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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace.

More and more people switching to DuckDuckGo as a default and using Google only when necessary would get the ball rolling. Gmail is pretty replaceable with any other email, although I can see many people not changing from it out of laziness.

Google drive apps are pretty nice, but I doubt most people use them much at all, and Microsoft/apple offer alternatives. Google maps can eventually be replaced if people started using the alternatives more.

It will take time, but seems doable if more and more people keep changing habits.

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> I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace.

What about Vimeo? Or for a more federated approach, PeerTube?

From the last conversation I had around PeerTube, the main objection I got was that content creators would probably lose a bunch of traffic which they switched, which is true, but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail.

The good content isn't on any alternative platforms. And they mostly suck.

I wish it wasn't true.

> but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail.

People use gmail for free, and there are no network effects.

Content creators use YouTube due to its ability to sell ads, but I am not familiar with the alternatives to know if they are capable of handling the amount of people and ads YouTube serves. It seems like a more difficult problem than alternatives to email/maps/drive/search.

YouTube has the content. I can put my stuff on the others, and send my friends links no problem. However when Dave Richards posts another old time machine shop video it is only to YT - I can think of several more awesome channels that are only on YT.

I don't know how to solve this problem.

I'm not convinced that's actually a problem. To replace them, we don't need to vacuum every single creator out of their ecosystem at the same time.

When the network effect shifts, it does it gradually with long siphoning effects, not all at once.

Some people I follow have moved to Odysee[1], seems like a good candidate for helping wean users off YT. There are a handful of YT creators uploading content to both platforms simultaneously. That might be the best way to transition away from YT until the other platforms become popular enough to self-sustain. There's a blockchain under the hood which I'm sure will trigger some HN denizens (I'm a bit skeptical as well) but it seems like a solid concept.

[1] https://odysee.com

> but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail.

huh? There's a massive difference between those two things. YouTube provides discoverability for your content. Gmail does not. Besides the loss of existing viewers in a platform switch, creators would also lose a huge audience of potential viewers of their content both from recommendations and from search results. Sure, there are content creators who build up followings, but lots of people will get a handful of videos that become popular results for certain searches. Those come entirely from searches and "related" listings.

Further, changing emails doesn't require people emailing you to use a completely different client to do so.

> I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace.

This fits me exactly, I ungoogled myself completely except for YT. There is no viable alternative, and I'd rather not watch TV again so I stick reluctantly with YT for now.

You can ungoogle yourself from both TV and YT just fine. The viable alternative is to spend your time on something else, internets are big.

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