Will YouTube ever see a legit competitor?

[themistermanguy]

YouTube has been around for more than a decade now, and had evolved from simply a novel way of letting people distribute silly viral videos, to a Juggernaut in Pop Culture that changed the Video consumption landscape forever. However, YouTube has gained infamy over the years. YouTube is also the only Video Sharing service anybody actually uses, with other alternatives like Dailymotion being either a joke or dead.

YouTube's monopolistic nature, more so than Google's influence is IMO, the biggest problem with the service. With no real competitor to counter them, YouTube has no incentive to improve, and thus Google has slowly but surely worked to suck the core identity and freedoms of YouTube out. Now YouTube is a mine-field of copyright strikes, demonetization and de-platforming for wrong think, and Altering seach results and trending pages to prioritize big media corporations over the very users who made YouTube what it was.

Monopolies are never good because it conditions people running the business to think they can do anything they want without consequence or looming threats. Competition is good because it can force or incentivise companies to better themselves in order to preserve their customers.

That's why I'm wondering if YouTube will ever have an actual competitor to pose a major threat. A service that promises to be like what YouTube was in its earlier years, where people can make what they want, say what they want, and have a fair chance to be popular by doing so.

There's still a lot of great content on YouTube getting uploaded on a regular basis, but it's clear that the YouTube of today, is a shell of the service it once was.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Not sure. The Internet I grew up in, where there was an actual diversity of platforms and communities, seems to have died out and been replaced with a few large sites of questionable quality monopolizing their respective field. I'd like to see that change and the Internet becoming more like it used to but right now I don't see that happening anytime soon. The environment t itself would have to change.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

NicoNico's pretty popular, but's kinda region specific.

The biggest problem with starting a competitor is the shear cost of all that storage space for HD videos that get tens of views.

I've got a terabyte of video on YouTube that maybe 200 people have seen

 

[balladbird]

there's a really good reason why youtube has had its market mostly all to itself for so long: Youtube hemorrhages money. It's had the benefit of existing for decades with little meaningful competition, and even in spite of that boon, it loses money hand over fist no matter who owns it or what they try with it.

Every time a famous youtuber has copyright troubles, there's this big "someone should make a competitor that doesn't automatically side against creators, and we can all leave youtube behind" sentiment in the community. The frustration is understandable, of course. The vast majority of the time, the creator was completely in the right, and a copyright troll just took advantage of youtube's automated system to hijack his revenue, but really, it's easy to imagine why no one has seriously tried to make this pipe dream a reality.

The business startup costs, the bandwidth, the storage, the advertising, most of these competitor ideas are born from "we want to side with the creators", so, the legal fees associate with constant legal battles with IP holders... you'd need to already be a billionaire to try to establish such a thing... it can't really spring up grassroots.

Even the simpler task of fixing youtube is too expensive to be viable. Most issues come down to its algorithms and the people who take advantage of it. This could be circumvented by adding more humans to the process... but when one stops to consider the sheer volume of videos that are uploaded every minute of every day... it would take a staff of thousands to try to do these automated functions manually... more overhead for an already fragile business model.

 

[Marik2]

Maybe someone who can make a decentralized youtube that magically doesn't need storage space for HD videos?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

The only one I can ever see doing it is Pornhub if they make a SFW version

 

[Squilookle]

Can't see it happening, to be honest.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

If its coming, its either coming from a competing conglomerate (my money would be on Apple), an existing service looking to go mainstream in a big way (aforementioned PornHub) or one of those weird libertarian YouTubers wins the next $1.8billion USD lotto jackpots and decides that's how they're going to waste their winnings.

 

[Samos205]

No-ones going to mention bitchute? alrighty the

 

[bluegate]

That's why I'm wondering if YouTube will ever have an actual competitor to pose a major threat. A service that promises to be like what YouTube was in its earlier years, where people can make what they want, say what they want, and have a fair chance to be popular by doing so.

And all of that for free!

People take for granted how much they get for free on the internet, honestly, people are spoiled.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, as long as Youtube disallows certain videos, there'll always be competitors in certain niches, one of those could grow or the videos Youtube allows could shrink.

 

[Worgen]

We kinda already have one, its called porntube or youporn or something. Really the only streaming competitors for youtube are porn sites since everyone wants porn, but most people like to pretend they don't want porn.

 

[CaitSeith]

Eh, as long as Youtube disallows certain videos, there'll always be competitors in certain niches, one of those could grow or the videos Youtube allows could shrink.

That being said, aiming to host the kind of videos that Youtube and Pornhub ban right now would be the equivalent of hosting 8chan.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, as long as Youtube disallows certain videos, there'll always be competitors in certain niches, one of those could grow or the videos Youtube allows could shrink.

That being said, aiming to host the kind of videos that Youtube and Pornhub ban right now would be the equivalent of hosting 8chan.

There was a kerfuffle a little while ago when Youtube said something about banning videos about guns, and lots of channels, from preppers to historians were looking for somewhere else. Didn't come to anything, though.

 

[RaikuFA]

Vanillio seems to be a good competitor but I doubt it will do the job. I think it will take someone like pornhub or twitch to make a competitor that?ll tell YouTube ?step up your game or you?ll die?. Or worse, it?ll take government regulation to get YouTube to step up its game. And we can?t have YouTube with government regulation.

I partially blame bigger youtubers for this issue too. They always talk about this exodus but never do it. They never complain about the double standards YouTube has until they?re hit by it(hi Casey Neistat). Remember when Pewdiepie said he was gonna delete his channel unless YouTube did something about the broken copyright system and deleted a throwaway channel(a reminder this was when he was still a moneymaker for the site). They refuse to delete Pewds, those creepy Elsagate videos, Peluchin Entertainment who killed a cat on his channel or the Paul Brothers but started an actual harassment campaign against Munkey Jones all while allowing Keemstar to stay on the platform despite him being banned before.

 

[Trunkage]

Honestly, I don't think anyone would want the regulatory or social headache. Just look at the controversy surrounding pedophilia comments. And that's not even a government mandate. It's just Youtube trying to stop pedophiles

 

[Xprimentyl]

According to the YouTube algorithm, my sole interests are Flat Earth debunkings, Dark Souls playthroughs or ?Irish People Try? videos; If I want to see anything else, I have to deliberately search for it; I could use a fresh start somewhere else.

 

[RaikuFA]

According to the YouTube algorithm, my sole interests are Flat Earth debunkings, Dark Souls playthroughs or ?Irish People Try? videos; If I want to see anything else, I have to deliberately search for it; I could use a fresh start somewhere else.

Mines always animations, ZP?s, animals and Dark Souls theorys

 

[BrawlMan]

there's a really good reason why youtube has had its market mostly all to itself for so long: Youtube hemorrhages money. It's had the benefit of existing for decades with little meaningful competition, and even in spite of that boon, it loses money hand over fist no matter who owns it or what they try with it.

Every time a famous youtuber has copyright troubles, there's this big "someone should make a competitor that doesn't automatically side against creators, and we can all leave youtube behind" sentiment in the community. The frustration is understandable, of course. The vast majority of the time, the creator was completely in the right, and a copyright troll just took advantage of youtube's automated system to hijack his revenue, but really, it's easy to imagine why no one has seriously tried to make this pipe dream a reality.

The business startup costs, the bandwidth, the storage, the advertising, most of these competitor ideas are born from "we want to side with the creators", so, the legal fees associate with constant legal battles with IP holders... you'd need to already be a billionaire to try to establish such a thing... it can't really spring up grassroots.

Even the simpler task of fixing youtube is too expensive to be viable. Most issues come down to its algorithms and the people who take advantage of it. This could be circumvented by adding more humans to the process... but when one stops to consider the sheer volume of videos that are uploaded every minute of every day... it would take a staff of thousands to try to do these automated functions manually... more overhead for an already fragile business model.

That reminds me of that "mass exodus" to Daily Motion that was supposed to happen back in 2013...but nothing came of it despite the ruckus. Those making the claims or complaints quieted down or pretended to act like nothing happened by deleting their videos of claiming towards going to competing video sites.

 

[Chessrook44]

there's a really good reason why youtube has had its market mostly all to itself for so long: Youtube hemorrhages money. It's had the benefit of existing for decades with little meaningful competition, and even in spite of that boon, it loses money hand over fist no matter who owns it or what they try with it.

Every time a famous youtuber has copyright troubles, there's this big "someone should make a competitor that doesn't automatically side against creators, and we can all leave youtube behind" sentiment in the community. The frustration is understandable, of course. The vast majority of the time, the creator was completely in the right, and a copyright troll just took advantage of youtube's automated system to hijack his revenue, but really, it's easy to imagine why no one has seriously tried to make this pipe dream a reality.

The business startup costs, the bandwidth, the storage, the advertising, most of these competitor ideas are born from "we want to side with the creators", so, the legal fees associate with constant legal battles with IP holders... you'd need to already be a billionaire to try to establish such a thing... it can't really spring up grassroots.

Even the simpler task of fixing youtube is too expensive to be viable. Most issues come down to its algorithms and the people who take advantage of it. This could be circumvented by adding more humans to the process... but when one stops to consider the sheer volume of videos that are uploaded every minute of every day... it would take a staff of thousands to try to do these automated functions manually... more overhead for an already fragile business model.

You forgot to mention the fact that EVERYBODY is on YouTube. When the things you want to watch are in a place, then you have to go to that place to watch it. It's a self-feeding cycle.

Honestly, the way you put it, it sounds like the only way a YouTube replacement will be formed is if YouTube dies and the masses link onto a new place to make popular. That, or there will NEVER be another YouTube because nobody will be able to afford it.