Putting technical limitations aside (which are a huge deal, at the very least for video), the problem is that the audiences were built using the platform, and don’t carry over easily.
The creators were able to build their audiences because, notably
The platforms have idle eyeballs actively looking for good content *on the platform*. No one google for content these days, only for answers.
The recommendation algorithms sometimes work, or at least you can make them work for you. Even if you have to figure out the peculiarities in the algorithm, this is vastly simpler than cracking global marketing. And again, active digital marketing for content typical passes through social media anyway! This is were the people are, and it’s where they look, and it’s where they will stumble on you if they’re not looking.
The alternative is being so damn appealing that you’ll spread by word of mouth. And even then, you’d do better on a platform, it’s just an incredible force multiplier.
The audiences don’t carry over because, simply put, they are living on the platform. It’s centralized. They consume many things there, so they will check it. Most people don’t know RSS and it’s being phased out of many browsers. You’ll lose most of your subscribers.
And you are wrong, the algorithms do account for many of the views of the top creators, on top of their subscribers.
Could they survive without the platform? Of course! Would they do better? No chance.
Finally, anger at the platform is generally at being less good than it used to be. But think about, for instance, demonetization on YouTube. Well, you can still sign your own deals and include your own ads in the videos. If you leave the platform, you have to do this. But if you stay there, it’s still an option.
I agree; it’s a coordination problem. But it doesn’t apply just to creators. Even if most of the audience is hating the platform, no one will switch to another—because there’s no content there.
I think something like generalized Kickstarter could solve that, if it itself got popular & understood. We would need to spread awareness of it & the problem they’re trying to solve across the population. Once significant portion of population is on such platform, one could start a campaign to, for example, switch from YouTube to DTube. All users agree to switch to DTube if/when X amount of people joined the campaign. All content creators being part of it would reupload their content there, and preferably temporarily unlist their videos on YouTube.
Or creators could coordinate among themselves in similar way. If there were enough of them, and they all unlisted their videos with info that they moved to platform X, audience should follow.
Also, assuming something like DTube can actually reliably work at massive scale, one could make decentralized app which is a wrapper for YouTube. It’d include both videos which are on the decentralized network, and videos hosted on YouTube, seamlessly. Then interested audience could switch one user at a time—it’d be like YouTube, but with extra content. And then people could slowly rip videos off YouTube onto the platform, and when there’s more users of the new platform—gradually suppress YouTube content.
If general audience or creators really care about censorship, then it should be doable.
Putting technical limitations aside (which are a huge deal, at the very least for video), the problem is that the audiences were built using the platform, and don’t carry over easily.
The creators were able to build their audiences because, notably
The platforms have idle eyeballs actively looking for good content *on the platform*. No one google for content these days, only for answers.
The recommendation algorithms sometimes work, or at least you can make them work for you. Even if you have to figure out the peculiarities in the algorithm, this is vastly simpler than cracking global marketing. And again, active digital marketing for content typical passes through social media anyway! This is were the people are, and it’s where they look, and it’s where they will stumble on you if they’re not looking.
The alternative is being so damn appealing that you’ll spread by word of mouth. And even then, you’d do better on a platform, it’s just an incredible force multiplier.
The audiences don’t carry over because, simply put, they are living on the platform. It’s centralized. They consume many things there, so they will check it. Most people don’t know RSS and it’s being phased out of many browsers. You’ll lose most of your subscribers.
And you are wrong, the algorithms do account for many of the views of the top creators, on top of their subscribers.
Could they survive without the platform? Of course! Would they do better? No chance.
Finally, anger at the platform is generally at being less good than it used to be. But think about, for instance, demonetization on YouTube. Well, you can still sign your own deals and include your own ads in the videos. If you leave the platform, you have to do this. But if you stay there, it’s still an option.
I agree; it’s a coordination problem. But it doesn’t apply just to creators. Even if most of the audience is hating the platform, no one will switch to another—because there’s no content there.
I think something like generalized Kickstarter could solve that, if it itself got popular & understood. We would need to spread awareness of it & the problem they’re trying to solve across the population. Once significant portion of population is on such platform, one could start a campaign to, for example, switch from YouTube to DTube. All users agree to switch to DTube if/when X amount of people joined the campaign. All content creators being part of it would reupload their content there, and preferably temporarily unlist their videos on YouTube.
Or creators could coordinate among themselves in similar way. If there were enough of them, and they all unlisted their videos with info that they moved to platform X, audience should follow.
Also, assuming something like DTube can actually reliably work at massive scale, one could make decentralized app which is a wrapper for YouTube. It’d include both videos which are on the decentralized network, and videos hosted on YouTube, seamlessly. Then interested audience could switch one user at a time—it’d be like YouTube, but with extra content. And then people could slowly rip videos off YouTube onto the platform, and when there’s more users of the new platform—gradually suppress YouTube content.
If general audience or creators really care about censorship, then it should be doable.