The technology that YouTube provides was hard to build when YouTube started a decade and a half ago, but surely today it’s not a huge challenge.
PDP has 20 billion total views. He doesn’t need traffic from the algorithm suggesting his videos, everyone else is trying to game the algorithm to get redirected by PDP!
The problem is that building a platform to enable those 20-billion views carries enormous fixed costs that only make sense when they are amortized across a truly massive amount of users, both in terms of uploaders and users. Video delivery at scale is one of the most difficult engineering problems out there. The only companies that have mastered it (YouTube, Vimeo, PornHub, Netflix, Amazon) are all billon dollar enterprises.
Sure, PewDiePie could pay to build out his own video service. But would it be as good as YouTube? It’s very doubtful that it would have the level of polish that YouTube offers. YouTube is far more than just tossing up a bunch of .mp4 files on a web server.
Finally, I think you’re underestimating the power of YouTube’s algorithms. When Logan Paul (another YouTube celebrity) got delisted from YouTube, he suffered a massive revenue hit, even though his videos were still on the platform (but not showing up in search results). So I do think that PewDiePie is beholden to the algorithm. I would be willing to bet that if PewDiePie got delisted from YouTube, he would rapidly be forgotten, and would be replaced by the next YouTube celebrity willing to walk the fine line between “outrageous enough to be entertaining” and “so outrageous as to cause offense”.
Edit: Scott Alexander has addressed the part of your question regarding hosting other comedians on his excellent post, Freedom on the Centralized Web. He correctly points out that the initial group of switchers are all going to be people who YouTube has deemed undesirable. However, YouTube deeming people undesirable is an effect. The cause is that these people have offended some powerful group (copyright holders, activists, etc). If all of these people abandon YouTube and start their own platform, the same forces that kicked them off YouTube will ensure that their new platform is starved of funding and respectability. For a good example of this, look at what happened to Gab. I don’t support Gab, but the saga of Gab shows how difficult it really is to set up an entirely independent platform, which supports content that society doesn’t approve of.
SlateStarCodex is hosted on Wordpress. Scott has his own domain without needing to build all the architecture from the ground up.
For video’s there’s Wistia which is existing software that works well and that can host videos. Do you have reason to believe that Wistia couldn’t handle the necessary traffic?
I don’t know enough about Wistia to say. However, from a cursory examination of their website, I would be skeptical. Wistia is designed for hosting product videos for business. These videos don’t go viral in the same way that PewDiePie’s content does. If Wistia did host PewDiePie’s content my prediction would be that they’d have a deal with PewDiePie where he pays significantly more than he paid YouTube to host his content and, eventually, they’d incur enough controversy and protest to kick him off their platform.
Wistia’s primary business is hosting boring promotional videos for businesses. Why should they put that boring-but-profitable business model at risk to host someone as troublesome as PewDiepPie? Moreover, why should PewDiePie move his videos to Wistia? Despite the controversy, we must remember that the cost that PewDiePie pays to YouTube is negative. YouTube pays PewDiePie (unless he’s been demonetized, in which case the cost to PewDiePie is zero).
I would be willing to bet that if Slate Star Codex got controversial enough to get kicked off Wordpress, then Scott Alexander would have a heck of a time building out his own site. Even if he were a programmer, and even if he knew enough about PHP and Wordpress to build out his own hosting, he’d have to deal with people protesting his new hosting provider. He’d have to deal with people complaining to Patreon and PayPal about his content. He’d have to deal with people launching hacking and DDOS attacks against his site, constantly.
he’d have to deal with people protesting his new hosting provider. … He’d have to deal with people launching hacking and DDOS attacks against his site, constantly.
This seems like a great opportunity to mention NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, which is exactly the ideal hosting provider for these sorts of situations.
Even if he were a programmer, and even if he knew enough about PHP and Wordpress to build out his own hosting
I guarantee you that there are more than enough people who would be willing to help Scott set up a self-hosted Wordpress install (or anything else, really).
Scott Alexander is, actually, an excellent example of a “content creator” who could go “totally independent” without any real problem. This is because his “content” is text. Text is easy.
The problem is that building a platform to enable those 20-billion views carries enormous fixed costs that only make sense when they are amortized across a truly massive amount of users, both in terms of uploaders and users. Video delivery at scale is one of the most difficult engineering problems out there. The only companies that have mastered it (YouTube, Vimeo, PornHub, Netflix, Amazon) are all billon dollar enterprises.
Sure, PewDiePie could pay to build out his own video service. But would it be as good as YouTube? It’s very doubtful that it would have the level of polish that YouTube offers. YouTube is far more than just tossing up a bunch of .mp4 files on a web server.
Finally, I think you’re underestimating the power of YouTube’s algorithms. When Logan Paul (another YouTube celebrity) got delisted from YouTube, he suffered a massive revenue hit, even though his videos were still on the platform (but not showing up in search results). So I do think that PewDiePie is beholden to the algorithm. I would be willing to bet that if PewDiePie got delisted from YouTube, he would rapidly be forgotten, and would be replaced by the next YouTube celebrity willing to walk the fine line between “outrageous enough to be entertaining” and “so outrageous as to cause offense”.
Edit: Scott Alexander has addressed the part of your question regarding hosting other comedians on his excellent post, Freedom on the Centralized Web. He correctly points out that the initial group of switchers are all going to be people who YouTube has deemed undesirable. However, YouTube deeming people undesirable is an effect. The cause is that these people have offended some powerful group (copyright holders, activists, etc). If all of these people abandon YouTube and start their own platform, the same forces that kicked them off YouTube will ensure that their new platform is starved of funding and respectability. For a good example of this, look at what happened to Gab. I don’t support Gab, but the saga of Gab shows how difficult it really is to set up an entirely independent platform, which supports content that society doesn’t approve of.
SlateStarCodex is hosted on Wordpress. Scott has his own domain without needing to build all the architecture from the ground up.
For video’s there’s Wistia which is existing software that works well and that can host videos. Do you have reason to believe that Wistia couldn’t handle the necessary traffic?
I don’t know enough about Wistia to say. However, from a cursory examination of their website, I would be skeptical. Wistia is designed for hosting product videos for business. These videos don’t go viral in the same way that PewDiePie’s content does. If Wistia did host PewDiePie’s content my prediction would be that they’d have a deal with PewDiePie where he pays significantly more than he paid YouTube to host his content and, eventually, they’d incur enough controversy and protest to kick him off their platform.
Wistia’s primary business is hosting boring promotional videos for businesses. Why should they put that boring-but-profitable business model at risk to host someone as troublesome as PewDiepPie? Moreover, why should PewDiePie move his videos to Wistia? Despite the controversy, we must remember that the cost that PewDiePie pays to YouTube is negative. YouTube pays PewDiePie (unless he’s been demonetized, in which case the cost to PewDiePie is zero).
I would be willing to bet that if Slate Star Codex got controversial enough to get kicked off Wordpress, then Scott Alexander would have a heck of a time building out his own site. Even if he were a programmer, and even if he knew enough about PHP and Wordpress to build out his own hosting, he’d have to deal with people protesting his new hosting provider. He’d have to deal with people complaining to Patreon and PayPal about his content. He’d have to deal with people launching hacking and DDOS attacks against his site, constantly.
This seems like a great opportunity to mention NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, which is exactly the ideal hosting provider for these sorts of situations.
I guarantee you that there are more than enough people who would be willing to help Scott set up a self-hosted Wordpress install (or anything else, really).
Scott Alexander is, actually, an excellent example of a “content creator” who could go “totally independent” without any real problem. This is because his “content” is text. Text is easy.