Any YouTube alternative needs to take one of these niche areas and pick at it.
If you're worried about the power tech companies have gained, and you're using that as the sole reason to build a new community, it's not going to become something better. If you want to compete with Youtube, You have to have something that is fundamentally more appealing on a mainstream level than their product.
To be a viable long-term alternative, a competitor will have to break at least one of those fundamental constraints.
I'm also very close to making some sort of self-hosted Twitch type thing. A lot of streamers are getting caught up in Twitch's bullshit policies. Someone I follow wore their workout clothes on stream after they finished a workout and wanted to make their normal stream time. Twitch banned her for 30 days because that's supposedly inappropriate. I think it's time to cut them out of the loop and make streaming decentralized. The type of bandwidth and compute power you need to distribute 5Mbps video to a couple thousand viewers is easily in the reach of individuals now. (10Gbps connections to the Internet can be had on the order of $1000.)
All you need is some software to run it all and a standard way of paying the streamers across the decentralized network. Probably a good application for cryptocurrency. People are crazy about their favorite streamers, and would probably be willing to learn how to use something other than a credit card to subscribe. Emotes are already decentralized with things like BTTV and FFZ. So it could work. I just don't see how I would personally make any money, so I haven't pursued it much. But the days of requiring some megacorp like Google or Amazon to be able to distribute video are over -- this area is ripe for disruption.
But I think as much as content creators love to hate on their platform, they do love the free audience. A lot of people got their start when "the algorithm" finally recognized them, and they turned their hobby into a day job. I'm not sure it could ever work with a centralized gateway that collects metadata and suggests new creators to users. But maybe it's OK if we put the money and the servers in the hands of the creators, and let discovery be an additional bonus. And maybe running that could be profitable; you get a $1 commission for sending a new subscriber their way.
I dunno, just some random thoughts... but this all sounds more and more reasonable every day. People lost access to their email for chatting in a streamer's chat. That's CRAZY.
Here is a summary of the situation: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/overwatch-streamer-hit...
I don't think Fareeha was out of line. I've watched people stream Overwatch from their pool, and Twitch didn't mind at all even though the (male) streamer was completely topless.
It's very arbitrary and unfair.
I stopped reading here because you're clearly out of touch.
I'm happy to give you a phone number to call to get your 10Gbps transit circuit set up at that price, even though I don't work there anymore.
Unless of course you mean "$1000/mo, after several million in upfront costs".
In the last few days all of the iPads at the school I work at have begun showing the following error when attempting to open YouTube links in safari:
"Sorry for the interruption.
You are seeing this message because your current network has been identified as using non-authorized applications to access YouTube."
The only way I've found around it is to use their app, or solve the reCAPTCHA puzzle every time.
Some actual competition in this space would be wonderful.
The pressures that make youtube act the way it does aren't going to be significantly different for another provider.
How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
> How do we get there? Assuming users still don't want to pay for cat videos.
Peer-to-peer torrent-like distribution. Of course, then you'll have the problem where the system will be full of pirated content, illegal content, etc, and you'll get to enjoy attention from police and regulators.
Of course, it doesn't have an ad or patronage model built in.
No, that self-hosting option doesn't replace Youtube. A lot of techies seem to have a blind spot as to the real value Youtube provides to content creators and video uploaders: $0 hosting costs for unlimited audience.
No self-hosted tech stack or home-based network appliance to stream videos can offer that same financial deal.
Techies seem to only see the technical stack and the protocol to host a video. The intimate knowledge computers is actually misdirecting you away from the real strengths of Youtube. Instead, look at Youtube the same way a non-techie content creator would. My previous comments trying to explain this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488484
However people making money on youtube are a significant minority. Most uses are not that use.
So in terms of non-commercial sharing - I already pay for my internet connection and fibre 'upload' speeds ( from home-out ) are very under-utilized.
Also usage isn't metered - the limit is maxbandwidth X time.
So the only risk here is being too popular - which is frankly unlikely!
If you wanted to scale - p2p is an option - the issues around illegal content etc - that can be fixed if you have identity and permissions built in - the people who share are identifiable and you only choose to peer people/content you approve.
Imagine it being like a retweet - with just the same legal consequences, but with just the same potential to reach millions - but without a single company in control...
I'd only imagine someone like Netflix, who has existing infrastructure, to actually create a profitable video site.
You either vastly underestimate the size of their library, or vastly overestimate the maximum amount of RAM a single server can hold.
I said this about Twitter during the days of ubiquitous fail whale pages. The problems are branding and money. One needs to create a brand, and market it effectively. It needs funding to pay for hosting and traffic.
So how does one disrupt YouTube?
You will accomplish exactly nothing.