Usedtotube.com – a cool idea by Mike

A humane alternative to YouTube. It will start as a free backup copy of anything YouTube censors (or every video in a creators library if they want).

Humane

• Free fast & not evil!
  
• Privacy aware unobtrusive ads.
  
• Open source code, open records accounting.
  
• Generic tracking only with permission.
  
• Gives back.
  

Unobtrusive

After clicking a video you could see one of the following:

• Under 10 seconds pre-roll once per session
  

Or

• Under 10 seconds (silent) lower thirds banner once per hour
  

If video is under 30 seconds ads will be under 5!

You can login or just share info to skip the pre-roll ad. Share form only "requires" regional location (think zip-code or state-level info).

Other details like age (if over 13), city, profession and gender would be skipp-able.

From the share screen, you can jump to your video or sign-up.

Privacy

Signed-up users can set retention and privacy preferences or view their engagement history / viewing history or (if applicable) payment history.

Users see 0 ads by paying $20/yr or $2/mo.

Or you can skip just the pre-roll ads for $10/yr or $1/mo.

Lower thirds can be skipped by non-paying signed-in-users on a permanent per-video basis for a one-time ad click or one-time payment of ~25 cents.

All clicked ads open in background tabs if video is closed or navigated away from, or are redirect targets in existing video tabs 7 seconds after video ends.

Nerdy Stuff

For each unique visit, a session is created that expires after 24 hours or when the browser closes. Then a new session is created. For non-signed-in users a session is the maximum history stored. A session stores the following info:

• generic demographics from session (when provided by user through either login or pre-roll skip)
  
• activity records which are comprised of:
  

• watch history (prev/next chain, abandonments)
  
• ad impressions/clicks
  
• upvotes and downvotes
  
• share button activity
  

• if viewer is signed-in two other things are stored in session:
  

• an impression key (tracking session history within each month)
  

&

• a tag list
  

Impression key

This is used to pay creators. A unique key which links together a connected session history. It expires monthly after settlements are made.

Impression keys are added to an encrypted log, which is only decrypted locally in a users browser. Only the user has access to their long term session history.

Creators and advertisers only get one month impression data and summary transaction data (no user data).

Tag list

This is used for video recommendation and more accurate ad targeting. When a user has allowed it in their preferences (default setting), a count is stored alongside their profile of the cumulative most common tags. Tags can be derived from search terms, video categories, or video keywords (but not individual video watch history) for last 3 months rolling.

The top 5 tags are sent to be stored in sessions.

Session is retained on a users account only as long as they choose (after the one month for settlement). Upon login, they can abandon or import their current session to their history.

All the marketing is targeted to demographics or tags in sessions, and never to specific users.

Creators

Creators must be signed in. Monetized creators must at least be $20/yr or $2/mo users. The only difference between a non-monetized creator and a user is that creators have at least one upload.

Revenue is money due to the company or users and is either advertiser paid (pay-per-impression) or subsidized by subscription (attention based-distribution of subscription fee using percentages described below). For each creator we calculate a monthly cost of hosting their total videos + traffic.

If creators revenue equals less than half their cost, they are blocked from uploading until they pay $20/yr or $2/mo or earn more than half of cost. Until their revenue exceeds half their costs, we also take 90% of payment and pay only 10% After revenue exceeds half their costs the distribution flips paying creators 90%.

Videos once uploaded can not be removed. They can only be deactivated (not available for recommendation engine or targeted ads).

Code

The video suggestion and advertising selection algorithms will be public and simple.

Advertising selection code will be based on 2 things.

1. Ad preferences/engagement.
   

1. for everyone: activity
   
2. for users: also tags & demographics
   

2. Normal pay-per impression auction buys
   

Video suggestion code will be based on activity, tags and demographics.

Extras/Values

• No pornography
  
• No unblurred nudity
  
• No unblurred extremely graphic violence
  
• Possibility for shows and movies to be rented or purchased for one-time fee.
  
• May actually be a good candidate for working with Braves BAT (basic attention token) system.
  
• Custom channel links and shortlinks for creators
  
• Api's for embedding videos.
  
• Linking to other/original sources would be encouraged with removal reasons if given/applicable.
  
• Categories/keywords/tags can be blacklisted.
  
• Videos can be viewed off-record (individually or by tag/keyword/category), where a new per-view session is created and view is removed from original session history.
  
• Tags can be suggested and applied to videos by trusted community users.
  
• Comments are hidden by default, community moderated, and reputation based.
  
• 10% of post-cost revenue goes to the charity of the companies choosing.