Youtube has a giant lead in the online video streaming market and in spite of many controversies (demonetization, click bait being promoted to peoples' front pages, etc.) there doesn't seem to be any indication that this is going to change. What do you think about the future of this industry? Which (if any) providers have a chance to become viable competitors to YouTube?

For those of you not in the loop, the Verge created a PC build guide back in September, and it was...bad, to put it lightly. They took down the original video after a storm of criticism, but this guy reuploaded it, if you want to see it.

Kyle (aka Bitwit) created a response video to it, which got copyright striked (which is more severe than a claim and has to be done by a human, unlike content ID claims), in addition to ReviewTechUSA. Ironically, the Verge published an article about abuse of the copyright system just 3 days ago (2 days when the videos were taken down yesterday).

The Verge should have taken more responsibility to begin with, now that the dust have settled they seem bent on reminding everyone how bad their video was.

Edit: Bauke pointed out Kyle's video is back up! This is not because the Verge retracted their claim, but because YouTube actually had a human review it and determine it was fair use (which usually isn't the case from what I've heard).

If you've been following tech news somewhat recently, you've surely heard about Article 13- the one where the EU essentially requires all content hosts to have extremely strict copyright checking tools and have automated takedown of any potentially copyrighted works.

That got put on the backburner for a little bit, but now it's back with a vote being held in early 2019.

YouTube, being one of, if not the largest content hosts in the world, is greatly affected by this motion. In fact, they have a whole website designed to encourage their creators to talk about A13 in their videos. The page very subtly hints at massive service changes that will happen in the EU if this actually ends up passing.

The CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, has also written an op-ed for Financial times (linked to official YT blog since it's free there) about the issues facing YT if A13 passes.

I haven't heard anything from official sources, but I've heard on the rumor mill that YouTube will completely suspend creators in the EU, not allowing them to upload any content, and potentially even removing their existing content from YouTube.

What if this passes? YouTube is one of the biggest sources of free knowledge and entertainment we have today, and it's become engrained into the internet as it is today.

With all this, I simply ask, "what's next?"

Hooktube.com used to provide a private way to view youtube vids, blocking ads, bypassing region locks, and also pulling comments and search results via the api. All you had to do was replace the you in a youtube link with hook.

No more. On July 11, this appeared on the changelog:

HookTube no longer uses YouTube api for anything, and most features (channel page, search, related videos, etc) are gone. No choice.

Which was extremely bad, but at least you could still watch videos privately right?

July 16: YouTube api features are back but mp4 <video> is replaced with the standard YT video embed. HookTube is now effectively just a light-weight version of youtube and useless to the 90% of you primarily concerned with denying Google data and seeing videos blocked by your governments.

rest in pieces
It was a good run, 1.5 years. Started as a quickly made addition to the norbot project, and within long the server had to be upgraded several times. Of course YouTube Legal was an inevitability at that point.
Special thanks to the many people who created plugins and extensions for hooktube, /g/, the five people who donated anonymously, and BitChute for working hard on a real YouTube alternative. HookTube will remain operational in the present state for those who only needed it for performance reasons. See you in the next project.

:(

Alternatives include: invidio.us, youtube-dl, the Freetube desktop app, Newpipe for Android, and you’re doomed if you use iOS. ETA: Actually, I just remembered, there’s Media Grabber for the Workflow app. And Invidio mostly works on mobile.

Oddly all off a sudden, while I was watching a video, my phone started to play the same sound as my PC speakers. It was kinda of cool, like my phone was a second speaker. But it did it automatically. Anyone else see this? I have access to YouTube music now so maybe that's a new feature or something?

edit: My device is Windows 10 PC using regular Chrome and Google Pixel XL (Android P)