I ended up subscribing to both Nebula and Dropout.tv, especially after noticing that a good portion of my favourite YT channels are in fact on Nebula. Sadly, this is primarly larger ones, and I do feel bad about smaller creators being kinda stuck on YT… especially when it's the odd one-time well-made video that really doesn't warrant e.g. Patreon.
But yeah, the real moral quandry is with the creators. They're more or less under the same monopoly pressure; in most cases you just can't ignore the YT audience :(
Where do creators go if not YouTube!? Ideally they could self host videos which could be expensive AND not bring any revenue, neither do they are they discoverable - this is where the internet is broken these days.
And maybe this is where micro transactions would have a proper use case, i.e. if you had a browser extension where you add $5 and then you can dish out 1ct or 10ct for some content...
I have no idea how well it worked out - I am still contented with the ad-filled YouTube
Ps. Now I am curious why you are getting downvoted. Are people here in favor of this type of thing? I wouldn't be surprised either at this point
It won't happen of course.
I recently had ads show up before videos on YouTube (audio only, so uBlock Origin was blocking part of it), and the only thing I felt was disgust and a mental note never to buy insurance from InShared (a Dutch insurance company) simply for repeating the same stupid jingle for each video.
Youtube is great because of the wide availability of videos, recommendations and (maybe not great because of this) the comments.
I know the comments are not that well liked, but it means the videos are not in a vacuum. They are in a social context. And comments are pretty good, maybe because negative ones are heavily suppressed, that's at least what it looks like.
Nebula feels empty because of those missing parts. It doesn't draw you in to new channels. I don't like half the recommendations youtube gives, but some of them I do.
I think in an ideal world the recommendation engine and video host would be separated. You could be recommended videos on all platforms (including single-creator websites).
If you want "free-market" you should deal with its basic premise that consumer pays as little as they can and seller tries to milk the consumer as much as they can. That's quite literally how it's supposed to work.
I'm very much in favor of bringing some morality to the economic system, but it shouldn't be one sided.
I do feel bad for the creators, but I would rather donate to their Patreons than buy YT premium.