Update 21/09/2024: #4734 (comment) EDIT by @unixfox: The Invidious team is aware of this issue. It appears that it affects all the software using YouTube. Please refrain from commenting if you have...
EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says
Hello,
Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.
Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won't work anymore.
This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.
I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don't abuse them since the number is really low.
Feel free to discuss this politely on Matrix or IRC.
About half the ads I see on YouTube are already within the videos they post. I wonder what the overall ratio is of YouTube ad revenue versus in-video ad revenue.
I guess I forgot things like Patreon which could be a valid option. Although I’m neither a fan of subscribing to specific creators nor am I particularly fond of Patreon.
With Nebula my perception is that I pay a monthly fee and they can figure out who gets what depending on whose videos I watched. I don’t need to be particular in my action on who to support.
Nebula is a good option, but now you've created a paywall. Now only people who can afford it, can watch the content and what is to keep Nebula from upping the price of the subscription?
If ads is out of the question, then content creators need to use sponsors and patrons, if they want to make a living.
People want a fantasy world where all the main content is free and two or three rich sponsors support the creator by sponsoring little extras only available to Patreon supporters. The ends will never meet in the middle on that. It’s a fantasy where people get what they want for free because someone else pays for it. Won’t work. Get out your cash, kids. Cancel your Netflix and put the money into Nebula.
Don't shift the blame on "people wants" as if they're owed by the people. Most people dont even ask for whatever content that is pushed out. And what's more content creator is just a glorified term for online digital panhandlers. And they frame it as if viewers are meant to owe them something all while contributing as little to their efforts that amounts to no significance as possible. Imagine paying someone to make a facial reaction and talking for a bit everytime you passed a panhandler and they call themselves a content creator. It's bogus way to frame or even justify that especially considering they get payed far larger sums comparison to people who actully work for a living while dodging the taxes. And is unlikely any such platform as youtube as well as its big panhandlers are struggling with finances. Youtube gets $15 billion dollars a year in ad revenue and hey greedily continue the push for more ads. And the digital panhandlers calling themselves content creators can make more money in a week than the typical wage slave can in a year.
YouTube's top 3% of channels now attract 90% of total views, up from 67% in 2006. Even among those elite channels, average annual ad revenue is only $16,800 - less than a third of U.S. median household income. For the remaining 97% of YouTubers, reaching even that modest income level is nearly impossible given the platform's increasingly skewed viewership distribution.
An advantage of funding things via a collective like Nebula as opposed to each individual creator managing their own patrons is that new creators can start making bigger, more expensive projects quicker. Even established creators have this advantage, they can take bigger risks on bigger projects with the safety net of a share of the nebula pie.
I don't think a project like The Prince would exist without Nebula, for example.
Thanks for the link, it was a very interesting read. While it is disappointing that it's not actually a collective (assuming this blog post is accurate), having a platform run and owned by 6 creators is still better than YouTube's governance structure, and still has the advantage in having both the capacity and desire to invest in creators.
Nebula is also priced for the masses. You get an entire video service for one reasonable price. Patreon finally has really low priced options like $1 a month but for the longest time it was like $25/month just for the entry level supporter package and I could never justify blowing all that on one creator. I also hated digging around the Patreon app for the sponsor content and dealing with its stupid push notifications.
I find Nebula is a much more sustainable thing. And I still discover new creators there. Because after all I’m not going to be set for life with one or two YT creators. I want to find new things too. Nebula gives you that.
Yes if a creator’s main living can be shifted into Patreon or their own independent subscription service, THEN you will see them move off of YT because it actually works against them at that point. Mark Spagnuolo aka The Wood Whisperer has made this transition. He’s been around years (decades?) with awesome quality woodworking content. He’s found independent sponsorships. He’s created his own subscription service and takes direct payments but also uses platforms like Patreon. He plays the social media game very well. He travels to trade shows and keeps up with a podcast. He is the gold standard for what it takes a creator to move off of YT and still make a living IMO. His wife is a driving force behind making the business work and I think it’s a full time job for her too and probably a staff of employees. Mark used YT in the early years to build an audience but he does very little at all on YT nowadays.
He also has very little out there now that is free 🤷♂️
Ah yes, youtube now is just one big ad and sponsorship cesspool flooded with clickbait and misinformation and with highly privacy invasive protocol. Its a souless capitalisic corporate machine. I dont know why people would still use it. Just let youtube die.
All the people I watch on youtube make the majority of their money on patreon or twitch. Youtube is way too heavy handed with demonitization and copyright strikes to be a trutsworthy income source.
Nebula is cool and all, but at the end of the day, it's still a commercial platform, and those do tend to enshittify and depend a lot on externalities.
As creators grow more dependent on Nebula, Sam and the team of original Nebula creators can wield more power and change the rules.
They already dictate the kind of content that is allowed - for example, Second Thought, one of the original creators behind Nebula, was asked to leave as he doesn't agree to change public stance on Israeli-Palestinian conflict (he is pro-Palestine). This has suddenly left him without a source of revenue necessary for the production to expand, and has put him into debt.
Solution? Probably independent sponsorships that would go both on YouTube and PeerTube videos. Or a creator reward system like in Lbry/Odysee. Something that would allow to reward creators without going full commercial.
I can’t stand hearing people whine about wanting everything for free and how DARE people try to make a living so they can eat in between making videos!!!
I just want the videos no creator makes money on. I expect thats about 50% at least. Let’s start there. Put them in the Library of Congress and YouTube will be free to enshittify themselves into oblivion without complaint.
And while we're at it, stop calling them 'content creators'
EDIT: to clarify, my stance on this is that 'content creator' devalues the human endeavour behind a piece of work (or content, if you will). Instead it's just slop for the machine, and who cares what it is as long as it gets numbers, right?
So what should we say when discussing people who make video, audio, text media?
I see their point about "content", where, on YouTube, for example, it devalues the videos as subordinate to YouTube as a platform, but I think as people use the word "content" it loses that connotation.
Well, we start by referring ta work not as "content", but as what it actually is. Then work from there. For instance, one could ostensibly call Ahoy a filmmaker or a documentary maker.
There's a lot of content that doesn't fit neatly into a category though, because it was made by someone turning on a camera and making a video without worrying about any commercial concerns. So calling someone like that a creator is a catch all term for anyone making content for a platform.
But don't you think it's a bit reductionist? We read books, not analogue text content. We eat meals, not nutritional content. We listen to songs, not rhythmic euphoria content. I don't think it's about commercial concerns - in fact, the term 'content' to refer to anything and everything is the 'commercial' way of putting it.
Someone hitting 'record' on a microphone and jamming on a guitar is still music. Why should we treat video any differently?
Bruh that dude is a CONTENT CREATOR, not a filmmaker 😂🤣🤣
His internet videos are colourful animations meant to serve ads while capturing attention and summarizing Wikipedia articles giving some thoughts on them, and I love them, but it's called content for a reason.
To answer the "why", it's because the word "content" is kinda meaningless. Instead of making films, documentaries, talk shows, reference guides, cartoons... it's all just this generic "content" slop that's just there to feed the machine
Not really. The term "content creator" is corporate speak. Google's ad-based business model has a binary classification: content and ads. It's not an inaccurate term, but using it implicitly endorses the corporation's binary world view.
In the past maybe, but certainly not these days. It's overglorified corporate money grab propaganda, that goes around shamelessy guilt tripping viewers when truth is spoken. Much of these so-called content creators do not much else than making face react videos to something they saw and just talk about their likes or dislikes. They get paid lots just to make a soy-jack face and shitty clickbaits. The amount of money some them get paid is large sums insane for little efforts in proportion to what worth it actually ought to be. There people out there putting real efforts and labor to contributions to society to keep it running that paid squat in comparison. Its sad really. Go ahead downvote me, it doesn't change the truth i speak.
Or just call them Content creators, recognize they don't really produce value for anyone but YT's grab on the attention economy and start living in the real world.
Not all content is entertaining. Someone who makes tutorials I wouldn't call an entertainer. That's why "content creator" is used as a catch all term to cover all of it.