Vimeo Softens the Blow of Higher Fees for Popular Creators

pcmag.com:

Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud has publicly apologized for the way the company treated popular creators whose bandwidth usage exceeded the vast majority of the video platform's other users.

The Verge reported on March 15 that Vimeo had told some creators they would have to pay thousands of dollars a year to continue using its video hosting service without interruption because they—and their viewers—used more bandwidth than 99% of Vimeo users.

Those messages came as a surprise, especially to people who've been using Vimeo for years. It's also a difficult position to be put in. Not many creators would be able to afford such a dramatic price increase, and there's little they can do to limit their bandwidth usage, either.

The backlash was swift—which is why Sud made the following apology on Vimeo's blog:

"For those who consume 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. This pains me greatly, and does not do justice to the passion and hard work of our team. I’d like to offer an apology for this, and more importantly, a solution."

Sud explains that Vimeo will be changing its enforcement of this policy to apply to anyone who uses more than 2TB of bandwidth per month, creating an exemption policy to allow creators who "aren’t using Vimeo to monetize those videos elsewhere" to exceed that limit, and more.

For those still affected by this policy, Sud says Vimeo will send "more frequent and visible alerts" and offer "a minimum of 30 days from the time of our