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Neither the GP or this comment are viable in the real world. Businesses/creators need continued distribution, see Nike as an example of what happens when you "

Neither the GP or this comment are viable in the real world. Businesses/creators need continued distribution, see Nike as an example of what happens when you "take your audience elsewhere to monetize them better/more." 1. People buy the other option (in Nike's case they kept going to footlocker and buying other shoes rather than only buying Nike DTC, in Beato's case they would continue to go to YouTube to discover new guitar content) 2. The business can't get new customers because no one is on the new platform (Nike DTC/Peertube) It's viable for a split second (covid, "stick it to Youtube cause they suck") then people just go back to living their lives.

AlecSchueler 1y ago
> in Beato's case they would continue to go to YouTube to discover new guitar content He's in a unique market position though because he's got industry respect. Joe Bloggs in his bedroom can't compete with "guitar content" because Dave Gilmore, Pat Matheney and Glynn Johns aren't all going to sit with him for a 2 hour long interview.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  The GP is still correct. People are lazy. If you add even a small complication for people to consume content, then it doesn’t matter how much respect that content creator has, people will just follow someone else instead. Google knows this; which is why they can screw over content creators on their platform.
  - rglullis 1y ago
    https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/ solves this quite well.
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      Same problem applies: That’s another site to read. Another app to download. Another product to discover. I nearly didn’t even open the link because I didn’t want to learn something new before I’d had my morning cup of earl grey. Chances are the average consumer wouldn’t bother — assuming they even discover about this to begin with.
      - rglullis 1y ago
        "Hey everyone, I'm Rick Beato. I am tired of dealing with YouTube constantly threatening my livelihood, so now I will be focused on my own channel. I will be posting here as well for whatever they let me, but to get full videos just download the GrayJay app (link in description) and look for my channel (link also in description)." That's all it would take to get a few hundred thousand people to download it, and you'd know that the those who are going through the effort are higher-value subscribers, so it would be even easier to bring better sponsors. I really don't like arguments based on "I am lazy to do that, therefore everyone is". It's at best defeatist cowardice and at worst a malicious way to support the status quo.
        hnlmorg 1y ago
        I’m not being defeatist. I’m literally just pointing out the reality of consumer trends. There is oodles of research into this topic. It isn’t something I’ve just made up. It’s why analytics exist to explore website user journeys and then promoting the most important calls to action in prominent places. It’s why physical store fronts put the doors at the front of the shop rather than on the side (side note: a friend of mine does own a shop and when he had to have the front door closed for repair, he saw a sharp decline in random walk-ins because people didn’t want to use the side door). It’s why Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn etc remaining dominant platforms in their respective domains despite almost universal dislike for those platforms. It’s why supermarkets put their product with the highest margin in the centre of the shelves and the lower margin items at the top and bottom. It’s why being on page 2 of Googles search results are as good as not being in Google at all. I’d actually love it if your idealistic view were true in practice. I don’t want to depend on GitHub, LinkedIn, YouTube. But that’s where the masses are so I need to use it too. I already ditched WhatsApp for Signal, but after several years without WhatsApp, I still haven’t converted all my family. So I miss out on sooo much conversations because of my ideals. What you’re advocating simply doesn’t match the reality of how people shop for content. Be that free stuff on social platforms, nor purchasing physical products in stores. It’s not defeatist to say consumers are lazy. It’s just a sad fact of life. And ignoring that fact doesn’t magically make it untrue.
    - bonoboTP 1y ago
      YouTube already was built on the "distributed" premise. That You can "broadcast yourself" as the slogan says, you use the platform to make your own presence, users can subscribe to you specifically and the platform merely connects the audience and the video makers. No longer are you beholden to the old ways of cable TV producer filters and gatekeepers. You just find and manage your own audience and the platform gets out of the way. So when grayjay says "Follow Creators, Not Platforms" I'm pretty sure that the minute that regular people on the street know about the existence of "grayjay", they will become essentially also a platform that enshittifies in the same way (cf. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/). It's a common pattern. Be an aggregator first, then slowly introduce exclusives, and become a competitor that climbed up on the backs of the others. Somewhat similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
      - rglullis 1y ago
        GrayJay is just a client for the different platforms, like a regular web browser. They can't put themselves between and the consumer. > YouTube already was built on the "distributed" premise. What a load of BS.
        bonoboTP 1y ago
        > They can't put themselves between and the consumer. Of course they can. If they smell money and sell, they can change it to whatever they want. It's just a client for now. It's like arguing for Skype back then based on tech aspects. It's P2P! Yes, P2P until it wasn't. Youtube wasnt distribute in tech, but was in marketing and if you were there around 2007-10, you remember it was much less social-media-ified and felt more direct and raw. Subscribe and get notified. Just a platform. The only way to avoid that same path is by remaining obscure and small. I guess every new generation of tech enthusiasts has to get burned to get sufficiently disillusioned.
        rglullis 1y ago
        The code is open source and FOSS. They could try a bait-and-switch and they would see a dozen forks 30 minutes after the announcement.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    Oh yeah, it would still be very difficult for him to move his audience off of YouTube. I was trying to pick up on the idea that he would be replaced by someone else. I think it's more likely just a lose/lose scenario for everyone.
rglullis 1y ago
> then people just go back to living their lives. If during the switch you got people to download Grayjay, they will be living their lives like they were, except that some of their subscriptions won't be on YouTube anymore.

AlecSchueler 1y ago

> in Beato's case they would continue to go to YouTube to discover new guitar content He's in a unique market position though because he's got industry respect. Joe Bloggs in his bedroom can't compete with "guitar content" because Dave Gilmore, Pat Matheney and Glynn Johns aren't all going to sit with him for a 2 hour long interview.

hnlmorg 1y ago
The GP is still correct. People are lazy. If you add even a small complication for people to consume content, then it doesn’t matter how much respect that content creator has, people will just follow someone else instead. Google knows this; which is why they can screw over content creators on their platform.
- rglullis 1y ago
  https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/ solves this quite well.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Same problem applies: That’s another site to read. Another app to download. Another product to discover. I nearly didn’t even open the link because I didn’t want to learn something new before I’d had my morning cup of earl grey. Chances are the average consumer wouldn’t bother — assuming they even discover about this to begin with.
    - rglullis 1y ago
      "Hey everyone, I'm Rick Beato. I am tired of dealing with YouTube constantly threatening my livelihood, so now I will be focused on my own channel. I will be posting here as well for whatever they let me, but to get full videos just download the GrayJay app (link in description) and look for my channel (link also in description)." That's all it would take to get a few hundred thousand people to download it, and you'd know that the those who are going through the effort are higher-value subscribers, so it would be even easier to bring better sponsors. I really don't like arguments based on "I am lazy to do that, therefore everyone is". It's at best defeatist cowardice and at worst a malicious way to support the status quo.
      - hnlmorg 1y ago
        I’m not being defeatist. I’m literally just pointing out the reality of consumer trends. There is oodles of research into this topic. It isn’t something I’ve just made up. It’s why analytics exist to explore website user journeys and then promoting the most important calls to action in prominent places. It’s why physical store fronts put the doors at the front of the shop rather than on the side (side note: a friend of mine does own a shop and when he had to have the front door closed for repair, he saw a sharp decline in random walk-ins because people didn’t want to use the side door). It’s why Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn etc remaining dominant platforms in their respective domains despite almost universal dislike for those platforms. It’s why supermarkets put their product with the highest margin in the centre of the shelves and the lower margin items at the top and bottom. It’s why being on page 2 of Googles search results are as good as not being in Google at all. I’d actually love it if your idealistic view were true in practice. I don’t want to depend on GitHub, LinkedIn, YouTube. But that’s where the masses are so I need to use it too. I already ditched WhatsApp for Signal, but after several years without WhatsApp, I still haven’t converted all my family. So I miss out on sooo much conversations because of my ideals. What you’re advocating simply doesn’t match the reality of how people shop for content. Be that free stuff on social platforms, nor purchasing physical products in stores. It’s not defeatist to say consumers are lazy. It’s just a sad fact of life. And ignoring that fact doesn’t magically make it untrue.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    YouTube already was built on the "distributed" premise. That You can "broadcast yourself" as the slogan says, you use the platform to make your own presence, users can subscribe to you specifically and the platform merely connects the audience and the video makers. No longer are you beholden to the old ways of cable TV producer filters and gatekeepers. You just find and manage your own audience and the platform gets out of the way. So when grayjay says "Follow Creators, Not Platforms" I'm pretty sure that the minute that regular people on the street know about the existence of "grayjay", they will become essentially also a platform that enshittifies in the same way (cf. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/). It's a common pattern. Be an aggregator first, then slowly introduce exclusives, and become a competitor that climbed up on the backs of the others. Somewhat similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
    - rglullis 1y ago
      GrayJay is just a client for the different platforms, like a regular web browser. They can't put themselves between and the consumer. > YouTube already was built on the "distributed" premise. What a load of BS.
      - bonoboTP 1y ago
        > They can't put themselves between and the consumer. Of course they can. If they smell money and sell, they can change it to whatever they want. It's just a client for now. It's like arguing for Skype back then based on tech aspects. It's P2P! Yes, P2P until it wasn't. Youtube wasnt distribute in tech, but was in marketing and if you were there around 2007-10, you remember it was much less social-media-ified and felt more direct and raw. Subscribe and get notified. Just a platform. The only way to avoid that same path is by remaining obscure and small. I guess every new generation of tech enthusiasts has to get burned to get sufficiently disillusioned.
        rglullis 1y ago
        The code is open source and FOSS. They could try a bait-and-switch and they would see a dozen forks 30 minutes after the announcement.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  Oh yeah, it would still be very difficult for him to move his audience off of YouTube. I was trying to pick up on the idea that he would be replaced by someone else. I think it's more likely just a lose/lose scenario for everyone.

rglullis 1y ago

> then people just go back to living their lives. If during the switch you got people to download Grayjay, they will be living their lives like they were, except that some of their subscriptions won't be on YouTube anymore.