video
last updated 1 day ago
why is youtube the de facto home of video on the internet? obviously because who else but google could sink so much money into hosting, streaming, and storing so much data? apparently "on average, there are over 20 million videos uploaded daily to YouTube", which even as a person who knew it would be a lot is wild to me. on sinking money into the problem, they've been doing the same with maps, aka making the cost and low, low likelihood of profitable sucess for competitors impossible to surmount. who wants to get into a showdown with google?!
so you'd imagine my surprise when i hear that youtube actually fell over for a few hours for the first time in my memory since i've been extensively using it. i was very asleep at the time but my friend james was awake, and we spoke about the incident the next morning. they mentioned their feelings of dread at the incident, and at the time i wasn't sure what they meant, but it is fucking spooky that The Place For Video can both exist and fall over in the year 2025. why is so much power concentrated in the hands of so few?
there are people making attempts at different solutions:
- vimeo, which isn't really social and so is not the most interesting to me
- peertube, which i have toyed with posting on but has no internal monetisation for obvious reasons AND the pesky issue of having to self host or inflict your traffic upon your host. not that i'm doing numbers any time soon video-wise, but i wouldn't want the pressure of the power on my head if it ever happened, you know?
- critical commons also looks really cool but fulfils an academic rather than purely social need.
i have no idea if massive multiplayer video platforms are even possible given the current configuration of the world without pouring money into its gaping maw, though i realise as typing i assumed that google doesn't make a profit off YouTube, given the collective, financially-related gnashing of teeth developers do whenever people talk about building their own versions. but who knows? in 2020 they released numbers for the first time and YouTube's revenue is 15 billion dollars apparently. based on pure vibes i can believe that all goes back on developer wages, influencer tips and infrastructure, but if you quote me you're quoting a feeling! i need some ex-google SREs to do some napkin maths for me but i assume they'd get in trouble.
do you post much video online? do you care if you host it on youtube or tiktok or whatever? let me know!
this piece is part of my attempt at alphabet superset, a “6-month” creative challenge (i passed a year in september 2024 — with a long break! — and the creator of the challenge finished on 11th August 2025). other posts so far: abolition, bump, boost, culture, discussion, english, formulaic, gone, home, immortality, jargon, knowledge, leaving, monotony, no, permanent, questions, relationships, sensual, technopaganism and upload.
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