Why doesn't youtube shut down their public web api? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 months ago by kionite231@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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so we already know that youtube doesn't like people freeloading their bandwidth using something like invidious, piped, newpipe etc. why don't they just close the public web api and require a login or something. by requiring login they can keep track of what users are watching and if a user is watching thousands of videos daily they can rate limit that user.

are they afraid of losing their user if they do so? I personally don't think it can affect their business or profit. It will cut down their cost of bandwidth and computation costs. so why don't just cut off users that don't bring any revenue??

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[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Even with their recent efforts to squeeze money out of their users by killing adblockers and pushing even more intrusive ads, they still don't make a profit. And that's with 100% of the market share. There just isn't a way for another company to come in and unseat youtube, and youtube knows it. Hence why they feel they can get away with pretty much any anti-consumer move they can dream up.

They just have to keep users happy enough that nobody at microsoft/amazon decides to start their own money pit out of spite, and all that tasty data remains theirs for the indefinite future.

this post was submitted on 29 May 2024

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