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Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

I am seriously surprised how long it is taking for YouTubers to realize the YouTube platform is failing them and in some cases it is pitted against them. When you get down to brass tacks they only care about their advertisers. CBS is a big advertiser and partner for YouTube so they and those like them will always win. Social and legal norms be damned

I do get encouraged when I see some creators going their own way like: floatplane.com and watchnebula.com

Support creators you care about or they may not be around much longer.

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It feels like most YouTubers know and have vocalized their issues with YouTube, but lack any viable alternatives. The benefits they get with YouTube with the large audience already using the platform and potential help the 'Suggestions' system on YouTube gives them outweigh the freedom they'd get from switching platforms.

I agree, there is about to be a large market gap for streaming content creators. If someone had the team, the skill, and the funding they could effectively roll out a viable competitor to YouTube.

I'm not sure how it would go exactly, but their advertising could very easily be centered around dodging the wrongs of YouTube.

You could do everything YouTube does, but better, and still have a hard time of it because content creators audiences are still on YouTube

There's also the high barrier to entry due to bandwidth and storage: you're not going to be able to compete with YouTube if you don't offer at least 1080p streaming which means you have to have a pretty hefty infrastructure in place before you can launch.

And then the legal issues: as a scrappy new website, you're unlikely to be able to protect your users from large copyright holders, which in practice means new YouTube competitors will be even more quick to take down fair use videos than YouTube to prevent being sued out of existence.

I've been thinking about building something like that for a long time, but I just don't see how it would be feasible in the current copyright system.

The only solution I see would be sites like Dropout or Nebula(? not too familiar with it), where the platform is effectively the same as the content creator. This of course is inaccessible to the vast majority of smaller creators.

I'm honestly surprised Twitch hasn't made more of a grab for this.

Start slowly, maybe a nightly gaming news show. Get a few podcasts to live broadcast their episodes.

People have been talking a lot about how Twitch streaming is eating YouTube. Content creators are finding it more lucrative to stream on Twitch than create monetized content on YouTube. With VODs and such in Twitch they're really eating up that segment of YouTube.

I'm not sure how much YouTube notices though, they still have all the rest of their HUGE pie.

Well the creators absolutely know that... but they also know that those exact advertisers are the ones that are paying them as well. Who else is giving them money?

There's a few creators who managed to get Patreon as a second source of funding, but there's just no getting away from the fact that Google signed up advertisers who actually pay for a lot of YouTubes hosting, infrastructure and payout costs.

If creators move away from the platform they'll need to handle those deals by themselves from a weaker negotiating position. It's significantly easier to get money from all three: Patreon donations, their own in-video advertisements AND youtube advertiser payouts.

"I am seriously surprised how long it is taking for YouTubers to realize the YouTube platform is failing them"

I don't think that is the case. For what I've seen, the discontent has been growing for years. Youtube is to video what google is to search.

Yeah. there are competitors but we all know it's a monopoly.

YouTubers absolutely realize, but YouTube is the biggest game in town by a huge margin. If you're making non-porn videos on the internet, it's very very hard to be successful outside of youtube.

Currently as an independent creator its only possible to make living wage money on YT or Twitch.

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