It's a chicken and egg problem: users won't switch platforms until their favorite creators switch over, and the creators won't switch over if nobody's there to watch their videos.
Well in any case it's pretty clear which one needs to come first, convince the creators and they'll push existing users to the new platform.
The chicken problem is more about the ad buyers and the users, not creators. The patreon system scales better this way but the ads are what holds most back.
I know quite a few YouTube channels who tried pushing one of those
awful decentralized versions of YouTube that look like Chinese knockoffs when the either the demonetization and copyright stuff bit them hard and threatened (or simply ruined) years of their hard work, but there was never a proper alternative to offer. I'm sure they'd love a legitimate alternative designed by top tier designers and developers for once.
Otherwise the creators will have no financial incentive to route users to another platform. Which is a far higher problem than not having enough other people commenting on the same video as other users.
That's where the problem is, a lot of popular content creators have contracts with large media groups which specifically prevents them to upload to another platform.
Do the media partners in turn have contracts with youtube requiring that they upload to it exclusively?
If not, maybe even if so, that might not be such a bad thing. It would mean that if you could negotiate a deal with a single media group to upload to your platform as well you get a lot of content. I don't imagine these businesses are any happier with being hostage by youtube than individual creators.
That'd work fine for small channels, but you can bet that the big ones do have exclusivity contracts. Not with YouTube directly, but media groups that tie them to YouTube.
In-video sponsors like Skillshare, NordVPN, Dollar Shave Club or whatever don't contact channels directly. There's someone representing them.
The chicken problem is more about the ad buyers and the users, not creators. The patreon system scales better this way but the ads are what holds most back.
I know quite a few YouTube channels who tried pushing one of those awful decentralized versions of YouTube that look like Chinese knockoffs when the either the demonetization and copyright stuff bit them hard and threatened (or simply ruined) years of their hard work, but there was never a proper alternative to offer. I'm sure they'd love a legitimate alternative designed by top tier designers and developers for once.
Otherwise the creators will have no financial incentive to route users to another platform. Which is a far higher problem than not having enough other people commenting on the same video as other users.