Comment by ndriscoll
8 days ago
The underlying technology enablers are from companies like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, TSMC, Micron, all sorts of ISP/cell providers, etc. They're the reason why computers are over 10x faster than they were 10-15 years ago, storage is 1000x faster, networks are 100x faster, etc. The technology is cheap because of actual technology companies. You don't need a centralized service for video calls. You need lots of bandwidth between endpoints and some relatively modest signaling servers (similar to voice calling, which already existed).
Bittorrent does not equate to theft, and the point is it demonstrates that actually distribution costs nothing. The production of most media was paid for generations ago. It can be free or extremely cheap because it's literally free on the provider side. The thing that costs money is monetization.
The fact that self-publishers are at the mercy of ad companies is the point. The ad companies destroy every market they infect. Because they use predatory pricing.
> The underlying technology enablers are from companies like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, TSMC, Micron, all sorts of ISP/cell providers, etc
And they exist because of demand from the consumers. All those providers have no incentive to invest and upgrade their offerings if there is no demand. Said otherwise, without the likes of YouTube and Whatsapp video chat (and many other ad-funded social media apps), we would be stuck in 2010-era infrastructure.
> You don't need a centralized service for video calls.
Need is a funny word. You need a centralized effort to enhance the user experience of video calls which is very expensive. And very companies have resources to pull that off and offer a great experience for free. Only 3 I can think of - Google, Facebook, Apple (via Facetime). Only Apple is not ad-funded and they keep it to their devices only which is for rich people. Ad-funded products at least made it available to the entire populace.
> The ad companies destroy every market they infect. Because they use predatory pricing.
I gave you a counter-example to your thesis about Youtube Premium which was offered at a reasonable price. Its failure shows that predatory pricing is an excuse - real reason is that people simply prefer to not pay.
Those companies have been developing hardware with exponential improvements for generations now. They wouldn't have stopped if not for youtube. Youtube and Whatsapp became possible because of them, not the other way around.
Phone companies are literally a concrete, non-theoretical demonstration that call signaling doesn't need to be centralized for a good experience. There's also already XMPP which works like email: you can add your contacts and just start video calls over it just like you can just send emails. It works today. It scales today. You can use it right now, but the monopolists lock everyone into their networks.
Your "counter-example" proves my point: giving youtube away for free canabalizes youtube premium.