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Comment by planede | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how abusive this is though. In the end you are downloading the same amount of data, but in a shorter time. You are utilizing more bandwidth but you go away earlier.

I think the original browser use case is tuned for the common occurrence of not watching the whole video. But if you intend to watch (and archive) the whole video to begin with then I don't think this eats away Google's bandwidth more. OTOH it probably has more overhead due to the amount of connections.

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> I wonder how abusive this is though. In the end you are downloading the same amount of data, but in a shorter time.

In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome). Whereas if you could only watch that stuff during life playback, you'd be downloading much less data in total as there's no bytes wasted amassing a library that never gets viewed.

> In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome).

Well that's an assumption on the intent of downloading. I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch. But typically it's for archival, I just hate my favorite videos going away.

> I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch.

I doubt it.

Well, you go away unless you're another organization that proposes to mirror all of YouTube and eat its lunch.

Google can't only think about humans, it's got to also think about competing organizations. That complicates things.

that's their problem to deal with. why is everyone here going all 'think of the poor corporations'

I think you're reading it as "as a user, you must not do this because...", when the GP meant it as "as Google, the reason I'm doing this is because..."

Well, when they "deal with it", we'll all be complaining even harder. The fact that they've gone relatively light on obfuscation and security against things like yt-dlp for such a long time is basically tacit approval at this point. I wouldn't want to bite that hand.

By the same logic, fare evasion is "metro company's problem to deal with".

It technically is, but if someone makes a programmer's salary and still jumps over turnstiles, I consider it a big red flag over their personality.

That organization would probably parallelize the download on multiple video level, not necessarily on subrange level on a single video.

Is it technically or financially feasible to mirror YouTube?

What is complicated about throttling downloads, let’s say X times the bitrate of the video? I am sure Google’s engineers can implement something ever more complex

yea, i also don't think that the increased rate is a problem per se, but i also doubt that a majority of youtube views cover the entire length of the video, hence downloaders do probably use more data.

Any youtuber, myself included, can attest that a majority of youtube views demonstrably don't. A key factor in finding success as a youtuber is getting better at retention, hence all the ridiculousness and MrBeastness: some people specialize in retention, and they do better.

It's weird from the standpoint of someone who sets out to watch an entire thing, but almost nobody sticks around while watching videos. It seems like the mass of youtube viewerdom are bouncing around like mad, all the time.

not unlike "zapping" tv channels

It's FOMO on a second-by-second basis. No matter what you're watching now you could be watching something better. The UI even somewhat encourages this with the way it displays a list of additional videos below what's playing now.

By default, it's even right next to what's playing now. It's only below when you're in theater mode.

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