[TameAntelope]

I can't stop thinking about the concept of "policy-based innovation" a new startup could build off of to disrupt an industry, but I feel like it violates one of the primary tenets of Starting a Startup because a big player can theoretically "just change their policy" to eat your lunch.

For example (given enough capital), is there genuinely an opportunity to build a YouTube-like platform that simply doesn't have the policies YouTube has (e.g. shares revenue more fairly, has a more-sane copyright law enforcement, explains their moderation actions)?

The idea here is that while it's true, in theory, that YouTube could make those policy changes and your YouTube alternative would then be pointless, the reality is they never will, even if it begins to cost them.

I really wish I could talk to someone more about this, or if there was targeted reading, but I haven't really found much, because I think most folks dismiss this as a viable strategy.

[MiddleEndian]

Ideally people would host their own content. Then there would be no "policy" at all. Every channel should be its own website, and if they want they could engage in mutual link agreements with other content creators they like. Something like wordpress for video content, and maybe with some torrent tech involved so more viewers would distribute the bandwidth.

[master-lincoln]

There is Peertube which is part of the Fediverse, where multiple instances each with their own policies exist. You can have an account on an instance and still discover/follow content on other instances (if they were not banned by your instance owner)

To me this seems like a good middle ground between having your own website and relying on a monopolistic service. Downside still is that your identity is fixed to an instance, but there are discussions on how to change that.

[Miner49er]

It can work, just depends. DuckDuckGo is an example of a success doing this. For things like YouTube it's much harder. Content creators go where the consumers are, and consumers don't know about or care about these types of policy things until it effects content they watch.

TIDAL tried this as a Spotify competitor and have basically failed.

[colejohnson66]

Tidal’s still trying. I see ads for it every so often. But you’re correct: they haven’t “broken through” yet like Spotify and Netflix did. First mover advantage?

[TameAntelope]

Yeah I was thinking about this -- when you try to innovate via policy, do you basically start at the bottom? That is, do you have to more or less a) match features with the incumbent, b) baseline need to meet the incumbents user volume (or a substantial fraction) and c) be able to benefit from the scale that the incumbent already benefits from?

Or can you throw money at it until you have those? TIDAL seems to be trying the "throw money at it until it's winning" strategy...