this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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Ok so first let’s go over what YouTube provides: Storage, community tools, search algorithm, add sense, authority over copyright, front end.
Realistically you could probably cover the front end, search algorithm, and community tools with FOSS collaboration.
Everything else gets harder.
For storage, the VAST swaths of data, and forever growing nature of YouTube storage nearly guarantee its market dominance alone… if they can contain that infinitely growing monster forever. Its their greatest strength and can also be its Achilles heel. I would propose that video hosting would be covered by the creatives. This change creates a ripple effect that effect all the other challenges, but immediately raises the bar for entry, and with the exception of the highest earning creators, videos would have to be cycled out when their earning capability falls below cost to host. But! This has good sides, like the best videos would linger and bad videos would fall off increasing the quality of what remains. Creatives would have more control over their videos. You could also have a system that rotates videos between a cold storage and live videos, where cold storage would use a torrent like system vs the streaming of a live system, which would allow cheap storage of low earning videos to still have them available for those who could wait.
Copyright, so with the creatives holding the keys to the content, this new youtube would only facilitate the connection and front end, but would not regulate it. So copyright claims would have to be handled by the creatives. This is a sharp as hell double edged sword! You won’t be copyright trolled as successfully any more BUT your odds of ending up in court could be higher as there is no way to appease the record labels and what have you so readily. There would also not be a method to scan the videos to easily find other people who are stealing YOUR content either. And you would have to deal with the person stealing your content directly.
And ad sense. Without a unifying front to bargain with advertisers, it will be like the Wild West. Most advertisers don’t have assurances of enforced standards and will be very timid to employ this new system. They would all have to vett creatives separately, and it would work allot like Sponcers do now, but ultimately i think it would be a boon, but for a wile the money won’t be there.
I think you SEVERELY misunderstand the content on YouTube and the content that pays and people watch. The average YouTube watcher is quite brain-dead.
The most profitable YouTube channels are:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTube_channels
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-viewed_YouTube_channels
https://www.tubefilter.com/2024/02/02/top-100-most-viewed-youtube-channels-us-january-2024/
The likes of popular youtubers with good content like Tom Scott and GamersNexus do not even make the list at all.
Good channels like Stories to Old that aren't big, but well produced probably won't be able to make it at all with this setup unless they form a coalition with other small creators to pay for hosting costs and have someone with the expertise to manage it. That cost would severely cut into what they would be able to live off of.
The most likely scenario is the platform becomes a wasteland of clickbait and child-friendly clickbait because that is what gets the most watch time.
So what YouTube is now. But there will be a higher bar for entry. I said as much. I fully expect groups to form and would welcome them. And the hash tag system would allow greater means of finding content that people want to actually watch, and still allowing these content farms to operate.
But this is a discussion about possible YouTube replacement, and realistically i don’t see another company that could handle the infinite demands of free on demand video streaming that we would have been as our new masters. I took inspiration from the Fediverse in this regard. The FOSS collaboration may be able to stream line the hows and specifications expected to have creatives connect their content to the collective.