[slapfrog]

> Even moderately successful YouTubers rely on sponsorship and because there's competition for creators between platforms

The fact that you call them "Youtubers", identifying them using the trademark of one particular platform rather than a generic descriptor like "video content creator", suggests that there is not quite as much healthy competition as you claim. Most video companies other than youtube only compete with youtube in a narrow sense; a great deal of the content on youtube does not fit on tiktok's platform, which is only good for short-form content. Netflix only hosts movies or TV shows. Twitch is for livestreaming; other kinds of content don't fit into the paradigm of twitch. Vimeo has never been a good place for off-the-cuff home movies, they too try to compete with youtube only in a narrow domain, not across the board. The few generalist video hosting companies other than youtube are all jokes that are faaar behind youtube in viewer counts.

[space_fountain]

I guess the point is that Youtube has a powerful market position but not an unassailable one. They can lose market share and pissing off a large percent of there content creators seems like a good way of doing that