They have. Nebula is one platform, floatplane is another.
Comment on PewDiePie: I'm DONE with Google
Kolanaki@pawb.social 19 hours ago
I was actually kinda wondering the other day why super large content creators with good cash flow from what they already do, don’t ditch Google and Patreon or anything else that takes a cut to he nothing more than a middleman to accessing the content? They don’t need to host on the same level as YouTube; they could probably make more money hosting their videos on their own website, where they can control what is free or paid for, and can work directly with advertisers themselves.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 17 hours ago
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Sauce plus and dropout as well. Basically run by youtubers to make content without relying on YouTube. A lot of this is running on pre-existing tech for running a streaming service and I assume it’s dependent on AWS (Amazon) hosting but yeah lots of smaller paid streaming services run by youtubers because YouTube sucks
Evotech@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Literally all of them have tried at some point. But honestly you just end up with a bunch of effectively streaming services that you have to pay for.
I already have hbo, Netflix, krangle + and Hulu and YouTube and now I need «randomyoutuber+» x10 too?
Yeah no thanks
rtxn@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
hosting their videos on their own website
I love that entrepreneurial attitude. If an online service is unsatisfactory, just develop your own software from the ground up and provision the infrastructure from your pocket. Car industry sucks? Just build your own car! GPU prices high? Grab a soldering iron and a handful of sand, how hard could it be?
y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
There are open source alternatives that already exist.
DolphinMath@slrpnk.net 18 hours ago
Streaming video is expensive. LTT did it with Floatplane, even going so far as to develop their own backend. Watcher and some other YouTubers did it with Vimeo as their backend, but Vimeo still takes a large cut.
At the end of the day, people are doing this, but YouTube still offers a compelling value compared to other platforms. It’s hard to beat their scale, sophistication, and the discoverability of their platform.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 18 hours ago
Well, there is Nebula, which is kinda like that. But most of them also put their videos on YouTube, using Nebula as the premium ad-free option with a little bonus content.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 hours ago
I’m worried about Nebula’s business model being profitable enough to be sustainable in the long term but given their business model includes making every creator on the platform a part-owner of the platform that does limit how bad things can get
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 hours ago
From everything I’ve heard, they’re already profitable, and are explicitly choosing only to grow in a sustainable way, without taking on outside investment which could force them into enshittifying down the line. With a relative lack of need to show extreme growth, and a lack of reliance on outside factors like advertising (being subscription-based), the only major risk that I can see for them long-term is user churn. Which is definitely a risk, but with the ever-creeping growth of the range of content they have and (at least for now) an attitude of being customer-friendly, churn seems a relatively low risk.
As far as I can see, at worst, the platform dies if the YouTube channels of the people on the platform die because of the YouTube algorithm, and they get bad churn (with fewer new subscribers because of the aforementioned dead YouTube channels at the top of the funnel), and they don’t get new more successful channels on before that happens. A scenario that’s far from unlikely, but which I would describe as “catastrophic, whether or not Nebula exists today”, so its existence for now as a hedge against more likely bad scenarios is still worthwhile.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 10 minutes ago
That’s super cool. I’d love to know more about Nebula’s business practices, do you know where I could find that information? I’ve seen some interviews with their leadership that didn’t go into anywhere near the depth that I’d like and that’s about it
rumba@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
Putting a video file somewhere and letting 10,000 people watch it at the same time is no small feat.
You could probably get away with doing it on peer tube but it has no facilities to lock people out or make them pay.
Even if you don’t use patreon for payments payments aren’t free.
Auli@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
It’s harder then you think.
dmtalon@infosec.pub 18 hours ago
And how do they get big? How do they get discovered? SEO ?
They’re getting huge because of the platform.
I’m not saying google is not evil but it literally gives them their audience.
I watch YT more than anything else by a mile, and if my top subscription moved to their website, and I had to jump through hoops to watch them on my TV device, by installing a browser or something I probably would stop watching them. Another TV friendly app sure that wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t see many doing that.
merc@sh.itjust.works 34 minutes ago
Yeah, even an established creator is going to have a hard time moving their audience.
If YouTube weren’t a near monopoly it would be different. Then other companies would be competing for creators.
Making it worse is section 1201 of the DMCA. It makes it a crime to circumvent access controls. In the past, Facebook was able to grow by providing tools to interface with MySpace. People didn’t have to abandon their MySpace friends, they could communicate with them through Facebook, and Facebook could ensure that messages sent on its platform arrived to people still on MySpace. But, if you tried that today Facebook has access controls in place that make that a crime. The same applies to YouTube. Nobody can build a seamless “migrate away from YouTube” experience because YouTube will use the DMCA to block them.
The governments of the world need to bring back antitrust with teeth and force interoperability.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 18 hours ago
I’m talking about those who have already gotten big, like PewDiePie. Not the dude who just started a channel last week and has nothing to do shit with.
non_burglar@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The lift of running your own platform is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to creating your own video hosting platform.
rebelrbl@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
It’s not that challenging with a partner to help manage infrastructure which even at his scale is not going to cost an obscene amount of money.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 17 hours ago
Websites work very well and are scalable af. A plugged in person with a track record like that could go Web 2.0 and probably net more.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
If they somehow even got 10% of their audience to go to another platform that would be a miracle
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
YouTube still offers them a service in directing them new viewers. The big creators all lose viewers but YouTube funnels replacement views faster than they lose. They could host their own videos but they are gonna see very little growth without Google either in search or with YouTube as they start to lose the base that followed them.
They also won’t be able to negotiate as good as rates for pre-rolls or in video sponsorships as if they were on YouTube.
The only real alternative would be to band together like the creators that are a part of nebula are doing. Hosting on peertube really isn’t an option unless you are independently supported and you are doing it as a passion project and don’t care about audience growth or retention.
dmtalon@infosec.pub 18 hours ago
Still think building their own site with apps I can throw on my devices is pretty involved.