Is there any development into an open and free video sharing site similar to what YT used to be? Something where the users of the site are actually the customers and are treated as such?
There is plenty of content I'd subscribe to see on YouTube.
If there is, it's something we should promote. If there isn't, we should build it.
A note to Google: when users are looking to get away from your otherwise incredibly successful services, it might indicate there's a very serious problem that should be corrected immediately. People want alternatives to Search, Mail, and now YouTube based on your policies and how you mistreat and ignore users. Perhaps something needs to change before this evil spreads to everything Google owns.
> the users of the site are actually the customers
Well which is it? Do you want it to be free, or do you want to be treated like a customer? Because you don't store and serve millions of videos on sunshine, it takes data centers and lots of bandwidth.
Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I don't believe ads are a valid source of monetization. Once you start showing ads, you invariably become evil.
Free to use, free content by default, with premiums and ratings/comments to help people decide what's worth paying for.
There are a number of shows I watch on YT that I find very entertaining. If the latest 3-5 episodes, posted daily are available to a channel subscriber for something like $2.99 a month, and episodes older than that are free, you can either watch things for free or get access to them as they're made and be more involved with the author via comments, etc. There are more options than "free" or "paid" or "advertisement supported." Unfortunately we're still stuck in a world that's riding the coattails of the cable industry, which is now dying, so perhaps that's a bad model to emulate.
There is plenty of content I'd subscribe to see on YouTube.
If there is, it's something we should promote. If there isn't, we should build it.
A note to Google: when users are looking to get away from your otherwise incredibly successful services, it might indicate there's a very serious problem that should be corrected immediately. People want alternatives to Search, Mail, and now YouTube based on your policies and how you mistreat and ignore users. Perhaps something needs to change before this evil spreads to everything Google owns.