.

~~~
Applejinx
I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8)

I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this
aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined.

Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take
most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they
pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core
business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become
obvious.

I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish
I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of
that.

Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to
work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.

~~~
cvwright
Eventually this is going to get them in trouble with the Sherman Antitrust
Act.

From Wikipedia:

> "Innocent monopoly", or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly
> legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve that status, or
> nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. The purpose of the Sherman
> Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful
> businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from
> consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect
> consumers from abuses.

It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search
and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space. And now
they're engaging in the type of abuse of customers that the Sherman Antitrust
Act was designed to mitigate.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act)

~~~
comex
> It's pretty clear that Google used their dominant position(s) in web search
> and web advertising to then dominate the user-generated video space.

That's not particularly clear to me. YouTube was already pretty huge when
Google bought them in 2006: according to Wikipedia, the fifth most popular
website, albeit of a far smaller Web. Google, meanwhile, had their own video-
uploading service, Google Video, which launched three months before YouTube
but was not nearly as successful. Sure, there's no doubt that YouTube has
benefitted massively from Google's resources in the decade since, including
their willingness to let it run without a profit. But based on that history,
it seems far from inevitable that Google would be the one to dominate video.

It also doesn't seem like YouTube's growth is all that directly linked to
Google Search's monopoly status, other than in that the latter powered
Google's profits (but there are plenty of sources of money in the world).
Google Search's video results have always shown videos from all websites
rather than being YouTube-specific; who knows what they might have done if
there had been more serious competition, but there wasn't, so they don't have
that particular blood on their hands. You could argue that Google used its
Search leverage to promote Web videos in general, as opposed to some other
form of media, but I don't know what other form would be or why it would be
preferable to video. (Perhaps live video? There might be another universe in
which justin.tv was successful early on, rather than waiting most of a decade
for the unexpected explosion of Twitch. But I think that given the state of
Internet connections at the time, it made more sense for YouTube to happen
first.)

~~~
deftturtle
The internet today vs 12 years ago seems heavily biased towards video content.
Different landscape, where Facebook and Google/YouTube now account for a
majority of all internet traffic. If YouTube manipulates people, they’ll lose
support and maybe risk a lawsuit. I’m not very familiar with the specifics
here, but YouTube is the dominant video platform. If Facebook cleaned up their
design and embraced an open web with public links, they could probably destroy
YouTube.

------
ariwilson
The comments here are more interesting than the article itself. Looks like the
real issue was a UX snafu on YouTube's part that support had trouble resolving
for too long. Let's hope YouTube does better in the future.

However, if you read the comments here, they paint a sinister portrait of
YouTube that has nothing to do with Blender's issue. Some examples:

\- ads are required for big channels (false)

\- demonetization of content creators (unrelated)

\- anti-trust based on search or social networking (unrelated)

\- SketchUp is blocking YouTube videos (false)

We might as well change Hacker News from an article based format to a topic
based format if everyone is just going to bring in their unrelated and false
pet peeves to every discussion.

~~~
sammorrowdrums
Blender were asked to sign a monetization agreement.

[https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-
mit-c...](https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-courses-
blender-videos-and-more-180618/)

    
    
        "Update 2: Blender’s Ton Roosendaal notes that YouTube wants the organization to sign a monetization agreement."

~~~
ariwilson
TFA has updates after this and this update turned out to be misinterpretation.

~~~
kop316
I am not seeing this update you are referring to, it looks like it stops after
Update 2.

~~~
ariwilson
Not your article, the original article:

"Last night the Youtube Support team contacted Francesco Siddi by phone. As we
understand it now it’s a mix of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages,
ignorant support desk staff and our non-standard decision to not monetize a
popular Youtube channel."

~~~
kop316
I see it now (sorry the comment was confusing to me).

To your original comment, Yes, in this case it was a "UX snafu". In the
future, how many of those will actually be fixed? Will YouTube look at other
instances for smaller ones where there won't be a social media backlash? Or
will it be business as usual until YouTube gets enough bas PR again to
manually fix it again and still nothing gets fixed?

The reason that the comments in Hacker News are what they are is because of
much deeper issues between YouTube and content creators. YouTube and Google
have had many customer support issues in the past, it seems that YouTube has
burned a lot of good will with a lot of content creators, and the only way to
truly get to them is via "social media shaming".

------
abnry
I can't believe this has been going on for three days. YouTube seems like it
is actively sabotaging its independent content creator's channels. But in this
case it's not just some random kid living with their parent's. MIT and Blender
are both respectable orgs.

~~~
gooseus
I'm pretty annoyed, I was planning on using a bunch of MITOCW video series to
level up some on some computer science and information theory this summer and
I hadn't even gotten through the first lecture of the first series on my list
(6.001 with Sussman from 1986, classic and awesome) when this stopped me in my
tracks.

I've been waiting patiently hoping it comes back, but at this point I feel
like I'm going to have to use archive.org or download directly from them.

I was slowly warming up to the idea of paying for Red for commercial-less
music and maybe checking out some other paid content, but this has been a
bucket of cold water on that notion.

~~~
cityhomesteader
I know this has been posted before but youtube-dl is a godsend when it comes
to archiving content. Considering how quickly youtube is taking down
educational channels, it's prudent to create a backup just in case.

~~~
DrJaws
which other educational channels have youtube shut down?

------
daveid
Side note: PeerTube is part of the same federated network as Mastodon. You can
follow Blender's PeerTube account from Mastodon by entering
@blender@video.blender.org into the search bar and clicking follow on the
result!

~~~
Neirin
oh no, now I just have even more questions, what is mastodon?

~~~
foxylad
A good replacement for Twitter. Where "good" means:

\- Decentralised. Anyone can run their own instance, but instances are
federated so everyone on any instance can see your toots (Mastodon's tweets).
So if you're paranoid about privacy or hate Nazi bootboys, you can run your
own instance with complete control.

\- A nice progression of feeds from only people you follow; to all toots of
your instance; to toots from all instances.

\- Polite discourse, at least on the mastodon.social instance which I belong
to. Different instances have different rules, so maybe there is one for Nazi
bootboys.

\- Open, so if you don't like the interface, you can make your own. The stock
web interface is fine for me.

\- No ads!

\- Trump isn't on it.

If you enjoyed Twitter more in the past when real people tweeted about real
things, Mastodon is definitely worth checking out.

~~~
kbenson
Don't worry, either your Eternal September is coming, or it will never take
off.

Unfortu steely I think there's no way around that at this point, as I suspect
any growth curve that actually allows a group to keep a culture will never be
growing fast enough for the vastajoriry of people to put up with for long
enough for it to grow sizable enough. :/

~~~
kbenson
Wow, I really butchered that last night while using my phone.

------
djsumdog
I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are
these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into
YouTube's ability to sustain themselves?

They recently demonetized all of the Salad Fingers videos, causing David Firth
to remove all those videos from YouTube and only allowing them to Patreon
subscribers via Vimeo.

I hope this pushes towards more independent, distributed toob sites. YouTube
is simply too big a monolith.

~~~
jgtrosh
I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature.
Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I
believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the
first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.

~~~
samschooler
I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and
watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via
the embeded video player.

~~~
alexbeloi
Where do the creators you follow host their videos?

~~~
hundchenkatze
Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to
[https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager](https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager)
and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS
readers".

~~~
Arnavion
Oh wow, how have I never noticed that.

In fact there are individual channel feeds
([https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>))
and this is a wrapper around that. That's great!

I currently receive email notifications for subscriptions, but I've noticed I
don't always get emails for all the uploads of some of those channels. A
direct RSS feed should solve that problem too.

------
etatoby
From Google's point of view, the Blender Foundation are the bad guys. They
host a very popular channel on their servers, using up a lot of bandwidth,
storage, and resources, they don't pay a cent to the hosting provider, and on
top of that, they actively try to prevent their content from paying up for
itself. I don't see it as shocking that Google is forcing them to enable ads.

What I find surprising is that Google did not see this coming and thus A.
never limited ad-free content to small channels in their ToS, and B. does not
provide a paid hosting option.

~~~
pacificmint
Or doesn't at least C) clearly explain what the policy is. You want to require
ads on channels over x views, make that your policy.

But these guys have priority support, and still go around for months with
youtube without getting any answers, only to then have their whole channel
killed without comment.

Why do so many tech companies have these Kafkaesque exception paths?

~~~
ForHackernews
> Why do so many tech companies have these Kafkaesque exception paths?

Support doesn't scale. Better that a million users have a terrible experience
than one user takes up staff time getting their problem fixed.

~~~
watt
I don't understand if you truly believe that or are trying to be sarcastic
(poorly).

~~~
protonfish
Either way it's a comment that adds nothing constructive to the discussion.

------
vorpalhex
So YouTube created an effective monopoly through social networking, and now is
abusing that position.

Not surprising but disappointing. Hopefully people leave YouTube in droves and
remind them that their position is not static.

First time hearing of PeerTube, but looks good so far.

~~~
ucaetano
> now is abusing that position

Offering to host your videos for free and display ads along them hardly seems
like "abusing that position"...

~~~
vorpalhex
Blocking your videos and holding them hostage until you agree to a new
contract would be abuse, yes.

~~~
ucaetano
Wait, are you suggesting that it should be forced to continue to distribute
your videos for free (to you) even if you don't agree to their terms of
service?

~~~
vorpalhex
No, I'm suggesting that you can't change a contract (ToS) after it's been
accepted without consideration.

Blender already had an account and videos hosted on Youtube. Blender did not
change their videos. YouTube changed their rules - and is holding Blender's
videos hostage until they accept _NEW_ terms.

These aren't terms already part of Blender's contract - which is why Youtube
is literally trying to force Blender to sign a new contract and refuses to
execute their original ToS.

~~~
optimuspaul
It's a bit of a stretch to call it a contract I think. Terms of service may in
fact be a contact, but IANAL, but calling it a contract might imply that there
are things to be gained on both sides. If a contract is no longer providing
value for one of the contractees then it is fair, and should be provisions for
such, to renegotiate or terminate the contract.

I do agree that they are abusing their position, but I don't agree that they
shouldn't be allowed to act the way they are acting. Are they being
unreasonable? Maybe, but it's not my, or your, place to decide that.

~~~
JackCh
> _" Are they being unreasonable? Maybe, but it's not my, or your, place to
> decide that."_

What a ridiculous statement. It's _everybody 's_ right and place to decide for
themselves whether or not they think youtube is being reasonable.

~~~
optimuspaul
Well, it's not my place because I don't put videos on Youtube and rarely if
ever watch them. Sorry, I may have assumed too much. We also don't know all
the details as to why they are doing this. We can only assume it is
unreasonable. We shouldn't assume anything.

------
AsyncAwait
PeerTube is awesome and needs more visibility. Coincidentally, they're having
a fundraiser right now to be able to ship a 1.0, so if you like the idea of a
federated, decentralized YouTube alternative that can also talk to other
ActivityPub software like Mastodon etc. consider donating[1].

1 - [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-
free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-
federated-video-platform)

~~~
ealhad
And you should also consider _contributing_!

It’s Typescript on client and server.

[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

------
lainga
4 days now (since the 15th at least) and nothing out of YT. I realize that the
portion of their viewers interested in MIT OCW or Blender is small, compared
to the portion interested in FNAF and dental surgery on characters from
Frozen... but it's also probably the portion they want to piss off least as an
internet company.

ed: see below comment from OscarCunningham

~~~
gmueckl
This will barely register as a blip for YouTube. They'll survive and be more
profitable afterwards.

~~~
JackCh
The hope for many, perhaps a vain one, is that negatively impacting technical
organizations (open source projects or MIT's ability to host computer science
course videos) will have a disproportionate effect on the developers of
youtube who on average might care about about these sort of organizations more
than others. It could hurt youtube developer morale and/or their ability to
recruit.

~~~
yayana
More basically, I only see their ads because there are non-ad videos that draw
me to the site and give me a reasonable average impression of the combination
of content and ads I see. Remove non-ad videos from YouTube and you would need
to cut ads down by 50% to retain viewers like me.. the lower split of sharing
on all content and/or lower viewer numbers will further dustress people with
ads enabled on their content.. pushing them further into a death spiral of low
profitability, poor content and inadequate incentives for the commercial
content they apparently want.

------
buovjaga
PeerTube fundraiser: [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-
free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-
federated-video-platform)

~~~
rainbowmverse
For those not familiar with this fundraising platform, it appears to be legit.
I asked them about it last month:
[https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131](https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131)

~~~
ealhad
It is indeed, and is quite popular in France for nonprofit or social projects.

------
sumanthvepa
It seems to me that YouTube's business model is ad supported. They need to run
ads to pay for infrastructure to support the service and make profit for
themselves, since they are not charging the user. So a sufficiently large
channel that does not permit ads will eat into their revenues.i.e. it becomes
an expensive free rider. This, I guess, is the reason behind the decision. I
suppose it makes sense. But I don't see why they don't offer a paid option to
entities like Blender who don't want ads?

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Actually YouTube has started a patronage "Sponsorship" system, where users pay
$5 a month to support a channel (and get "perks").

~~~
sumanthvepa
Yes. But this puts the burden on blender's viewers. That may not result in
sufficient revenue. (Generally charging the viewer is not a winning revenue
generation strategy.) The creator may more resources to pay and definitely
more incentive.

------
beiller
Blender is the epic example of free software slowly eventually eating the big
proprietary guys' lunch. Volunteers spending countless hours writing software,
because they were fed up with the very high pricing point of the alternatives
(Maya, 3DS). Now hopefully they can kick off the eating of large internet
incumbents like Youtube, maybe using some decentralized free video sharing
like PeerTube. I love watching blender tutorials. I hope this creates more
competition in this space (online video hosting).

~~~
burnte
Remember that Blender started as proprietary software created by a Dutch
company. The software was close source from its inception until 2002 when the
parent company went bankrupt and the creator started a crowdfunding campaign
to buy and open the source from the holding company's liquidation sale.

~~~
andrewflnr
Yes, and _then_ it was able to start slowly taking over the world. I see the
value of a proprietary cash-fueled kick start, but it wasn't the driving
factor in blender's adoption, and other projects show it's clearly not
necessary in the general case.

~~~
burnte
I'm just pointing out it was originally proprietary and that's where it built
a reputation that made it worth opening and supporting. Software doesn't know
if it's proprietarily licensed or not. Great ideas are only GPL. OSS is great,
but it doesn't mean proprietary software is bad or evil.

------
Endy
Am I the only one who thinks it would be better if Blender uploaded directly
to archive.org or archive.is? As much as it's interesting on a technical
level, the fact that PeerTube is by nature decentralized and self-hosted is
going to reduce Blender's overall visibility (which is what I think
Alphabet/Google wants).

Whether Alphabet is still making any money off SketchUp, or whether one of the
3D companies is paying them something, I think this move was intentionally
targeted on their part. And unfortunately, like most of the things that have
happened ever since Google completely dropped the first word from "Don't Be
Evil", I'm terrified that they're going to win.

~~~
codelord
What is terrifying about this? Why should Google pay for hosting and
distributing your video online forever without making any money? How's that
"evil"?

~~~
bad_user
Because they allowed it until now and it's been years since.

Changing their policies now hurts non-profit organizations like the Blender
Foundation and is in effect a _bait and switch_. Google is using at this point
its monopoly to coerce their partners and users into accepting whatever the
heck they want. Personally I don't understand them. This is clearly about a
very popular channel that is bringing them eyeballs.

I also have no sympathy for their need to monetize — several years back we had
a protest in my country against a gold mining company and the YouTube videos
made by protesters where preceded by ads of the mining company, ads which were
lying and that couldn't be reported for that.

Ads on YouTube are dangerous as they aren't just about products or services,
but about social and political issues too and whomever has the bucks to pay
wins more attention. As an author, having the ability to disable ads for
certain videos is common sense.

\---

Also, Google, I would have registered for YouTube Red to pay cash for an ad
free experience, but you haven't made it available in my country yet and I've
been waiting for a long time.

~~~
Endy
>Also, Google, I would have registered for YouTube Red to pay cash for an ad
free experience, but you haven't made it available in my country yet and I've
been waiting for a long time.

Pay them for no ads? Nope, that's why I have Disconnect, Ghostery, uBlock
Origin, and some userscripts enabled along with a fairly extensive HOSTS file.

~~~
bad_user
Well, people like you are the reason for why we can't have nice things.

~~~
Martus
You make it look like they are starving to death there when in fact it's about
generating MORE revenue every year despite the costs because this is what
Wallstreet expects you to do.

~~~
bad_user
That they aren’t “starving” or the amount of revenue they generate is
irrelevant. What wallstreet expects or not is also irrelevant.

If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons
that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers will
become illegal.

It happened before with DRM, it can always happen again. At which point people
will cry out in support of privacy or security, but it will be too late,
because the truth is the vast majority don’t care about privacy or security.

So yeah, keep sticking it to the man.

~~~
Martus
No it's not irrevant what Wallstreet expects. Please don't be ignorant. This
is not some church or club we're talking about.

> If users refuse to pay for subscriptions and keep blocking ads for reasons
> that have nothing to do with privacy or security, pretty soon as-blockers
> will become illegal.

We Ad-Blocking software users laughed about that already in the 90s. Think
about it. Same goes for DRM. A giant waste of money.

The net grew from then on and it still is while computing power, web design,
etc. got cheaper. So how do you explain it to yourself? Just think about it
for a moment.

There is no other justification then the need to generate MORE revenue. This
is why you get less for more.

The more google rapes here those who make the content for them, the essence of
their existence, the more they threaten this part of their business because
with every step away from centralized businesses like YouTube, they'll lose
revenue or good. It won't come back. Nobody is coming back to Myspace or
Facebook. In the end they just need to not be popular anymore and that doesn't
take much or long those days.

------
ChuckMcM
The next step will be that you won't be indexed by Google's web search engine
if you don't have AdSense for Content ads. Why? Because the steam is going out
of Google's ad business[1], and Google has no other business. They have added
just about all of the advertising on their own pages they can get away with
and they started by squeezing channels with fewer than 4k views a month, and
now their squeezing channels that choose not to show ads.

Thinks about what this means in the big picture, Google _cannot get enough
people showing ads on their videos_ to support people who choose not to show
ads. What percentage of Youtube videos don't show ads? 5% ? 10%?

Don't hate me for it, but my prediction is that the next lifeline Google will
reach for will be charging money for turn by turn directions in maps. They
really need to find some way other than search ads to make money.

[1] This is hyperbole, I don't think they will deindex sites but I can see it
affecting the page rank.

~~~
laser
Is the charging for turn by turn directions also hyperbole? Because I don’t
see how that could happen. For one, taking something free and then charging
for it generally doesn’t really work. More importantly, though, the free
competitors are too sophisticated, so the vast majority would just switch to
them.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not hyperbole. I really do think Google will start charging for that at some
point in the next 5 years.

~~~
xuki
Good luck with that when Apple offer the same thing for free on iOS.

~~~
JetSpiegel
And FLOSS on OsmAnd

~~~
JackCh
I've found that OsmAnd's directions are high quality, but it's UX needs some
more TLC. It's something I can use because I found poking around at it somehow
enjoyable, but it's not something I can yet recommend to people who aren't
peculiar in that sense.

~~~
JetSpiegel
I'm not saying they are perfect, but I installed it on my parents' phone and
the learning curve is not that steep. They are perfectly usable by mere
muggles.

OsmAnd is being developed at a steady pace, and the UX is being improved.

------
otakucode
It makes sense that YouTube would do this. I've been expecting YouTube to go
after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full
teeth and claws for awhile now, and still expect it is coming. Channels not
running ads reduced YouTube to a free video hosting service and cuts them out
of the revenue loop completely. Their main goal, as I see it, is to transition
into a centralized and much more controlled content platform run much more
like a traditional TV network used to be. This will enable them to achieve
Eric Schmidt's stated goal of taking the reins of human culture to protect the
poor from themselves (which he states, though not in those words, in his book
'The New Digital Age'). They also think it makes them more attractive to
advertisers (although there is abundant proof now that no 'adpocalypse' ever
occurred and YouTube has only grown as an advertising platform... they see
this as 'in spite of' niche content being present, not 'because of').

So if there are large channels that have milquetoast content that is non-
controversial (for now, it won't take long before all educational content
beyond elementary school level is de facto controversial) but aren't
monetized, that really leaves YouTube out in the cold. Paying the hosting
costs AND they don't have any increased leverage to regulate those channels
contents? Worst case scenario as far as they're concerned... but they also
don't want that content hopping to a different platform. Google didn't run
YouTube at a staggering loss for a decade for nothing, they did it to suppress
competition in the video space and guarantee no one could afford to compete
with them unless they also had a search engine advertising business that could
prop up the titanic losses.

~~~
sly010
> I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily
> supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now...

An alternative solution would be for youtube to compete with patreon, allow
sponsorship directly and take a cut. They have in fact been testing this on
select channels. On some big channels you see a "sponsor" button next to the
"subscribe" button.

~~~
da_chicken
Yeah, but much like with live streaming, that ship has already left port.
Twitch.tv (aka, Amazon) has like 80% of the market. YouTube's streaming has
only recently been good enough to use.

Patreon's also got inertia for crowd funding and donations. Twitch has had
paid subscriptions for a fairly long time and you _still_ see Twitch streamers
talking about their Patreon. Twitch only recently added multi tier support,
but their bits for donations has essentially killed PayPal (largely since
PayPal's service isn't very good).

There are people throwing cash at the screen, and YouTube is taking the slow
road and they're going to end up as far behind as IBM was in the 90s.

------
RIMR
I never thought I would see the day that Google removed Big Buck Bunny, the
definitive copyleft short film, on copyright infringment grounds, against the
actual creators, and there would actually be some argument over whether or not
this was proper....

------
Analemma_
Wait, am I reading this right? If you're a particularly popular channel,
you're _required_ to monetize and YT will block you if you don't?

That's ridiculous, and it's totally shooting yourself in the foot. The vast
majority of creators with many views _do_ want to monetize, YouTube is losing
almost nothing by allowing people not to if they choose. They must be really
be desparate for revenue over there.

~~~
falcolas
If its not monetized, then YouTube has no way to make money off the views; no
way to recoup the costs associated with hosting those videos. History,
morality, and good will aside, its in their financial best interest to not
allow videos which are not monetized.

~~~
atrus
Sure, but YouTube gives the option to not monetize your videos. You can't give
your users and option and then be upset when some users pick that option.

If people picking that option is causing problems for your business, you take
that option away.

~~~
jkchu
But isn't that what YouTube was essentially trying to do here?

------
rdschouw
Since I’m a paying YouTube Red customer, I filed a complaint.

I think if enough people write in, they’ll change their mind.

~~~
chrisjc
Is this something you do via the YouTubeRed app or did you literally write a
complaint and emailed it in? I would like to do the same.

~~~
puzzle
I sent feedback from the YouTube app while on a blocked video. It gives you
the options to contact them via chat, phone or email (the last one is composed
all within the app, not in your email client).

------
iamleppert
One reason why I will never, ever work at Google. They are a reprehensible
company on so many levels.

------
otterpro
Why not switch to Vimeo, a well-established and stable video hosting platform?
There's no advertising and no shenanigans of ads being forced on your video.
The hosting is not free, but at least you have control over your videos and
privacy issues.

Peertube, d.tube, and other federated/decentralized streaming service are
really not that reliable, at least from my experience.

~~~
plopz
Vimeo only accepts content that it deems "artistic". Way back in 2008, a site
called stage6 shut down, at the time it was the only streaming site that
allowed 1080p videos and was the go to site for video game content creators to
upload videos. After it shut down many of those users tried out vimeo since
they were allowing 720p videos compared to youtube's 480p. Vimeo then deleted
the videos and disallowed the content. For a period, things went back to
direct downloads instead of streaming, but youtube increased quality and the
content shifted over with it.

Edit: Apparently vimeo reversed its position in 2014.
[https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-
rules](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules)

~~~
tomjakubowski
Huh? The company I work for hosts all of its marketing videos on Vimeo. Are
you sure about this?

~~~
plopz
I just looked it up, apparently they reversed their position in 2014.

[https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-
rules](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules)

------
pleasecalllater
And the next thing would be... let's think... block all gmail accounts for
people who use adblock?

~~~
ntoeu98nt34
Actually, that's an interesting thought. I have a Gmail account I don't use
much, but I almost never access it from the web. I only use it with a mail
client. I never see any of the ads they would show if I accessed it through
the web. I do wonder now if they'll cut it off. I've been trying to move away
from using them at all anyway, so no loss if they do, but certainly an
interesting idea.

~~~
rubatuga
Your emails are too valuable for them already...

------
deltron3030
If you're interested in Blender, but come from a ${'insert your favorite
creative tool'} background, and want less cognitive load (adaption to quirks
that only exist within Blender), check out Bforartists! It's a fork of Blender
with better, more familiar UX and behavior.

[https://www.bforartists.de/](https://www.bforartists.de/)

~~~
ePierre
I didn't know this!

The Blender team is working on Blender 2.8 which will bring __a lot __of new
features, including a lot of UI changes.

There was an article about some of these changes a while ago on their blog
[1], and more recently a video showing a lot of these UI changes... available
on the Blender Developers Youtube channel (how ironic!) [2].

[1] [https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-
widg...](https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widgets/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s)

------
scottmcdot
Correct me if I am wrong, but if content creators take their content off
YouTube and use PeerTube, does this mean that there will be separate instances
of PeerTube (e.g., video.blender.org) for each channel/creator? Another
example could be if ol' Pewds decided to also do this - would his content be
hosted on something like video.pewdiepie.org?

~~~
andypants
Each instance of peertube is like youtube. There can be many users and users
can have many channels. You can choose which instance you want to upload to,
since different instances will have different storage limits, user limits,
content policies, content focus, moderation, site layout, etc. Or you can run
your own instance if you want full control over your content and the site as a
whole.

Different instances of peertube can follow each other (doesn't have to be
mutual - think twitter follow) and essentially share content to improve
discoverability (think twitter timeline showing content from all the instances
you follow).

~~~
scottmcdot
I see, thanks for the clarification.

When it came to searching for all content across all instances (in a way like
how we can search all content on YouTube) is this something that would be
possible?

~~~
executesorder66
According to [0]:

> The administrators of a PeerTube instance can follow each other. When your
> PeerTube instance follows another PeerTube instance, you receive the videos
> preview informations from this instance. This way, you can display the
> videos available on your instance and on the instances you decided to
> follow. So you keep control of the videos displayed on your PeerTube
> instance!

[0] [https://joinpeertube.org/en/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/)

------
rurounijones
So I had a look at Peertube and had the friendly reminder

"The sharing system used by this video implies that some technical information
about your system (such as a public IP address) can be accessed publicly."

Which is then expanded on in an about page:

"PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It
implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker
of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video. If you
want to keep your public IP address private, please use a VPN or Tor. "

Seems like a large privacy leak that can be exploited by anyone who signs up
to the tracker.

Requiring a VPN or Tor just for privacy from other users seems like an
excessive requirement.

~~~
lev99
Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address? Every server I
connect to knows my IP address.

Connecting to bittorrent would give you the following information:

* Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address).

* ISP name

* Rough location (mine says I'm in a suburb about 20 miles away, when I'm actually in the city)

* Which files you have and are willing to share.

* Which files you are requesting.

There is no PII, and the only thing interesting would be to do location
analysis or to try to cluster the files based on taste (people that watch
movie A are likely to also watch movie B)

~~~
rurounijones
> Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address?

Yes, I like my privacy.

> Every server I connect to knows my IP address.

And in this case it is every server _plus_ every peer which is a much larger
number of people having this information.

> * Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP
> addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the
> same ip address).

Not always. IP addresses can be correlated with other data sources. IP
Addresses changing depends on the ISP. People using multiple IP addresses
isn't always the case. Multiple people using the same IP address is not always
the case.

> There is no PII

IP addresses can be PII depending on who you talk to. e.g.
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-
stati...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/eu-dynamic-static-ip-
personal-data/)

This is just another chink in the armour of online privacy no matter how noble
the intentions.

~~~
lev99
> People using multiple IP addresses isn't always the case. Multiple people
> using the same IP address is not always the case.

I think sharing ip addresses, and using multiple ones, is probably the most
common case in The United States.

Most households have multiple internet users and one ip addresses. Most people
have a cellphone connected to the internet. A lot of people access the
internet in locations like offices, school, and libraries.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Blender is running their PeerTube test from a _European_ datacenter. I wonder
what will happen to the legality of hosting a PeerTube site with public
uploads if EU's upload filter law gets passed. Also I wonder how the GDPR will
affect them (and anyone else hosting PeerTube in Europe or with EU
users)...won't they need to get explicit consent from everyone for getting
things like user IP address (so they can protect against spam and DDoS
attacks) and won't they have a tough time ensuring everyone who uploads could
delete their videos?

------
kraftman
Why has YouTube blocked their videos worldwide?

~~~
OscarCunningham
Looks like it's connected to the fact that they had the "Allow advertisements
to be displayed alongside my videos" setting turned off.
[https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-
blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-
videos-worldwide/)

~~~
mcguire
Interesting. From the linked contract between Google and Blender:

" _4\. ADVERTISING_

" _4.1 Delivery, Ad Revenues, Payments, Reports._

" _Google will have the right, but not the obligation, to serve advertising in
any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads
on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with
the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content. Provider
will receive 55% of Ad Revenues recognised by Google . If one or more Google
content providers claim a portion of Monetized Content for monetization
through the Content ID system, Provider will receive a pro rata share of the
Ad Revenues that would otherwise be due, with such pro rata share to be
determined by Google in its reasonable discretion . Recognized revenues do not
include items listed in clause 4.3 or taxes. Payments to Provider for Ad
Revenues will be sent by Google within approximately sixty (60) days after the
end of any calendar month, provided that Provider’s earned balance is $100 or
more in the aggregate. When Provider’s monthly earned balance is less than
$100, there will be no payment and the balance will accumulate until it
exceeds $100, at which time it will be paid to Provider in accordance with the
preceding sentence. Any payments to Provider will be made in the manner that
Google pays its partners. Google reserves the right to retain all other
revenues derived from Google Services, including without limitation any
revenues from ads that may appear on any search results pages. Within thirty
(30) days of the end of each month, Google will provide Provider with usage
reports in the form generally made available to partners at that time . Google
may create an account for Provider to access information about payments owed
to Provider. To ensure proper payment, Provider is responsible for providing
and maintaining accurate contact and payment information associated with its
account._ "

The interesting statement is the first sentence: "Google will have the right
[...] to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not
limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube
Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content
and Monetized Content."

"Monitized Content", judging by other parts of the license, appears to be
those videos that have "allow ads" checkbox; "Provider Content" are those
without that check.

~~~
Arzh
Yeah, I could see them demanding adding ads to the videos / pages. YouTube is
a business and expecting them to host and stream videos worldwide for free is
unrealistic. This seems like they would have the right to run ads anyway so
I'm not sure why they would need to force them to select that option. (I can
also see blenders desire to not have ads but I don't think youtube is at fault
for not wanting to actively wanting to lose money on their videos. If that is
really the problem it might be interesting to have youtube open a paid option
for the cretors to pay for the service and not have any ads / user tracking
stuff.)

------
nkoren
Okay, the Youtube/political angle of this is pretty horrendous and is
deserving of discussion. But they pose a question about Peertube: how well
does it hold?

In my limited testing from central San Francisco: it doesn't. Which makes me
sad. Anybody have any insight into the pros/cons/ultimate
performance/scalability limits for Peertube? Is the flakiness a function of
immature technology or inviable technology?

~~~
gravypod
For video serving encoding technology is good enough that we don't actually
have to shovel that much data over the network. Latency is the biggest issue
from what I understand.

Most of the amazing work google has done to make youtube fast is the magic
behind google's omni-presence established world wide. Like they say in the
post they have one datacenter in the EU serving this content. If they used AWS
and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS region available the
performance would be much better.

I was able to play the video but it lagged a bit to get started until I was
able to find peers near me. This is likely a latency thing to the remote host
in the EU.

PeerTube should scale much more easily than a conventional site because
viewers, I assume, are peers of the content. More people looking at something
means more people serving that content. The biggest con is that if you're
viewing the video you're shoveling data to other viewers which, previously,
you've likely not done.

I hope more people try things like this tech.

~~~
hex12648430
>If they used AWS and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS
region available the performance would be much better.

This actually could be done by anyone since PeerTube uses WebTorrent. Good
samaritans could run a webtorrent-hybrid or WebTorrent Desktop instance and
help serve those videos from their home connection or personal server(s).

~~~
BTeam
> help serve those videos from their home connection

While it's what we usually do when we uses BitTorrent and similar protocols,
this is ignoring network topology, and somewhat inefficient. Of course,
theoretically not the global bandwidth, but the pipes congestion.

Home connections are not connected to the internet, but to a service provider
connected to the internet. Home are behind distribution trees connected to the
internet graph.

Nothing forces ISPs to optimize routing flow inside their AS to distribute
content. Could be at their root tree. How can we expect people with capped
upload speed and high latency to IX servers, while some global CDNs are
already closer to homes on ISPs regional level PoP?

And besides, traffic shaping, throttling, protocol blocking on private ISP
infrastructure is now unregulated in some parts of the world. Massive outbound
traffic could unbalance their (massively inbound) peering contracts, this is a
threat.

The principles of free, open and decentralized internet do not necessarily
apply to users of ISP infrastructure.

------
atotic
All Blender needs to do is to publish a few videos that offend everyone, and
get demonetized. Problem solved!

------
0xcde4c3db
Does PeerTube provide a way to have any server other than the originating
instance act as a tracker/seed? The readme diagrams make it seem like the
long-term video hosting is still effectively centralized, with only metadata
being federated.

~~~
tcit
It is planned.

------
liveoneggs
just host your code on github, tutorials on youtube, chats on slack, forums on
reddit...

------
ohiovr
YouPHPtube could be a nice option for the Blender Foundation if they don't
mind paying for their bandwidth usage. It is pretty easy to install (the hard
way). I'm going to make a docker container for it and the encoder sometime.
One advantage is that it can use amazon s3 storage and there are instructions
for setting up live streaming. AFAIK, peer tube doesn't have a live stream
capability (though I realize that the blender foundation may never use such a
feature).

~~~
isostatic
I was interested. Then I looked at github

> This Software must be used for Good, never Evil. It is expressly forbidden
> to use YouPHPTube to build porn sites, violence, racism or anything else
> that affects human integrity or denigrates the image of anyone.

Sigh.

------
dosshell
Wait, is it really solved now? I get the following error for many videos:

> This video contains content from BlenderFoundation. It is not available in
> your country.

For example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w)
and all other videos in "Blender Fundamentals" playlist.

I'm located in Sweden.

~~~
rainbowmverse
Same in the US.

------
EastSmith
I would love to buy a preinstalled peertube instance on a Raspberry Pi and
plug it in somewhere around the house.

~~~
mmozeiko
From
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/...](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md)

> Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low
> bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because
> it could slow down the fediverse.

~~~
dudeofx
I am looking for a technical explanation.

Would this be because of fear of establishing a precedence where if a lot of
people did that you'd have a situation of a lot of leechers but few seeders.

If thats the case, its the same situation where you have a lot of users
watching videos on a server. The server can limit membership to protect itself
I suppose but a personal instance would be better then a user that just
watches but does not contribute.

I suppose somebody could make a RPI client that becomes a member to one or
more instances and just downloads. Just let the servers protect themselves by
limiting use here and there.

------
larkeith
Direct link to blog post: [https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-
blocks-blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-
blender-videos-worldwide/)

------
zelon88
I've been meaning to cancel for a while. Just got around to it and it felt
amazing.

------
yboris
Blender videos are back:
[https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505](https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505)
Read about the chain of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant
support desks and being non-standard here: [https://www.blender.org/media-
exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-
exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/)

------
arenaninja
I've noticed a trend on reddit to link outside of YT for short clips. I hope
the pace picks up, I get the impression that YT is actively hostile to a lot
of content

------
lifeisstillgood
One of the huge problems with YouTube etc is the centralised nature means
normal methods of telling good from bad are limited.

Recently the Peppa Pig shock videos thread started up again. As a parent it
does worry me - but if we had to visit "grot-peppa-porn-1234.com" before
viewing the video instead of choosing "bbc.com" I think managing the problem
would be easier.

So, peertube is nice. Perhaps it's not the right solution still?

------
squarefoot
Excellent performance on all videos but one (Elephants Dream). That video
hangs forever strangely reporting a total length of 10:50:04 in the lower left
corner, that is, over 10 hours which is of course incorrect. Maybe a problem
during upload? All other videos start immediately even in full HD; so far I've
watched a couple in their entirety with no glitches at all.

------
testcross
Reminder that PeerTube is doing a crowdfunding to develop the project further.
Available at [https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-
free...](https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-
federated-video-platform/)

------
Rapzid
The most shocking thing to me is that YouTube didnt't have the presience to
handle Blender with better care..

------
microcolonel
You know, the value proposition of YouTube Red/Premium (extra features in the
Android app, no ads on any device) is just starting to blossom as YouTube
alienates a major portion of their most productive creators, in an apparent
bid to build yet another TV channel nobody wants to watch or pay for.

------
davidparks21
Does this have anything to do with Google removing their "Don't be evil"
trademark? Maybe huh?

------
lerax
Wow this really cool! Never saw PeerTube before. It's UI is far away better
than Youtube!

------
greydata
[https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-
ref...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-refuse/)

------
jameslk
PeerTube is using WebTorrent for videos. This means user's IPs are exposed to
other users. Wouldn't it be possible to abuse this to track others by
associating IPs with types of videos/content viewed?

------
DpdC
YOUTUBE STOP PAYING MILLIONS OF CREATORS WITH SMALL INCOME BY THE FACE, BY THE
FACE. WITH YOUR CHANGES NOW ADD METHODS OF PAYMENT, AND NOW YOU WANT TO REDUCE
CHARGES.

Well if that is not to take advantage of the user. What is it?

------
akerro
They should publish everything on IPFS too, maybe even peertube should support
IPFS.

------
teilo
Great. Just when my daughter has installed Blender to learn 3D modelling.

~~~
soulkito
As someone who recently started learning Blender I recommend the YouTube
channel Blender Guru. They guy makes great tutorials for both beginners and
more advanced users.

~~~
tvanantwerp
I will second Blender Guru as an excellent resource! (Might want to increase
the playback speed though--his videos take a while...)

------
nunez
I can't wait for a real competitor to YouTube to pop up.

------
consultSKI
Cool.

------
DoctorOetker
Influencers MUST CO-OPERATE!

------
dang
Url changed from
[https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368](https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368),
which points to this.

------
dingo_bat
They should just seed a nice torrent for all their videos.

------
app4soft

      :-/
    

This PeerTube-based Blender's webpage NOT working in _Links2_ [0] (or any
other browser without JavaScript) and _Pale Moon_ [1,2].

[0]
[https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368)

[2]
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675)

~~~
duskwuff
Uhh... it's a streaming _video_ site. It's not going to be viewable in a
terminal-based browser, regardless of whether it uses JS or not.

