It's not really a case of YT "getting it's act together", but more a case of Google having a look at this massive white elephant and trying to figure out how to make it profitable. Chad, Steve and Jawed jumped at the right time in 2005 when they sold to Google, YT is a massive resource hog which voraciously eats up hard drives and servers. Just think of the hardware requirements for people to be uploading 300 hours of HD video every minute! (Accurate as of September 2019)

Having users that upload 14 hour videos of the same 5-second clip on a loop isn't really good for anybody, and although they make a fair bit of money from the advertising (which probably aren't paying the bills considering how they are getting more and more intrusive), when you consider the staff requirements, servers, renting space to store servers, constantly buying more hardware to house new content, constantly replacing old hardware that fails - it's all going to add up.

Imagine the electricity bill! Not just to run all the electronics, but the cooling as well...

I, myself, haven't had that good of an experience with Newgrounds. Besides, isn't that website the internet equivalent of hosting a boxing match at the ancient Roman Colosseum?

And Vimeo only allows so many gigs of upload space with a free account (and a 10/15 minute upload limit on free accounts too, if I'm not mistaken)

Twitter supports video and Bitchute isn't a half-bad idea.

I know it would be very memory-heavy and expensive, but what about going old school and having Bricks in Motion host the videos directly? (a la pre-Youtube Brickfilms.com) Or what about a Brickshelf, but for video; made just for Lego content?

Just throwing ideas out there.

I'm not moving from youtube. It's the best hosting site. Even if I lose comments, people can still comment on BiM, Twitter, or wherever I post. I may even start posting to Facebook again, but I dont know if I'm that desperate for the comments. My audience is on YouTube.

My take is that while it may be better for creators to host elsewhere where comments are allowed, it's not better for consumers. I'm not gonna go to far lengths to hunt down brickfilms personally. So if you're putting them on Newgrounds exclusively and not crossposting to youtube too, I prolly won't see the video. And that comes from me, a brickfilmer. Your audience is suddenly reduced to like, four people and a handful of strangers on a site that isn't youtube.

YouTube • Website

"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

But isn't that the most indie !@#$ ever; posting films on a website where almost no one's gonna go out of their way to see them?

That's not the point. William Osborne's Dancing in the Street recreation got over twice the amount of views on Vimeo as it did YouTube. But the Vimeo upload only has 4 comments while the YouTube upload got 28. (plus the 5 on BiM and the twitter responses...)

Views do not directly correlate to audience & engagement beyond the initial single click. And even then, a look into the YouTube Analytics page generally shows that audience retention, even for short videos, is rather short. (e.g. clicking on and clicking right back off)

Especially when it comes to content like brickfilms, audience convenience should be a priority.

What happens if we don't do anything to our youtube channels? Will our videos be removed or blocked? Will adults still be able to view them freely?

But you won't be blocked. Anyone can watch the videos. The comments might go away if youtube marks your video as "for kids" and people can't add them to playlists. That's about it.

YouTube • Website

"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

I don't know what the current financial state of BricksInMotion is, but I don't think the pockets are deep enough for that kind of hosting. Server space isn't actually that expensive, it's the bandwidth. A site can potentially host thousands of videos, so long as each one is only getting a few views a month it isn't an issue. But if one 25Mb video gets mega popular (maybe some famous person links to it) it can suck up the month's bandwidth allowance in a day (or a few hours). If we're lucky, the hosting company simply shuts the site down. If the hosting company is "user friendly" they might keep providing a service (good for the viewer, good for the brand) but hand over a bill for thousands of dollars at the end of the month (very bad for the site owner / admins).

Using an existing site which has a large company behind it is a much better idea than BiM hosting.

I don't want to be a part of a website that hosts and actively supports pornographic content. And I won't go there to watch 'your' films - whomever that 'you' is. Newgrounds, IMHO, is not a place for brickfilms and brickfilmers - even those that wish to spread their videos out amongst multiple platforms.

IMO, there are better platforms.

Do any of you guys know what that Brick-a-Brack website is? A lot of you use it, right? Is it a good YouTube alternative?