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Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

What are you talking about? What niche video sites existed before YouTube? Seriously. Video on the internet wasn’t really a thing before YouTube.

Give me a break...

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I didn't talk about before YouTube existed–I'm talking about when YouTube became the defacto standard for online video. Independent video sites existed and flourished along side YouTube in the beginning.

Sidenote: If we were having this conversation over beers at a meetup would you have said "Give me a break..." to me? Is this your conversational tone in person as well?

This is my HN tone because tons of people here love to play the “everything was better back in the day” card. Couple that with every mention of google bringing out people with huge axes to grind and it can become eye-roll city. Apologies for being so harsh.

It's okay. I understand that feeling and I'm probably guilty of it more than I realize it. I tried to say "miss" instead of "better", but even that phrasing implies I'd rather have the old and I'm not sure about that to be honest. This stuff is hard for sure. Hence why these conversations are good for beers after a meetup :)

pff! stileproject for one.

newgrounds

So 10 second clips of grainy 300x300 cat videos stolen from broadcast tv? If you think that is all that is on YouTube, you are sadly mistaken.

Again. Give me a break. YouTube has absolutely transformed content distribution for then independent producer. We’ve never had a better age for independent content.

Your last statement needs the standard smallprint: Some restrictions apply. See Terms and Conditions.

And actually T&C which can change on a whim and aren't even always transparently visible.

I didn't say it wasn't better and I didn't say it didn't transform content distribution for the independent producer. What I said was

1.) there used to be a lot of niche video sites 2.) many of those sites are gone 3.) The standardization of YouTube is one of the reasons many of those sites are gone.

The first two are facts and the second is my opinion, but which of those things do you not agree with?

I can miss something and understand that what we have now is better overall.

newgrounds still exists.

https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/pico

Still flash video in 2019?

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