It's quite possible to create content that survives and thrives without depending on some large, proprietary platform like YouTube. Happens all the time.

Of course it's not easy. You have to figure out growth for yourself, and most indie businesses and projects fail. Then again, so do most YouTube channels. So it's up to you to choose the indie path or choose YouTube.

You can also do things because you want to do them, share ideas because you want to share them. This advertising fueled content filled Internet is pretty toxic.

I don't remember any of the Internet idealism of the 90s mentioning the great progress of sharing information involving the creator of every piece of data available making a fraction of a cent every time it was consumed.

I don't mind people getting paid to do things of course, but I do mind a culture dominated by selling each other's attention to advertisers in exchange for creative output, or creative output solely for the dopamine shot from attention and likes.

That’s a pretty indifferent attitude to take. Do things because you want to? A lot of people make these videos for a living, and have no choice but to feed the advertisement machine. The business model of the internet is not something most content creators have any control over, and it’s pointless to criticize them for it. The only players who might be able to do that are the big tech companies controlling the platforms, which is why they take a lot of flak for how things are going.

>That’s a pretty indifferent attitude to take.

I don't see that at all. Encouraging people to do things for their own merit and not just to make money – and we have to be realistic here, most people trying to make money on YouTube or anywhere by creating content won't ever see a single dollar from it, so it's more like trying to win a crappy lottery.

It's this constant sense of entitlement or talking like people are forced into making videos for a living which bothers me. It's a crappy job that is pretty easy to know how it works before you get into it. I keep seeing "no choice", well you can always do something else.

Then complain about Google's monopoly, not its moderation inadequacies, and consider that creators unwilling to leave are the source of the monopoly, not necessarily its victims, especially if they're not even trying other platforms.

I guess I don't like the entitlement/blame cycle where people who help create a problem complain about the consequences.

The monopoly is due to threshold of creators being on youtube. A single channel leaving would make no difference. I'd love to see a movement away from youtube, but that would require a movement with serous organization, which creators mostly aren't capable of doing.

This is exactly the same conversation that HN is having about blogging/social media.

Be the change we want to see in the world. Stop posting on YT/FB/IG/wherever, and create your own site, attract your own audience.

I'll come watch you/read it/listen to it. I'm sick of FB/YT/IG/wherever.

> I'd love to see a movement away from youtube

I have seen that, particularly in history channel circles were the content get demonetized for things like saying Hitler, many of them band together and publish to youtube last or not at all and promote these other channels in their videos. I don't know if any of them will be successful, but staying on youtube simply isn't an option for them either.

I think if/when youtube falters it will be death be a thousand cuts, it won't be a single movement with organization and it won't be to something else as centralized.

Cue the Simpsons clip "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".

If one is not willing, capable, or even interested in trying to solve problems they help create, as an individual or a group, I have very little interest in sympathy for their difficulty.

How is writing blog posts not trying something? Seems pretty clear to me that content creators are trying to create outrage to force youtube's hand, which seems to me to be the only successful strategy other than getting laws changed.

If the only thing you are willing to do about your problems is publicly complain about them implicitly hoping for an angry mob in response is... quite nearly the least you could do. I think I have expended the amount that I care about the issue.

People have tried it, that's how we know it doesn't work.

Refusing your pet idea isn't a refusal to do anything at all.

If viewers would actually pay for content they like, this wouldn't be an issue. The problems are that tech companies are 1. dumping product well under cost while 2. training customers not to pay anything.

At some point, people need to realize what constantly wanting things for free is costing them and the people they watch.

> At some point, people need to realize what constantly wanting things for free is costing them and the people they watch.

It's not free, we pay for the content by buying products, it's just very very indirect.

Much of the population isn't economically able to purchase all the media they watch. The Silicon Valley 'everything free' experience doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's in an environment where there's an overwhelming majority of people who are only able to pay with their time and attention.

Which is the Star Trek model. It's the future of 'nobody has to work to eat, and so now people go insane trying to pursue popularity since survival's a solved problem'.

That makes it interesting in its own right, and we can already see both the possibilities and the 'race to the bottom' factor that ensues.