[least]

> ...and the reason is: they were the first. Now they are so huge that you can't go past them. If you want to have your video seen, you HAVE to go to YouTube.

I think you're understanding the value in the platform itself, then. It is pretty trivial for someone to share their video online but it's extremely difficult to get it to propagate.

> There is no real choice.

There is kind of a choice. You already added the primary condition for uploading it to Youtube and that condition isn't something that matters to everyone for everything. Traditional media is Youtube's competition for attention on long form content.

[msadirna]

People who upload their content to the open internet usually want to have it seen by others. So no...there is no real choice.

Also, suggesting that this "value" is something YouTube still delivers or creates, is ridiculous. It was luck and from then on the value is being provided by the people who upload content there. What they get in return is ridiculous compared to what YT generates financially. This is nothing to be proud of. It's your usual digital rip-off through privilege.

[least]

> It was luck and from then on the value is being provided by the people who upload content there.

Content means absolutely fuck all if it can't reach its audience. Youtube hosts, encodes, streams, distributes, and circulates the content and has recommendation algorithms to increase the productivity of every public video published on the platform. It was lucky that it was a first mover and gained the momentum that it continues to enjoy from its massive user base, but a massive user base means fuck all if you can't deliver a product that they want to use... and Youtube as a platform means absolutely fuck all if people don't create and share videos.

If you want to argue that Youtube takes too much of a cut because of their position as a natural monopoly in the long form video content market, you might have a reasonable argument. To say that Youtube as a platform does not provide value to both its creators and its regular users is simply asinine.

[msadirna]

> Content means absolutely fuck all if it can't reach its audience

Obviously no, or YouTube wouldn't be where it is today...

> Youtube hosts, encodes, streams, distributes, and circulates the content and has recommendation algorithms to increase the productivity of every public video published on the platform

Nothing of this is in any way special. Nobody would care if they wouldn't already have their quasi monopoly. The algorithm is a topic for itself. Enforcing hate, misinformation, etc. but in the end always working in such a way as to maximize YT profits and not recommend useful content to the user. What are you trying to sell here? The way the algorithm got terrible is a meme by ow. What is it even supposed to justify?

> but a massive user base means fuck all if you can't deliver a product that they want to use...

The fact that the algorithm was much better before and works perfectly on other pages who actually care about what you wrote more then about the artificial limits YT forces on their content providers shows that this approach at justification is ridiculous.

If there would be even one competitor out there with the same amount of luck and YT would work exactly as it does now while the other would actually care about their content providers, YT would go broke.

[least]

> Obviously no, or YouTube wouldn't be where it is today...

Youtube is where it is today because the content on it reached its audience.

> Nothing of this is in any way special. Nobody would care if they wouldn't already have their quasi monopoly. The algorithm is a topic for itself. Enforcing hate, misinformation, etc. but in the end always working in such a way as to maximize YT profits and not recommend useful content to the user. What are you trying to sell here? The way the algorithm got terrible is a meme by ow. What is it even supposed to justify?

I notice sometimes if I watch a video outside of what is normal for me on Youtube, I'll see more videos on that topic. If I stop watching them, they go away. If you are consistently seeing videos of hate or misinformation, that is because you're engaging with those videos.

The reason the algorithm is important is because it is how you deliver videos to users. Several of the topics that I watch are fairly niche, so I do end up receiving recommendations for videos of creators with very low sub counts and view counts. I would never have found these videos without the recommendation algorithm.

It's not perfect, but it's simply incorrect that it doesn't recommend useful content to the user. It is optimized to maximize engagement and it does that by recommending videos that it thinks the user wants to and will watch to completion. That can be at odds with user's interests, but I'd say typically it's working how it should.

There's another can of worms of rabbit holes and echo chambers, but that seems to be an internet issue and more broadly a people issue, not solely a Youtube issue. How Youtube should handle this is another deep and nuanced issue.

> If there would be even one competitor out there with the same amount of luck and YT would work exactly as it does now while the other would actually care about their content providers, YT would go broke.

Same amount of luck, how? Be there at the same time? because Youtube did have competitors like Google Videos and Vimeo and it was the one that won out.

It's obvious that if someone had a better product in every way including luck and youtube didn't change anything that youtube would die out.