8 ms·

I love that the view count is included in the minimalist UI. I came across one with zero views, and there's something so intimate and exciting about being the f

I love that the view count is included in the minimalist UI. I came across one with zero views, and there's something so intimate and exciting about being the first person to watch an ancient home video (even if it's shaky handycam footage of a horse, narrated in Russian). As an aside, hats off to Google to being able to serve an 11 year old video with no noticeable delay from what must be the coldest of caches.

hoseja 2y ago
I'm really anxious Google will also kill this aspect of Youtube one day.
- supermatt 2y ago
  As soon as it gets split off from google and they no longer have the money machine to fund them and have to fight on a level regulatory-monitored ground for ad revenue you can bet your ass it will.
  - Mashimo 2y ago
    AFAIK youtube is profitable now. It was not for years, but is now.
    - eru 2y ago
      Yes, but it could perhaps be more profitable, if they cut spending on this aspect?
      - whereismyacc 2y ago
        For every year that passes, storage becomes cheaper, but the total size of youtube's video repository grows. I wonder what the net effect of all that is in the end. Ever increasing costs? Or maybe it kinda evens out.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        eru 2y ago
        Interestingly, if storage cost decreases geometrically over time, then the total storage cost of storing a video for all eternity is finite. Though what I was commenting on here wasn't so much the cost of storing a video at all, but storing it in 'warm' enough storage that you can load it really quickly.
    - iamgopal 2y ago
      What could be cost of total storage of YouTube ? Edit : About billion USD per year.
    - b3lvedere 2y ago
      Since when did that stop shareholders to make even more money?
    - dnissley 2y ago
      Can you post your source? Last time I checked (and quickly checking around now) I didn't see any announcement from Google about Youtube being profitable.
- joelkoen 2y ago
  Anyone aware of public archives of videos like this? These are so cool and I imagine that in the future this would be an incredibly valuable peek into history given how raw it is.
  - thesuitonym 2y ago
    https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection
- kristopolous 2y ago
  Google: if you like it, it's going away.
  - supportengineer 2y ago
    Once you live to a certain age, you realize this is true about everything in your life.
    - kristopolous 2y ago
      I'm increasingly thinking of customer product relations in terms of giving treats to your users. The moat and stickiness concepts are ok, but "candy store" is more fruitful. Of course what constitutes candy is different for every product and you need to understand your customers to know what "flavors" they want
  - seanw265 2y ago
    I got charged by Squarespace the other day, and it immediately raised red flags—I've never done business with them before. Then it clicked: this was for an old domain I’d purchased through Google Domains. I knew Google had sold its domain business to Squarespace, but in the moment, I’d completely forgotten about it. Oh well.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  You should get YouTube Premium so they can pay for all those servers.
- pohuing 2y ago
  They've already announced deleting videos from unused channels. So it's only a matter of time
  - lelandfe 2y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/18/youtube-will-no-longer-be-deleting-videos-from-inactive-accounts/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/18/youtube-will-no-longer-be-... > Google updated the post to read, “We do not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time.”
    - pohuing 2y ago
      Thanks, finally some good news from them for once
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  It was already partially killed when in 2017 YouTube switched all unlisted videos to private. Which I now just realize why they did that : a lot of people didn't understand the difference. Sadly, a lot of other people did understand the difference, and did not expect this kind of switcheroo, and now there's a bunch of effectively dead links covering more than a decade of videos.
gear54rus 2y ago
View count is nice but I'd like to be able to share a video that I got with someone else, I think that would be a great function.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  Clicking the date opens it in YouTube.
  - jonny_eh 2y ago
    That's a shame, I like the ephemeral nature of these.
    - rkagerer 2y ago
      I just hope viewers who stumble upon any that seem as though they were not intended to be uploaded respect the privacy of the subjects and use discretion in what they share.
mattlondon 2y ago
I felt slightly uneasy myself - the first thing I saw was a mum laying on her bed doing a selfie-video with two small kids (probably between 2 and 4 years old) singing a song to daddy. That felt like a total invasion of their private lives. I've had the same videos from my own kids, and while there is nothing embarrassing or shameful about it, it's not something I'd want broadcasted. Maybe it hit a nerve for me as it is so very very similar to my own life right now. Sure yeah they uploaded it to YouTube and it's public but it still felt wrong to watch that. Kinda ruined my day a bit - feel kinda bad for viewing it.
- arethuza 2y ago
  Thanks - that's exactly how I felt after watching a view videos - I came away feeling a bit disturbed - largely because the things I watched were very wholesome but also very private.
  - stronglikedan 2y ago
    > very private very explicitly uploaded with the intent that others would see it
    - latexr 2y ago
      We don’t know that. As per the webpage, this could’ve been uploaded directly from the Photos app on an iPhone, by people who didn’t really understand the consequences. Maybe they uploaded it and thought they’d get a private link to share with one specific person. Most people are not tech savvy and don’t fully understand the possible ramifications of their sharing.
      - dan353hehe 2y ago
        Yeah I just got a video of an infant taking a bath. I have small kids my self so nothing new, but not something I would want on the internet for everyone to see. And I doubt that the mom, and now the teenager who was the kid, would want broadcast everywhere.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
I know a video from roughly 11+ years ago where the audio got messed up, not sure how to even begin to report that. Was some niche "inside joke" type of meme. I have to wonder how many videos got re-encoded by YouTube that got screwed up inadvertently.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp lets you list and download different formats offered by YoTube for videos. You could try downloading different audio formats and see if any of the available ones contain non-garbled audio. For example: yt-dlp -F "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" Output: [youtube] Extracting URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading webpage [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading ios player API JSON [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading player 62ccfae7 WARNING: [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: nsig extraction failed: Some formats may be missing n = l9bNLKrDBBdCJtknGqU ; player = https://www.youtube.com/s/player/62ccfae7/player_ias.vflset/en_US/base.js WARNING: [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: nsig extraction failed: Some formats may be missing n = Z-MlQqu4ClRjI62sqw_ ; player = https://www.youtube.com/s/player/62ccfae7/player_ias.vflset/en_US/base.js [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading m3u8 information [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading MPD manifest [info] Available formats for a28_aXgrgXE: ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS CH │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── sb2 mhtml 48x27 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb1 mhtml 33x45 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb0 mhtml 67x90 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard 233 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 234 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 139-dash m4a audio only │ 427.60KiB 48k dash │ audio only mp4a.40.5 48k 22k DASH audio, m4a_dash 139 m4a audio only 1 │ 427.60KiB 48k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 48k 22k low, m4a_dash 140-dash m4a audio only │ 853.17KiB 96k dash │ audio only mp4a.40.2 96k 44k DASH audio, m4a_dash 251 webm audio only │ 851.41KiB 99k dash │ audio only opus 99k 48k DASH audio, webm_dash 140 m4a audio only 1 │ 853.17KiB 95k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 95k 44k medium, m4a_dash 160 mp4 108x144 30 │ ~962.40KiB 108k dash │ avc1.4d400b 108k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 269 mp4 108x144 30 │ ~ 1.43MiB 164k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400B 164k video only 278 webm 108x144 30 │ ~846.56KiB 95k dash │ vp9 95k video only DASH video, webm_dash 133 mp4 180x240 30 │ ~ 2.11MiB 242k dash │ avc1.4d400c 242k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 229 mp4 180x240 30 │ ~ 2.65MiB 305k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400C 305k video only 242 webm 180x240 30 │ ~ 1.92MiB 220k dash │ vp9 220k video only DASH video, webm_dash 134-dash mp4 270x360 30 │ 3.32MiB 459k dash │ avc1.4d4014 459k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 230 mp4 270x360 30 │ ~ 5.07MiB 583k m3u8 │ avc1.4D4014 583k video only 134 mp4 270x360 30 │ 3.32MiB 380k https │ avc1.4D4014 380k video only 240p, mp4_dash 243 webm 270x360 30 │ ~ 3.53MiB 406k dash │ vp9 406k video only DASH video, webm_dash 135 mp4 360x480 30 │ ~ 10.05MiB 1155k dash │ avc1.4d400b 1155k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 231 mp4 360x480 30 │ ~ 11.43MiB 1313k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400B 1313k video only 244 webm 360x480 30 │ ~ 6.55MiB 753k dash │ vp9 753k video only DASH video, webm_dash And then download each of the "audio only" entries from the table. In the case of the table for the video I chose: yt-dlp -f 233 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 234 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 139-dash -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 139 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 140-dash -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 251 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 140 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" Here I used the '-f' option to choose each of the 'audio only' formats available for the example video, and then I used the '-o' flag to specify a custom format string for the output files so that the file names include the format id making them unique from each other and corresponding to the entries in the original table. This gives me files containing each of the audio formats that were available from YouTube. -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 437246 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.139-dash.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 437246 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.139.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 713133 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.140-dash.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 872935 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.140.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 441481 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.233.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 881428 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.234.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 711273 Jul 22 2019 a28_aXgrgXE.251.webm The timestamps of the files are set by yt-dlp to correspond to timestamps it got from YouTube. It might be worth to be careful about downloading alternate format versions of too many videos. I could imagine that downloading alternate formats of too many videos from YouTube could trigger something on their side to make them think you are a bot or something. Of course that's just speculation and I don't know if YouTube actually does that. Hopefully doing it for a single video won't get your IP banned by YouTube.
dheera 2y ago
I don't think they are being served from Youtube (?)
- kahirsch 2y ago
  There's an iframe with a link to the youtube api. When I watched a video, it was being streamed from a server named rr4---sn-p5qlsny6.googlevideo.com
Sateeshm 2y ago
The first video I got was of a really cute baby making baby noises. Made me very happy. It had 0 views.
londons_explore 2y ago
> As an aside, hats off to Google to being able to serve an 11 year old video with no noticeable delay from what must be the coldest of caches. And remember that depending if you visited with an iphone, or an android, or a smart TV, or a Chromecast, they'd be needing to serve the video with different encoding settings/codecs/MPEG profiles. So for the hardly ever watched videos, they either need to keep transcoded copies in 10+ formats, all ready to serve with no latency for years, or be ready to live transcode.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  It really amazes me that they don't simply say that any video that doesn't get at least 1000 views will count towards your google drive storage quota. Keeping all that private and never watched video ready-to-serve must cost so much, with zero revenue.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I think they will/are using it for AI/ML training. After all, it is data created by a human, so useful in the newly polluted sea of AI generated content.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Doubt data uploaded 10+ years ago has the necessary agreements in place, at least in countries like Europe/UK requiring user consent for processing of private data. Collecting data for one purpose (video sharing site), but then using it for another (training AI) is very much verboten. They can probably use the public stuff tho.
      - Mraedis 2y ago
        But it's under an account, an account that can receive notices about ToS and such. Wouldn't that cover this?

hoseja 2y ago

I'm really anxious Google will also kill this aspect of Youtube one day.

supermatt 2y ago
As soon as it gets split off from google and they no longer have the money machine to fund them and have to fight on a level regulatory-monitored ground for ad revenue you can bet your ass it will.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  AFAIK youtube is profitable now. It was not for years, but is now.
  - eru 2y ago
    Yes, but it could perhaps be more profitable, if they cut spending on this aspect?
    - whereismyacc 2y ago
      For every year that passes, storage becomes cheaper, but the total size of youtube's video repository grows. I wonder what the net effect of all that is in the end. Ever increasing costs? Or maybe it kinda evens out.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - eru 2y ago
        Interestingly, if storage cost decreases geometrically over time, then the total storage cost of storing a video for all eternity is finite. Though what I was commenting on here wasn't so much the cost of storing a video at all, but storing it in 'warm' enough storage that you can load it really quickly.
  - iamgopal 2y ago
    What could be cost of total storage of YouTube ? Edit : About billion USD per year.
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    Since when did that stop shareholders to make even more money?
  - dnissley 2y ago
    Can you post your source? Last time I checked (and quickly checking around now) I didn't see any announcement from Google about Youtube being profitable.
joelkoen 2y ago
Anyone aware of public archives of videos like this? These are so cool and I imagine that in the future this would be an incredibly valuable peek into history given how raw it is.
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection
kristopolous 2y ago
Google: if you like it, it's going away.
- supportengineer 2y ago
  Once you live to a certain age, you realize this is true about everything in your life.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    I'm increasingly thinking of customer product relations in terms of giving treats to your users. The moat and stickiness concepts are ok, but "candy store" is more fruitful. Of course what constitutes candy is different for every product and you need to understand your customers to know what "flavors" they want
- seanw265 2y ago
  I got charged by Squarespace the other day, and it immediately raised red flags—I've never done business with them before. Then it clicked: this was for an old domain I’d purchased through Google Domains. I knew Google had sold its domain business to Squarespace, but in the moment, I’d completely forgotten about it. Oh well.
ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
You should get YouTube Premium so they can pay for all those servers.
pohuing 2y ago
They've already announced deleting videos from unused channels. So it's only a matter of time
- lelandfe 2y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/18/youtube-will-no-longer-be-deleting-videos-from-inactive-accounts/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/18/youtube-will-no-longer-be-... > Google updated the post to read, “We do not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time.”
  - pohuing 2y ago
    Thanks, finally some good news from them for once
BlueTemplar 2y ago
It was already partially killed when in 2017 YouTube switched all unlisted videos to private. Which I now just realize why they did that : a lot of people didn't understand the difference. Sadly, a lot of other people did understand the difference, and did not expect this kind of switcheroo, and now there's a bunch of effectively dead links covering more than a decade of videos.

gear54rus 2y ago

View count is nice but I'd like to be able to share a video that I got with someone else, I think that would be a great function.

rkagerer 2y ago
Clicking the date opens it in YouTube.
- jonny_eh 2y ago
  That's a shame, I like the ephemeral nature of these.
  - rkagerer 2y ago
    I just hope viewers who stumble upon any that seem as though they were not intended to be uploaded respect the privacy of the subjects and use discretion in what they share.

mattlondon 2y ago

I felt slightly uneasy myself - the first thing I saw was a mum laying on her bed doing a selfie-video with two small kids (probably between 2 and 4 years old) singing a song to daddy. That felt like a total invasion of their private lives. I've had the same videos from my own kids, and while there is nothing embarrassing or shameful about it, it's not something I'd want broadcasted. Maybe it hit a nerve for me as it is so very very similar to my own life right now. Sure yeah they uploaded it to YouTube and it's public but it still felt wrong to watch that. Kinda ruined my day a bit - feel kinda bad for viewing it.

arethuza 2y ago
Thanks - that's exactly how I felt after watching a view videos - I came away feeling a bit disturbed - largely because the things I watched were very wholesome but also very private.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  > very private very explicitly uploaded with the intent that others would see it
  - latexr 2y ago
    We don’t know that. As per the webpage, this could’ve been uploaded directly from the Photos app on an iPhone, by people who didn’t really understand the consequences. Maybe they uploaded it and thought they’d get a private link to share with one specific person. Most people are not tech savvy and don’t fully understand the possible ramifications of their sharing.
    - dan353hehe 2y ago
      Yeah I just got a video of an infant taking a bath. I have small kids my self so nothing new, but not something I would want on the internet for everyone to see. And I doubt that the mom, and now the teenager who was the kid, would want broadcast everywhere.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

I know a video from roughly 11+ years ago where the audio got messed up, not sure how to even begin to report that. Was some niche "inside joke" type of meme. I have to wonder how many videos got re-encoded by YouTube that got screwed up inadvertently.

codetrotter 2y ago
yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp lets you list and download different formats offered by YoTube for videos. You could try downloading different audio formats and see if any of the available ones contain non-garbled audio. For example: yt-dlp -F "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" Output: [youtube] Extracting URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading webpage [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading ios player API JSON [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading player 62ccfae7 WARNING: [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: nsig extraction failed: Some formats may be missing n = l9bNLKrDBBdCJtknGqU ; player = https://www.youtube.com/s/player/62ccfae7/player_ias.vflset/en_US/base.js WARNING: [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: nsig extraction failed: Some formats may be missing n = Z-MlQqu4ClRjI62sqw_ ; player = https://www.youtube.com/s/player/62ccfae7/player_ias.vflset/en_US/base.js [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading m3u8 information [youtube] a28_aXgrgXE: Downloading MPD manifest [info] Available formats for a28_aXgrgXE: ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS CH │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── sb2 mhtml 48x27 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb1 mhtml 33x45 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard sb0 mhtml 67x90 1 │ mhtml │ images storyboard 233 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 234 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 139-dash m4a audio only │ 427.60KiB 48k dash │ audio only mp4a.40.5 48k 22k DASH audio, m4a_dash 139 m4a audio only 1 │ 427.60KiB 48k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 48k 22k low, m4a_dash 140-dash m4a audio only │ 853.17KiB 96k dash │ audio only mp4a.40.2 96k 44k DASH audio, m4a_dash 251 webm audio only │ 851.41KiB 99k dash │ audio only opus 99k 48k DASH audio, webm_dash 140 m4a audio only 1 │ 853.17KiB 95k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 95k 44k medium, m4a_dash 160 mp4 108x144 30 │ ~962.40KiB 108k dash │ avc1.4d400b 108k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 269 mp4 108x144 30 │ ~ 1.43MiB 164k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400B 164k video only 278 webm 108x144 30 │ ~846.56KiB 95k dash │ vp9 95k video only DASH video, webm_dash 133 mp4 180x240 30 │ ~ 2.11MiB 242k dash │ avc1.4d400c 242k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 229 mp4 180x240 30 │ ~ 2.65MiB 305k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400C 305k video only 242 webm 180x240 30 │ ~ 1.92MiB 220k dash │ vp9 220k video only DASH video, webm_dash 134-dash mp4 270x360 30 │ 3.32MiB 459k dash │ avc1.4d4014 459k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 230 mp4 270x360 30 │ ~ 5.07MiB 583k m3u8 │ avc1.4D4014 583k video only 134 mp4 270x360 30 │ 3.32MiB 380k https │ avc1.4D4014 380k video only 240p, mp4_dash 243 webm 270x360 30 │ ~ 3.53MiB 406k dash │ vp9 406k video only DASH video, webm_dash 135 mp4 360x480 30 │ ~ 10.05MiB 1155k dash │ avc1.4d400b 1155k video only DASH video, mp4_dash 231 mp4 360x480 30 │ ~ 11.43MiB 1313k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400B 1313k video only 244 webm 360x480 30 │ ~ 6.55MiB 753k dash │ vp9 753k video only DASH video, webm_dash And then download each of the "audio only" entries from the table. In the case of the table for the video I chose: yt-dlp -f 233 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 234 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 139-dash -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 139 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 140-dash -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 251 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" yt-dlp -f 140 -o "%(id)s.%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" "https://youtube.com/watch?v=a28_aXgrgXE" Here I used the '-f' option to choose each of the 'audio only' formats available for the example video, and then I used the '-o' flag to specify a custom format string for the output files so that the file names include the format id making them unique from each other and corresponding to the entries in the original table. This gives me files containing each of the audio formats that were available from YouTube. -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 437246 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.139-dash.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 437246 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.139.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 713133 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.140-dash.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 872935 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.140.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 441481 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.233.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 881428 Oct 9 2013 a28_aXgrgXE.234.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 711273 Jul 22 2019 a28_aXgrgXE.251.webm The timestamps of the files are set by yt-dlp to correspond to timestamps it got from YouTube. It might be worth to be careful about downloading alternate format versions of too many videos. I could imagine that downloading alternate formats of too many videos from YouTube could trigger something on their side to make them think you are a bot or something. Of course that's just speculation and I don't know if YouTube actually does that. Hopefully doing it for a single video won't get your IP banned by YouTube.

dheera 2y ago

I don't think they are being served from Youtube (?)

kahirsch 2y ago
There's an iframe with a link to the youtube api. When I watched a video, it was being streamed from a server named rr4---sn-p5qlsny6.googlevideo.com

Sateeshm 2y ago

The first video I got was of a really cute baby making baby noises. Made me very happy. It had 0 views.

londons_explore 2y ago

> As an aside, hats off to Google to being able to serve an 11 year old video with no noticeable delay from what must be the coldest of caches. And remember that depending if you visited with an iphone, or an android, or a smart TV, or a Chromecast, they'd be needing to serve the video with different encoding settings/codecs/MPEG profiles. So for the hardly ever watched videos, they either need to keep transcoded copies in 10+ formats, all ready to serve with no latency for years, or be ready to live transcode.

londons_explore 2y ago
It really amazes me that they don't simply say that any video that doesn't get at least 1000 views will count towards your google drive storage quota. Keeping all that private and never watched video ready-to-serve must cost so much, with zero revenue.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I think they will/are using it for AI/ML training. After all, it is data created by a human, so useful in the newly polluted sea of AI generated content.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Doubt data uploaded 10+ years ago has the necessary agreements in place, at least in countries like Europe/UK requiring user consent for processing of private data. Collecting data for one purpose (video sharing site), but then using it for another (training AI) is very much verboten. They can probably use the public stuff tho.
    - Mraedis 2y ago
      But it's under an account, an account that can receive notices about ToS and such. Wouldn't that cover this?