> Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't solve and can't solve.

Are you talking about search and content discovery? Are you talking about replicating the most popular videos over many servers so that the system can efficiently serve all the demand to watch those videos?

Maybe existing, fully-distributed products don't solve these problems. But it isn't obvious to me that they can't.

He is talking about monetization.

It’s not even that counterintuitive with some capitalist forethought.

Monetization is easily possible, we just need a reliable way to transfer small amounts of money electronically at a low fee. Right now the large credit card players have a stranglehold on digital transactions, we just need something new that makes it not awful to pay someone a few cents online.

Consider that the people watching the videos have repeatedly shown in no uncertain terms (even when given the option and it is made really really easy for them), that they don't want to pay.

Really? I absolutely will not pay 8$ a month to read the occasional NYT article. I will not pay 4$ per episode of TV shows I watch (I have tried this multiple times and it sucks). I would absolutely pay 5 to 25 cents to read an article. I would absolutely pay 1$ per episode. Unfortunately, no one is offering their content at these realistic price points. Nor could they with credit card processors taking 30 cents per transaction. We need a new model that makes costs realistic. I bet a lot of people would pay 1 dollar a month for social media to avoid ads and tracking.

Facebook had revenue of about $40 billion in 2017. Facebook has billions of users, so if every user gave Facebook a dollar a month, that could add up to about as much as they made last year. (I don't think every user would do that, especially the users who live in developing countries and can't afford to spend a dollar, but let's use the best case for the sake of argument.)

What happens when a startup decides to take on Facebook by offering a social network that focuses on protecting user privacy? We would want that startup to succeed, but how could it ever get there by charging a dollar a month? It would start with a small number of users, so the total dollars per month would be small. If Facebook was only charging a dollar, this startup couldn't charge more than that -- a social network that has fewer of your friends on it than Facebook and costs more to use is not a very attractive.

In other words, I think the subscription model would make it difficult for social media startups to succeed.

I think the lock in effect of social networks is orthohonal to monetarisation model. It is difficult for social media startups to succeed regardless of how they (or facebook) make money.

There's a difference between "$9.99/mo for no ads" and "skip this ad for 2c". I'm not aware of any popular video sites offering the latter.

You are wrong. They won't pay to watch an individual video, and they won't pay to watch Latest Gigacorp Product Placement Hour, but they will pay the creators they care about. Many are making a living supported by their audience via Patreon while posting their videos to YouTube. Which is really the worst case apocalyptic scenario for YouTube... Kinda surprised they haven't made more overt moves to try to destroy that setup. Especially given Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age' and his views that since Google are rich they can and should take direct control of human culture to save the poor from themselves.

At this point it becomes clear to anyone interested in open but connected technologies that respect your privacy is that monetisation itself is the problem.

One thing I've heard harped on recently is how common the Pareto type distributions are.

"80% of the work is done by 20% of the workers".

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

Where this comes into play with regards to your thought experiment... is how the larger the playing field, the fewer the large players are - they tend to get "concentrated".

Plenty of Facebook alternatives exist... but why go to them? No one uses them. Large chunks of friends/family/acquaintances aren't "there" - they are on Facebook.

Plenty of authors other than Steven King exist... but given a few spaces on shelves at kiosks, who's going to get those spots? You can guarantee King will get one of those few spots...

The majority of activity is going to condense down until a few spots. Why? Because that is where everyone else is. That's where the skilled "creators" are.

The question becomes... how do you make sure those spots are fair, open, balanced, secure, etc.

Data in the hands of a few companies? What happens when they all lean left - politically? What happens when one of them gets hacked? When a "foreign actor" learns how to game that system?

I've thought for the last decade that things will continue to get "worse" before they get "better". How much worse? How can we make it better?

Million dollar questions.

I may be accused of nitpicking here but the Pareto Principle is, although related, distinct from the Pareto family of distributions.

I don't intend to derail the conversation so, rather than typing out an explanation of obscene length, I will refer all interested parties to the following:

Pareto Principle https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-paret...

Basics of Pareto Distributions https://actuarialmodelingtopics.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/par...

https://subversion.american.edu/aisaac/notes/pareto-distribu...

Example of some limitations in the application of Pareto Distributions https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0504217.pdf