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As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely un

by djaro 3mo ago

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small channel (~100K subscribers) with no employees and relatively low upkeep costs (a few hundred dollars a month), and even I could not make this work if I didn't get at least $500-$1,000 per video on average, since it just takes so much time and money. Most channels with more than a million subscribers are likely founders working 60-80 hour weeks with multiple full-time employees supporting them. You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there. And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. And the difference between a million views and a hundred is 10,000x. You cannot create a platform without big users. I think any real competitor to YouTube nowadays would have to be backed by a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. Otherwise it's just dead in the water.

ktallett 3mo ago
Your issue is assuming that this is trying to replace YouTube for those who wish to try and make money from this. I suspect this is much more closer to a Google videos or YouTube back in the day which was pretty much just random videos, plus lots of conferences on there (which don't get enough views to monetize). This can easily replace that and is something I would support. YouTube hasn't always been monetising and it is good if we have a competitor against it.
- djaro 3mo ago
  It's not about people "trying to make money", it's about viewers wanting to see high quality videos. High quality videos just cost a lot of money and labor to produce. There is simply no way around this. Any platform which doesn't let creators monetize effectively will be stuck with what people produce in their free time. Which will essentially always be worse, because the competitors will have creators with actual budgets and time to work.
  - ndriscoll 3mo ago
    They don't necessarily. e.g. I'd consider Ravi Vakil's Algebraic Geometry videos[0] among the highest quality videos on youtube, and its just him talking over a screen share. Fields medalist Richard Borcherds likewise has posted a ton of lectures of him just talking while he writes on paper. In fact, I'd expect the highest quality videos to have a relatively low viewership. Most people seem to want Mr Beast or whatever. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=WTEZjR5aNjw&list=PLoaXcYRr65txn86oKmjM_MKgrcY7kHWSb https://youtube.com/watch?v=WTEZjR5aNjw&list=PLoaXcYRr65txn8...
  - ktallett 3mo ago
    High quality doesn't just mean production values, it can relate to any aspect of the video. High quality could simply reflect the quality of content. I would much prefer if PeerTube became a far easier to browse version of Archive along with creators producing items of creative and knowledge value. We don't need to replace YouTube as it likely can't be replaced. However switching a significant number away with a different approach to what is hosted there would be a positive.
  - solumunus 3mo ago
    The cost of cross posting your professional YouTube video is basically nil.
infamia 3mo ago
You can publish to both and even better your own domain that simply points to your video hosting provider. Long term you want to own your distribution channel as much as possible, while using YouTube as your lead generation tool to drive true believers to your site and premium distribution channel not owned by YouTube. Otherwise, you will always be subject to platform risk via YouTube's whims which has destroyed many content creators. That's the long term winning play IMO and it doesn't preclude tools like FreeTube.
- mywittyname 3mo ago
  Realistically, how many viewers will be retained should YT shut the OP down? Right now, that number rounds to 0. Practically speaking, YT is free internet video streaming for long-form videos on the US market. Nobody is going to go to OP's personal site to watch videos. They are going to fire up YT and eat what the algorithm feeds them. The reason PeerTube and Nebula are important is it provides the potential for a true alternative destination for people looking for videos. Once these platforms have an enough content to draw an audience naturally, then content creators will be able to survive a post-YT world. For people like the OP, it's probably best to follow the model video games do with DRM. Post on YT first, to get the ad revenue, then repost on other platforms after some time to build up an alternative subscriber base. Presumably, in-video sponsorships will pay for these views as well, even if there's no direct ad-sense like revenue model.
  - sleepybrett 3mo ago
    Nebula is invite only, as far as I can tell, for creators.
    - geerlingguy 3mo ago
      Nebula's value proposition for invited creators is dubious at best, too. They also require an off-YouTube exclusivity contract, which was especially no bueno for me.
      - 3mo ago
the_cat_kittles 3mo ago
its fine for the genre of video thats just someone narrating while filming with there phone and almost no editing. if someone is doing something interesting, i prefer this to something well produced, its more candid and relatable, and lacks the artifice most projects designed for youtube have
deepsun 3mo ago
Honestly I found that the videos I come to Youtube to watch are either personal, non-monetized hobby video, or just a head talking to camera.
- dymk 3mo ago
  That's great, but you represent 1% of viewing patterns.
  - mvdtnz 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - satvikpendem 3mo ago
      You can compare view counts of those channels to more clickbaity or professionally produced channels. And you'd also be surprised that many of those "head talking to camera" YouTubers also have production teams behind them, at a certain scale and revenue they're not editing their own videos.
      - djaro 3mo ago
        Yeah, I think a lot of people on Hackernews fall into the "advertising never worked on me" or "I'm too smart for propaganda" camp. Clickbait is not just big red arrows and "OMG" in the title. It certainly can be, for some demographics. For other demographics, clickbait can be a video titled "The Theorem That Changed Math Forever" and a blurred out formula in the thumbnail. If you ever saw a video and just instantly had the urge of, "I have to see this", you successfully got clickbaited. If you dislike constant sound effects and transitions and just want to see someone speak - a lot of adult audiences feel the same way, which is why many big channels deliberately produce content in that way. It's still a similarly skilled editor who probably could make overproduced content if they wanted to - they're just making the choice to make the video more relaxed.
  - ndriscoll 3mo ago
    According to another comment, youtube gets ~2.7B MAU. Then that 1% would mean 27M people are looking for that kind of thing.
paxys 3mo ago
There are 100M+ channels uploading on YouTube regularly and only 2-3M of them are monetized. Not everyone wants to upload videos on the internet with the explicit goal of making money. Professional creators are a very tiny minority, and a platform like YouTube will always be better suited for them (your "small" channel with 100K subscribers is actually in the top 0.5-0.1% of YouTube). There is no reason for Peertube to go after this specific demographic.
- dinkleberg 3mo ago
  Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views. It is a two-sided system. And if you want to attract viewers, you need what they want to watch. Looking on the front page of peertube the most viewed video I see has 29 views. If I sort by hot, the "hottest" video has 692 in a month. If the intent is to publish videos to have people watch it, PeerTube is clearly not the place to do that.
  - fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago
    If you want real numbers start selling hard drugs. You don't have to "serve the people". YouTube is a cesspool.
  - roadside_picnic 3mo ago
    > Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views. ...because they're directly tied to YouTube own revenue. As someone who creates a fair bit of content, and am fortunate enough not to have to worry about the revenue from that, I deliberately try to minimize monetization because it ultimately becomes the main driving force behind your content creation. Monetization as the only model for content creation leads to an incredibly safe and boring world while simultaneously meaning every piece of content you interact with is trying to extract money from you the viewer.
    - dinkleberg 3mo ago
      No, it is because that is the content that people want to watch. I too create content that has been widely watched and don't include video ads or any of the other monetization features they push. But I create videos because I want people to watch them. I don't do it for the sake of myself and pushing it out into the void. I don't follow whatever the trends are, I create what I believe will be the most useful as I make educational content. And it works. But I post to YouTube because that is where people will find it. If I were to self-host my videos or put it on PeerTube if I wanted anyone to see it I would actively have to go out and promote it myself. YouTube does that for me.
ndriscoll 3mo ago
It doesn't have to be for your use-case. e.g. KDE has their own instance, as does Blender. It would perhaps be a good fit for MIT to host their OCW videos, or for Khan Academy to host their material, or people sharing conference talks, or governments, or quick home DIY videos, or vlogs and idle musings, or hobbyists showing/discussing their thing they like, etc. Videos that are meant to help people to better themselves or collaborate fit better on a platform that doesn't try to be a constant sales funnel.
- treesknees 3mo ago
  There are many people who believe everything must be a grind to get rich. I wish more people stepped back and did things online because they were fun or educational, not because it was monetized.
  - nemomarx 3mo ago
    they need a day job to pay the bills then, which does cut down on the scope of videos you can make if we could have less working hours or cheaper rent or less expensive bills more people could do hobby stuff again ofc. but right now is tricky for that
    - ndriscoll 3mo ago
      Generally speaking, that's how hobbies work. You do them for fun or enrichment and do something else for money. People who try to turn hobbies into a day job seem to get this weird idea that they're somehow critical to the hobby when in fact they're just hyper focused on getting attention and crowding out actually sincere people so they can sell stuff. e.g. this thread. Here you have people making software for themselves to host their own videos without being beholden to the likes of Google. Absolutely nothing to do with OP. So why is OP criticising them? Where in the README does this free software project discuss monetization (other than mentioning it's ad-free)? Why is the topic even slightly germane?
      - lopis 3mo ago
mvdtnz 3mo ago
Virtually all of the content I watch on youtube does not fall into this category. The content I watch is a mixture of raw footage, a guy speaking to a camera with minimal editing for 10 minutes (think Rick Beato, for those who know him), edited down footage of people working (pool cleaning guys, chefs, etc) or people playing music. Frankly I wouldn't care at all if all of your over-produced thumbnail-bait disappeared overnight.
- djaro 3mo ago
  This is just a great example of people who aren't in content creation fundamentally not understanding the ecosystem. This isn't about "over-produced thumbnail-bait". This is about all high-quality media. You mention Rick Beato. Do you really think Rick Beato sits down behind his laptop to edit his own videos? He has nearly 6 million subscribers and produces around 10 long-form videos per month. He has at the very least an editor (probably full-time) and a thumbnail designer (part-time), and I assume also a manager who sets up brand deals and contacts musicians for his interviews. He also records his videos on expensive cameras inside his well-lit studio, which also isn't cheap. It's very difficult to tell how much YouTube channels generate but I wouldn't be surprised if the Rick Beato channel is at this point a >$20K/month operation. Edit: Also, do you really think Rick Beato making "The Secret Weapon Behind Dr Dre" or "The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse" is not clickbait? It's just clickbait, but for people like you. Part of good advertising is making people feel like they're not even being sold anything.
  - satvikpendem 3mo ago
    Indeed. Even streamers who just speak to the camera and play video games have a team of multiple people behind them, which some streamers discuss the economics of openly.
    - djaro 3mo ago
      I think the problem is that the "act" of a lot of streamers and content creators is that they are relatable, in the sense that, part of watching a video game streamer is the appeal of, he's just a guy like me playing games in his bedroom. The problem is that this is all an act, or kayfabe as they would call it in wrestling. But it's an act so good that unlike wrestling, which everyone knows is fake, most people that are not at least adjacent to the content industry genuinely have no idea.
slg 3mo ago
You say your target is $500-$1000 per video and let's assume you do videos weekly. That would mean your optimistic goal is $4500 a month. Let's say you create a voluntary donation subscription at $5 per month for people willing to support your work. That means you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them to hit your $4500 goal. That's a 0.9% conversion rate from subscribers to donators. Doesn't seem that impractical when looked at in those terms. This is often the default monetization model for small podcasts because RSS feeds don't have built in ad revenue the way YouTube does.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- satvikpendem 3mo ago
  At that point I'd just make a Patreon (that offers various benefits including exclusive videos not on YouTube) while also monetizing via YouTube ads and sponshorships.
  - slg 3mo ago
    Yes, there is a reason I said "you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them". I'm not claiming this is a new concept, I was making specific allusions to Patreon and the idea of 1000 true fans[1]. [1] - https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
- Auracle 3mo ago
  Voluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare. I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI. Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training. Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able to ask for people to donate with every podcast/video, but people just aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to. It’s a rare trait.
add-sub-mul-div 3mo ago
Maybe the purpose of Youtube going forward is to be a quarantine for content whose purpose is to be monetized.
- djaro 3mo ago
  If YouTube becomes a quarantine for high-quality content, then it will also become a quarantine for viewers. the fundamental issue a lot of people here don't seem to get is that high quality videos that people want to watch are expensive to create. Besides the huge amount of high-skill labor, there's also just production costs, software, equipment, upkeep, etc. At the very least, ignoring all other costs, a single person making good videos somewhat regularly is a full-time job. People who make entertainment also need to eat and pay rent, the money has to come from somewhere.
  - necovek 3mo ago
    I believe most people here "get" that. They have a problem with high quality production (more engaging due to production), low value content that proliferates on platforms like YouTube, and would rather see more high value content regardless of production quality, and Internet, in general enabled that if not for people starting to think about (ad supported) revenue first.
forgotaccount3 3mo ago
> most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. I get your point, but many of them fail to hit some hundreds of views due in large part to all of the large, professional channels that are spending hundreds of man hours as week producing content. If the production was less professional do you think total viewership hours would drop significantly, or would it be distributed across more channels?
- no-name-here 3mo ago
  Is the argument that such a world is possible to create, where the audience does not have the choice of the ‘professional’ looking content so can't choose it?
j45 3mo ago
Having your own distribution has it's benefits as a fall back or alternatives, in addition to publishing elsewhere like youtube. The cost of creating and editing videos going to come way down, there's already ways to do it in the past few years.
fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago
> As a professional YouTuber Well, there's your problem. You want the numbers that come from mass consumption, which means catering to the lowest common denominator thus producing shit with gold plating while then complain the gold plating is bloody expensive. Some people just are knowledgeable and want to share with the rest of us mortals like say someone like Terrence Tao. Putting someone like him on "YouTube" is a goddamn travesty. We need an alternative and yes, you won't make money and no, it's not for you then.
- aembleton 3mo ago
  > which means catering to the lowest common denominator At some point that becomes saturated, and you're better off catering to a niche that is poorly served.
butz 3mo ago
I heard that main source of income for some professional YouTubers are Patreon and sponsorships. Ad revenue is dead last and very unstable. Also, if you are building your business on single platform, which one day might decide that your content does not adhere to their rules - that's a high risk to take.
- djaro 3mo ago
  Sponsorships are definitely the highest if a youtuber actively engages in them, ad revenue vs patreon depends highly on if you have i.e. a small but highly active fanbase of core fans, versus a wider more general audience that you entertain a bit. I think people should be more aware of the perverse incentive of YouTubers saying, "my guaranteed source of income is very little and unstable guys, I need you to also subscribe to my patreon" where - could YouTubers perhaps have a reason to act like their ad revenue is very little? In my experience, while ad revenue isn't great, for any decent-size YouTuber its still enough to live on and in any case it always stays a significant income stream.
- izacus 3mo ago
  Do you think those creators pay YouTube for bandwidth, storage and transcode servers? Where do you think money for that comes from? Streaming video is very expensive, even in 2026 and ignoring that someone is paying the main business expense of those creators is not very honest.
  - Scoundreller 3mo ago
    Dunno about the storage side, but fly by night operators seem to be constantly available to stream every movie and tv show and somehow afford the bandwidth, transcoding and all other costs while being shunned from the general ad industry…
    - izacus 3mo ago
      How about you actually look at the costs and try setting up a streaming website yourself and see how true your bs is? :)
whatever1 3mo ago
This is exactly why TikTok won. It is so much cheaper to iterate ideas on 10” videos. You make non interesting 20’ YT video? Well too bad your 80 labor hours & equipment time are lost.
- boca_honey 3mo ago
  TikTok won? YouTube is significantly larger, with over 2.7 billion monthly active users compared to TikTok's 1.6 billion. Even if you count TikTok's higher average watch time per user, YouTube's broader demographic more than makes up for it.
- touristtam 3mo ago
  As a side note 10-12 min is the ideal length for a non full feature documentary. I am growing tired of those 20+ minutes repeating and stretching the same topic without going into more depth.
  - Animats 3mo ago
    Yes. "To understand this, we have to go back to..." 10 minutes of unnecessary retrospective, allowing insertion of three more ads. Usually you can skip that and get to the five minutes or so of new content.
bitwize 3mo ago
YouTubers are now blurring out women's cleavage. Not bare breasts. Cleavage. Nearly all of Pamela Anderson's notable body of work would need to be censored to avoid risking loss of that precious, precious monetization. It's like fucking Iran. And of course you can't say "die", "kill", "suicide", etc. You have to talk like a parody of 80s cartoon censorship—literally. (The neologism "unalive" came from Deadpool in an animated series called Ultimate Spider-Man, who realized he was in an animated show but thought it was 80s Saturday morning fare and constantly minced his intent to kill by saying he was going to "unalive" his target.) Monetization has had a chilling effect on the kind of content people put on YouTube. I do not mourn its lack, at least on alternative video platforms.
- signatoremo 3mo ago
  Where are you located? I'm looking as we speak at a bunch of YT videos of women with cleavage, or promoting fashion that involve stripping down to their underwear.
  - bitwize 3mo ago
    If they're getting sponsorships or just engagement-baiting gooners to get OnlyFans signups, maybe they don't care that much about video monetization. The ones that do are starting to censor cľeavage.
BrenBarn 3mo ago
> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
  Because people are expected to spend their time, effort and money to provide content for you for free, of course. Seems like the only explanation.
  - ndriscoll 3mo ago
    They're not. No one asked OP to use peertube. This is software for people who want to share videos. Coming in and declaring you won't use it because you can't make money from your videos should just get an "okay?" Interjecting into a FOSS space and complaining they are not paying you is beyond bizarre. Doubling down when people basically say "actually I'm specifically looking for non-commercial groups, so your absence is appreciated" is crazy. If you want to make money in something, you're not part of the group who doesn't. There's already a giant platform for you. Why would you say hobbyists are entitled?
    - kalcode 3mo ago
      Thank you. It is a bit bizarre reading this thread.
    - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
      > As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization. I was replying to that. This commenter is not a hobbyist making video, he watches some hobbyists video, and them getting paid is the issue he has.
      - ndriscoll 3mo ago
        The issue he has is he wants to find/communicate with hobbyists, and instead runs into people trying to turn it into a profession. It becomes difficult to find like-minded people when every topic is infected by grifters. Injecting money into a leisure activity will inevitably ruin it and the people participating. The reason why is on full display here: this entire thread has been derailed by people asking how you're supposed to make money with it, denigrating people who "only" have 100 subscribers (imagine 100 people regularly coming to watch you give a talk or demo or performance out of pure interest!), etc. In a hobby or leisure space, appreciation or encouragement alone is valuable. Monetizing leisure leads to some crazy ideas. Like completely turning the perspective around: "content creators" think what they're doing is interesting enough that not only will I give them my attention, but that I should somehow compensate them for it? Crazy.
nonameiguess 3mo ago
Big corporations that pay big creators millions per production are just normal studios like Disney and Paramount and nowadays Netflix and Prime. YouTube is the competitor to that. No matter how professional you think of your operation, you're not Christopher Nolan or even BBC Earth and neither is anyone else whose primary distribution channel is YouTube. Good examples of more or less "free" content that fits PeerTube are cited in other comments, though. Conference footage, MIT OCW, archival footage of any kind of live event. Productions where the work is in putting on the event in the first place. Holding the conference, creating a course, putting on some kind of skateboarding competition, whatever it might be. Incidentally filming it and uploading the footage costs next to nothing in comparison, isn't expected to drive revenue compared to the live attendance, and it doesn't make much difference to the viewers if the footage is terrible. Shitty quality Feynman lectures is still watching Feynman lecture. It was really cool, for a recent example, that somebody found and uploaded phone footage of Caitlin Clark's fabled scrimmage against the Iowa men's team from however many years ago. Nobody cares about the quality of the video or who filmed it. Likely nobody subscribed to whatever channel it first ended up on, but how cares? People who wanted to see a rare real world event would still have been able to find it and it cost nothing to the person who pulled out a phone and turned it on while that event was happening.
jonshariat 3mo ago
Yeah reminds me of how Kick seems to be winning over the Twitch creators. Now Kick isn't a shining beacon by any means, its got gambling issues for one, but I do think this is one area the big companies are vulnerable in: Rev share. If a new incumbent can raise some money, offer creators some money and a path to a higher cut than their competitors, they can win big.
- djaro 3mo ago
  I think this is the only way for new platforms to ever rise in this space. A video sharing website is not a social media platform, it's a streaming platform. The real competitors to YouTube are not PeerTube or whatever, it's Netflix and HBO. This is why Nebula also managed to find a niche and be relatively successful: the issue is not ads or a monthly subscription or something, the only problem is: people want to watch high-quality content. Find a way to get them high-quality content. If you cannot do that, everything else is meaningless. In Nebula's case, even a few high-profile YouTubers in the same niche uploading exclusives on a platform is better than a thousand nobodies uploading low effort content.
dotwack 3mo ago
Really? Thats the main issue? What about when they upload child porn and some of it ends up on your computer and they break down your door and you spend the rest of your life getting bungholed by Darnel. I would rate that higher than monetary rewards. Decentralized system rely heavily on how much you trust other humans, I do not, so I hear them.say Decentralized and I run.
- sajithdilshan 3mo ago
  I was gonna say the same. Also copyrighted content like movies. In Germany you can easily get sued for hosting and distributing. That's why torrenting is quite unpopular there
- fwip 3mo ago
  Darnel? Am I missing a reference?
ChuckMcM 3mo ago
Do you ever think about the fact that if you're making $500 - $1000 per video on average that means Google is making $5000 - $10,000 on each of your videos on average? I mean its working for you, and that's great. I am a student of information asymmetric markets and the whole 'Ad supported' business that Google runs on all of its properties is perhaps the largest one in the current time frame. The point being that building a production company to produce videos is a known thing, Peertube is a distribution network, and historically this is a remarkable mirror of 'independent' theaters and 'studio owned' theaters. It was a characteristic of that time that the big studios would use their monoply power to force small studios to give them their work at a discount that allowed the studio to get most of the income. They made it just enough that the small studios didn't feel motivated to build a competitive system. When I read your comment it struck me that perhaps "$500 - $1000 average per video" was the number Google has determined to be 'just enough'.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
  It says "at least"... on many channels there's videos with just a few views and videos with tons of views with much more than 10x difference
  - ChuckMcM 3mo ago
    That's fair, Google admitted in the DoJ trial where it was convicted of being a monopolist that the revenues that it paid out were roughly 10% of the revenues it collected. If you have fewer than a requisite number of subscribers they keep 100% of the monetization proceeds. I was simply struck by the parallels between the way YouTube has grown up and how the whole movie industry grew up.
    - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
      Wow, how many subscribers does one need to have?
      - AlienRobot 3mo ago
rixed 3mo ago
Understood your situation, but personnaly I'm not watching so much professional content on YT; actually, I'm not watching YT as much as I used to when the service was young and unprofessional. What I want from such a platform is authenticity... and curation.
- Scoundreller 3mo ago
  That’s what I find silly about YouTube. Through effective search, Google enabled mass deportalization. The best link would win. Your crappy but good blog about how to fix an issue could become top in the results. Now YouTube favours entertainer-mechanic making subscribeable but generic videos instead of… the one specific to your vehicle by some gruff but knowledgeable mechanic. Like, c’mon buddy, the bolt only comes off like that in the studio after 3 practice runs.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago
"As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is lack of monetization." As a computer user I see that as the main advantage No third party intermediary No advertising Computer users need peer-to-peer options for sharing video with each other that do not use third party advertising companies, e.g., posing as "search engine" or "social media", to transfer the bits Whether PeerTube works well, I do not know. I know that overlay networks I have tested work well enough
- lanthissa 3mo ago
  the 3rd party isn't an intermediary, youtube content is fantastic because it found a way to pay people to produce something for every niche, and reward the ones doing well with more viewers and more money. ofc you would prefer high quality content delivered directly to you for free, because you're ignore the producers perspective.
  - rapidaneurism 3mo ago
    And if they dare touch controversial topics it demonitises them automatically. I find it hilarious that people self censor or invent new terms (like euphemisms for suicide).
  - account42 3mo ago
    Youtube rewards producers who use any dark pattern they can think of to get more views. This results in videos that are extremely awful to watch if your brain hasn't already been turned to pulp.
- djaro 3mo ago
  The problem with this is that creating the content you watch costs a lot of money and labor. As a user I would see a grocery store where everything is free as an advantage... utill the products inevitably run out and no food supplier is willing to stock the shelves for free.
  - allarm 3mo ago
stonogo 3mo ago
this is the strongest endorsement of peertube I've seen so far
- djaro 3mo ago
  The strongest endorsement for PeerTube is that it cannot sustain creators and thus will only either 1) freeboot off of platforms that do or 2) be flooded by low effort slop?
  - stonogo 3mo ago
    I'm not sure the difference between low-effort slop and high-effort slop is as significant as you seem to assume.
  - account42 3mo ago
    People who spam slop are exactly the ones who chase after monetization.
nicechianti 3mo ago
[dead]
cyberax 3mo ago
Would you mirror your videos to something like Peertube if it included automated pay-per-view (via something like x402 API)?
lanthissa 3mo ago
this is exactly right, people dont realize that they're getting a great deal on youtube. if you want to disrupt youtube you need to do it by winning over the creators which is a difficult thing to do since no new platform can subsidize to the scale of what youtube offers already due to its size, the only ones who really could are meta since they have the ad network and users already to funnel to it, or another company willing to eat a loss for a long time. The issue with eating hte loss, is video is a pretty painful loss to eat compared to text, so why not go into every text market first for places like meta.
- alex1138 3mo ago
  Great deal except when you get demonetized for partisan reasons
  - carlosjobim 3mo ago
    Sure, but compare that to all other television and streaming services, where all independent creators are demonetized and banned by default. If you don't have the right contacts you're not allowed to put your video on Netflix.
  - lanthissa 3mo ago
    demonization has nothing to do with viewers value from youtube you just have been radicalized to inject talking points into every single conversation.
    - alex1138 3mo ago
      No, not really. I haven't been "radicalized" into anything. Go look at what Youtube actually does to content creators
dvngnt_ 3mo ago
I use adblocker for youtube but will still subscribe via pateron
anticorporate 3mo ago
I understand where you are coming from, and if monetization is your primary reason for being on a platform, it's likely that PeerTube is not for you, unless your videos help you move your own product or service. That said, I'm also okay with there being platforms out there where monetization is difficult or impossible. I want there to be places where creators can get paid, but I am also nostalgic for a less commercial internet.
dharmatech 3mo ago
> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. That's a feature, not a bug.
BeetleB 3mo ago
Here's my dilemma: The Youtube experience has always sucked for me - right from the first year Youtube launched. I just don't like the interface, web site, layout, etc. It's why I didn't have a Youtube account until I needed to share a video with someone, and even then, I never log into it (so I don't follow[1], rate, etc). And then over the last few years, the ad situation has gotten astronomically worse. I'm not exaggerating when I say that old school cable TV with its ads was a significantly better experience. I do a search for something specific. I start clicking videos to see if it has the content I want. But very often, on my Roku or similar device, I won't be able to see anything of the video unless I watch 15-60s of ads. Only to find out the video is not useful for me. Click next video. Repeat the pain. I think this is what leads a lot of people to just plain hate Youtube. It's what leads me not to care if suddenly no one can make money on Youtube (even the folks I like). It's why I want Youtube to just die. If they made the site much more pleasing, and found a way to allow 3rd party interfaces (while still serving ads), and weren't anywhere near as annoying with the ads, I'd like the platform. Regarding monetization: For the folks who have well established viewers, and who make most of their money via embedded ads in the video, I don't think they'll lose anything by switching to Peertube - as long as the Peertube infrastructure can handle the load. The major fans will know where to find the content.[2] The real problem with Peertube is discovery. How can a new content creator be noticed? And then how can they show accurate viewership numbers to get those sponsors? [1] Well, I may follow via other means: Manually, or via RSS, etc. [2] Incidentally, some of the "popular" content I watch on Youtube exclusively gets monetized via embedded ads. Youtube demonetized that whole category a while ago. So embedded ads is totally viable.
pojzon 3mo ago
And there is Asmongold doing a video of him watching someone else making a video with commentary like “absolutely”, “outrageous”, “bold” and having it all monetized with literally ZERO effort. So yea.. it takes a lot of effort -> if you are nobody. For eatablished streamers just slapping something from stream on ytb is enough.
doublerabbit 3mo ago
Why couldn't you post it after it's got its money worth? Or is that the clause of YouTube "you must not post elsewhere"?
gneuron 3mo ago
Easy solve; PeerTube should launch ads and the rev share with creators is 99% (platform take 1% fee to keep platform up)
doginasuit 3mo ago
This is a feature. The golden age of YouTube ended roughly around the time they made monetization more available.
- doginasuit 3mo ago
  To put a finer point on it, I recognize there are a lot of good creators on YouTube and I'm glad it can support their work. But the overall trend has been for the worse, at least for the target audience I belong to. The change in the average title card tells a story. I believe it would be fantastic if there was a competitor that captured the original motivation.
samrus 3mo ago
> You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there. But then how does twitch work? Genuinely asking, whats the difference?
King-Aaron 3mo ago
I miss old, grass-roots youtube. I used to be a 'youtuber' back in the very very early days where it was just a case of sharing yourself doing dumb things. I completely get that it's your job now... But the fact it's become a job for people is probably why I don't like it so much anymore. With all the ads and such too, it's now just television. But worse.
trimethylpurine 3mo ago
I guess you never used YouTube in the early days. It was a site for posting and watching random home made videos and recorded broadcasts. Just for fun. Revenue streams for creators came after Google bought it, I think. Along with the ads. This might simply revive a platform that no longer exists. It might not be about paying creators or collecting ad revenue. It's peer to peer, after all.
PacificSpecific 3mo ago
Thanks for the insight. Do you think something like nebula could ever be feasible?
vfclists 3mo ago
Not everyone is a "professional Youtuber" like you, and that includes a lot of Youtube who upload videos without any expectation of income, for who Youtube is mainly a free video hosting service that also allows them to reach a wider viewership.
Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago
Interesting, I thought the major issue with PeerTube was the high latency due the decentralized nature and that they don't have the backing of Google infrastructure. What you state sounds more like a chicken and egg problem. You'll publish content only when there are enough viewers but there can be viewers only when you publish content. Like others have said, There's not much effort to publish in both platforms; good way to hedge against the algorithmic risks.
nullbio 3mo ago
Why can't they build an advertiser network into this?
jeffalyanak 3mo ago
Monetization is the easy part, a plugin that adds advertisements, paid subscriptions, or some other form of monetization could easily be made if there was a demand for it. The real barrier issue is that of network effect. There's simply (almost) no audience, which means there are (almost) no creators, which means there is (almost) no audience. I've been publishing my videos on my own peertube instance for a while and I really do appreciate it as a platform, but I don't think that the technical aspects of it alone will ever be the key to its potential success.
sevenzero 3mo ago
>I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This is something I always thought to be extremely funny. Producing videos is a hobby. If you made it your job, go figure out how to monetize your material yourself. Nobody prevents you from taking sponsorships.
customguy 3mo ago
It would still be a great alternative for the original YouTube. The one with video replies and all that, that was basically just people video blogging at each other or into the ether. > And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. Where is the "fail" though? Some of those videos take exactly as long to make is it does to watch them. If they don't get monetized (maybe for speaking normal English instead of saying "unalive" and "to grape"), then someone else doesn't make a lot of money from even the little effort it took them by showing ads [0] to people. If all you want to do is talk at a camera and maybe with some people, then all that is a plus. [0] Speaking of ads, some of the stuff on youtube is wild. Like, honestly gross and disturbing to me. If you are looking to make money of it, sure, starting with peertube only would be nonsense. If you just wanna make videos, do it! Upload the best ones to youtube and mention peertube, so you maybe get some audience. Then if you really get into it, and make better stuff, spend more effort than just "start record, say things, upload as is", you can upload everything to youtube, too. After having livestreamed the whole thing on Twitch, just to use every part of the buffalo.
protocolture 3mo ago
>As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. That's the main benefit. Monetised content, and the people who make it, is despicable. >and even I could not make this work if I didn't get at least $500-$1,000 per video on average, since it just takes so much time and money. Have you considered getting a real job? >Most channels with more than a million subscribers are likely founders working 60-80 hour weeks with multiple full-time employees supporting them. Putting them out of business would be a fantastic turn of events. >And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. Cool and good. >I think any real competitor to YouTube nowadays would have to be backed by a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. That would be like paying a malware company to move from windows to apple.
Induane 3mo ago
That's the thing; not everything has to be or should be monetized. The thing I miss the most are the funny dumb amateur videos. There are several YouTube channels I love; Folding Ideas, hbomberguy, Kurtis Conner, Contrapoints, etc... but I see those essentially as semi professional / professional variations on television. Once I got into their content via YouTube, YouTube of course drove me away with horrid vile ads, and I moved on to supporting those creators on Patreon. And that's all good - the digital medium needs places like YouTube. But that doesn't mean there isn't a huge amount of value in the amateur unmonitized video landscape. Pairing those with some niche phpbb style forums was, for me, the last time I truly enjoyed the experience of actually being on the internet.
gloosx 3mo ago
>You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there. But you can do that in hopes of youtube sharing a percentage of fluctuating ad revenue? Certain things can get you de-monetized, you can get strike-bombed, falsely accused of copyright infringement via automated systems, etc, and unless you are a very big channel owner, you will receive a minimal droplet of support likely involving no humans in the loop. There are sustainable creators getting much more revenue by collecting direct subscription money from their patrons while providing exclusive or first-hand content to them which is then re-uploaded to youtube for reaching a wider audience. They can run their own integrated ad-campaings without google deciding what they are advertising or which content they can or cannot produce.
mariusor 3mo ago
> lack of monetization I mean, when you spin your own instance, because frankly, that's what the best option if you're a content creator, you can put whatever ads and monetization strategies you want. So basically the full income that gets generated gets to you, instead of splitting it with some third party that invests minimal effort. Yes, you'll have to pay someone to maintain and upkeep the server, but assumedly the people that can make the change will take that cost into account. > a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. I'm surprised by this. Isn't controlling your full production/distribution/revenue a good enough payback?
reorder9695 3mo ago
Thr one solution I see to that is sponsorships, the number I've heard is they typically pay 10x the ad revenue of a video, and this wouldn't be affected by the platform, just the viewership numbers.
account42 3mo ago
As a professional watcher, I consider the lack of monetization a feature. I'd much rather see genuine videos from amateurs than commercialized crap with sponsored segments and undisclosed sponsorships and product placement and filler to keep up release schedules and please like and subscribe and whatever other dark patterns commercially motivated video producers come up with on "free" platforms. And of course also without the ads the video platform adds on top of all that. Not everything needs to be a viable job.
touristtam 3mo ago
> This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram Low key shitting on other content creators? Some of IG content creator easily match professionalism you are describing. I know you are probably partially venting your frustration, but that doesn't paint you in a nice light.
FloatArtifact 3mo ago
It's simple. If I want to support you, I buy your merchandise.
ksec 3mo ago
> this is the lack of monetization. By charging it for content. Since HN doesn't like any form of Ads. /s Sorry I have to write this out. But I am somewhat glad in the past 2 years HN has returned back to discussing monetization, money, business in a sane way.
nielsbot 3mo ago
Seems advertising could be a third-party service on top of the video streaming service. Just like there are ad platforms that plugin to web pages. If that grows, you get your monetization.
kelvinjps10 2mo ago
But isn't know most of the money they make from direct sponsors instead of adsense? I have seen a few creators putting their income sources and most of the money comes from direct sponsors instead of adsense. So if these sponsors would continue to sponsor them in other platforms, it can take YouTube monopoly away. The problem now is that those others video platform don't have the eyeballs as YouTube

by djaro 3mo ago

ktallett 3mo ago

Your issue is assuming that this is trying to replace YouTube for those who wish to try and make money from this. I suspect this is much more closer to a Google videos or YouTube back in the day which was pretty much just random videos, plus lots of conferences on there (which don't get enough views to monetize). This can easily replace that and is something I would support. YouTube hasn't always been monetising and it is good if we have a competitor against it.

djaro 3mo ago
It's not about people "trying to make money", it's about viewers wanting to see high quality videos. High quality videos just cost a lot of money and labor to produce. There is simply no way around this. Any platform which doesn't let creators monetize effectively will be stuck with what people produce in their free time. Which will essentially always be worse, because the competitors will have creators with actual budgets and time to work.
- ndriscoll 3mo ago
  They don't necessarily. e.g. I'd consider Ravi Vakil's Algebraic Geometry videos[0] among the highest quality videos on youtube, and its just him talking over a screen share. Fields medalist Richard Borcherds likewise has posted a ton of lectures of him just talking while he writes on paper. In fact, I'd expect the highest quality videos to have a relatively low viewership. Most people seem to want Mr Beast or whatever. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=WTEZjR5aNjw&list=PLoaXcYRr65txn86oKmjM_MKgrcY7kHWSb https://youtube.com/watch?v=WTEZjR5aNjw&list=PLoaXcYRr65txn8...
- ktallett 3mo ago
  High quality doesn't just mean production values, it can relate to any aspect of the video. High quality could simply reflect the quality of content. I would much prefer if PeerTube became a far easier to browse version of Archive along with creators producing items of creative and knowledge value. We don't need to replace YouTube as it likely can't be replaced. However switching a significant number away with a different approach to what is hosted there would be a positive.
- solumunus 3mo ago
  The cost of cross posting your professional YouTube video is basically nil.

infamia 3mo ago

You can publish to both and even better your own domain that simply points to your video hosting provider. Long term you want to own your distribution channel as much as possible, while using YouTube as your lead generation tool to drive true believers to your site and premium distribution channel not owned by YouTube. Otherwise, you will always be subject to platform risk via YouTube's whims which has destroyed many content creators. That's the long term winning play IMO and it doesn't preclude tools like FreeTube.

mywittyname 3mo ago
Realistically, how many viewers will be retained should YT shut the OP down? Right now, that number rounds to 0. Practically speaking, YT is free internet video streaming for long-form videos on the US market. Nobody is going to go to OP's personal site to watch videos. They are going to fire up YT and eat what the algorithm feeds them. The reason PeerTube and Nebula are important is it provides the potential for a true alternative destination for people looking for videos. Once these platforms have an enough content to draw an audience naturally, then content creators will be able to survive a post-YT world. For people like the OP, it's probably best to follow the model video games do with DRM. Post on YT first, to get the ad revenue, then repost on other platforms after some time to build up an alternative subscriber base. Presumably, in-video sponsorships will pay for these views as well, even if there's no direct ad-sense like revenue model.
- sleepybrett 3mo ago
  Nebula is invite only, as far as I can tell, for creators.
  - geerlingguy 3mo ago
    Nebula's value proposition for invited creators is dubious at best, too. They also require an off-YouTube exclusivity contract, which was especially no bueno for me.
    - 3mo ago

the_cat_kittles 3mo ago

its fine for the genre of video thats just someone narrating while filming with there phone and almost no editing. if someone is doing something interesting, i prefer this to something well produced, its more candid and relatable, and lacks the artifice most projects designed for youtube have

deepsun 3mo ago

Honestly I found that the videos I come to Youtube to watch are either personal, non-monetized hobby video, or just a head talking to camera.

dymk 3mo ago
That's great, but you represent 1% of viewing patterns.
- mvdtnz 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - satvikpendem 3mo ago
    You can compare view counts of those channels to more clickbaity or professionally produced channels. And you'd also be surprised that many of those "head talking to camera" YouTubers also have production teams behind them, at a certain scale and revenue they're not editing their own videos.
    - djaro 3mo ago
      Yeah, I think a lot of people on Hackernews fall into the "advertising never worked on me" or "I'm too smart for propaganda" camp. Clickbait is not just big red arrows and "OMG" in the title. It certainly can be, for some demographics. For other demographics, clickbait can be a video titled "The Theorem That Changed Math Forever" and a blurred out formula in the thumbnail. If you ever saw a video and just instantly had the urge of, "I have to see this", you successfully got clickbaited. If you dislike constant sound effects and transitions and just want to see someone speak - a lot of adult audiences feel the same way, which is why many big channels deliberately produce content in that way. It's still a similarly skilled editor who probably could make overproduced content if they wanted to - they're just making the choice to make the video more relaxed.
- ndriscoll 3mo ago
  According to another comment, youtube gets ~2.7B MAU. Then that 1% would mean 27M people are looking for that kind of thing.

paxys 3mo ago

There are 100M+ channels uploading on YouTube regularly and only 2-3M of them are monetized. Not everyone wants to upload videos on the internet with the explicit goal of making money. Professional creators are a very tiny minority, and a platform like YouTube will always be better suited for them (your "small" channel with 100K subscribers is actually in the top 0.5-0.1% of YouTube). There is no reason for Peertube to go after this specific demographic.

dinkleberg 3mo ago
Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views. It is a two-sided system. And if you want to attract viewers, you need what they want to watch. Looking on the front page of peertube the most viewed video I see has 29 views. If I sort by hot, the "hottest" video has 692 in a month. If the intent is to publish videos to have people watch it, PeerTube is clearly not the place to do that.
- fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago
  If you want real numbers start selling hard drugs. You don't have to "serve the people". YouTube is a cesspool.
- roadside_picnic 3mo ago
  > Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views. ...because they're directly tied to YouTube own revenue. As someone who creates a fair bit of content, and am fortunate enough not to have to worry about the revenue from that, I deliberately try to minimize monetization because it ultimately becomes the main driving force behind your content creation. Monetization as the only model for content creation leads to an incredibly safe and boring world while simultaneously meaning every piece of content you interact with is trying to extract money from you the viewer.
  - dinkleberg 3mo ago
    No, it is because that is the content that people want to watch. I too create content that has been widely watched and don't include video ads or any of the other monetization features they push. But I create videos because I want people to watch them. I don't do it for the sake of myself and pushing it out into the void. I don't follow whatever the trends are, I create what I believe will be the most useful as I make educational content. And it works. But I post to YouTube because that is where people will find it. If I were to self-host my videos or put it on PeerTube if I wanted anyone to see it I would actively have to go out and promote it myself. YouTube does that for me.

ndriscoll 3mo ago

It doesn't have to be for your use-case. e.g. KDE has their own instance, as does Blender. It would perhaps be a good fit for MIT to host their OCW videos, or for Khan Academy to host their material, or people sharing conference talks, or governments, or quick home DIY videos, or vlogs and idle musings, or hobbyists showing/discussing their thing they like, etc. Videos that are meant to help people to better themselves or collaborate fit better on a platform that doesn't try to be a constant sales funnel.

treesknees 3mo ago
There are many people who believe everything must be a grind to get rich. I wish more people stepped back and did things online because they were fun or educational, not because it was monetized.
- nemomarx 3mo ago
  they need a day job to pay the bills then, which does cut down on the scope of videos you can make if we could have less working hours or cheaper rent or less expensive bills more people could do hobby stuff again ofc. but right now is tricky for that
  - ndriscoll 3mo ago
    Generally speaking, that's how hobbies work. You do them for fun or enrichment and do something else for money. People who try to turn hobbies into a day job seem to get this weird idea that they're somehow critical to the hobby when in fact they're just hyper focused on getting attention and crowding out actually sincere people so they can sell stuff. e.g. this thread. Here you have people making software for themselves to host their own videos without being beholden to the likes of Google. Absolutely nothing to do with OP. So why is OP criticising them? Where in the README does this free software project discuss monetization (other than mentioning it's ad-free)? Why is the topic even slightly germane?
    - lopis 3mo ago

mvdtnz 3mo ago

Virtually all of the content I watch on youtube does not fall into this category. The content I watch is a mixture of raw footage, a guy speaking to a camera with minimal editing for 10 minutes (think Rick Beato, for those who know him), edited down footage of people working (pool cleaning guys, chefs, etc) or people playing music. Frankly I wouldn't care at all if all of your over-produced thumbnail-bait disappeared overnight.

djaro 3mo ago
This is just a great example of people who aren't in content creation fundamentally not understanding the ecosystem. This isn't about "over-produced thumbnail-bait". This is about all high-quality media. You mention Rick Beato. Do you really think Rick Beato sits down behind his laptop to edit his own videos? He has nearly 6 million subscribers and produces around 10 long-form videos per month. He has at the very least an editor (probably full-time) and a thumbnail designer (part-time), and I assume also a manager who sets up brand deals and contacts musicians for his interviews. He also records his videos on expensive cameras inside his well-lit studio, which also isn't cheap. It's very difficult to tell how much YouTube channels generate but I wouldn't be surprised if the Rick Beato channel is at this point a >$20K/month operation. Edit: Also, do you really think Rick Beato making "The Secret Weapon Behind Dr Dre" or "The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse" is not clickbait? It's just clickbait, but for people like you. Part of good advertising is making people feel like they're not even being sold anything.
- satvikpendem 3mo ago
  Indeed. Even streamers who just speak to the camera and play video games have a team of multiple people behind them, which some streamers discuss the economics of openly.
  - djaro 3mo ago
    I think the problem is that the "act" of a lot of streamers and content creators is that they are relatable, in the sense that, part of watching a video game streamer is the appeal of, he's just a guy like me playing games in his bedroom. The problem is that this is all an act, or kayfabe as they would call it in wrestling. But it's an act so good that unlike wrestling, which everyone knows is fake, most people that are not at least adjacent to the content industry genuinely have no idea.

slg 3mo ago

You say your target is $500-$1000 per video and let's assume you do videos weekly. That would mean your optimistic goal is $4500 a month. Let's say you create a voluntary donation subscription at $5 per month for people willing to support your work. That means you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them to hit your $4500 goal. That's a 0.9% conversion rate from subscribers to donators. Doesn't seem that impractical when looked at in those terms. This is often the default monetization model for small podcasts because RSS feeds don't have built in ad revenue the way YouTube does.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
satvikpendem 3mo ago
At that point I'd just make a Patreon (that offers various benefits including exclusive videos not on YouTube) while also monetizing via YouTube ads and sponshorships.
- slg 3mo ago
  Yes, there is a reason I said "you would need 900 true fans, patrons, or whatever other label you want to give them". I'm not claiming this is a new concept, I was making specific allusions to Patreon and the idea of 1000 true fans[1]. [1] - https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
Auracle 3mo ago
Voluntary donations are practically impossible. Sure, you get the odd straggler, but it’s so, so rare. I have the most popular NSFW LoRA (actually a LoKR but whatever) for at least one major text to image model on CivitAI. Once it blew up I made a Patreon, maybe 6 months ago? I get $50 a month from it. I doubt that even covers my electricity costs for training. Podcasts and videos do have the advantage of being able to ask for people to donate with every podcast/video, but people just aren’t inclined to give their money away when they don’t have to. It’s a rare trait.

add-sub-mul-div 3mo ago

Maybe the purpose of Youtube going forward is to be a quarantine for content whose purpose is to be monetized.

djaro 3mo ago
If YouTube becomes a quarantine for high-quality content, then it will also become a quarantine for viewers. the fundamental issue a lot of people here don't seem to get is that high quality videos that people want to watch are expensive to create. Besides the huge amount of high-skill labor, there's also just production costs, software, equipment, upkeep, etc. At the very least, ignoring all other costs, a single person making good videos somewhat regularly is a full-time job. People who make entertainment also need to eat and pay rent, the money has to come from somewhere.
- necovek 3mo ago
  I believe most people here "get" that. They have a problem with high quality production (more engaging due to production), low value content that proliferates on platforms like YouTube, and would rather see more high value content regardless of production quality, and Internet, in general enabled that if not for people starting to think about (ad supported) revenue first.

forgotaccount3 3mo ago

> most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. I get your point, but many of them fail to hit some hundreds of views due in large part to all of the large, professional channels that are spending hundreds of man hours as week producing content. If the production was less professional do you think total viewership hours would drop significantly, or would it be distributed across more channels?

no-name-here 3mo ago
Is the argument that such a world is possible to create, where the audience does not have the choice of the ‘professional’ looking content so can't choose it?

j45 3mo ago

Having your own distribution has it's benefits as a fall back or alternatives, in addition to publishing elsewhere like youtube. The cost of creating and editing videos going to come way down, there's already ways to do it in the past few years.

fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago

> As a professional YouTuber Well, there's your problem. You want the numbers that come from mass consumption, which means catering to the lowest common denominator thus producing shit with gold plating while then complain the gold plating is bloody expensive. Some people just are knowledgeable and want to share with the rest of us mortals like say someone like Terrence Tao. Putting someone like him on "YouTube" is a goddamn travesty. We need an alternative and yes, you won't make money and no, it's not for you then.

aembleton 3mo ago
> which means catering to the lowest common denominator At some point that becomes saturated, and you're better off catering to a niche that is poorly served.

butz 3mo ago

I heard that main source of income for some professional YouTubers are Patreon and sponsorships. Ad revenue is dead last and very unstable. Also, if you are building your business on single platform, which one day might decide that your content does not adhere to their rules - that's a high risk to take.

djaro 3mo ago
Sponsorships are definitely the highest if a youtuber actively engages in them, ad revenue vs patreon depends highly on if you have i.e. a small but highly active fanbase of core fans, versus a wider more general audience that you entertain a bit. I think people should be more aware of the perverse incentive of YouTubers saying, "my guaranteed source of income is very little and unstable guys, I need you to also subscribe to my patreon" where - could YouTubers perhaps have a reason to act like their ad revenue is very little? In my experience, while ad revenue isn't great, for any decent-size YouTuber its still enough to live on and in any case it always stays a significant income stream.
izacus 3mo ago
Do you think those creators pay YouTube for bandwidth, storage and transcode servers? Where do you think money for that comes from? Streaming video is very expensive, even in 2026 and ignoring that someone is paying the main business expense of those creators is not very honest.
- Scoundreller 3mo ago
  Dunno about the storage side, but fly by night operators seem to be constantly available to stream every movie and tv show and somehow afford the bandwidth, transcoding and all other costs while being shunned from the general ad industry…
  - izacus 3mo ago
    How about you actually look at the costs and try setting up a streaming website yourself and see how true your bs is? :)

whatever1 3mo ago

This is exactly why TikTok won. It is so much cheaper to iterate ideas on 10” videos. You make non interesting 20’ YT video? Well too bad your 80 labor hours & equipment time are lost.

boca_honey 3mo ago
TikTok won? YouTube is significantly larger, with over 2.7 billion monthly active users compared to TikTok's 1.6 billion. Even if you count TikTok's higher average watch time per user, YouTube's broader demographic more than makes up for it.
touristtam 3mo ago
As a side note 10-12 min is the ideal length for a non full feature documentary. I am growing tired of those 20+ minutes repeating and stretching the same topic without going into more depth.
- Animats 3mo ago
  Yes. "To understand this, we have to go back to..." 10 minutes of unnecessary retrospective, allowing insertion of three more ads. Usually you can skip that and get to the five minutes or so of new content.

bitwize 3mo ago

YouTubers are now blurring out women's cleavage. Not bare breasts. Cleavage. Nearly all of Pamela Anderson's notable body of work would need to be censored to avoid risking loss of that precious, precious monetization. It's like fucking Iran. And of course you can't say "die", "kill", "suicide", etc. You have to talk like a parody of 80s cartoon censorship—literally. (The neologism "unalive" came from Deadpool in an animated series called Ultimate Spider-Man, who realized he was in an animated show but thought it was 80s Saturday morning fare and constantly minced his intent to kill by saying he was going to "unalive" his target.) Monetization has had a chilling effect on the kind of content people put on YouTube. I do not mourn its lack, at least on alternative video platforms.

signatoremo 3mo ago
Where are you located? I'm looking as we speak at a bunch of YT videos of women with cleavage, or promoting fashion that involve stripping down to their underwear.
- bitwize 3mo ago
  If they're getting sponsorships or just engagement-baiting gooners to get OnlyFans signups, maybe they don't care that much about video monetization. The ones that do are starting to censor cľeavage.

BrenBarn 3mo ago

> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization.

ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
Because people are expected to spend their time, effort and money to provide content for you for free, of course. Seems like the only explanation.
- ndriscoll 3mo ago
  They're not. No one asked OP to use peertube. This is software for people who want to share videos. Coming in and declaring you won't use it because you can't make money from your videos should just get an "okay?" Interjecting into a FOSS space and complaining they are not paying you is beyond bizarre. Doubling down when people basically say "actually I'm specifically looking for non-commercial groups, so your absence is appreciated" is crazy. If you want to make money in something, you're not part of the group who doesn't. There's already a giant platform for you. Why would you say hobbyists are entitled?
  - kalcode 3mo ago
    Thank you. It is a bit bizarre reading this thread.
  - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
    > As a video watcher, the main issue I have with YouTube is the presence of monetization. I was replying to that. This commenter is not a hobbyist making video, he watches some hobbyists video, and them getting paid is the issue he has.
    - ndriscoll 3mo ago
      The issue he has is he wants to find/communicate with hobbyists, and instead runs into people trying to turn it into a profession. It becomes difficult to find like-minded people when every topic is infected by grifters. Injecting money into a leisure activity will inevitably ruin it and the people participating. The reason why is on full display here: this entire thread has been derailed by people asking how you're supposed to make money with it, denigrating people who "only" have 100 subscribers (imagine 100 people regularly coming to watch you give a talk or demo or performance out of pure interest!), etc. In a hobby or leisure space, appreciation or encouragement alone is valuable. Monetizing leisure leads to some crazy ideas. Like completely turning the perspective around: "content creators" think what they're doing is interesting enough that not only will I give them my attention, but that I should somehow compensate them for it? Crazy.

nonameiguess 3mo ago

Big corporations that pay big creators millions per production are just normal studios like Disney and Paramount and nowadays Netflix and Prime. YouTube is the competitor to that. No matter how professional you think of your operation, you're not Christopher Nolan or even BBC Earth and neither is anyone else whose primary distribution channel is YouTube. Good examples of more or less "free" content that fits PeerTube are cited in other comments, though. Conference footage, MIT OCW, archival footage of any kind of live event. Productions where the work is in putting on the event in the first place. Holding the conference, creating a course, putting on some kind of skateboarding competition, whatever it might be. Incidentally filming it and uploading the footage costs next to nothing in comparison, isn't expected to drive revenue compared to the live attendance, and it doesn't make much difference to the viewers if the footage is terrible. Shitty quality Feynman lectures is still watching Feynman lecture. It was really cool, for a recent example, that somebody found and uploaded phone footage of Caitlin Clark's fabled scrimmage against the Iowa men's team from however many years ago. Nobody cares about the quality of the video or who filmed it. Likely nobody subscribed to whatever channel it first ended up on, but how cares? People who wanted to see a rare real world event would still have been able to find it and it cost nothing to the person who pulled out a phone and turned it on while that event was happening.

jonshariat 3mo ago

Yeah reminds me of how Kick seems to be winning over the Twitch creators. Now Kick isn't a shining beacon by any means, its got gambling issues for one, but I do think this is one area the big companies are vulnerable in: Rev share. If a new incumbent can raise some money, offer creators some money and a path to a higher cut than their competitors, they can win big.

djaro 3mo ago
I think this is the only way for new platforms to ever rise in this space. A video sharing website is not a social media platform, it's a streaming platform. The real competitors to YouTube are not PeerTube or whatever, it's Netflix and HBO. This is why Nebula also managed to find a niche and be relatively successful: the issue is not ads or a monthly subscription or something, the only problem is: people want to watch high-quality content. Find a way to get them high-quality content. If you cannot do that, everything else is meaningless. In Nebula's case, even a few high-profile YouTubers in the same niche uploading exclusives on a platform is better than a thousand nobodies uploading low effort content.

dotwack 3mo ago

Really? Thats the main issue? What about when they upload child porn and some of it ends up on your computer and they break down your door and you spend the rest of your life getting bungholed by Darnel. I would rate that higher than monetary rewards. Decentralized system rely heavily on how much you trust other humans, I do not, so I hear them.say Decentralized and I run.

sajithdilshan 3mo ago
I was gonna say the same. Also copyrighted content like movies. In Germany you can easily get sued for hosting and distributing. That's why torrenting is quite unpopular there
fwip 3mo ago
Darnel? Am I missing a reference?

ChuckMcM 3mo ago

Do you ever think about the fact that if you're making $500 - $1000 per video on average that means Google is making $5000 - $10,000 on each of your videos on average? I mean its working for you, and that's great. I am a student of information asymmetric markets and the whole 'Ad supported' business that Google runs on all of its properties is perhaps the largest one in the current time frame. The point being that building a production company to produce videos is a known thing, Peertube is a distribution network, and historically this is a remarkable mirror of 'independent' theaters and 'studio owned' theaters. It was a characteristic of that time that the big studios would use their monoply power to force small studios to give them their work at a discount that allowed the studio to get most of the income. They made it just enough that the small studios didn't feel motivated to build a competitive system. When I read your comment it struck me that perhaps "$500 - $1000 average per video" was the number Google has determined to be 'just enough'.

ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
It says "at least"... on many channels there's videos with just a few views and videos with tons of views with much more than 10x difference
- ChuckMcM 3mo ago
  That's fair, Google admitted in the DoJ trial where it was convicted of being a monopolist that the revenues that it paid out were roughly 10% of the revenues it collected. If you have fewer than a requisite number of subscribers they keep 100% of the monetization proceeds. I was simply struck by the parallels between the way YouTube has grown up and how the whole movie industry grew up.
  - ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago
    Wow, how many subscribers does one need to have?
    - AlienRobot 3mo ago

rixed 3mo ago

Understood your situation, but personnaly I'm not watching so much professional content on YT; actually, I'm not watching YT as much as I used to when the service was young and unprofessional. What I want from such a platform is authenticity... and curation.

Scoundreller 3mo ago
That’s what I find silly about YouTube. Through effective search, Google enabled mass deportalization. The best link would win. Your crappy but good blog about how to fix an issue could become top in the results. Now YouTube favours entertainer-mechanic making subscribeable but generic videos instead of… the one specific to your vehicle by some gruff but knowledgeable mechanic. Like, c’mon buddy, the bolt only comes off like that in the studio after 3 practice runs.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo ago

"As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is lack of monetization." As a computer user I see that as the main advantage No third party intermediary No advertising Computer users need peer-to-peer options for sharing video with each other that do not use third party advertising companies, e.g., posing as "search engine" or "social media", to transfer the bits Whether PeerTube works well, I do not know. I know that overlay networks I have tested work well enough

lanthissa 3mo ago
the 3rd party isn't an intermediary, youtube content is fantastic because it found a way to pay people to produce something for every niche, and reward the ones doing well with more viewers and more money. ofc you would prefer high quality content delivered directly to you for free, because you're ignore the producers perspective.
- rapidaneurism 3mo ago
  And if they dare touch controversial topics it demonitises them automatically. I find it hilarious that people self censor or invent new terms (like euphemisms for suicide).
- account42 3mo ago
  Youtube rewards producers who use any dark pattern they can think of to get more views. This results in videos that are extremely awful to watch if your brain hasn't already been turned to pulp.
djaro 3mo ago
The problem with this is that creating the content you watch costs a lot of money and labor. As a user I would see a grocery store where everything is free as an advantage... utill the products inevitably run out and no food supplier is willing to stock the shelves for free.
- allarm 3mo ago

stonogo 3mo ago

this is the strongest endorsement of peertube I've seen so far

djaro 3mo ago
The strongest endorsement for PeerTube is that it cannot sustain creators and thus will only either 1) freeboot off of platforms that do or 2) be flooded by low effort slop?
- stonogo 3mo ago
  I'm not sure the difference between low-effort slop and high-effort slop is as significant as you seem to assume.
- account42 3mo ago
  People who spam slop are exactly the ones who chase after monetization.

nicechianti 3mo ago

[dead]

cyberax 3mo ago

Would you mirror your videos to something like Peertube if it included automated pay-per-view (via something like x402 API)?

lanthissa 3mo ago

this is exactly right, people dont realize that they're getting a great deal on youtube. if you want to disrupt youtube you need to do it by winning over the creators which is a difficult thing to do since no new platform can subsidize to the scale of what youtube offers already due to its size, the only ones who really could are meta since they have the ad network and users already to funnel to it, or another company willing to eat a loss for a long time. The issue with eating hte loss, is video is a pretty painful loss to eat compared to text, so why not go into every text market first for places like meta.

alex1138 3mo ago
Great deal except when you get demonetized for partisan reasons
- carlosjobim 3mo ago
  Sure, but compare that to all other television and streaming services, where all independent creators are demonetized and banned by default. If you don't have the right contacts you're not allowed to put your video on Netflix.
- lanthissa 3mo ago
  demonization has nothing to do with viewers value from youtube you just have been radicalized to inject talking points into every single conversation.
  - alex1138 3mo ago
    No, not really. I haven't been "radicalized" into anything. Go look at what Youtube actually does to content creators

dvngnt_ 3mo ago

I use adblocker for youtube but will still subscribe via pateron

anticorporate 3mo ago

I understand where you are coming from, and if monetization is your primary reason for being on a platform, it's likely that PeerTube is not for you, unless your videos help you move your own product or service. That said, I'm also okay with there being platforms out there where monetization is difficult or impossible. I want there to be places where creators can get paid, but I am also nostalgic for a less commercial internet.

dharmatech 3mo ago

> As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. That's a feature, not a bug.

BeetleB 3mo ago

Here's my dilemma: The Youtube experience has always sucked for me - right from the first year Youtube launched. I just don't like the interface, web site, layout, etc. It's why I didn't have a Youtube account until I needed to share a video with someone, and even then, I never log into it (so I don't follow[1], rate, etc). And then over the last few years, the ad situation has gotten astronomically worse. I'm not exaggerating when I say that old school cable TV with its ads was a significantly better experience. I do a search for something specific. I start clicking videos to see if it has the content I want. But very often, on my Roku or similar device, I won't be able to see anything of the video unless I watch 15-60s of ads. Only to find out the video is not useful for me. Click next video. Repeat the pain. I think this is what leads a lot of people to just plain hate Youtube. It's what leads me not to care if suddenly no one can make money on Youtube (even the folks I like). It's why I want Youtube to just die. If they made the site much more pleasing, and found a way to allow 3rd party interfaces (while still serving ads), and weren't anywhere near as annoying with the ads, I'd like the platform. Regarding monetization: For the folks who have well established viewers, and who make most of their money via embedded ads in the video, I don't think they'll lose anything by switching to Peertube - as long as the Peertube infrastructure can handle the load. The major fans will know where to find the content.[2] The real problem with Peertube is discovery. How can a new content creator be noticed? And then how can they show accurate viewership numbers to get those sponsors? [1] Well, I may follow via other means: Manually, or via RSS, etc. [2] Incidentally, some of the "popular" content I watch on Youtube exclusively gets monetized via embedded ads. Youtube demonetized that whole category a while ago. So embedded ads is totally viable.

pojzon 3mo ago

And there is Asmongold doing a video of him watching someone else making a video with commentary like “absolutely”, “outrageous”, “bold” and having it all monetized with literally ZERO effort. So yea.. it takes a lot of effort -> if you are nobody. For eatablished streamers just slapping something from stream on ytb is enough.

doublerabbit 3mo ago

Why couldn't you post it after it's got its money worth? Or is that the clause of YouTube "you must not post elsewhere"?

gneuron 3mo ago

Easy solve; PeerTube should launch ads and the rev share with creators is 99% (platform take 1% fee to keep platform up)

doginasuit 3mo ago

This is a feature. The golden age of YouTube ended roughly around the time they made monetization more available.

doginasuit 3mo ago
To put a finer point on it, I recognize there are a lot of good creators on YouTube and I'm glad it can support their work. But the overall trend has been for the worse, at least for the target audience I belong to. The change in the average title card tells a story. I believe it would be fantastic if there was a competitor that captured the original motivation.

samrus 3mo ago

> You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there. But then how does twitch work? Genuinely asking, whats the difference?

King-Aaron 3mo ago

I miss old, grass-roots youtube. I used to be a 'youtuber' back in the very very early days where it was just a case of sharing yourself doing dumb things. I completely get that it's your job now... But the fact it's become a job for people is probably why I don't like it so much anymore. With all the ads and such too, it's now just television. But worse.

trimethylpurine 3mo ago

I guess you never used YouTube in the early days. It was a site for posting and watching random home made videos and recorded broadcasts. Just for fun. Revenue streams for creators came after Google bought it, I think. Along with the ads. This might simply revive a platform that no longer exists. It might not be about paying creators or collecting ad revenue. It's peer to peer, after all.

PacificSpecific 3mo ago

Thanks for the insight. Do you think something like nebula could ever be feasible?

vfclists 3mo ago

Not everyone is a "professional Youtuber" like you, and that includes a lot of Youtube who upload videos without any expectation of income, for who Youtube is mainly a free video hosting service that also allows them to reach a wider viewership.

Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago

Interesting, I thought the major issue with PeerTube was the high latency due the decentralized nature and that they don't have the backing of Google infrastructure. What you state sounds more like a chicken and egg problem. You'll publish content only when there are enough viewers but there can be viewers only when you publish content. Like others have said, There's not much effort to publish in both platforms; good way to hedge against the algorithmic risks.

nullbio 3mo ago

Why can't they build an advertiser network into this?

jeffalyanak 3mo ago

Monetization is the easy part, a plugin that adds advertisements, paid subscriptions, or some other form of monetization could easily be made if there was a demand for it. The real barrier issue is that of network effect. There's simply (almost) no audience, which means there are (almost) no creators, which means there is (almost) no audience. I've been publishing my videos on my own peertube instance for a while and I really do appreciate it as a platform, but I don't think that the technical aspects of it alone will ever be the key to its potential success.

sevenzero 3mo ago

>I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This is something I always thought to be extremely funny. Producing videos is a hobby. If you made it your job, go figure out how to monetize your material yourself. Nobody prevents you from taking sponsorships.

customguy 3mo ago

It would still be a great alternative for the original YouTube. The one with video replies and all that, that was basically just people video blogging at each other or into the ether. > And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. Where is the "fail" though? Some of those videos take exactly as long to make is it does to watch them. If they don't get monetized (maybe for speaking normal English instead of saying "unalive" and "to grape"), then someone else doesn't make a lot of money from even the little effort it took them by showing ads [0] to people. If all you want to do is talk at a camera and maybe with some people, then all that is a plus. [0] Speaking of ads, some of the stuff on youtube is wild. Like, honestly gross and disturbing to me. If you are looking to make money of it, sure, starting with peertube only would be nonsense. If you just wanna make videos, do it! Upload the best ones to youtube and mention peertube, so you maybe get some audience. Then if you really get into it, and make better stuff, spend more effort than just "start record, say things, upload as is", you can upload everything to youtube, too. After having livestreamed the whole thing on Twitch, just to use every part of the buffalo.

protocolture 3mo ago

>As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. That's the main benefit. Monetised content, and the people who make it, is despicable. >and even I could not make this work if I didn't get at least $500-$1,000 per video on average, since it just takes so much time and money. Have you considered getting a real job? >Most channels with more than a million subscribers are likely founders working 60-80 hour weeks with multiple full-time employees supporting them. Putting them out of business would be a fantastic turn of events. >And yes, there are people who make content for free - most of them fail to hit a hundred views per video. Cool and good. >I think any real competitor to YouTube nowadays would have to be backed by a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. That would be like paying a malware company to move from windows to apple.

Induane 3mo ago

That's the thing; not everything has to be or should be monetized. The thing I miss the most are the funny dumb amateur videos. There are several YouTube channels I love; Folding Ideas, hbomberguy, Kurtis Conner, Contrapoints, etc... but I see those essentially as semi professional / professional variations on television. Once I got into their content via YouTube, YouTube of course drove me away with horrid vile ads, and I moved on to supporting those creators on Patreon. And that's all good - the digital medium needs places like YouTube. But that doesn't mean there isn't a huge amount of value in the amateur unmonitized video landscape. Pairing those with some niche phpbb style forums was, for me, the last time I truly enjoyed the experience of actually being on the internet.

gloosx 3mo ago

>You cannot do that in the hopes of viewers donating $5 here and there. But you can do that in hopes of youtube sharing a percentage of fluctuating ad revenue? Certain things can get you de-monetized, you can get strike-bombed, falsely accused of copyright infringement via automated systems, etc, and unless you are a very big channel owner, you will receive a minimal droplet of support likely involving no humans in the loop. There are sustainable creators getting much more revenue by collecting direct subscription money from their patrons while providing exclusive or first-hand content to them which is then re-uploaded to youtube for reaching a wider audience. They can run their own integrated ad-campaings without google deciding what they are advertising or which content they can or cannot produce.

mariusor 3mo ago

> lack of monetization I mean, when you spin your own instance, because frankly, that's what the best option if you're a content creator, you can put whatever ads and monetization strategies you want. So basically the full income that gets generated gets to you, instead of splitting it with some third party that invests minimal effort. Yes, you'll have to pay someone to maintain and upkeep the server, but assumedly the people that can make the change will take that cost into account. > a big corporation that can pay big creators million-dollar deals to make the switch. I'm surprised by this. Isn't controlling your full production/distribution/revenue a good enough payback?

reorder9695 3mo ago

Thr one solution I see to that is sponsorships, the number I've heard is they typically pay 10x the ad revenue of a video, and this wouldn't be affected by the platform, just the viewership numbers.

account42 3mo ago

As a professional watcher, I consider the lack of monetization a feature. I'd much rather see genuine videos from amateurs than commercialized crap with sponsored segments and undisclosed sponsorships and product placement and filler to keep up release schedules and please like and subscribe and whatever other dark patterns commercially motivated video producers come up with on "free" platforms. And of course also without the ads the video platform adds on top of all that. Not everything needs to be a viable job.

touristtam 3mo ago

> This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram Low key shitting on other content creators? Some of IG content creator easily match professionalism you are describing. I know you are probably partially venting your frustration, but that doesn't paint you in a nice light.

FloatArtifact 3mo ago

It's simple. If I want to support you, I buy your merchandise.

ksec 3mo ago

> this is the lack of monetization. By charging it for content. Since HN doesn't like any form of Ads. /s Sorry I have to write this out. But I am somewhat glad in the past 2 years HN has returned back to discussing monetization, money, business in a sane way.

nielsbot 3mo ago

Seems advertising could be a third-party service on top of the video streaming service. Just like there are ad platforms that plugin to web pages. If that grows, you get your monetization.

kelvinjps10 2mo ago

But isn't know most of the money they make from direct sponsors instead of adsense? I have seen a few creators putting their income sources and most of the money comes from direct sponsors instead of adsense. So if these sponsors would continue to sponsor them in other platforms, it can take YouTube monopoly away. The problem now is that those others video platform don't have the eyeballs as YouTube