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Comment by djaro | Hacker News Reader

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization.

I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor.

I have a pretty small channel (~100K subscribers) with no employees and relatively low upkeep costs (a few hundred dollars a month), and even I could not make this work if I didn't get at least $500-$1,000 per video on average, since it just takes so much time and money.

Most channels with more than a million subscribers are likely founders working 60-80 hour weeks with multiple full-time employees supporting them. You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there.

And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. And the difference between a million views and a hundred is 10,000x. You cannot create a platform without big users.

I think any real competitor to YouTube nowadays would have to be backed by a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. Otherwise it's just dead in the water.

View on HN

You can publish to both and even better your own domain that simply points to your video hosting provider. Long term you want to own your distribution channel as much as possible, while using YouTube as your lead generation tool to drive true believers to your site and premium distribution channel not owned by YouTube. Otherwise, you will always be subject to platform risk via YouTube's whims which has destroyed many content creators. That's the long term winning play IMO and it doesn't preclude tools like FreeTube.

Realistically, how many viewers will be retained should YT shut the OP down? Right now, that number rounds to 0. Practically speaking, YT is free internet video streaming for long-form videos on the US market.

Nobody is going to go to OP's personal site to watch videos. They are going to fire up YT and eat what the algorithm feeds them.

The reason PeerTube and Nebula are important is it provides the potential for a true alternative destination for people looking for videos. Once these platforms have an enough content to draw an audience naturally, then content creators will be able to survive a post-YT world.

For people like the OP, it's probably best to follow the model video games do with DRM. Post on YT first, to get the ad revenue, then repost on other platforms after some time to build up an alternative subscriber base. Presumably, in-video sponsorships will pay for these views as well, even if there's no direct ad-sense like revenue model.

Nebula is invite only, as far as I can tell, for creators.

Nebula's value proposition for invited creators is dubious at best, too.

They also require an off-YouTube exclusivity contract, which was especially no bueno for me.

Isn't it possible for creators to release on YouTube some time after the Nebula release?

I know of a couple channels that do that, though it seems like there's a requirement to add a little extra bit on the end for the Nebula side.

I’ve seen both “Nebula first, YouTube later” and “bonus/longer content on Nebula only” as a common pattern.

Examples: Adam Neely, Tom Scott

Jet Lag videos release on YT one week after they premiere on Nebula.

> Realistically, how many viewers will be retained should YT shut the OP down? Right now, that number rounds to 0. Practically speaking, YT is free internet video streaming for long-form videos on the US market.

People have been following this strategy of creating their own mini-brands for years and have their own following. YT doesn't even have all of the their content, and YT is just one lead gen channel. Frankly, Ad Revenue from YT is pitiful, and it's an open secret the real money is made as I've described (although it is a long term play).

I don't disagree with you about PeerTube and the like, but it is a two-sided marketplace and you need to prime both sides of that pump (content creators and viewers).

> Nobody is going to go to OP's personal site to watch videos

Unfortunately, I agree. It's not the algorithm for me, though. Rather, it's the capabilities of the platform. I use the cast feature almost exclusively. I rarely watch a video on a computer screen and never on a mobile device. YouTube's casting feature is constantly broken, but it's the only thing that even barely works. I have no idea how many others see it this way, but I don't think I'm particularly distinct.

I've been following https://github.com/futo-org/fcast for a bit, but it doesn't really have a viable receiver implementation that I know of.

> Nobody is going to go to OP's personal site to watch videos.

Counterpoint: Channels with Patreons with uncensored and pre-release content.

Youtube can't be unseated as the main platform, but you're wildly wrong about the order of operations for what to do beyond your lead audience. No, you want to post on other platforms first, at a premium, and on youtube second. And should Youtube somehow magically evaporate, you just unlock your past premium content so people can find it and you have some degree of word of mouth as content that survived the apocalypse, as a lifeline.

Do people go looking for videos?

I think I go to YouTube because it has interesting content, and the fact it's in video form isn't particularly relevant. Some content must be in video form but not all of it. I also follow several blogs, and Hacker News. I used to use Reddit when it was less enshittified, the way I use YouTube now. I don't know why I don't follow Nebula - I have a subscription because I want to support more independent platforms.

A bootstrap problem. No one goes until there's enough content and no one posts because there are no viewers.

What is needed is a way to ingest YouTube video through peertube or through a client that treats peertube as a primary destination and YT as a fallback.

This client then gives multihosting a single UI and blurs YT branding.

Maybe?

Alright, you're hosting on FreeTube (paying for hosting & bandwidth costs) - how are you making money? Most YouTubers don't want to run their own ad network or sell a physical product. Sponsors make deals conditional on YouTube engagement metrics.

There are lots of strategies how to make money and it will vary based on your specialty. It could be premium content, premium services, exclusive engagement with your fans, merchandising (e.g., many cooking YouTubers sell their own brand of cooking utensils that they have designed themselves). It requires some thought, but the idea is to deepen the authenticity and engagement by building an actual community and your own personal micro-brand. The offering needs to feel organic and huge value to your community in some way. Many many people have done this on YT and now are making way more money than what's possible with the pittance that is YT monetization. YT then becomes just one part of your funnel intake strategy once you get big enough.

Edit: Of course, you do need to have enough demand/scale to make it worth your while, but that will depend on your audience size and how engaged/invested they are in your content AND you personally to an extent. Perhaps be creative and start out with small experiments. Not too hard with LLMs nowadays.

> It could be premium content, premium services, exclusive engagement with your fans, merchandising

To address the elephant in the room, except for "premium content", you're asking to pay for something the users didn't come for and most probably don't want.

So if you're not into mild grifting, the only way your content is directly monetized is paywalls, and that's an utterly complicated business as you need to show enough to entice, but not too much, while dealing with freebooting and custome support. It can be alleviated by joining a paywalled community like Nebula's, but it comes with it's own issues.

As you point out it's not impossible by any mean, it's just a huge PITA that will make no business sense for most creators compared to ad ridden platforms.

Selling get rich quick schemes, workout plans, etc?

A bit more like Kevin Powell, who publishes lots of free CSS videos [0], has some good basic CSS Training Courses for free, but charges money for the advanced ones [1]. His videos are not only available on his site, but they're also on Front End Masters, which is a well known training site.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@KevinPowell

[1] https://www.kevinpowell.co/courses/

While I can't speak specifically to this person's earnings, I suspect you're overestimating just how much money average YouTubers make from owned platforms when they try to push their audiences to them.

It's very difficult to do this in a way that produces sustainable, durable revenue, and I suspect that people doing technical educational content are finding it increasingly difficult in the age of AI.

Trends for his YouTube channel look pretty much like what I expected given the general trends in the marketplace.

https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCJZv4d5rbIKd4QHMPkc...

> You can publish to both and even better your own domain that simply points to your video hosting provider.

That one is likely the best use case while one monetizes on YT waiting for FreeTube to gain more popularity. Worth also for keeping a safer online accessible backup in case things go south with the YT channel being taken down for any reason, be it bogus copyright claims or else. What I'm not sure of though is how long until Google changes YT rules to disallow linking or even mentioning competing, or perceived as such, services. Companies always do that: I'm a Ebay user since 2008, 100% feedback both as seller and customer, hundreds of positives not a single negative or neutral in 18 years, but a while ago Ebay in their infinite wisdom blocked a listing of mine because I added the links of the documentation needed to use the device I was selling; no way to appeal successfully or have it restored, they evidently either used a monkey or AI to detect what they identified as an attempt to contact the customer outside of Ebay, for a €30 item nonetheless. Years ago they didn't enforce such idiotic limitations, so I wouldn't put any trust on YT to remain consistent with their current rules.

> they evidently either used a monkey or AI to detect what they identified as an attempt to contact the customer outside of Ebay, for a €30 item nonetheless

Dunno if they’ve caught on, but just send what you need to send in a .png

Probably goes through a not-hotdog test, but that’s about it.

People don’t really want another step in the already arduous process of making videos - especially when the return on investment will be $0. This website will die off in a couple years and everyone who wastes time on it will be worse off for it.

You need to build a product so good that my statement above sounds INSANE. Not just “I think he’s wrong” but “dude absolutely no way. Everyone will want this. Are you stupid?”

And this is not that product.

Edit: yeah. I was curious so I went searching for ASMR videos. The default search brought some (terrible-looking) ones up, but half of them were in French? I sorted by views instead, and even though I literally only searched for “ASMR”, there were no longer any ASMR videos near the top of the results. For something trying to compete with YouTube, this is a very mid experience. Nobody is going to waste time migrating.

I think for most people you're right, they just want to upload their videos, and maybe make a couple of bucks on the side. I was referring to folks who are truly committed to making this their career and want to have their own brand. Many, many people are already doing this, so it isn't something theoretical. Most YouTubers are automating their production pipeline, so another upload step isn't too hard, especially nowadays where it is easier than ever to build a bespoke, deterministic pipeline with agents writing scripts and programs.

> I think for most people you're right, they just want to upload their videos, and maybe make a couple of bucks on the side.

Sadly, those won’t make a couple bucks anymore. You can’t get a cut of the revenue until you have 1000 subscribers.

The couple bucks a month from my 1 video that was more useful than professional was nice until the moved that goalpost.

In case you were wondering why every bloody publisher, big or small, asks you to subscribe, even if, well, why would you subscribe to a channel that helped you fix your phone one day but their next video couldn’t be more unrelated?

Meanwhile in my “blogging” days, that first couple cents/bucks a month from Adsense convinced me to spend more time on it & make $20/month, then $200. Was $2000/month for a while. Now they expect you to work for free to prove yourself?

Your use of the word "product" here reminds me of the now infamous McDonald's video.

It's a decentralized, open source, video sharing platform. It's not a product. It's okay for products to exist, but not everything needs to be one.

In Youtube, you are the product...

Exactly, but good luck convincing a horde of morons of it

Sure, but as I explained, it doesn’t really work well anyways, so who cares?

> This website will die off in a couple years

While that might be true, it's worth noting that the project has been running for seven years already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

It's hard to discuss things online because the dumb people will make stuff up, then when you correct it they disappear but leave the wrong info up, confusing even more dumb people. Like an idiot-tsunami growing ever larger

this isn't an appropriate response on HN, please read the guidelines on how to conduct yourself https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

long term he doesn't want his own distribution though. youtube offers you new viewers constantly. peertube only makes sense if it has a viewerbase and an ad network, and at hte point we're back to google but they're going to pay more since they have a larger user base and more ads which means their monetization rate is going to be much higher.

disrupting youtube is super hard, you basically need to bring your own audience from something else to do it, or have a platform already existing that you expand into the us.

> Long term you want to own your distribution channel as much as possible, while using YouTube as your lead generation tool to drive true believers to your site and premium distribution channel not owned by YouTube.

This reads like MBA advice but the reality is not that simple. For a variety of reasons, relatively few people have the ability to produce durable revenue over the long term by pushing their YouTube audience to owned platforms.

The most successful YouTubers get a lot of attention but the reality is that outside of the 1%, there is no "long term winning play" for most of these people. The average YouTuber who finds some success building an audience tries to milk it for as long as they can before they're supplanted by new faces, they burn out, their category loses appeal, algorithms change, etc.

Well said. So do prepublish to peer tube post it to my domain and then post to YouTube and link back to my domain ?

Does the order matter as long as I hit both?

Would having bonus content on the peertube version make sense ?

Or even more extreme do I want the YouTube bid to be a teaser to the peertube version?

It doesn't have to be for your use-case. e.g. KDE has their own instance, as does Blender. It would perhaps be a good fit for MIT to host their OCW videos, or for Khan Academy to host their material, or people sharing conference talks, or governments, or quick home DIY videos, or vlogs and idle musings, or hobbyists showing/discussing their thing they like, etc. Videos that are meant to help people to better themselves or collaborate fit better on a platform that doesn't try to be a constant sales funnel.

There are many people who believe everything must be a grind to get rich. I wish more people stepped back and did things online because they were fun or educational, not because it was monetized.

they need a day job to pay the bills then, which does cut down on the scope of videos you can make

if we could have less working hours or cheaper rent or less expensive bills more people could do hobby stuff again ofc. but right now is tricky for that

Generally speaking, that's how hobbies work. You do them for fun or enrichment and do something else for money. People who try to turn hobbies into a day job seem to get this weird idea that they're somehow critical to the hobby when in fact they're just hyper focused on getting attention and crowding out actually sincere people so they can sell stuff.

e.g. this thread. Here you have people making software for themselves to host their own videos without being beholden to the likes of Google. Absolutely nothing to do with OP. So why is OP criticising them? Where in the README does this free software project discuss monetization (other than mentioning it's ad-free)? Why is the topic even slightly germane?

Can you imagine having a hobby and not trying to monetize it? I really think we've completely lost the plot.

If it's tricky for people in software engineering (those still holding a job continue to have big salaries compared to most other industries) to have hobbies they are willing to pay for themselves, it's probably them finding excuses instead or living beyond their means.

Nope, there are still people doing this stuff to share what they are excited about, and they will continue to be people like that.

Economy has nothing to do with this — as mentioned, a lot of this comes out of university students and low rung staff, and they were never best paid.

Anything and everything starts costing money when done at a high level. And since you have dedicate yourself full time if you want to be among the best at what you do, you're also forfeiting other sources of income. So you need to make money on your craft. It's not necessarily about getting rich, but getting by.

And there is no audience interested in seeing average things online.

Do you ever think about the fact that if you're making $500 - $1000 per video on average that means Google is making $5000 - $10,000 on each of your videos on average? I mean its working for you, and that's great. I am a student of information asymmetric markets and the whole 'Ad supported' business that Google runs on all of its properties is perhaps the largest one in the current time frame.

The point being that building a production company to produce videos is a known thing, Peertube is a distribution network, and historically this is a remarkable mirror of 'independent' theaters and 'studio owned' theaters. It was a characteristic of that time that the big studios would use their monoply power to force small studios to give them their work at a discount that allowed the studio to get most of the income. They made it just enough that the small studios didn't feel motivated to build a competitive system.

When I read your comment it struck me that perhaps "$500 - $1000 average per video" was the number Google has determined to be 'just enough'.

It says "at least"... on many channels there's videos with just a few views and videos with tons of views with much more than 10x difference

That's fair, Google admitted in the DoJ trial where it was convicted of being a monopolist that the revenues that it paid out were roughly 10% of the revenues it collected. If you have fewer than a requisite number of subscribers they keep 100% of the monetization proceeds. I was simply struck by the parallels between the way YouTube has grown up and how the whole movie industry grew up.

Wow, how many subscribers does one need to have?

1000 subscribers, 4000 hours in the last 12 months, and you must have uploaded 3 videos I think in the last 3 months to be allowed to apply for monetization.

There is a different requirement if you only post shorts.

Also worth pointing out that they’ve demonetized people after meeting the old monetization requirements and then not meeting their new requirements. No grandfathering.

I shed a tear (and subscribe) when I encounter an incredibly useful video but they have “only” a few hundred subs.

Because Google is losing money for those videos, they're collecting 100% of the revenue and shouldering 100% of the costs and 100% of the net loss. Perhaps they should split the net loss 50-50 with those users, but then no one would use YouTube.

Goog’s monetization requirements make no sense: requiring regular posting of new videos costs them money. You have people posting crap just to keep their monetization active.

More subscribers to a channel doesn’t save Google money at all.

Requiring X hours of views encourages posting longer videos, which costs them more to store and process.

They just want more content. They don't care about quality - the algorithm does a good job of sifting through all the content to find the good quality content. The definition of good quality being something that generates more money and keeps more eyes fixed to the screen!

Google splits with the creator 50-50. If you got paid $1000, so did Google. And given their hosting infrastructure, network, and other tools, I would say it's a miracle they don't charge to upload.

Not a miracle if the math works out such that their margins cover the infrastructural fixed costs. Just simple economics.

You clearly don't work in AI:)

What Google makes is irrelevant to the content prouducer. What matters to them is what they could make on alternate platforms, and the answer is no where near that amount. The slice Google keeps is only relevant to Google and potential competitors who may try to move into the space.

> What Google makes is irrelevant to the content producer.

Is it though? Let's say I weave a basket out of reeds I've spent the weekend picking from the shores of a local creek. I take the basket to a guy who pays me $20 for it. Then that same guy takes it to a swap meet that he runs in town and sells it for $200.

That's just market economics, until you try to set up your own smaller swap meet on the route to this guys market and sell your baskets there, and this guy calls the police and has them shut down your "illegal swap meet." So you go to city hall for a permit and they say, "We don't sell permits unless you can prove that at least 1,000 people will go to your swap meet and every week you'll have at least 10 new products to show." See where I'm going with that?

Asymmetric markets are ones where a single individual or small group of individuals can exercise control over the entire operation of the market. You can think of then as nascent monopolies or perhaps price fixing cartels. In the US, after experiencing the Great Depression, as a result of unregulated markets, the US made it government policy to regulate market abuses as no single participant (or even a set of participants) could hope to compete with the monopoly or cartel.

Information markets, or non-real property markets like video content, did an end run around controls in an effort to capture the value that is associated with a product you can manufacture instances of for pennies, but sell for dollars. Games, Office processing suites, Videos, Musical recordings, can all be "sold" for 100 to 1000x the cost to produce them. It is an area that is under studied in my opinion.

What's preventing anyone from trying to launch a YouTube competitor? Or content producers monetizing and hosting their own videos?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

There platforms like this. I subscribe to Nebula, for example.

"As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is lack of monetization."

As a computer user I see that as the main advantage

No third party intermediary

No advertising

Computer users need peer-to-peer options for sharing video with each other that do not use third party advertising companies, e.g., posing as "search engine" or "social media", to transfer the bits

Whether PeerTube works well, I do not know. I know that overlay networks I have tested work well enough

the 3rd party isn't an intermediary, youtube content is fantastic because it found a way to pay people to produce something for every niche, and reward the ones doing well with more viewers and more money.

ofc you would prefer high quality content delivered directly to you for free, because you're ignore the producers perspective.

And if they dare touch controversial topics it demonitises them automatically. I find it hilarious that people self censor or invent new terms (like euphemisms for suicide).

Youtube rewards producers who use any dark pattern they can think of to get more views. This results in videos that are extremely awful to watch if your brain hasn't already been turned to pulp.

The problem with this is that creating the content you watch costs a lot of money and labor.

As a user I would see a grocery store where everything is free as an advantage... utill the products inevitably run out and no food supplier is willing to stock the shelves for free.

It's not a problem though. There is absolutely no need for “quality content” whose sole or primary purpose is to monetize it. What we’re all missing is hobby content created out of passion, free of ads and all the nonsense that plagues the modern internet. And another thing - there’s absolutely no need to explain here the basic fundamentals of how money and the economy as a whole work, as if it were some kind of revelation. It’s actually better to think about why this approach is in fact problematic. Look at what it did to the world.

If YouTube was not an intermediary then it could not claim Section 230 immunity

https://compliancehub.wiki/section-230-the-backbone-of-the-i...

I made a video today. It cost me nothing

There are some people to whom I'd like to send it

But I'm not uploading it to YouTube's servers

There are 100M+ channels uploading on YouTube regularly and only 2-3M of them are monetized. Not everyone wants to upload videos on the internet with the explicit goal of making money. Professional creators are a very tiny minority, and a platform like YouTube will always be better suited for them (your "small" channel with 100K subscribers is actually in the top 0.5-0.1% of YouTube). There is no reason for Peertube to go after this specific demographic.

Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views. It is a two-sided system. And if you want to attract viewers, you need what they want to watch. Looking on the front page of peertube the most viewed video I see has 29 views. If I sort by hot, the "hottest" video has 692 in a month. If the intent is to publish videos to have people watch it, PeerTube is clearly not the place to do that.

If you want real numbers start selling hard drugs. You don't have to "serve the people". YouTube is a cesspool.

> Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views.

...because they're directly tied to YouTube own revenue.

As someone who creates a fair bit of content, and am fortunate enough not to have to worry about the revenue from that, I deliberately try to minimize monetization because it ultimately becomes the main driving force behind your content creation.

Monetization as the only model for content creation leads to an incredibly safe and boring world while simultaneously meaning every piece of content you interact with is trying to extract money from you the viewer.

No, it is because that is the content that people want to watch. I too create content that has been widely watched and don't include video ads or any of the other monetization features they push. But I create videos because I want people to watch them. I don't do it for the sake of myself and pushing it out into the void. I don't follow whatever the trends are, I create what I believe will be the most useful as I make educational content. And it works. But I post to YouTube because that is where people will find it.

If I were to self-host my videos or put it on PeerTube if I wanted anyone to see it I would actively have to go out and promote it myself. YouTube does that for me.

>No, it is because that is the content that people want to watch.

No, that's not a given. It would be more accurate to say it is content people will watch, and not necessarily want to watch. I mean people will watch porn, I'm not sure they want to watch porn.

If you asked someone before vine or tiktok whether you wanted to watch an unending carousel of thirty second videos from nobodies for four hours straight I'm not sure a lot of people would say yes.

Am I the only one who sees ragebait titles to youtube videos that do not contain a modicrum of the rage that is advertised in the title?

I don't think we need to conflate algorithmic nudging with the conscience preference of the user frankly.

I'm confused, why are you arguing about this? Stick with YouTube. This isn't for you.

It's even in the name. PeerTube. Peer. Your talking about 'consumers' of a product you produce vs a way to share videos that isn't YouTube with your .. PEERs.

Not 100k views videos. Think you should step back and think what your actually trying to debate or argue. It comes off kinda like your misunderstanding the software and conflating a lot of things that don't relate and not relevant to PeerTube.

> what they want to watch

What does that even mean? Not everything published has to be with the purpose of entertaining. This is a more recent mindset that came with the advent of the "Content Creator" (think Mr.Beast). But it needs not be this engineered. Historically, some of the more interesting channels on YouTube have been people organically sharing something that was genuinely dear to them. Offered with little concern as to whether it's "what people want to watch". They make you want to watch it, because it's a passion that they manage to convey. By contrast, people who are particularly concerned about eyeballs seem to publish with the purpose of meeting the audience's interest as a main guiding factor. And yes, maybe for those, YouTube is a better fit. But I also know many for whom moving to a reliable alternative (tech wise) would be a step up.

If for instance your goal is to share educational content for free, provided that the hosting platform is sound, your main concern as far as your audience finding your content should be that of discoverability. Which is an easy enough kink to iron with current search technology.

>> what they want to watch

> Not everything published has to be with the purpose of entertaining.

1. Why do you assume that people would “want to watch” something only for entertainment reasons, instead of for educational reasons, etc. GP commenter did not seem to even imply any focus on entertainment like your assumption that entertainment is the only reason someone could ‘want to watch’ something.

2. As far as what GP commenter meant by want to watch, they provided some specifics in their post - the most watched video on the home page had 29 views, so that presumably is the sun of people who wanted to watch it (whether for educational, etc reasons), accidentally viewed it, were required to view it as part of an educational program, etc.

The word "entertain" quickly came to mind in that sentence because attracting the audience as a primary concern is typical of the entertainment industry, regardless of the content being educational, news, or otherwise. If we get stuck on that choice of a word, it's admittedly a bit narrow for the point I was making, but I think the rest of my post successfully got things across.

The problem is that big creators have many subscribers, because they're the only ones making videos people want to watch.

If a channel has 100 subscribers - (except if it's a brand new channel) - it's because people saw the videos and decided, no, I don't want to see this, I'm not going to subscribe.

Put all of those people on a platform together, you will just end up with a platform with more creators than viewers.

So? Why is that a problem? My wife occasionally watches this old lady who's vlogged every day for over 14 years straight. She averages 150-200 views. The people who try to build a brand end up getting outsized attention so it seems like that must be what anyone would want, but most people actually aren't trying to do that.

Well, do you want a platform people watch videos on, or a platform people simply upload videos to, never to be seen?

It's not an either-or, but generally speaking, a platform centered around getting more people to watch is probably worse to have in the world than one centered around people just expressing themselves to a handful of e.g. family/friends/small communities. Especially if the former is really just a conduit for ads.

The answer is not that obvious as you might see or imply it.

Then there's even less reason to host outside of YouTube, why would I want to host a server that costs money if I'm not making any money from the videos? It works for those who want to own their content and verify its safety, or for ideological reasons such as supporting OSS but I'm not sure why the average user would care about PeerTube.

I guess you also never contribute to any potluck where you're not strictly required to?

You are required to contribute to potlucks by definition, false analogy.

I understand where you are coming from, and if monetization is your primary reason for being on a platform, it's likely that PeerTube is not for you, unless your videos help you move your own product or service.

That said, I'm also okay with there being platforms out there where monetization is difficult or impossible. I want there to be places where creators can get paid, but I am also nostalgic for a less commercial internet.

I heard that main source of income for some professional YouTubers are Patreon and sponsorships. Ad revenue is dead last and very unstable. Also, if you are building your business on single platform, which one day might decide that your content does not adhere to their rules - that's a high risk to take.

Sponsorships are definitely the highest if a youtuber actively engages in them, ad revenue vs patreon depends highly on if you have i.e. a small but highly active fanbase of core fans, versus a wider more general audience that you entertain a bit.

I think people should be more aware of the perverse incentive of YouTubers saying, "my guaranteed source of income is very little and unstable guys, I need you to also subscribe to my patreon" where - could YouTubers perhaps have a reason to act like their ad revenue is very little? In my experience, while ad revenue isn't great, for any decent-size YouTuber its still enough to live on and in any case it always stays a significant income stream.

Do you think those creators pay YouTube for bandwidth, storage and transcode servers? Where do you think money for that comes from?

Streaming video is very expensive, even in 2026 and ignoring that someone is paying the main business expense of those creators is not very honest.

Dunno about the storage side, but fly by night operators seem to be constantly available to stream every movie and tv show and somehow afford the bandwidth, transcoding and all other costs while being shunned from the general ad industry…

How about you actually look at the costs and try setting up a streaming website yourself and see how true your bs is? :)

You say your target is $500-$1000 per video and let's assume you do videos weekly. That would mean your optimistic goal is $4500 a month. Let's say you create a voluntary donation subscription at $5 per month for people willing to support your work. That means you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them to hit your $4500 goal. That's a 0.9% conversion rate from subscribers to donators. Doesn't seem that impractical when looked at in those terms. This is often the default monetization model for small podcasts because RSS feeds don't have built in ad revenue the way YouTube does.

At that point I'd just make a Patreon (that offers various benefits including exclusive videos not on YouTube) while also monetizing via YouTube ads and sponshorships.

Yes, there is a reason I said "you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them". I'm not claiming this is a new concept, I was making specific allusions to Patreon and the idea of 1000 true fans[1].

[1] - https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Voluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare.

I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI.

Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training.

Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able to ask for people to donate with every podcast/video, but people just aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to. It’s a rare trait.

Quite frankly, I don't think you can compare image generation, let alone NSFW image generation, with YouTube and podcasts. You are simply operating in a medium in which this is going to be dramatically tougher, primarily because most people who consume your content are likely there for the content and unlikely to have any relationship to you specifically. But either way, "It's a rare trait" isn't disagreeing with what I said. The successful conversion rate in my last comment was below 1%.

> aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to

vtuber culture proves that this is categorically wrong

Right, I suppose I should have mentioned the caveat of desperate men hoping to get a glimpse of attention from a woman.

Here's my dilemma:

The Youtube experience has always sucked for me - right from the first year Youtube launched. I just don't like the interface, web site, layout, etc. It's why I didn't have a Youtube account until I needed to share a video with someone, and even then, I never log into it (so I don't follow[1], rate, etc).

And then over the last few years, the ad situation has gotten astronomically worse. I'm not exaggerating when I say that old school cable TV with its ads was a significantly better experience.

I do a search for something specific. I start clicking videos to see if it has the content I want. But very often, on my Roku or similar device, I won't be able to see anything of the video unless I watch 15-60s of ads.

Only to find out the video is not useful for me. Click next video. Repeat the pain.

I think this is what leads a lot of people to just plain hate Youtube. It's what leads me not to care if suddenly no one can make money on Youtube (even the folks I like). It's why I want Youtube to just die.

If they made the site much more pleasing, and found a way to allow 3rd party interfaces (while still serving ads), and weren't anywhere near as annoying with the ads, I'd like the platform.

Regarding monetization: For the folks who have well established viewers, and who make most of their money via embedded ads in the video, I don't think they'll lose anything by switching to Peertube - as long as the Peertube infrastructure can handle the load. The major fans will know where to find the content.[2]

The real problem with Peertube is discovery. How can a new content creator be noticed? And then how can they show accurate viewership numbers to get those sponsors?

[1] Well, I may follow via other means: Manually, or via RSS, etc.

[2] Incidentally, some of the "popular" content I watch on Youtube exclusively gets monetized via embedded ads. Youtube demonetized that whole category a while ago. So embedded ads is totally viable.

I miss old, grass-roots youtube. I used to be a 'youtuber' back in the very very early days where it was just a case of sharing yourself doing dumb things.

I completely get that it's your job now... But the fact it's become a job for people is probably why I don't like it so much anymore. With all the ads and such too, it's now just television. But worse.

> most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video.

I get your point, but many of them fail to hit some hundreds of views due in large part to all of the large, professional channels that are spending hundreds of man hours as week producing content.

If the production was less professional do you think total viewership hours would drop significantly, or would it be distributed across more channels?

Is the argument that such a world is possible to create, where the audience does not have the choice of the ‘professional’ looking content so can't choose it?

It would still be a great alternative for the original YouTube. The one with video replies and all that, that was basically just people video blogging at each other or into the ether.

> And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video.

Where is the "fail" though? Some of those videos take exactly as long to make is it does to watch them. If they don't get monetized (maybe for speaking normal English instead of saying "unalive" and "to grape"), then someone else doesn't make a lot of money from even the little effort it took them by showing ads [0] to people. If all you want to do is talk at a camera and maybe with some people, then all that is a plus.

[0] Speaking of ads, some of the stuff on youtube is wild. Like, honestly gross and disturbing to me.

If you are looking to make money of it, sure, starting with peertube only would be nonsense. If you just wanna make videos, do it! Upload the best ones to youtube and mention peertube, so you maybe get some audience. Then if you really get into it, and make better stuff, spend more effort than just "start record, say things, upload as is", you can upload everything to youtube, too. After having livestreamed the whole thing on Twitch, just to use every part of the buffalo.

> As a professional YouTuber

Well, there's your problem.

You want the numbers that come from mass consumption, which means catering to the lowest common denominator thus producing shit with gold plating while then complain the gold plating is bloody expensive.

Some people just are knowledgeable and want to share with the rest of us mortals like say someone like Terrence Tao. Putting someone like him on "YouTube" is a goddamn travesty. We need an alternative and yes, you won't make money and no, it's not for you then.

> which means catering to the lowest common denominator

At some point that becomes saturated, and you're better off catering to a niche that is poorly served.

Your issue is assuming that this is trying to replace YouTube for those who wish to try and make money from this. I suspect this is much more closer to a Google videos or YouTube back in the day which was pretty much just random videos, plus lots of conferences on there (which don't get enough views to monetize). This can easily replace that and is something I would support. YouTube hasn't always been monetising and it is good if we have a competitor against it.

It's not about people "trying to make money", it's about viewers wanting to see high quality videos.

High quality videos just cost a lot of money and labor to produce. There is simply no way around this. Any platform which doesn't let creators monetize effectively will be stuck with what people produce in their free time. Which will essentially always be worse, because the competitors will have creators with actual budgets and time to work.

They don't necessarily. e.g. I'd consider Ravi Vakil's Algebraic Geometry videos[0] among the highest quality videos on youtube, and its just him talking over a screen share. Fields medalist Richard Borcherds likewise has posted a ton of lectures of him just talking while he writes on paper.

In fact, I'd expect the highest quality videos to have a relatively low viewership. Most people seem to want Mr Beast or whatever.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=WTEZjR5aNjw&list=PLoaXcYRr65txn8...

High quality doesn't just mean production values, it can relate to any aspect of the video. High quality could simply reflect the quality of content. I would much prefer if PeerTube became a far easier to browse version of Archive along with creators producing items of creative and knowledge value. We don't need to replace YouTube as it likely can't be replaced. However switching a significant number away with a different approach to what is hosted there would be a positive.

The cost of cross posting your professional YouTube video is basically nil.

That's the thing; not everything has to be or should be monetized. The thing I miss the most are the funny dumb amateur videos.

There are several YouTube channels I love; Folding Ideas, hbomberguy, Kurtis Conner, Contrapoints, etc... but I see those essentially as semi professional / professional variations on television. Once I got into their content via YouTube, YouTube of course drove me away with horrid vile ads, and I moved on to supporting those creators on Patreon.

And that's all good - the digital medium needs places like YouTube. But that doesn't mean there isn't a huge amount of value in the amateur unmonitized video landscape. Pairing those with some niche phpbb style forums was, for me, the last time I truly enjoyed the experience of actually being on the internet.

YouTubers are now blurring out women's cleavage.

Not bare breasts. Cleavage. Nearly all of Pamela Anderson's notable body of work would need to be censored to avoid risking loss of that precious, precious monetization. It's like fucking Iran.

And of course you can't say "die", "kill", "suicide", etc. You have to talk like a parody of 80s cartoon censorship—literally. (The neologism "unalive" came from Deadpool in an animated series called Ultimate Spider-Man, who realized he was in an animated show but thought it was 80s Saturday morning fare and constantly minced his intent to kill by saying he was going to "unalive" his target.)

Monetization has had a chilling effect on the kind of content people put on YouTube. I do not mourn its lack, at least on alternative video platforms.

Where are you located? I'm looking as we speak at a bunch of YT videos of women with cleavage, or promoting fashion that involve stripping down to their underwear.

If they're getting sponsorships or just engagement-baiting gooners to get OnlyFans signups, maybe they don't care that much about video monetization. The ones that do are starting to censor cľeavage.

Understood your situation, but personnaly I'm not watching so much professional content on YT; actually, I'm not watching YT as much as I used to when the service was young and unprofessional.

What I want from such a platform is authenticity... and curation.

That’s what I find silly about YouTube.

Through effective search, Google enabled mass deportalization. The best link would win. Your crappy but good blog about how to fix an issue could become top in the results.

Now YouTube favours entertainer-mechanic making subscribeable but generic videos instead of… the one specific to your vehicle by some gruff but knowledgeable mechanic.

Like, c’mon buddy, the bolt only comes off like that in the studio after 3 practice runs.

its fine for the genre of video thats just someone narrating while filming with there phone and almost no editing. if someone is doing something interesting, i prefer this to something well produced, its more candid and relatable, and lacks the artifice most projects designed for youtube have

Yeah reminds me of how Kick seems to be winning over the Twitch creators. Now Kick isn't a shining beacon by any means, its got gambling issues for one, but I do think this is one area the big companies are vulnerable in: Rev share.

If a new incumbent can raise some money, offer creators some money and a path to a higher cut than their competitors, they can win big.

I think this is the only way for new platforms to ever rise in this space.

A video sharing website is not a social media platform, it's a streaming platform. The real competitors to YouTube are not PeerTube or whatever, it's Netflix and HBO.

This is why Nebula also managed to find a niche and be relatively successful: the issue is not ads or a monthly subscription or something, the only problem is: people want to watch high-quality content. Find a way to get them high-quality content. If you cannot do that, everything else is meaningless. In Nebula's case, even a few high-profile YouTubers in the same niche uploading exclusives on a platform is better than a thousand nobodies uploading low effort content.

> You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there.

But then how does twitch work? Genuinely asking, whats the difference?

> This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram

Low key shitting on other content creators? Some of IG content creator easily match professionalism you are describing. I know you are probably partially venting your frustration, but that doesn't paint you in a nice light.

This is a feature. The golden age of YouTube ended roughly around the time they made monetization more available.

To put a finer point on it, I recognize there are a lot of good creators on YouTube and I'm glad it can support their work. But the overall trend has been for the worse, at least for the target audience I belong to. The change in the average title card tells a story. I believe it would be fantastic if there was a competitor that captured the original motivation.

>You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there.

But you can do that in hopes of youtube sharing a percentage of fluctuating ad revenue? Certain things can get you de-monetized, you can get strike-bombed, falsely accused of copyright infringement via automated systems, etc, and unless you are a very big channel owner, you will receive a minimal droplet of support likely involving no humans in the loop.

There are sustainable creators getting much more revenue by collecting direct subscription money from their patrons while providing exclusive or first-hand content to them which is then re-uploaded to youtube for reaching a wider audience. They can run their own integrated ad-campaings without google deciding what they are advertising or which content they can or cannot produce.

And there is Asmongold doing a video of him watching someone else making a video with commentary like “absolutely”, “outrageous”, “bold” and having it all monetized with literally ZERO effort.

So yea.. it takes a lot of effort -> if you are nobody.

For eatablished streamers just slapping something from stream on ytb is enough.

Having your own distribution has it's benefits as a fall back or alternatives, in addition to publishing elsewhere like youtube.

The cost of creating and editing videos going to come way down, there's already ways to do it in the past few years.

this is exactly right, people dont realize that they're getting a great deal on youtube. if you want to disrupt youtube you need to do it by winning over the creators which is a difficult thing to do since no new platform can subsidize to the scale of what youtube offers already due to its size, the only ones who really could are meta since they have the ad network and users already to funnel to it, or another company willing to eat a loss for a long time. The issue with eating hte loss, is video is a pretty painful loss to eat compared to text, so why not go into every text market first for places like meta.

Great deal except when you get demonetized for partisan reasons

Sure, but compare that to all other television and streaming services, where all independent creators are demonetized and banned by default. If you don't have the right contacts you're not allowed to put your video on Netflix.

demonization has nothing to do with viewers value from youtube you just have been radicalized to inject talking points into every single conversation.

No, not really. I haven't been "radicalized" into anything. Go look at what Youtube actually does to content creators

But isn't know most of the money they make from direct sponsors instead of adsense? I have seen a few creators putting their income sources and most of the money comes from direct sponsors instead of adsense. So if these sponsors would continue to sponsor them in other platforms, it can take YouTube monopoly away. The problem now is that those others video platform don't have the eyeballs as YouTube

Monetization is the easy part, a plugin that adds advertisements, paid subscriptions, or some other form of monetization could easily be made if there was a demand for it.

The real barrier issue is that of network effect. There's simply (almost) no audience, which means there are (almost) no creators, which means there is (almost) no audience.

I've been publishing my videos on my own peertube instance for a while and I really do appreciate it as a platform, but I don't think that the technical aspects of it alone will ever be the key to its potential success.

As a professional watcher, I consider the lack of monetization a feature. I'd much rather see genuine videos from amateurs than commercialized crap with sponsored segments and undisclosed sponsorships and product placement and filler to keep up release schedules and please like and subscribe and whatever other dark patterns commercially motivated video producers come up with on "free" platforms. And of course also without the ads the video platform adds on top of all that. Not everything needs to be a viable job.

> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization.

As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization.

Because people are expected to spend their time, effort and money to provide content for you for free, of course. Seems like the only explanation.

They're not. No one asked OP to use peertube. This is software for people who want to share videos. Coming in and declaring you won't use it because you can't make money from your videos should just get an "okay?" Interjecting into a FOSS space and complaining they are not paying you is beyond bizarre. Doubling down when people basically say "actually I'm specifically looking for non-commercial groups, so your absence is appreciated" is crazy.

If you want to make money in something, you're not part of the group who doesn't. There's already a giant platform for you. Why would you say hobbyists are entitled?

Thank you. It is a bit bizarre reading this thread.

> As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization.

I was replying to that. This commenter is not a hobbyist making video, he watches some hobbyists video, and them getting paid is the issue he has.

The issue he has is he wants to find/communicate with hobbyists, and instead runs into people trying to turn it into a profession. It becomes difficult to find like-minded people when every topic is infected by grifters. Injecting money into a leisure activity will inevitably ruin it and the people participating.

The reason why is on full display here: this entire thread has been derailed by people asking how you're supposed to make money with it, denigrating people who "only" have 100 subscribers (imagine 100 people regularly coming to watch you give a talk or demo or performance out of pure interest!), etc.

In a hobby or leisure space, appreciation or encouragement alone is valuable. Monetizing leisure leads to some crazy ideas. Like completely turning the perspective around: "content creators" think what they're doing is interesting enough that not only will I give them my attention, but that I should somehow compensate them for it? Crazy.

> The issue he has is he wants to find/communicate with hobbyists, and instead runs into people trying to turn it into a profession.

To me that is in line with my original quote. He actively seeks work people put in while haivng an issue with them getting compensated for it.

Whether YT has monetization or not people's incentives are the same. Imagine that YT has no ads, people would put stuff behind paywalls or upsell aggressively.

> denigrating people who "only" have 100 subscribers (imagine 100 people regularly coming to watch you give a talk or demo or performance out of pure interest!), etc

I would never denigrate those people. But if you work hard enough and put in enough work that people watch 4000 hours of your videos in last year, and eventually you want to quit the job you don't like and just get paid by creating for people like that guy, and that guy says "monetization is the problem I have", it's kind of sociopathic. Drawing this line between work and hobby, like you have to do stuff you hate for money and god forbid you start getting paid for doing stuff you like

My assertion is that he's not actively seeking work people put in; he's actively seeking people. The sociopathic thing is exactly reducing people, interests, and interactions into something transactional like this. He's looking for people who don't think that way. So putting things behind paywalls is fine; it makes those people disappear. Upselling remains annoying. It recasts every interaction into a sales pitch.

What that guy is telling OP is that he's not creating for him. OP came into a thread about a platform for freely sharing video, not for getting a job in the entertainment industry. There's already at least 3 major platforms for that, and the monetization is what that user said he doesn't like about youtube [in contrast to this]. It's like commenting in a thread about a package repo complaining that the problem with FOSS communities is lack of monetization. If you want a job in the field, go somewhere where people are looking for help and will pay you to do things for them. Not places where people are having fun so you can try to upsell.

And yes there should be a line between work and hobby. Hobbies are things you do for you. Work is something someone else wants and pays you to do. You are doing it for them. e.g. with making software, work should not be fun. It should be boring. Making it "fun" is just a pain for your colleagues. Conversely, leisure should be fun. Making it into a money-making endeavor makes it unenjoyable for everyone else. There is supposed to be a line.

> The sociopathic thing is exactly reducing people, interests, and interactions into something transactional like this

Saying that people need to have money to survive and that it's great to be getting paid for doing something they love (while making stuff that's free for you to watch) is sociopathic and reducing them?

> OP came into a thread about a platform for freely sharing video, not for getting a job in the entertainment industry

Yes. But it's pretty silly to not think it will be compared to youtube. It's even called PeerTube, pretty obviously. youtube became so popular to inspire peertube in the first place thanks to its monetization. So it's a very obvious thing to bring up.

> And yes there should be a line between work and hobby. Hobbies are things you do for you. Work is something someone else wants and pays you to do

You keep that masochistic distinction if you want but please don't impose it on others

Yes, requiring payment to do things you love is sociopathic. It's the same as "keeping score" in a relationship. It will only make you and your counterparty grow to hate each other. This is exactly the "they just want something for free" dynamic. One or both parties thinks the other is an entitled freeloader and one or both thinks the other is an entitled dickhead.

You take payment to do things that are acceptable to you, that the other person needs, and that you are capable of. You don't tie emotions into it. Certainly not strong ones.

Of course they compare themselves to youtube, but via contrast. Specifically, that you control your own platform and (out of the box) there's no ad ecosystem. For people who want to share videos without making people watch ads, that's perfect. The entire point is that it's not youtube. And if you want "not youtube but still full of shills and grifters" there's also Instagram and TikTok. The "monetized 'content'" space is very well served already.

Masochism is turning the things you love into a grind, recontextualizing them such that they're now always carrying a question of economic utility (and therefore optimization) as you do them so that you can no longer just enjoy them for what they are.

> Yes, requiring payment to do things you love is sociopathic

I rest my case.

Do you really not understand that people might want to do things for reasons other than money?

If you read my comments you can provide an actual counter argument instead of claiming i don't understand something

I read all your comments and as far as I can see they presuppose that people are making videos to make money and would not otherwise make them.

'if you work hard enough and put in enough work that people watch 4000 hours of your videos in last year, and eventually you want to quit the job you don't like and just get paid by creating for people like that guy, and that guy says "monetization is the problem I have", it's kind of sociopathic. Drawing this line between work and hobby, like you have to do stuff you hate for money and god forbid you start getting paid for doing stuff you like' did you read that part?

'But it's pretty silly to not think it will be compared to youtube. It's even called PeerTube, pretty obviously. youtube became so popular to inspire peertube in the first place thanks to its monetization. So it's a very obvious thing to bring up.' or that

it makes it clear what I think about people being able to get paid for their work and 'they would not otherwise make them' is bullshit i never said. they would never make the videos that in recent years made youtube the place it is nowadays, but they would make some other stuff.

> they would never make the videos that in recent years made youtube the place it is nowadays, but they would make some other stuff.

Yes, that's exactly it. What I'm saying is I'm fine with not having the videos that in recent years made youtube the place it is nowadays, and I'm fine with the other stuff.

The place it is nowadays is the place you go to watch videos. You literally wrote "as youtube watcher".

The existence of ad bucks is what made people create better and better productions, which attracted more viewers, and that is why youtube became the default place for people like you to go for video stuff. You can't just remove that feature and have the rest.

I'm sure you didn't talk to every single creator whose video you watch and ask them if they did it without hoping for some YT ad bucks and whether they would have done it if there were no YT bucks. You can say they would but don't kid yourself we live in a capitalism and most people don't have enough money

> Seems like the only explanation.

Youtube itself is responsible for an entire generation expecting the videos to be free.

The monetisation and injection of advertising into roughly-everything is only a relatively recent development. Free-until-monopoly.

> Youtube itself is responsible for an entire generation expecting the videos to be free.

True, it did create this weird world. But then think about all of the amazing high production value work we enjoy because someone once did it for fun, got paid and then decided to keep doing it and make a nice living off it while you still don't pay them a cent. Sadly it's probably impossible for YT to have that original atmosphere.

I don't really expect anything. All the people who want to make money from YouTube can just stop making stuff if money is what's motivating them.

> I don't really expect anything.

You are a self described youtube watcher. Unless you pay for youtube premium, you expect free content literally every time you open youtube. By definition.

> All the people who want to make money from YouTube can just stop making stuff if money is what's motivating them.

I don't know how old are you but after certain age things are not so black and white. We don't live in severance where we can slave away at a denigrating unethical job we hate just to earn money. People prefer to do something they love AND earn money from it. If they don't do the latter they starve and go bankrupt. Guess what then they can't provide free content for you.

Interesting, I thought the major issue with PeerTube was the high latency due the decentralized nature and that they don't have the backing of Google infrastructure.

What you state sounds more like a chicken and egg problem. You'll publish content only when there are enough viewers but there can be viewers only when you publish content.

Like others have said, There's not much effort to publish in both platforms; good way to hedge against the algorithmic risks.

I guess you never used YouTube in the early days. It was a site for posting and watching random home made videos and recorded broadcasts. Just for fun. Revenue streams for creators came after Google bought it, I think. Along with the ads.

This might simply revive a platform that no longer exists. It might not be about paying creators or collecting ad revenue. It's peer to peer, after all.

>I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch.

This is something I always thought to be extremely funny. Producing videos is a hobby. If you made it your job, go figure out how to monetize your material yourself. Nobody prevents you from taking sponsorships.

Would you mirror your videos to something like Peertube if it included automated pay-per-view (via something like x402 API)?

Maybe the purpose of Youtube going forward is to be a quarantine for content whose purpose is to be monetized.

If YouTube becomes a quarantine for high-quality content, then it will also become a quarantine for viewers.

the fundamental issue a lot of people here don't seem to get is that high quality videos that people want to watch are expensive to create. Besides the huge amount of high-skill labor, there's also just production costs, software, equipment, upkeep, etc.

At the very least, ignoring all other costs, a single person making good videos somewhat regularly is a full-time job. People who make entertainment also need to eat and pay rent, the money has to come from somewhere.

I believe most people here "get" that.

They have a problem with high quality production (more engaging due to production), low value content that proliferates on platforms like YouTube, and would rather see more high value content regardless of production quality, and Internet, in general enabled that if not for people starting to think about (ad supported) revenue first.

Not everyone is a "professional Youtuber" like you, and that includes a lot of Youtube who upload videos without any expectation of income, for who Youtube is mainly a free video hosting service that also allows them to reach a wider viewership.

Big corporations that pay big creators millions per production are just normal studios like Disney and Paramount and nowadays Netflix and Prime. YouTube is the competitor to that. No matter how professional you think of your operation, you're not Christopher Nolan or even BBC Earth and neither is anyone else whose primary distribution channel is YouTube.

Good examples of more or less "free" content that fits PeerTube are cited in other comments, though. Conference footage, MIT OCW, archival footage of any kind of live event. Productions where the work is in putting on the event in the first place. Holding the conference, creating a course, putting on some kind of skateboarding competition, whatever it might be. Incidentally filming it and uploading the footage costs next to nothing in comparison, isn't expected to drive revenue compared to the live attendance, and it doesn't make much difference to the viewers if the footage is terrible. Shitty quality Feynman lectures is still watching Feynman lecture. It was really cool, for a recent example, that somebody found and uploaded phone footage of Caitlin Clark's fabled scrimmage against the Iowa men's team from however many years ago. Nobody cares about the quality of the video or who filmed it. Likely nobody subscribed to whatever channel it first ended up on, but how cares? People who wanted to see a rare real world event would still have been able to find it and it cost nothing to the person who pulled out a phone and turned it on while that event was happening.

Seems advertising could be a third-party service on top of the video streaming service. Just like there are ad platforms that plugin to web pages. If that grows, you get your monetization.

Thr one solution I see to that is sponsorships, the number I've heard is they typically pay 10x the ad revenue of a video, and this wouldn't be affected by the platform, just the viewership numbers.

This is exactly why TikTok won. It is so much cheaper to iterate ideas on 10” videos.

You make non interesting 20’ YT video? Well too bad your 80 labor hours & equipment time are lost.

TikTok won? YouTube is significantly larger, with over 2.7 billion monthly active users compared to TikTok's 1.6 billion.

Even if you count TikTok's higher average watch time per user, YouTube's broader demographic more than makes up for it.

As a side note 10-12 min is the ideal length for a non full feature documentary. I am growing tired of those 20+ minutes repeating and stretching the same topic without going into more depth.

Yes. "To understand this, we have to go back to..." 10 minutes of unnecessary retrospective, allowing insertion of three more ads. Usually you can skip that and get to the five minutes or so of new content.

>As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization.

That's the main benefit. Monetised content, and the people who make it, is despicable.

>and even I could not make this work if I didn't get at least $500-$1,000 per video on average, since it just takes so much time and money.

Have you considered getting a real job?

>Most channels with more than a million subscribers are likely founders working 60-80 hour weeks with multiple full-time employees supporting them.

Putting them out of business would be a fantastic turn of events.

>And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video.

Cool and good.

>I think any real competitor to YouTube nowadays would have to be backed by a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch.

That would be like paying a malware company to move from windows to apple.

Why couldn't you post it after it's got its money worth?

Or is that the clause of YouTube "you must not post elsewhere"?

> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Thanks for the insight. Do you think something like nebula could ever be feasible?

It's simple. If I want to support you, I buy your merchandise.

this is the strongest endorsement of peertube I've seen so far

The strongest endorsement for PeerTube is that it cannot sustain creators and thus will only either 1) freeboot off of platforms that do or 2) be flooded by low effort slop?

I'm not sure the difference between low-effort slop and high-effort slop is as significant as you seem to assume.

People who spam slop are exactly the ones who chase after monetization.

I use adblocker for youtube but will still subscribe via pateron

Why can't they build an advertiser network into this?

Virtually all of the content I watch on youtube does not fall into this category. The content I watch is a mixture of raw footage, a guy speaking to a camera with minimal editing for 10 minutes (think Rick Beato, for those who know him), edited down footage of people working (pool cleaning guys, chefs, etc) or people playing music.

Frankly I wouldn't care at all if all of your over-produced thumbnail-bait disappeared overnight.

This is just a great example of people who aren't in content creation fundamentally not understanding the ecosystem.

This isn't about "over-produced thumbnail-bait". This is about all high-quality media.

You mention Rick Beato. Do you really think Rick Beato sits down behind his laptop to edit his own videos? He has nearly 6 million subscribers and produces around 10 long-form videos per month. He has at the very least an editor (probably full-time) and a thumbnail designer (part-time), and I assume also a manager who sets up brand deals and contacts musicians for his interviews. He also records his videos on expensive cameras inside his well-lit studio, which also isn't cheap. It's very difficult to tell how much YouTube channels generate but I wouldn't be surprised if the Rick Beato channel is at this point a >$20K/month operation.

Edit: Also, do you really think Rick Beato making "The Secret Weapon Behind Dr Dre" or "The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse" is not clickbait? It's just clickbait, but for people like you. Part of good advertising is making people feel like they're not even being sold anything.

Indeed. Even streamers who just speak to the camera and play video games have a team of multiple people behind them, which some streamers discuss the economics of openly.

I think the problem is that the "act" of a lot of streamers and content creators is that they are relatable, in the sense that, part of watching a video game streamer is the appeal of, he's just a guy like me playing games in his bedroom. The problem is that this is all an act, or kayfabe as they would call it in wrestling. But it's an act so good that unlike wrestling, which everyone knows is fake, most people that are not at least adjacent to the content industry genuinely have no idea.

> "The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse"

As a musician myself, and as someone who enjoys watching music and music theory content on YouTube, I can't stand watching Rick Beato because of stuff like this. There certainly are valid criticisms to be made against the music industry, but those videos are like 90% ridiculous cherry-picked comparisons and vague, superficial justifications. It's low-quality nostalgia-driven engagement bait that's optimizing for clicks and comments.

I really like this video by 12tone addressing Beato's schtick about modern music [0]. 12tone is an example of someone who I consider produces much higher quality content than Beato, and obviously puts a ton of time and effort into the videos (writing scripts, drawing the visuals, recording and editing, and making moderately-clickbaity titles and thumbnails). But I'd guess it's probably a one-person operation.

In comparison, Beato's channel strikes me as low-effort content (pick a topic and spend an hour talking unscripted in front of a camera) with a ton of money spent on production, editing, and algorithm hyper-optimization to maximize ROI. It's such a straightforward case of something that would not exist without YouTube's monetization system that it's rather ironic for the parent to use it as an example otherwise.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODG4Xt45bU

> It's such a straightforward case of something that would not exist without YouTube's monetization system

I find this to be very insightful.

I said above that Youtube itself created a generation that expects free videos, but it's also true that Youtube has created an industry that expect to make a living from their platform - to the extent that they literally cannot understand the point of view of the 'generation that expects free videos'.

There's obviously room for both since that's the world we live in, but it's interesting to see the two philosophically opposed 'bubbles' interacting with each other.

Beato doesn't do much hour-long unscripted talking to the camera. Those videos are typically only about 10 minutes long.

In any event, Rick Beato seems like a normal human being, albeit a somewhat goofy dad-rock oldie. 12Tone comes across as an aspie weirdo. I'd rather have more of the former.

> Beato doesn't do much hour-long unscripted talking to the camera. Those videos are typically only about 10 minutes long.

The videos are heavily edited with many cuts. So, I'd guess the production process is "have him talk for an hour, then edit it down to a 10 minute YouTube video".

> In any event, Rick Beato seems like a normal human being, albeit a somewhat goofy dad-rock oldie. 12Tone comes across as an aspie weirdo. I'd rather have more of the former.

And that's...kind of the point I'm making? The amount of effort put into the content of Beato's videos is quite low, with probably a couple hours at most of time put into research, coming up with talking points, and recording. But a lot of effort is spent on production, in order to make content that feels relatable and punchy and palatable to a mass market. It's junk food, and junk food sells well.

We understand your "ecosystem" well enough to despise it.

Honestly I found that the videos I come to Youtube to watch are either personal, non-monetized hobby video, or just a head talking to camera.

That's great, but you represent 1% of viewing patterns.

According to another comment, youtube gets ~2.7B MAU. Then that 1% would mean 27M people are looking for that kind of thing.

Easy solve; PeerTube should launch ads and the rev share with creators is 99% (platform take 1% fee to keep platform up)

> lack of monetization

I mean, when you spin your own instance, because frankly, that's what the best option if you're a content creator, you can put whatever ads and monetization strategies you want. So basically the full income that gets generated gets to you, instead of splitting it with some third party that invests minimal effort. Yes, you'll have to pay someone to maintain and upkeep the server, but assumedly the people that can make the change will take that cost into account.

> a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch.

I'm surprised by this. Isn't controlling your full production/distribution/revenue a good enough payback?

> this is the lack of monetization.

By charging it for content. Since HN doesn't like any form of Ads. /s

Sorry I have to write this out. But I am somewhat glad in the past 2 years HN has returned back to discussing monetization, money, business in a sane way.

Really? Thats the main issue? What about when they upload child porn and some of it ends up on your computer and they break down your door and you spend the rest of your life getting bungholed by Darnel. I would rate that higher than monetary rewards.

Decentralized system rely heavily on how much you trust other humans, I do not, so I hear them.say Decentralized and I run.

I was gonna say the same. Also copyrighted content like movies. In Germany you can easily get sued for hosting and distributing. That's why torrenting is quite unpopular there

Darnel? Am I missing a reference?

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