About convenience, video platforms, and why Hyper 8 exists

Let's go back to a paragraph from a previous page to dive a little deeper:

On platforms like YouTube you upload a video, usually in the highest possible quality, and then it is automatically processed on their servers. After a while it is then available for streaming in different resolutions (e.g. 1080p, 720p, etc.).

All of this is of course convenient, and on the surface nothing to object to.

However, it also obscures an underlying reality:

1. Video processing is a computationally expensive task, and if it does not happen on your computer, it must happen somewhere else.

2. Somewhere else in this case means data centers - giant computer farms whose construction consumes immense amounts of resources, land, rare metals, energy, water, and likewise causes significant carbon emissions and pollution.

3. These data centers run day and night, often with fossil fuels, and constantly consume energy and water - resources that are often scarce in areas where these centers operate, leading to shortages and/or dramatic price increases for the local population.

4. This all describes the ecological cost of that convenience, but there is also another, societal cost to this convenience - we as viewers are paying for it by being forced to watch ads on these platforms, and by being inundated in an ever-growing flood of paid propaganda, disinformation and commercial trash that is pushed onto us on these platforms.

5. Because these platforms operate on the promise of offering everything to you, never compromising or settling for less, each and every video that we upload will generally be stored indefinitely, in as many qualities and versions as these platforms can afford, and therefore even if you yourself are willing, or even longing, to trade "Everything, at a high ecological and societal cost" with "A little less, but at significantly lower ecological and societal cost" you are simply not given that choice on these platforms.

And here we come full circle and back to Hyper 8:

Hyper 8 puts you - both as a video creator and as a viewer - back in control.

No new data center needs to be built so you can build a video site, and everything you need is already right in front of you – your own computer.

If YouTube is a global fast food chain - omnipresent, convenient, but ultimately damaging to the health of our society, Hyper 8 lets you set up your own local garden, open to your friends and viewers, free of the trash served elsewhere - just your own raw, delicous creations. And while hosting your own "video garden" with Hyper 8 of course also has its ecological cost (the internet and the server that hosts your video website do not run on love and air either), you are at the helm now, deciding just how much resources you choose to consume with your site, and for which things it is a price worth paying.