Why doesn't youtube shut down their public web api? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 month ago by kionite231@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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so we already know that youtube doesn't like people freeloading their bandwidth using something like invidious, piped, newpipe etc. why don't they just close the public web api and require a login or something. by requiring login they can keep track of what users are watching and if a user is watching thousands of videos daily they can rate limit that user.

are they afraid of losing their user if they do so? I personally don't think it can affect their business or profit. It will cut down their cost of bandwidth and computation costs. so why don't just cut off users that don't bring any revenue??

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[-] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 26 points 1 month ago

That’s probably true for now. Killing the API would be too much of a shock to millions of people, which would obviously hurt business.

However, making small changes every year is more acceptable. Remember how ads were initially rolled out vs. what they are today? At first, it was just an ad banner below the video, and I was willing to quit YT then and there. Well, turns out ad blockers handled that, so I stuck around. However, a shocking number of people still don’t use an ad blocker, such as Ublock Origin on Firefox, and they seem to just tolerate the ads. These changes happen so gradually, that people get used to them.

My guess is that YT will keep on making the service worse every year, and eventually it will be the time to kill the API. At that point, everything else will probably be so bad, that nobody will even notice the API any more.

[-] invertedspear@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

You were ready to leave over a banner ad? What should YouTube do to recoup the cost of running the service? Not even make a profit, just the cost of existing at the scale it exists is expensive. Unobtrusive banner ads seemed like the right “price” for the service. Having ads tell me I’m fat and need whatever they’re hucking or scare monger me to vote a certain way are too much, but banners seemed fair.

[-] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 3 points 1 month ago

I had a very different mindset at the time. Nowadays, I can totally understand the need for subscriptions/ads, but back then I just wanted to get everything for free. LOL. Nowadays though, I care a lot more about privacy so the blocker stays on.

I’m also paying for services that are worth it, but I’m just not convinced that YT is proving enough value to me. Besides, I’m also shifting towards other video platforms, so I’m less of a burden to YT than I used to.

this post was submitted on 29 May 2024

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