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> So if you want to publish stuff and no longer worry about it, you need to make sure that you have a subscription going with a valid credit card.

Also known as "paying for hosting". Seems pretty reasonable. If creators want to upload and broadcast unlimited hours of HD video onto the internet for free they need to accept the consequences of this arrangement (i.e. they aren't entitled to anything). The rest of us have to invest capital into our projects so that we can ensure a stable digital foundation in-line with our own prerogatives.

Personally I'm pretty stoked about getting free unlimited video hosting.

I understand that some people want to use it to get into show business, but man, Youtube is not the biggest impediment to that, nor the worst predatory company they'll deal with along the way.

I understand the rationale, the problem is that I don't want to pay for video hosting indefinitely, unless it's a service that's included in a package for something else I'm paying for.

So if the solution is Vimeo versus not hosting video at all, I might go for the later. Therefore free to host services like YouTube win.

> the problem is that I don't want to pay for video hosting indefinitely

That's fine, YouTube offers the service for free, but it's not reasonable to have any particular expectations of quality or service from a free offering.

> YouTube faces no competition for creators.

Twitch could have been a competitor, but they surprisingly don't seem to care about that market ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I think Twitch is probably better off not trying to go after the non-live market because it's tough to surface both live content and recorded content well using the same layout and the tools for deciding what recorded content to show is much different and involved than live.

I do wish they would do better with organizing the VoD section though it's so hard to find particular VoDs even for simple things like Critical Role's once a week show that happens at the same time every week much less a less scheduled streamer.

It's definitely an experience design tradeoff. It's nearly impossible to organically find livestream content on YouTube outside of 1) copyrighted TV shows or 2) 24/7 music streams.

It is pretty easy to find game streams on youtube, just look here:

https://www.youtube.com/gaming/live

You can also filter by game, for example Fortnite streams:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXzGWycANrrfyBmzX6JMsvQ/liv...

They have a list of top viewed games just like twitch:

https://www.youtube.com/gaming/games

The problem seems to be that on Twitch those pages are at the center and are how the users find content, while on youtube you have to dig for them and people find content via Youtube's algorithm so most are not even aware that they exist.

The armies are assembling, however.

Linus Media Group has Floatplane, CGP Grey and friends have Nebula... YouTube, like Netflix, doesn't have a special sauce. It has creators, and those creators are happy and eager to leave.

> YouTube, like Netflix, doesn't have a special sauce

But they do have the eyes. If you want your videos to be seen, there's no Youtube alternative. Twitch would be, but they seem to be banning people for political reasons too.

Network effect is real and very strong. It will be very hard to create real YT alternatives.

We have Bitchute and PeerTube, but they severely lack content and the viewers.

"Network effect is real and very strong."

I'd say it's real, but weak. The value to me of the next incremental YouTube content provider isn't very large. If one of my favorite providers leaves, I won't find it hard to follow them.

What they have is the only practical advertising-based monetization platform. That's the real moat. You can use YouTube to build enough of a base to then create a backup monetization base with something like Patreon, but I don't know how to get you to that point without starting on YouTube first.

It isn't weak. Not sure how you look for new content. In my case it is yt.com/feed/subscriptions. If you leave i might follow. But only if enough content is on your new website to warrant me opening that tab a few times a week. Maybe also with content very on schedule. But you can be sure I wont do this with many sides, so you better switch to the same platform as anyone else.

Also maybe once or twice a week I actually follow one of YTs recommendations. I'm unlikely to do the same on platforms with significant less content. I'd expect others to behave the same and thus you'd probably loose a lot of advertising. Being big on a smaller platform has its own advantages, but I'm not sure this cancels out. And you have to be one of the top dogs in the first place...

It should be pretty easy for a content creator to start uploading videos to both places? Maybe someone could write a tool that automatically uploads the same video to multiple sites with the same description, similar tags, etc.

Also, Twitch is too focused (or seems) in gaming. I wouldn't go to Twitch to find travel, anime reviews, cooking, pet videos...

> We have Bitchute and PeerTube, but they severely lack content and the viewers.

And they look terrible

Also, peertube result on google (of course), leads me here: https://joinpeertube.org/en/

Which is not a video portal. So, not going to work for wide audiences. They don't care about how your site is coded, what instances are, etc...

YouTube's special sauce is Google's treasury. I'm not convinced that free video hosting is something that is both profitable and scalable running on ad revenue alone, or at least, I believe that any new competitor would run out of runway before achieving a good enough margin to beat out operating costs.

Youtube has a platform that "just works". You click upload, it's uploaded and being served to be watched anywhere. What are the alternatives?

Does Youtube 'make money'?

If not, what deep-pocketed company would be able to keep a competitor afloat?

I watch more YouTube than anything else on a daily basis, and I would be perfectly fine watching my favorite creators on another platform. If it actually works and keeps those creators happy, then I'm happy. Competition in the marketplace used to be smiled upon.

I will not be downloading TikTok

Me too. I would happily switch if other websites had good content. But unfortunately, everyone's is on Youtube (I don't watch gameplay videos, so no Twitch for me)

And unfortunately, there's no real alternative to Youtube. Let's say I'm a content creator, where would I upload my videos? Vimeo is not free, other sites similar to Youtube closed, so...

There is https://www.anim8.io for animators and fans of animation. The community is much kinder and more constructive than YouTube and rapidly growing.

>YouTube faces no competition

This completely. I've never used TikTok, but my understanding is that it is more akin to SnapChat for lipsyncing. I'm sure there are a lot of people who use YouTube for that type of content and have been pulled to TikTok for it, but it does not seem like an alternative to me as someone who almost exclusively goes to YouTube for content that is at least 10 minutes or longer and more like a replacement for television.

I have done no research into this at all, so maybe I'm just an asshole repeating hearsay, but I've heard YouTube is not even remotely profitable for Google. Owning the huge site definitely benefits them in a lot of ways beyond just ad revenue/profit, so I'm assuming from Google's point of view, until some other site can actually challege YouTube's dominance, it's totally worth it to have this stream of publicity gaffes to lose a tiny amount of viewer revenue than to throw even more money down the hole trying to fix the site's issue. It's like a wooden row boat that keeps springing leaks, as long as YouTube has free fingers to plug them, that's what they're gonna do rather than actually fix them.

Vimeo is definitely not a youtube competitor

they've pivoted to aiding businesses create video ads