Audiences won’t go there because (a) even fewer people who watch youtube would know what peertube is or that it exists and (b) creators are not natively there leading to a loop.
Gotta build the platform to gain attention of the creators.
Gotta build the platform to gain attention of advertisors.
Gotta build the platform to gain an audience.
But how do you build the platform? Gotta have creators, advertisors, and an audience.
The problem I see is, the audience that will be built at this stage are technology enthusists. The kind of people who use Linux as their main OS. The reason that’s a problem is Linux has less than a 4% market share. That audience has a limited cap. Only so many people share that enthusiasm. The other problem I see on Lemmy, so I assume it would be a problem on Peer Tube is that if you suggest a community that the CURRENT audience has no interest in, you get downvoted. If you speak the truth, but the truth hurts, people will verbally attack you, reject the truth, and protect their own world bubble.
For example, saying that Lemmy needs an active Windows community will result in downvotes, because half the people here have no opinion on that, so they wouldn’t vote either way, and the other half will downvote you. Because in their mind, you’re challenging their precious Linux.
Or, let’s take it the other direction. I’m a 40 year old straight male with no children. I have zero interest in Barbie. I never saw the movie. I never owned a Barbie. I’m not a stock holder for Mattel. I have zero interest in that race. A LOT of people here have zero interest in Barbie. But I STILL say Barbie needs an active community here. Why? Because Barbie is popular. It would represent not only an increase in userbase, but also an increase in the diversity of users.
You need LOTS of different topics, and users with different interests. If you have 99% Linux users, and 1% non-Linux supporter, you have a Linux platform. If someone who dislikes Linux thinks thats all the platform is, they won’t join.
If you have 20% Linux users, 40% Windows users, 10% Barbie fans, 25% sports fans, 10% cooking enthusiasts, 5% political activists, and 10% music listeners, then you have a more broad audience. Yes the Linux users went down from 99% to 20%, but the variety increased which appeals to a broader audience. Which increase your overall number of users.
My worry is, peer tube at this point is going to be tech heavy in its audience. And as I’ve shown, you can’t steer too hard into one demographic or you’ll ONLY get that one limited demographic.
An egg came first, but it came from something genetically extremely close to a modern chicken (you can’t hatch a chicken from anything that is not a chicken egg and there’s no compelling evidence that one suddenly mutated itself in all the right ways to become a chicken before laying that egg).
Anyway, on the actual topic, yeah, I think I agree with everything you’ve mentioned here. I think it would take YouTube doing something profoundly stupid to give enough of an opening that any alternative (which may not necessarily even wind up being PeerTube – people may end up going to even something like PornHub instead (and I think all the others like DailyMotion are (mostly?) dead now)) to get a chance. I don’t see companies like Nebula ever going the route of opening up like YouTube .
It’s available but not flourishing last I checked. Just to be clear I’m not denigrating it at all, I desperatelywant it to flourish. I pay for nebula, too, as well as patreon for many of my preferred creators, in the hopes that they can explore alternatives to YouTube. Hell, I pay for floatplane and dropout too, as much as I hate the fractured environment it’s creating, I want the most direct way to support the content I watch, but YouTube is almost certainly still my most watched platform
Things would have to get massively shitty for that to happen. The volume of content on YouTube will be extremely difficult to replicate.
Just as a reference look at reddit. They’ve suffered a loss of users but they’re not going down anytime soon and while lemmy still isn’t going to take over anytime soon. There’s just too much inertia…
I just keep hoping it gets bad enough for something better to flourish in its place
I mean…peer tube is available.
Creators won’t go there because (a) almost none even know about it (b) there’s no audience there for the ones that do and © there’s no monetization after the first two are met and some people do youtube for a job.
Audiences won’t go there because (a) even fewer people who watch youtube would know what peertube is or that it exists and (b) creators are not natively there leading to a loop.
Those things need to be fixed first.
The answer that people usually give to this is something like “monetization is evil”, because apparently content creators should all work for free
That’s why I support my favorite creators via patreon, and then I use a youtube downloader.
Good on you, but people are much less likely to donate like that when compared to the platform itself supporting monetization somehow
I mean…which came first? The chicken or the egg?
Gotta build the platform to gain attention of the creators.
Gotta build the platform to gain attention of advertisors.
Gotta build the platform to gain an audience.
But how do you build the platform? Gotta have creators, advertisors, and an audience.
The problem I see is, the audience that will be built at this stage are technology enthusists. The kind of people who use Linux as their main OS. The reason that’s a problem is Linux has less than a 4% market share. That audience has a limited cap. Only so many people share that enthusiasm. The other problem I see on Lemmy, so I assume it would be a problem on Peer Tube is that if you suggest a community that the CURRENT audience has no interest in, you get downvoted. If you speak the truth, but the truth hurts, people will verbally attack you, reject the truth, and protect their own world bubble.
For example, saying that Lemmy needs an active Windows community will result in downvotes, because half the people here have no opinion on that, so they wouldn’t vote either way, and the other half will downvote you. Because in their mind, you’re challenging their precious Linux.
Or, let’s take it the other direction. I’m a 40 year old straight male with no children. I have zero interest in Barbie. I never saw the movie. I never owned a Barbie. I’m not a stock holder for Mattel. I have zero interest in that race. A LOT of people here have zero interest in Barbie. But I STILL say Barbie needs an active community here. Why? Because Barbie is popular. It would represent not only an increase in userbase, but also an increase in the diversity of users.
You need LOTS of different topics, and users with different interests. If you have 99% Linux users, and 1% non-Linux supporter, you have a Linux platform. If someone who dislikes Linux thinks thats all the platform is, they won’t join.
If you have 20% Linux users, 40% Windows users, 10% Barbie fans, 25% sports fans, 10% cooking enthusiasts, 5% political activists, and 10% music listeners, then you have a more broad audience. Yes the Linux users went down from 99% to 20%, but the variety increased which appeals to a broader audience. Which increase your overall number of users.
My worry is, peer tube at this point is going to be tech heavy in its audience. And as I’ve shown, you can’t steer too hard into one demographic or you’ll ONLY get that one limited demographic.
An egg came first, but it came from something genetically extremely close to a modern chicken (you can’t hatch a chicken from anything that is not a chicken egg and there’s no compelling evidence that one suddenly mutated itself in all the right ways to become a chicken before laying that egg).
Anyway, on the actual topic, yeah, I think I agree with everything you’ve mentioned here. I think it would take YouTube doing something profoundly stupid to give enough of an opening that any alternative (which may not necessarily even wind up being PeerTube – people may end up going to even something like PornHub instead (and I think all the others like DailyMotion are (mostly?) dead now)) to get a chance. I don’t see companies like Nebula ever going the route of opening up like YouTube .
It’s available but not flourishing last I checked. Just to be clear I’m not denigrating it at all, I desperatelywant it to flourish. I pay for nebula, too, as well as patreon for many of my preferred creators, in the hopes that they can explore alternatives to YouTube. Hell, I pay for floatplane and dropout too, as much as I hate the fractured environment it’s creating, I want the most direct way to support the content I watch, but YouTube is almost certainly still my most watched platform
Anyone know how Nebula is going these days?
Really well last I heard
Things would have to get massively shitty for that to happen. The volume of content on YouTube will be extremely difficult to replicate.
Just as a reference look at reddit. They’ve suffered a loss of users but they’re not going down anytime soon and while lemmy still isn’t going to take over anytime soon. There’s just too much inertia…
Odysee