[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Yeah, I'm reading this and thinking it is pretty similar to the situation on twitch. I'm the world's lamest twitch streamer in a category with paltry viewership, so it took me over 600 hours of streaming to get a payout[0] and I had to hit arbitrary milestones for affiliate in the first place. I have no idea how discovery even works on twitch, but I have to imagine it's the same as everywhere else: popular stuff gets more popular and everyone else languishes in obscurity. How else could it work, really?

[0] Twitch pays out at $100, if anyone didn't know.

[meheleventyone]

Twitch isn’t amazing at it in total but it does recommend smaller streamers to people.

[xmprt]

I think discoverability on YouTube is 100x easier than Twitch. I've been recommended videos with a few hundred or thousand views before. The equivalent on Twitch is a 0-10 viewer stream which I've literally never come across without it being through me actively looking for a niche game, through a raid, or through (ironically) finding their channel on YouTube which linked to their Twitch.

[meheleventyone]

Twitch has a "Recommended Smaller Communities" section on their user frontpage now.