Posted by geerlingguy 9/9/2025
The blog mentioned that the forced activation of Restricted Mode could have reduced video views, and while it's true that Restricted Mode blocks live streams, which could affect those who focus on live content, it basically doesn't block soft porn, violent videos, or political content. So, I don't think it's relevant.
On what joy? The biggest mistake that DoJ did was asking to court to divest Android & Chrome. Judge took grave offense at that (read the court's opinion) and there's a school of thought that said it distracted from the whole thing.
Once you start being imprecise, all your arguments fall apart.
I haven’t watched a video hosted on YouTube in years. But I hate amateur video. I never watch anything that I can possibly get through reading.
So in my tiny corner of user space, it’s really as if YouTube doesn’t exist except as an annoying thing Google puts at the top of searches I have to scroll past, reminding me to configure this device to use a different search engine.
While I do prefer to read as well I do like some of the better videos. Sometimes the information density is not as high as I would like - there are reasonable efforts.
Sure, there is amateur content. But there is a surprising amount of original researched content with a high production value.
A recent example with a scientific approach to cooking with some fun high quality references to Breaking Bad:
Yes - they want to (discretely) sell thermometers as well. Not all is good. But very far from amateur.
videos you just watched
videos you watched 10 years ago
auto dubbed videos on topics you are not interested
clickbait videos with 10 views
anything, but what you are used to watching
On my phone, the mobile site (m.youtube.com) has introduced Widevine a couple of weeks ago (last week of August IIRC). No idea if I’m just unlucky and part of a shitty A/B experiment, but I definitely had to recompile libc (being on Linux) with patches from Chromium and install Widevine so I could watch videos again.
Whenever I replace my patched libc with the unpatched original, then the Widevine plugin crashes everytime I try to play back a video on m.youtube.com. And it used to work before.
Source: Similarweb, world-wide
So, I stopped going there as much. They stopped respecting visitor intentions. Just like every other platform, they just want to keep you on the site for as long as possible sifting through a feed of dopamine slop.
Regardless I don’t think youtube is a monopoly.
A monopoly caries with it strict anti-competitive practices along with meddling in government affairs and great public harm. Just because something has market dominance does not make it a monopoly.
Facebook is a monopoly. Complete dominance of the entire social graph, aggressively buying competitors to silence them… direct government meddling not just in the us but abroad creating untold deaths and suffering in the process… to the point they rebrand themselves to skirt responsibility… thats a monopoly.
Live nation buying up entire cities worth of venues, artist managers, booking agents, artists themselves, ticketing, promotion companies, subsequently entire production staff, blacklisting anyone they dont like, meddling with politics, obfuscating their activities through subsidiaries, destroying entire communities and cultures in the process… thats a monopoly
Youtube could be a monopoly but I dont see them squashing their most successful creators from creating their own streaming services, I dont see them directly meddling with politics on a large scale (granted there was that time the algorithm would tend towards promoting fascism, but rather than keep that going or doubling down I see the opposite which implies active intent to the contrary), I dont see them aggressively purchasing competitors… I see them as ridiculously huge and I find their censorship annoying that if government was working I would think should be examined from a public responsibility stance but I dont see them engaged in monopolistic practices… in fact I see them actively avoiding most activities that would make them a monopoly that is of course other than being really really huge.
Isn't that the definition of a monopoly though? Just because something is a monopoly, that doesn't mean it necessarily has anti-competitive practices or meddles in government. (though that usually follows)
For what it's worth I agree that YouTube isn't abusing their market position, but it's important the semantics are clear.
The Hypothetical Monopolist Test is a primary method used to define relevant markets in antitrust cases. It assesses whether a hypothetical monopolist could profitably impose a small but significant and non-transitory increase in price (SSNIP).
Steps in the Test Market Definition: Identify the relevant product and geographic market.
Price Increase Assessment: Determine if a hypothetical monopolist could raise prices without losing too many customers.
Iterative Process: If the price increase is profitable, the market is correctly defined. If not, the market definition is expanded to include substitutes.
To establish a monopolization claim, two main elements must be proven:
Possession of Monopoly Power: The firm must have significant and durable market power.
Willful Acquisition or Maintenance: The firm must have obtained or maintained this power through improper means, rather than through competition on the merits.
Volume isnt even your main issue here. YouTube ads are powered by adwords... that all advertisers already use. It comes with tracking and user-analytics built in.
You can't compete with YouTube by replicating this business model.
Even so.. direct YouTube ad revenue per view is low. Many successful tubers monetize with sponsors. That is replicable, if a (single) tuber has enough views.
I think there can be markets for smaller, paid video sites... but that's not really a competitor to YouTube. It's more like competition for substack.
The way YouTube is managed, including all the reasons for criticism, are why it is successful.
Legible rules have loopholes. Keeping advertisers "on their toes" with mystery rules is a strategy.
It makes sense to keep the platform as unoffensive as possible. Strict nudity rules, and other such "hard" rules. Demonetization gives yotube a chance to implement soft/illegible rules... many of them simply assumed or imagined. It also makes business sense to suppress politics a little. The chilling effect is intentional.. and understandable.
Honestly, I think the more open alternative to YouTube is podcasting. Podcasting has terrible discovery, and video is underdeveloped but... it also has persistence that proves it is a good platform.
Half of "the problem" with YouTube is Google running the platform and pursuing their own interests. These are somewhat restrictive, but they also make sense.
The other half is intense competition for daily attention. That's what a low friction, highly accessible platform does. You can't have everything.
Without all the restrictions and manipulations that YouTube do, the platforms would be 100% nudity, scandals and suchlike.
Ever seen a colorized video from 1900? It's like a time machine. Imagine looking at today's videos, 100-200 years from now..
Systems that enable multi-platform natively are the answer to change the calculus on this problem. End-user clients such as Grayjay that enable users to view videos from multiple platforms at once can give much-needed views to creators on alternate platforms. A similar solution for creators (not sure if one exists or not) would lower the barrier to upload to all platforms at once.