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Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

That would be all nice and dandy, except that by doing that you validate all the things that Google did before to kill off any competition in the video hosting space.

There were plenty of platforms out there that could not rely on Google's bottomless coffers to sustain their operation. Were you paying for those as well?

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I get that, but in that case it also makes sense to avoid YouTube altogether since you simply being there continues to deprive other services of the opportunity to compete. These days I think YouTube’s biggest competition is stuff like TikTok, which I find odious.

>since you simply being there continues to deprive other services of the opportunity to compete

If DancingBacons posted other places, I'd go other places.

Saying something like this completely ignores the realities of network effect.

I totally get that the network effect makes it difficult to leave abusive platforms, but if one cares enough, it is possible to make that sacrifice. I deleted my Facebook account, for example, and now I can’t keep up with numerous people and groups that use Facebook. It was worth the sacrifice for me.

"If you don't like it, you can simply stop participating in society" is not really a good argument to me, but I'm glad it works for you.

I put all the ad blockers on YouTube and I pay Nebula not because I particularly enjoy it (it's nice, but not the first thing I think about when I want to watching some videos) but because I want to signal content creators "hey, if you want to be supported by your audience but worry that YouTube is the only place where you can make a living out of it, there is an alternative."

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