omg nebula is incredible. i just subbed like 2 months ago and i feel like ive been guzzling from a firehouse.

I’ve always been a bit unsure of what to make of nebula.

A lot of content is low effort edu-taintainment that seems to be little more than Wikipedia in video form.

More original and higher integrity creators like Veritasium, CGP Grey, Engineering explained don’t seem to be involved (actually I think CGP was but left without an explaination).

Maybe this is just a fundamental problem of bundling. It makes more sense for lower value content but less sense for higher value content.

The original founder's list was Dave Wiskus (current CEO), CGP Grey, and a guy behind Kurzgesagt, but yes, the latter two distanced themselves pretty quickly.

I don't think there's a single even semi-popular edu-tainment channel that wasn't at least approached by Nebula, but of course not every creator is interested. If I had to guess why, I'd say it's a tradeoff between Patreon/Nebula. You can have both, but you can only prioritize one of them, making the proposal far less interesting to those that already have a sizeable Patreon income.

Youtube itself is getting so good at monetization, with more people getting Premium, that it's no longer worth it to pursue other channels at all.

Sure, as long as you don't swear, play even a a couple seconds of copyrighted music, never say any of the "touchy" subjects that would earn you an info box below the video (could be anything from flat earth to covid), and a dozen of other arbitrary, constantly changing rules, YouTube is great on its own. Certainly better than any other popular platform.

However a lot of channels available on Nebula also use it as a place where they don't have to deal with those sometimes nonsensical rules, as a place to publish more "uncensored" versions of their videos. Sometimes they're as simple as not bleeping out the word fuck, sometimes they contain an extra section that would get their entire video demonetized on YouTube (example: showing a piece of art with nudity in it, or pretty much any blood), and sometimes they use it to cover topics that they know YouTube would instantly demonetize (example: pretty much any discussion around armed conflicts).

What I like about Nebula is that when I am using it I feel like they aren't trying to coerse me into anything. They don't push me to watch the next video, they don't push me to comment, like or subscribe, they don't push new channels or features on me. I just subscribe to the RSS feed of channels that I like, watch the video and leave.

I think there enough decent quality channels (many that I was following on YouTube before anyways) that it is definitely worth my subscription.

nebula really is the best of youtube! I've subscribed for a while but recently went for their lifetime subscription (I know it's not a "deal" I just want to support those creators')

a friend is actually a creator there! speaks very well about them

I watch things on Youtube intentionally. Right now I'm watching That UK Sound[1]. There are many more things worth watching intentionally on Youtube then there are on Netflix, HBO and Disney together. There's nothing like 3Blue1Brown on these.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlCEg4hCa1LHLLYk4KQQI...

The funny thing is, a casual viewer might be more interested in the ads/promoted products because they’re bored and looking for something to do.

On a certain movie/show, you can’t be bothered to divert your attention: you’re committed to the show.