• bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People are free to make videos and post them on their own websites. Where they have to try and figure out how people will find them, get people to check their site for new videos, source all their own ads, or rely only on sponsors (who will be hard to get without an audience), try to get people to sign up to their site for some user engagement, pay all the hosting fees for videos, build the actual website, make sure that site has metrics to sell yourself to sponsors, build a mobile site, probably an app…

    All of this not only gets expensive, but makes it much more difficult to get noticed or scale. Maybe if someone is already famous they can pull it off, but for someone who just has an iPhone and a dream… that’s all you need to start on YouTube, and you can make millions.

    The “platform” brings insane amounts of value to the table, and is extremely expensive to run. And the reason all the users are there to watch the big creators is that all the other random videos are hosted for free. There is no reason to go anywhere else.

    Creators have tried to start their own thing. I see ads for it all the time in their videos. I don’t know anyone who uses those as a viewer. I am curious how it’s working out for the creators.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      An empty platform has little value. Hundreds have gotten shut down for this very reason.

      Content by and large makes the platform. Not the other way round. Yet the platform soaks up the lions share of the benefit. Leaving most who aren’t whales to see nothing at all. This is the problem google is very complicit with. I’m all for them making enough to sustain the service. I just think they owe far more than they are giving, to the content that made them.

      Nebula is great. And is trundling along just fine. It could use some more promotion and love sure. But it’s goals aren’t the same as a behemoth like Google’s. Who’s talents aren’t in creating content, but promoting it.