this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
483 points (98.6% liked)

Firefox

17405 readers
128 users here now

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rip_art_bell@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I wonder how that would work. My understanding is running a video site is extremely expensive. Transcoding compute, massive amount of storage, etc. Sure, a few small ones could exist, but enough to replace even a fraction of YouTube's userbase? I just don't see how the math works out. I mean, text-based Lemmy and Kbin had slowdowns/outages for months with just tens of thousand of users...

And that's to say nothing of the copyright hurdles. Imagine people who don't own the original videos start replicating content from YouTube -> fediverse-style video sites. The lawsuits would crush the new platforms to dust.

Believe me, I'd love to see competition. YouTube has had too much power for too long. It sucks how they treat their content creators, and even their users to some degree. But just like how no one up and starts a new electric power company, there's a reason big players are entrenched: MASSIVE startup costs.