What's stopping youtube from just going full authoritarian and mandate DRM for all their videos in attempt to prevent people from downloading it or block ads?

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• RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Same reason Microsoft or Adobe do not stop piracy. They want to create friction that pushes people to pay, but if they fully blocked adblockers then it could create an impetus for a competitor to become popular.

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  • Shirasho@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    And then you have companies like Google who are going all in on adblocking because that is their entire revenue stream.

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    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Only enough to make the average user comply.

      Again, enough friction.

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    • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The original post is about Google

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    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You realize google owns youtube, right?

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• DundasStation@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  That would result in a mass exodus of their users and potentially result in their competitor popping up. Imagine the 2023 Reddit API controversy, but things going a lot worse for Reddit. Had Reddit taken a more extreme approach and made it entirely impossible to use any 3rd party apps instead of permitting workarounds for users to modify their apps, then they would’ve lost a lot of relevancy and would actually have suffered financially.

  The smart way to do this would be to slowly implement anti-user practices over a long period of time, and let your corporate bootlickers gaslight the rest of the users into thinking that everything is fine and that they’re only overreacting.

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Except who wants to be YouTube?

    Twitch only does streaming. Meta and TikTok only do short form video. Spotify’s attempts to branch into video seem focused on podcasts and curated content. If YouTube were to erase from existence, I don’t see a competitor getting made.

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    • DundasStation@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t see a competitor getting made.

      That’s the neat part. Why make it if you could just buy it? All it takes is for a rich authoritarian asshat with too much money and a desire to push an agenda.

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  • atayavie@lemmy.wtf ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s almost exactly what couchsurfing.com did. The fact they survived is kinda legendary

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  • Archer@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The greedy little pigboy didn’t do that because the IPO was coming up too fast

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• VibeSurgeon@piefed.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Well, you’d lose support for devices which can’t handle software DRM playback, old YouTube clients installed on things like TVs which no longer get updated, if you want to support things that only get Widevine L3 support (most devices) you’re not really going to move the needle since Widevine L3 had been broken since like forever, etc.

  The main thing YouTube would gain in practice from such a move would be to get DMCA as a legal tool to crack down on people ripping YouTube videos, but that’d require some very significant resources invested into driving Legal processes against average consumers ripping videos, and the return on investment for that is almost certainly abysmal.

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• slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Compatibility with older clients. It will also break some embedded videos on other sites too.

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• ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This… kills the site.

  (Would see Vimeo or similar take over in about 5 months)

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  • glimse@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Vimeo is a video hosting platform but it isn’t anywhere near YouTube replacement. It would be such a massive shift in their business model that trying to make it one would result a second dead site

    There is no algorithm and search function, I don’t even think there’s a notification feature. Vimeo is mostly for artists to upload to and manually send the link

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    • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It is worse in that Vimeo makes money by charging creators to host their content instead of YouTube’s model of it being free or a way to make money.

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    • ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Things change, and full DRM would hasten that change. YT is a platform, they don’t own the content.

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• herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  If they do, they risk losing customers to other platforms. So far, they decided not to take that risk.

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• Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I will not install DRM on my devices.

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• schwim@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I imagine the fact that they allow the embedding of videos on other sites make it hard to restrict the playback to that degree. There seems to be a tipping point at which they’ll work on breaking something, more than likely based on it’s popularity When enough 3rd party frontends figured out background playback, they took the time to develop a way to break it. I think the same will happen when they feel too many people are circumventing their data scraping, ads or algorithms. They’ll finally go all in but it’s clear that they don’t want to do that just yet.

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• setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I already just use screen capture recording to take videos in my desktop playing YouTube on a browser. Could they even stop that?

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  • azdle@news.idlestate.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes: en.wikipedia.org/…/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content…

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    • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      This is different, and doesn’t address screen recording.

      HDCP uses three systems:[5]

      1. Authentication prevents non-licensed devices from receiving content.
      2. Encryption of the data sent over DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, GVIF, or UDI interfaces prevents eavesdropping of information and man-in-the-middle attacks.
      3. Key revocation prevents devices that have been compromised and cloned from receiving data.

      It would stop someone from playing DRM content to an unauthorized TV, but does not mention anything about screen recording your own device. There are some built in protections for preventing an application from being recorded but I have no doubt there are bypasses

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    • setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Maybe I’m not following but this seems to be talking about applications communicating with hardware designed to be authorized to play.

      How would a video playing on a browser like YouTube on my existing, old hardware be able to parse what’s authorized? Short of making YouTube a program on my computer, how does it on a browser know what else I’m running?

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  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I mean that’s what DRM stops…

    You can’t record it, its just a blackscreen…

    You can try it. Or Try asking a friend/relative to screenrecord their netflix…

    I mean unless you literally take out a camera to record it… but then the video quality degrades since you aren’t gonna get a 1:1 from making a videotape of a screen.

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    • setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Netflix being an application that is running on a TV seems like a very different situation than a video playing inside of a browser. How exactly would YouTube know or be able to stop screen recording short of forcing me to actively run a program?

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    • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      From a quick google search, seems like you can disable hardware acceleration to record with OBS. Or you can use other dedicated software. And thats not even covering the bypasses that can likely be done on Linux

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    • adarza@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It is often the graphics hardware blocking it in this case… disabling hardware decoding in the browser may ‘help’, if your CPU can handle it (you can still use hardware encoding, tho)

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    • just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Nope

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    • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I mean that’s what DRM stops…

      …and nobody wants that.

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• ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Because they don’t care if people download it? 99% of users will still go to watch the video on youtube because it’s more convenient. I guess if they would stop ad-blockers first and then everyone who can’t stand ads left and started torrenting or something they might try that but for now it just doesn’t make sense.

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