I’m boycotting YouTube primarily because of their recent human right censorship against Palestine. But I’d generally like to reduce YouTube’s dominance in the streaming space, even if it means supporting a few alternative US-based platforms like Nebula, though obviously PeerTube would be ideal.
Edit: The comments here mention that it would be good to tie the email to monetization, so I’ll also be mentioning my support on Patreon in future emails.
Here’s the kind of email I’m sending to my favourite creators. You can usually find their email in their channel bio.
Subject: Please consider alternative video platforms
Hello <First Name/Channel Name>,
I’m writing to ask you to please consider uploading your videos to alternative streaming platforms, in addition to, not instead of, YouTube.
I’ve personally started to move away from YouTube because <INSERT reasons>. Here’s another creator who also recently wrote about their reasons for moving off the platform: https://joshgriffiths.site/youtube-is-awful-im-not-posting-there-anymore/
I’m currently consuming video content on <INSERT alternatives> instead of YouTube.
<INSERT reasons I’m a fan>. I would love to continue watching your content on any other platform, and I’m sure others would appreciate the option to do so as well.
Cheers,
<Name>
I would like to see less dependence on youtube as well, but it’s just such a difficult situation. I think it would be rare for anyone who does youtube as a job to switch over 100% all at once. Rather, at first I would just appreciate if they started uploading to another platform other than youtube in addition to youtube. I don’t think that would drop their numbers on youtube or anything really.
Some browser extension that sets up the upload to peertube or something whenever you go to upload a video to youtube might make it trivial to do and therefore more attractive, but as far as I am aware no such extension exists.
As awesome as this is. What we need is a real YouTube alternative. Most creators use YouTube for various reasons, but all of the valid: money, visibility, reach, fun. If a site cannot at least do those 4 basic reasons to some extent it will never work long term.
I really, really want a proper YouTube alternative, something that has staying power, and can fill those shoes, but unless we have a multi millionaire that loves foss and actual competition, it isn’t going to happen. :(
Hell yeah, thanks for fighting the good fight.
Another pitch that I think has a lot of potential is to ask long-form creators to let paid supporters get videos through a non-Youtube distributor. It encourages people to talk with their dollars and diversifies the creator’s revenue stream, so there are benefits to all parties involved.
A niche academic history podcaster that I’ve listened to for many years was able to move off of Youtube long-term after branching towards Patreon (+ maybe Nebula?), and seems to be doing well with it. Shameless plug: https://www.shadowsofutopia.com/
Good call, I’ll mention Patreon in my future emails.
Right on!!!
Make it about how relying on Google can affect them negatively without warning. Suddenly getting a fake DMCA takedown as other YouTubers have, suddenly seeing drops in viewership you rely on to negotiate deals with sponsors, false positives from AI taking down videos and potentially your channel without notice, making sure to diversify so if one platform goes down they will still have others they can retain their usual viewers in, etc. They may not be political activists, but all YouTubers want to succeed.
So how are you going to pay them?
Most make money from sponsors and Patreons.
I hate that I am stealing from the creators but I use Unwatched to block ads and trackers on youtube. If there was some other site like YouTube I would be willing to switch to it, I would even go back to paying for it if it was not a US company.
Thank you for doing this valuable work!
The problem is monetization. YouTube is brilliant in that people work their asses off to produce content for it with the hope that some day they will be able to make money off it, so that effectively a bunch of people end up working for YouTube for free. Even if they don’t make meaningful money yet they’re not going to shift platforms to somewhere where monetization is simply not going to happen.
The only solution I could think of is to suggest setting up a patreon or liberapay or something, and to start uploading videos there if certain funding goals are met. Offer them an alternative to making money off ads.
Yup, that’s why I’m asking them to use the alternative as a secondary, not a primary platform. I just want the option for now, we’ll have to see how things shake out in terms of monetization a few years from now.
Why would they waste their time for free? It still requires work on their part and time is not free.
So it should be an easy W for the producers who already have Patreon etc. right? Just upload to one more place and make everyone happy.
@cabbage @cecilkorik @brianpeiris There’s an initiative in the works to try and answer these questions, forming a co-operative structure dedicated to hosting video platform(s) in a way that can support the needs of creators, viewers and supporters. Focused on Canadian content but hoping to create a widely replicable model. It’s polling for names and other feedback right now, have your say:
While I’m not a huge channel, I have been posting on youtube for almost 10 years.
And over the years I have also been duplicating my uploads to a few other platforms, until they have inevitably shut down for one reason or another (though running out of money has always been among the reasons).
I’m currently duplicating my uploads on a peertube instance, and it’s getting about the same viewership as any of the other alternatives I have used - which is to say 10s of views (compared to 4-6k on youtube).
For anyone who is actually trying to make a living from their videos (I’m not, it’s a hobby that pays it’s own expenses for me) that is a really hard sell to convince them to put in any extra effort for such a statistically negligible audience share.
