Vimeo, a video hosting platform, has announced that it will change its bandwidth policy and promised to improved its services. Originally, the platform was supposed to increase the prices of its services, but it received criticism from creators.e
Now, Vimeo said that the new policies would replace the terms with definitive ones and guarantee that the platform's creators will have more time to prepare for the changes.
In a blog post, the company apologized to users who consumed large amounts of video bandwidth, "repeatedly hitting the bandwidth threshold for Vimeo's top 1% of users.
"we have continued to enforce legacy policies that are poorly communicated and that are causing unnecessary friction and anxiety. We have been too slow to act upon user feedback and as a consequence, have damaged user trust," wrote in a blog post.
Vimeo to Change Bandwidth Policy
The video streaming platform stated that its new cap for monthly bandwidth use is 2TB. In the past, the policy was applied to creators who were repeatedly in the top 1% of bandwidth usage, which Vimeo admits could have been more transparent, according to Cartoon Brew.
The platform also says that it will alert creators when they go over the 2TB limit, so they have enough time to figure out how to cut back on data use or prepare for their bill to increase.
Vimeo's new policies also say that creators will have 30 days to reply to the platform and work out a deal if they are over the cap and that their content during that time will not get affected.
Under the previous policy, a creator told The Verge that he was given nine days to upgrade his account, decrease his bandwidth usage, or his access to his videos would be disrupted.
The platform estimated that his costs would go from $900 a year to $3,000 a year, and that is a lot of money to come up with in just over a week.
Creators Fight Back
Under the previous policy, several creators said that they got messages from the platform saying that they were using too much bandwidth and were at risk of having to leave the platform.
A lot of the creators were paying hundreds of dollars every year so they could use Vimeo to host videos for Patreon, and they were surprised at how few the views were.
The videos can still eat up a lot of bandwidth even with a small number of views, and there is a lot of data that needs to be transferred if 10 people watch an hour-long concert in 4K in Vimeo, according to Business Insider.
The creators also said they were surprised that Vimeo was demanding thousands of dollars more a year if they wanted to keep using the service. One creator did not even realize that they were uploading to Vimeo when they uploaded videos to Patreon until all of those videos disappeared.
Vimeo's post, written by its CEO Anjali Sud, has an apologetic tone. The letter even opens with an image of a bouquet of flowers. However, it is important to remember that these changes won't make Vimeo a better option for the creators hit with high prices by the legacy policy.
Vimeo previously said that the top 1% threshold was already around 2 or 3TB a month. That means that if creators had to pay more under the old policy, it is possible that they would still have to with the new policy.
The new policy should at least make it, so creators do not have to scramble to lower their bandwidth use or find a new way to host their videos in just a couple of days.
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Written by Sophie Webster
