Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

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> Once the Digital Markets Act comes into effect in the EU in a couple of months I'll be installing alternative frontends for YouTube which include SponsorBlock.

this is weird. are we sure this is a thing in the EU? because the idea of having some sort of regulation forcing a private company to have their product offered by some other party raises so many issues. it's not like youtube is some sort of public good, it's a product offered by a private company.

who pays for the bandwidth, engineers, data centers? will the 3rd party pay for these things? if youtube is forced to break it's own TOS, and this leads to users moving away from YouTube but still somehow taking advantage of YouTube's offerings, why even provide the service at all, what exactly would be the point as the product would be loss making? and will capping access be back in the cards (we can't offer any more of these videos because it will cause losses)? and what about tracking viewers, how can we track these viewers when they're coming in from some 3rd party?

I feel like I'm misunderstanding something...

YouTube is a monopoly and it's putting ads in its ad-free subscription. They don't get to hide behind "it's not a public good, it's a private company". Especially when they gained their monopoly status by operating at below-cost for years, preventing fair competition from even springing up in the first place.

How would a third-party YouTube frontend qualify as a competitor?

They would beat little to none of the video hosting and serving costs.

It's basically adding one more middleman, just like most energy companies in Europe.

> YouTube is a monopoly

what? in which country and how?

> and it's putting ads in its ad-free subscription

i pay for youtube premium. never seen an ad.

> Especially when they gained their monopoly status by operating at below-cost for years, preventing fair competition from even springing up in the first place.

i fear you are thinking about a different product. youtube is not a monopoly and it's not preventing fair competition as TikTok is even bigger.

> I feel like I'm misunderstanding something...

In the EU it's ok to ask companies to do things, even if it costs them money.

everywhere it's the same. the problem is that it makes no sense for a state entity to force a company offer their product via a 3rd party without taking into consideration the myriad of questions that arise.

In general if Google is already paying for the engineers, etc to support their US offerings, then the EU can regulate their way into “paying” for the additional cost of supporting their users. Should be pretty cheap, no R&D costs.

If they go too far and Google leaves the EU market, I suspect nobody will be all that sad, goodbye giant competition, a boon for the local service providers.

I think what you are misunderstanding is: countries will sometimes be protectionist toward their own companies, but they don’t actually care if foreign companies have a viable business model, especially for non-critical things like YouTube. Asking the EU to care whether or not YouTube has a viable business model is not really reasonable.

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