Maybe it's time to reimagine content sharing that has full uncensorable control of the creator and reach of today's centralized platforms, with a fair way to monetize.
Maybe it's time to reimagine content sharing that has full uncensorable control of the creator and reach of today's centralized platforms, with a fair way to monetize.
Perhaps we (for a random definition of "we") should have legislation requiring these companies to provide warranty for the services they provide, under a common set of minimal and inalienable rights, when the service is "free" but the company has revenue from ads and such. Having warranty for the services require some level of tech support, of course.
Will this scale for a Google-sized company? Probably not, but that's their problem. It would even be better, for us as a society, if this makes these companies unsustainable; I can only dream of they being replaced by thousands of smaller ones for which the approach is sustainable.
Youtube was initially successful because hosting video for playback in a browser was difficult and expensive. It's not difficult anymore, but it's still expensive at scale. It was not profitable and only managed to keep operating because Google bought it early on and absorbed losses for a decade.
Youtube only became profitable when it started running lots of ads and using a recommendation engine that's prone to amplify misinformation and political extremism. That's not the only thing the recommendation engine does of course, but everyone running a massively popular service with user-generated content and a recommendation engine seems to have the same issues. Of course, advertisers are nervous about having their ads run next to controversial content, so these kinds of services tend to remove first and ask questions later.
Those are the reach and monetization bits. What's a better way to solve those problems than ads and a recommendation algorithm?