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Comment by tsgagnon | Hacker News Reader

It also shows how the web (and technology in general) would be a lot more better for us if we decided to support these people just a little bit, instead of letting ourselves be exploited by Big Tech in exchange of "free" stuff.

The biggest issue with Peertube/Youtube is related to creators and how they get paid for content they create.

Youtube has an avenue for that to happen, and Peertube doesn't, or at least in a way that works.

Unless Peertube wants to just be "the place you host your videos from other platforms as a backup" something would have to be done.

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How many YouTubers, as a percentage of total users, actually get paid a living wage by doing work on YouTube? I'd assume that it's not many.

The ones that do aren't surviving on YouTube ad revenue alone since the adpocalypse. They're doing so based on ad reads and crowdfunding, both of which work on Peertube just fine.

The only thing keeping them on YouTube is audience reach.

It's a very large ocean at this point, so while the percentages are small -- the number is quite large.

Youtube of ~15 years ago was mostly just Joe Randoms making videos to amuse themselves or others, not trying to make a career out of it. The videos were less polished but also less soulless. This sort of content could thrive on peertube, they don't have to win over the "influence career" people.

This sort of content could thrive on peertube, they don't have to win over the "influence career" people.

But this isn't 15 years ago. There wasn't a huge player in this space when Youtube was getting started, but now there is. And now people know it's theoretically possible to make decent money creating content.

The way to solve this, much like the way to solve R&D for open source, is to educate consumers to pay to creators and to eschew ad-funded business.

Has that ever worked?

On what scale are you talking about?

There are certainly plenty of stories of people who produce content funded directly by their audience, but none of them to match the money made by the top Youtubers.

"Educate" means to transfer skills and information, not to increase the likelihood that people behave in a certain way. The value-neutral term for the latter is "influence".

I'm a bit glib here, but the distinction is actually important. The ad industry, in particular, tends to use "educate" when it means "influence."

I do believe though that it is a matter of education. The absolute majority of people have no idea how the sausage of social media content is made.

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