[mrlala]

>This is only a problem because we allowed the web to become centralized around a few large hubs

But that's also in the best interested of everyone.

Instead of youtube, we should visit 10 different video sites? Instead of reddit, we should visit 10 different global info sources that now have 10x less content, and spend even more time finding what's relevant? Instead of twitch, we should visit 10 different sites to watch streams?

It's the natural order of things.. there's no way to have a LOT of different sites that also contain basically everything you want.

[simias]

What if each subreddit was an independent forum? What if each youtube channel was a blog hosted on potentially a whole bunch of different hosts? If reddit is so much better than the alternatives what are you doing on HN instead of /r/programming or similar?

The only thing you'd lose is the unified user profile but we have the tools to have distributed identities (oauth and friends). Before the era of social networks having mililon of forums for niche topics was common. Now you just create a subreddit instead.

Want to talk about knitting? Search for "knitting discussion online". Here are a few results: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/knitting-and-crocheting https://crochettalk.com/ http://www.knittingparadise.com/active-topic-list

Each site does not contain "everything I want" but each fills a particular niche. The fact that you actually have to search for them to find them can actually be seen as a bonus, you don't have the sort of "cross-contamination" you can observe on reddit when a community is suddenly popular enough to propelled into the frontpage and you have an influx of people who overrun your community and destroy its "culture".

Should reddit disappear tomorrow I'm sure we'll do just fine. Youtube is more complex because video hosting is much more demanding in terms of resources.

[zrobotics]

On the contrary, centralization can actually reduce the amount of content, at least for certain types. For instance, nearly any automobile will have a dedicated forum, and often these forums will provide some of the most helpful information, simply because they concentrate people around a specific subject. Whereas asking a question in one of the general automotive subreddits will typically yield poorer quality answers or will simply be lost in the noise. Thankfully reddit somewhat solved this problem w/ subreddits, since it's pretty common knowledge that the default subs are complete garbage, but youtube hasn't really done much about this. Sure, if someone made a video for your exact probem it is nice, but for finding specific information youtube is pretty poor.

[Scoundreller]

The latter is just getting worse.

YouTube is doing its best to demonetize content that doesn’t result in subscribing to an uploader. Ie: people posting numerous videos that are unrelated because they are so specific.

[chillwaves]

If content is centralized in this manner you should expect it to moderated and influenced from a central source.