[kzcqt]

A site like youtube requires so much CPU/GPU power, storage capacity and bandwidth that it's highly unlikely that a new competitor[] will appear, and completely impossible to decentralise.

[]If we don't count the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, etc as competitors, since they would manage the site in the same way Google does.

[krapp]

Plenty of other video streaming sites exist. Competition certainly isn't impossible, and competitors don't have to operate at Youtube's scale to be viable, assuming they target a niche demographic.

[Mirioron]

But do those video streaming sites offer comparable quality to YouTube, while also giving away half of the ad revenue they receive? Because YouTube does that. If it didn't give away half of the ad revenue to creators then YouTube would probably never have become as big as it is now.

We know that YouTube has trouble making money with this type of criteria. What do you think is the chance that another company with far less economies of scale will somehow make it work better?

[krapp]

Youtube is so capricious with demonetizing user content that it's become a meme, and content creators have to resort to merchandise and Patreon to survive. They're definitely not giving away anywhere near half of their ad revenue.

[Mirioron]

YouTube takes 45% of the ad revenue in a video, the creator of it takes 55%. If a video is demonetized then it won't have ads on it. This means that YouTube won't make any money on that video. It's in YouTube's best interests not to demonetize videos. They do it, because they want to avoid bad PR and avoid advertisers from doing yet another boycott.

I don't see how YouTube is not giving away half of their ad revenue. Note that even when a video is "unsuitable for advertisers" the creators still get paid by YouTube Red.

[stcredzero]

They do it, because they want to avoid bad PR and avoid advertisers from doing yet another boycott.

A part of YouTube has been captured by activists, and a lot of that policy is warped to their ends. Often, this is political. Often, it's arbitrary abuse of power in service of this or that "Internet slap fight." Either way, it's looks bad to someone who can see the big picture.

[creato]

> Youtube is so capricious with demonetizing user content that it's become a meme,

Yeah, and this meme is absurd. In what other ad business are advertisers obligated to pay you? Normally when you are trying to sell ads, you have to have a sales team to try to get advertisers to pay you, and it's a constant effort. Creators do not have a right to monetization. If they want monetization, nothing is stopping them from finding their own advertisers and striking their own deals (many creators do exactly this).

[kzcqt]

A competitor would need to operate at youtube's scale for it to be considered a serious competitor. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation, given that websites like Dailymotion and Vimeo exist, but no "youtube stars" use them.

[krapp]

Not every competitor has to be "serious" to be successful.

And what about Twitch? Plenty of "personality" driven content there.

[kzcqt]

Twitch is not a competitor of youtube. Twitch is specialised in live shows. They don't let you upload videos, and they delete old videos of past broadcasts pretty often.

[krapp]

If user attention is split between Twitch and Youtube then they are a competitor. Same for Netflix. Same for Pornhub. Same for Vine when that was a thing.

[stcredzero]

If user attention is split between Twitch and Youtube then they are a competitor. Same for Netflix. Same for Pornhub. Same for Vine when that was a thing.

But if you focus attention to political commentary specifically, then YouTube is clearly the dominant giant. In that context, they are a defacto monopoly.

[rchaud]

It really wouldn't. YT makes a big deal about vanity metrics like "10,000 hours of video uploaded per hour" (or something like that), but the 80-20 rule still applies.

A giant chunk of uploaded content is never even watched.

[yorwba]

A site for YouTube videos that have never been watched before: http://www.petittube.com/

[Spivak]

I don't really think so. A turnkey "host your own video site" would pretty much qualify a competitor -- I'm far more loyal to the people I watch on YouTube/Twitch than the platforms themselves. If they moved to their own site it wouldn't matter too much to me assuming I still had a way to get it on my TV.

[stcredzero]

But in the long term, virality, discovery, and monetization matter a great deal. YouTube could simply wait for current creators to become stale, and absolutely control the future of discourse.

[mtgx]

Bandwidth has nothing to do with it. If a site was super-popular, I'm sure they'd get the VC money. That's really not the issue. The issue is getting people to put their videos on other sites, too.

[MBCook]

And you don’t think the VCs would drive them to try to keep their content ‘clean’ the way YouTube is?