this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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In what way would I be trolling. A full video file, say you’re watching the Olympics, will be tens of gigabytes. That same file streamed will be maybe 200mb after compression and bit rate changes for your browser.
Because both sites there are serving compressed video and also because those type of sites absolutely do not have less ads than youtube. Every inch of screenspace is taken up by ads and you need to click 3 ads just to adjust the volume. So I dont think the meme wasnt referring to video streaming sites and was instead referring to piracy sites that host links to torrents which incurs very little running costs compared to youtube.
both sites where? are you talking about some specific sites you have in your mind instead of the topic of discussion? I never once mentioned video streaming sites, besides youtube. And I wasn't referring to torrents either. Sites like Anna's Archive (the largest pirate database on the web) hosts their files. If you download from them you are downloading the full file, no compression besides maybe gzip. Usenet, you are downloading the full file, no compression again, besides gzip or whatever compression the uploader used. With usenet at least you'll be pulling from a host rather than the site that has the links, but the content is still being downloaded. Downloading the full file is always more resource intensive than watching a streamed version. That's why Youtube doesn't want you streaming in 4k or high bitrates. It's literally why YouTube Premium exists.
I assumed video because the comparison is youtube. AA isnt really what was in mind because they are more of a book archiving site with slow capped direct downloads than video torrents but its along the lines of my point that their cost is far lower than YouTube so you'd expect them to run less ads.
Most of the pirated content is being served is via torrents which allow serving content cheaper than YouTube because the cost is distributed across the users in the network. This content is being encoded into efficient formats same as YouTube. There just isnt sites that cost more to operate than YouTube. except Vimeo i guess. Stuff lile 123 movies, no one would ever even try claim that has less ads than YouTube and it servers a shitter more compressed less reliable video stream.