
YouTube (Un)Blocks Blender Videos - ycnews
https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/?updated
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vortico
This would be completely avoided if the service they used had good support.
This is most important considering when choosing a service: Can non-standard
issues be fixed quickly? Can I build a professional relationship with the
company so I can ask them things that don't fit a typical "customer support"
pipeline? Vimeo has great support and appear to be run by humans with
emotions. Youtube basically doesn't have support. It is entirely machine-run
like Apple, some national banks, your cable service, etc.

A litmus test for determining whether a company has sufficient "support" is to
check whether the following conversation is possible:

"I really appreciate your service X!"

"Thanks, means a lot. We're glad you like it!"

If the response is "We'll pass that onto the team!" it's okay, but not great.
If the response has the jist "This message is miscategorized", you're in
trouble. If there's simply no channel to send that message, you're screwed.

~~~
IBM
There's nothing about Apple, banks or cable companies that are entirely
"machine run". In fact they're the exact opposite of Google in that they
invest significantly in customer support.

~~~
bad_user
That Google doesn't provide support is a myth.

They provide one of the best support I've seen for G Suite. You can get
somebody on the phone no matter the timezone and the issues I've had with G
Suite thus far have all been fixed.

And Blender did mention that they had access to higher level support actually,
due to their channel being popular. Support people however are often powerless
and what happened to Blender seems to be human error.

People speak of Microsoft's support being good for example. Remember the Skype
transition to Microsoft accounts? I lost half my address book in that
transition, contacted their support and they kept insisting that it isn't true
and that I might be having a second Skype account. After several attempts with
different people, I couldn't get them to transfer me to somebody technical
that can recognize this is a bug. I gave up eventually and lost Skype IDs of
people I've know for a long time.

Microsoft's support is shit, it's as if it doesn't exist in some situations
actually and yet people don't mention Microsoft as having poor support. Is
that because you can get a dummy to read textbook replies back at you? I'll
never know.

~~~
robin_reala
_Support people however are often powerless_

I don’t think it’s possible to label someone as support if they’re powerless.

~~~
bad_user
If the service / product has limitations that need to be fixed (aka bugs),
then support is powerless because it depends on the policies, the timeline,
the priorities of the development team.

To give an example, also with G Suite, once upon a time when it was called
Google Apps, I asked them to switch my primary domain to another domain — they
couldn't because the feature wasn't implemented and they refused to manually
change it, but they subscribed me to an early adopters program and several
months later I got the feature available.

~~~
heavenlyblue
I am not sure I care about the hierarchy of the company I am working with. If
I do have an issue that can not be resolved with a standard “look up in the
issue database” method - I need to be switched to someone with the necessary
skills to fix that for me.

That is mostly not the case with Google as it usually ends up in a situation
where I am meeting a group of their lawyers instead.

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taneq
Welcome to round N of "Google company only fixes farcical behaviour after it
garners huge publicity and/or someone knows a well positioned staff member."

~~~
superflyguy
That's true of all companies and has been for years.

~~~
e40
Seems to me that Google started this trend.

~~~
superflyguy
No. I remember uk TV shows in the 1980s which featured people going through
the official channels to get a problem resolved and it magically only happened
when the guy from the company concerned was invited onto the show to explain
what was going on.

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partiallypro
I don't know why Microsoft or Amazon don't try to launch a YouTube competitor.
Vimeo probably has the most reach for an acquisition, but those are more
artsy/professional focused. I suppose Facebook is YouTube's largest
competitor, but it's such a closed system that it's impossible to use in any
manner that isn't strictly personal.

~~~
vxNsr
Because even today youtube barely breaks even and its backed by the biggest ad
network in the world.

~~~
flamedoge
could've said [first part] for every social networking, video/image sharing
startup, yet... they still exist.

~~~
hobofan
Yes, because most of them still get regular cash injections from investors, or
they charge for it.

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est
I think the whole youtube drama can be summarized into one sentence:

Someone at Google are trying hard to turn youtube into Google Video.

~~~
djsumdog
No, I think it has to do more with money. I wonder if YouTube is still losing
money, and might not even be profitable. It's hard to believe with all the
revenue they post and the ads, but they do serve a lot of videos.

Alphabet can't drastically change YouTube, as its brand is so closely tied to
Google in the minds of a lot of people. (I'm still surprised how many people
don't realize YouTube is owned by Google/Alphabet).

~~~
pests
Wait you say its brand is so closely tied to Google but yet don't realize
YouTube is owned by Google?

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Endy
I still stand by my earlier suggestion - break away from Alphabet; release
videos directly through archive.org & Wikimedia.

~~~
rmc
There's PeerTube software, which is self hosting, and people's browsers use
in-browser bittorrent to share video amoung people who are watching the video.

Blender have set one up:
[https://video.blender.org/](https://video.blender.org/)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
How well does that work when a video isn't very popular though? The value of a
thing like youtube is that anybody can put a video on there and it will be
available for anybody else to play, instantly, for the foreseeable future.

~~~
raziel2p
I imagine the non-popular videos are sent directly from central servers. By
offloading the most popular spikes to P2P maybe they're able to reduce costs
enough to make it worth it.

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dreamache
As a YT creator with 200k+ subscribers, shit like this scares me. Fortunately,
I do not put all my eggs in one basket, and YouTube is just one of 4 ways I
monetize my business.

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orastor
Too late?

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dang
Earlier:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560).

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tandav
btw MIT-OCW is also unblocked

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simula67
It does not seem like Google is in the wrong here. Unless Blender is willing
to pay hosting charges, Google has no obligation to host these videos for free

~~~
djsumdog
We hear "it's their platform, they can do what they want," a whole lot. The
trouble is the platform is almost a monopoly on user created video. You can't
launch on other platforms and hope to be as successful as being on YouTube.
Their discovery mechanism and massive user base gives them an incredibly
unique positions.

YouTube is from an earlier era, yet still after the dotcom bust. It was still
on the rebound of the era of everything is free, we'll just make money on ads
(like NetZero and Juno).

That model was and still isn't sustainable, and their dominance gives them
pretty unique control over media. Same with Facebook.

~~~
geergar
> The trouble is the platform is almost a monopoly on user created video.

I agree entirely. So the solution is to break up the monopoly. We can start by
breaking up google:

[https://apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphics/2018/06/break-...](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphics/2018/06/break-
google/)

We also need to promote interchangeability and open standards. Not sure how to
do this - wonder if legislation is required.

