Yes

Watching videos on other websites isn't the issue, but where are you going to find new videos to watch? Where are you going to search to find a video on a specific thing, a recipe, a how-to, or some other more obscure thing?

Right now that's YouTube and TikTok.

If I want to follow someone, I’d use RSS, or subscribe to a newsletter.

If I want to find videos on a specific topic, I use a search engine. DuckDuckGo yields much better results than YouTube, even when the results are hosted on YouTube itself.

Sure, searching with an external search engine is an option, but YouTube and TikTok also just bring videos to you. In other words, they offer passive discovery you just don’t get with a search engine.

It’s fine if that’s not what you want, but people do love it and it keeps them going back to YouTube and TikTok.

> Honestly, I really wonder if users would refuse to follow creators whom they like to another platform. Are most people really that adverse to just watching videos on another website?

My wife and I watch ~15 hours of YouTube together each week, entirely on our Apple TV. If someone we watch were to move to another platform, we just wouldn't watch them anymore. Honestly even if there is an Apple TV app for the other platform, it's still unlikely we'd switch over just to watch them instead of filling up their "time slot" with someone else.

I sponsor several creators on Patreon, I don't watch early release videos because that would require me to log into Patreon and follow the link.

I've told the creators that I follow that I'm paying to enable them to do what they do, I don't need any more return than that.

I tried Nebula and others, honestly the content was either unappealing, low quality recycled material, or it took too long to find something interesting. The variety of YT is important and I'd also say 30% of my selections are based on duration, fitting the content into my lifestyle as well as my mood.

We do the same thing. There are a couple of channels we watch on YouTube who forego ads and use Patreon to fund their livelihoods; we'd be sad to see them disappear, so I started supporting them with a monthly donation on Patreon. They offer the same early release perks, but like you said, the variety of our YouTube subscription feed is important. I could binge all of these creators' videos on Patreon if I wanted to, but my wife and I aren't opening YouTube to binge just one type of video.