
YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals - rbanffy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/youtube-and-facebook-are-losing-creators-to-blockchain-powered-rivals
======
Jyaif
Roughly half of the content is about cryptocurrencies. The other half is
stolen content (e.g. [https://d.tube/#!/c/nba-
highlights](https://d.tube/#!/c/nba-highlights) ).

I don't think YT and FB are sad about losing those types of "creators".

~~~
Grue3
YT wasn't very sad about stolen content when they were starting up...

~~~
kitotik
They still are anything but sad about it. The amount of pirated music on their
platform is mind boggling.

~~~
strictnein
A lot of that is fully monetized by the copyright owners.

~~~
LordHeini
Or the random person who uploaded it.

~~~
strictnein
Youtube automatically identifies almost all copyrighted music when videos are
uploaded and copyright owners can decide who will be the one to monetize it.
Almost all of the major players have the monetization assigned to themselves.

~~~
LordHeini
How do you know that?

There are tons of whole albums which are definitively not "monetized" by their
makers.

E.g. old stuff where the band does not exists anymore or all the low selling
genres where nobody cares. It is not a bad thing since i discovered a lot of
cool stuff like that.

~~~
strictnein
There's some long tail stuff that isn't, but the large majority is.

A breakdown of how the system works (they're trying to sell music for you to
use, but it's still a good writeup):

[https://www.safemusiclist.com/can-use-copyrighted-music-
yout...](https://www.safemusiclist.com/can-use-copyrighted-music-youtube/)

------
mrtksn
You know what's interesting? A Decentralised media platform used to be huge
and actually is still huge: Torrents.

There's a huge community that consumes media that's not hosted anywhere
particular and there are apps like Popcorn Time that offer viewing experience
almost as good as Netflix.

The problem, of course, is that up until now there was no way to reward the
creators and almost all the media consumed on Torrents is illicit copies of
copyrighted material that don't bring direct benefits to its creators.

It is a huge topic in the blockchain community to find a way to reward content
creators and we see early attempts that may or may not succeed at this.

Another issue is the "Averagisation" of the content. The moment that you make
a content that advertisers might find controversial you risk losing your
reward for that content so advertising financed media fails to capture
anything beyond the mainstream entertainment. This has another unfortunate
outcome, which is that people who don't want to get a direct reward for their
content but hoping to be rewarded with political influence can afford to
continue producing content that tends to be extremist(veganism, left and right
politics, racism, conspiracy theories - you name it). So we end up with
extremely light content that's something between product unboxing and funny
videos not touching any sensitive topic and extremely edgy content that
depicts the world as black and white and if you are not one of us you are one
of them. Your average monetised content on Youtube is extremely light and your
average popular non-monetised conted is extremeley heavy.

At this time you'll find that these new decentralised platforms are full of
the extremist's stuff, as it is just another platform to spread their
influence but in the long run, I believe that they will be diluted and will
offer a platform where non-extremist but alternative cultures can flourish.

~~~
cornholio
You certainly don't need blockchains and distributed databases to reward
creators, centralized solutions like Patreon work perfectly fine. If you want
Netflix style monetization, that is not a technical problem but a social one,
Netflix relies on the concept of copyright. Any community that does not
respect copyright will switch to the free alternative, leaving voluntary
donations as the only monetization option.

Maybe there is a blockchain niche where content is offered freely but ad
supported, with the experience painless enough not to motivate users to switch
to the ad-free alternative. The revenue would then be necessarily modest, but
would be redirected to the creators almost in full, compensating the massive
Youtube cut.

~~~
koonsolo
I don't agree with your Netflix story. Most people don't prefer free, they
prefer convenience.

Spotify almost works properly as a centralized platform because almost all
music is on there. But I know a few albums that aren't, and it's too bad.

For Netflix, I have a subscription. But guess what I do when I want to watch
the latest Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. I want it convenient, preferably
legal, but most of all convenient.

~~~
ghaff
How is subscribing to HBO inconvenient?

It's a combination of price and convenience. There's some upper limit to the
monthly price you (and everyone else) is willing to pay for content.

~~~
prepend
HBO Now is a much worse experience than torrents. The navigation is slow, the
updates to new episodes are poorly placed under a bunch of clicks, there are
ads for other hbo shows over and over (even after I watched every single West
world episode they still show me ads about a “new show”), streaming bugs
(Although this improved quite a bit).

It wasn’t the price that moved me away from HBONow, it was their lack of
convenience compared to a torrent rig.

It ended up being HBO’s design was more for themselves rather than me (“we
want to show you ads” vs “you want to watch your shows”). It was still very
old in its philosophy of content.

Netflix however is awesome because it’s very UX focused.

Ultimately, I think only OSS/pirate are closest to the use desires.

~~~
ryanianian
> Netflix however is awesome because it’s very UX focused.

Except for the thousands of A/B experiments that incessantly drive you to
spend every ounce of attention on Netflix. E.g. the auto-playing preview that
starts whenever you stop moving the active selection. It strongly encourages
you to start playing the thing rather than being thoughtful about whether you
actually want to or not. Personally I hate this - it drives my anxiety nuts -
and I find HBO's tactics much less user-hostile (although agreed the ads for
HBO's own content are outright stupid).

------
anthonybsd
This article is pure clickbait. Make some half-assed, sensationalist, barely
verifiable claim, sprinkle some crypto / blockchain / bitcoin seasoning on
top, and to the moon you go.

~~~
sametmax
Yeap. I'm deep in crypto. I have literally a company making money by providing
service for masternode holders.

Yet even I recognize the tech is nowhere close to be user friendly for even
the most basic use.

Youtube loosing anything to blockchain solutions ?

Yeah, in 10 years maybe.

Right now we are still working hard to figure out how to makes things work,
and make money without scamming people.

I mean, come on, I regularly have to compile wallets from source to make them
work, sometime fixing the build process in the meantime. I have dedicated app
armor profiles that I have to custom make for each one because you basically
can't trust any of them.

Why is this article even on HN ? Who upvote that ?

Either we have a lot of new users with a completely different mindset than a
few years ago, or we have PR agency pushing some agenda. And given the article
is on Bloomberg...

~~~
vk23
>Youtube loosing anything to blockchain solutions ? >Yeah, in 10 years maybe.

I think it's way more likely for Youtube/Google to implement some sort of
blockchain based system to reward creators.

~~~
sametmax
I doubt it. That would make it either way too transparent and open, or just a
blockchain implementation of a centralized black box.

~~~
vk23
Blockchain implementations in centralized black boxes are more likely than not
the future of blockchain. As soon as regulation gets rolled out usable
blockchains will be controlled by governments and/or private companies that
comply with the rules. Not that I'm not in favor of a truely decentralized
solution but I doubt "they" will allow this to happen.

~~~
sametmax
Well they never managed to shutdown torrent or tor, so decentralized is still
alive and kicking.

But yeah, we are likely to see a lot of people using the "blockchain" label
for marketing reason, not using the tech for any of it's benefits.

But that's silly even from a technical point of view: if you don't need
decentralization and transparency, then a blockchain is a very poor
alternative to a blackbox built on postgress.

------
philfrasty
I see a lot of articles talking about ad revenue. For most YouTubers ad
revenue is minuscule compared to what they make on product placements. Someone
in the lifestyle/beauty segment with say 300k subs on YT (and similiar IG
following) might make 500$ in ads a month on YouTube but 8k to 10k per product
placement. This doesn't include multi-post deals (usually YT and IG combined)
that will yield (from what I have seen) 40k to 60k in collaboration with e.g.
big beauty brands.

~~~
mrtksn
Well, product placements are still advertisement. It simply means that these
ads are not managed by Google but other agencies that match Youtubers with
advertisers. I wonder if Google is happy with that?

~~~
richjdsmith
I doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a situation that content creators
would pay google for visibility (notifications, showing up in subscribers
feeds etc.) in order to satisfy their product placement contracts.

~~~
wolco
Youtube has been labeling these videos with a paid promotion scrolling
warning.

~~~
tokai
They do that because they have to. [https://www.out-
law.com/en/articles/2016/july/digital-influe...](https://www.out-
law.com/en/articles/2016/july/digital-influencers-must-disclose-paid-for-
content-says-new-guidance/)

------
nafest
STEEM is full of bots and content with purchased upvotes. (most articles have
more upvotes than views, funny, hey?) There are only about 60.000 active users
and this number is stagnating for months. No way, that Facebook or Youtube are
loosing users towards this platform.

~~~
BadassFractal
Was also disappointed by Steemit. I liked the concept and wanted it to work,
but in practice the service was 99% people (or bots) trying to game the system
uploading garbage. Any real quality content gets drowned among spam.

~~~
pjc50
Systems that promise to pay for content production create a massive, direct
incentive to game the system and spam it.

~~~
BadassFractal
Yep. Don't get me wrong, I really want these guys to win, but the current
system is just not good enough. I don't know how exactly they'll go around
solving that problem though.

~~~
ghaff
There are well-established systems to pay for content. The problem is that
they're very manual, take a big cut, and are relatively selective. They go by
names like publishers, labels, studios, and so forth. They actually work for
some definitions of work but you have to be OK with relatively high barriers
to entry and with a clearly-defined gatekeeper role.

------
fortythirteen
All of these "alternatives" suck. Whether you believe in censorship or not (I
don't), building a no-censorship alternative to a major media platform mostly
attracts the people who were censored because of truly abhorrent content. Gab
and voat suck because 90% of the content is extremist bullshit.

The development community needs to stop building "alternatives", with the hope
that they become the next big thing, and go back to building things that we
want to use ourselves.

~~~
kadenshep
>content is extremist bullshit.

Mainly just right+ extremists. No need to beat around the bush.

~~~
fortythirteen
That's only because the left+ extremists are tolerated, if not condoned, on
the SV run platforms.

~~~
kadenshep
Probably because left+ extremists don't inherently have dehumanization and
genocide as part of their political and moral beliefs. You can disagree with
economic allocation theories, but it's really not appropriate to compare the
two.

~~~
fortythirteen
Yes, the only thing they have going for them is that the initial factor they
use for putting someone against the wall is economic and not race based. They
still put innocent people against the wall. How is this not clear to you?

~~~
kadenshep
>How is this not clear to you?

Because it's objectively a straw man and isn't based on anything except your
ideological preconceptions?

>the initial factor they use for putting someone against the wall is economic
and not race based.

* Huge citation needed

~~~
fortythirteen
Citation? Lenin, Stalin, Mao, three generations of Kims, Guevara, Castro, Pol
Pot, Ho Chi Min. All murdered massive amounts of their own people for not
being communist.

------
sschueller
I like peertube [1] because it is about getting the Technology working without
all the crypto and money making stuff on top. Similar to mastodon [2].

[1]
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)
[2] [https://mastodon.social/about](https://mastodon.social/about)

------
snikeris
Yours.org is is my favorite example of this. Writers of articles receive
Bitcoin Cash from the community. Interestingly, it costs Bitcoin Cash to
upvote content and comment on things. Presumably this helps combat upvote bots
and spammers.

Edit: forgot to mention that if you upvote content, later upvotes of the same
content earn you money. This incentivizes people to discover and promote new
content they think will be popular on the platform.

~~~
wernsey
I find it an interesting concept, but as with so many of these solutions I
don't really see why you have to have Bitcoin Cash to make it work. They could
charge your credit card for upvotes and pay you in fiat like Patreon does, and
the functionality will be exactly the same from the end user's perspective.

~~~
nodja
I think it boils down to payment processing fees. For patreon for example it
would be super inconvenient (and expensive) to process all payments
individually, so payments are made in bulk. This is why monthly payments are
the standard.

With crypto you can perform instant sub $1 payments with minimal fees (blocks
aren't full so it's super low atm). It also saves not having to handle
chargebacks, fraud, etc.

------
thisisit
The article has an interesting perspective, but it doesn't answer the
perennial question - How many creators exactly?

Then there is this:

> , a growing swath of creators have fled to sites such as DTube to avoid the
> constraints. Like other upstart sites, DTube runs on the blockchain network
> Steem, and users can pay creators and commenters in digital tokens.

The article doesn't go beyond Dtube and Steemit at all, even though it tries
to quote them as examples. So the question is - what such sites other than
Dtube?

Actually, on reading it closely this is a submarine piece if there ever was
one.

~~~
Legogris
> Actually, on reading it closely this is a submarine piece if there ever was
> one. Never heard the term "submarine piece" before - care to explain its
> meaning and origin? (Googling yielded nothing)

~~~
skywhopper
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

It's a PR piece masquerading as a news article, supported by the reporter's
relationship with PR reps for the named companies. Not that it was planted or
bought. It's just lazy reporting. Write up a summary of what your friends
and/or acquaintances say, don't do any real background, and definitely don't
be skeptical of any claims. Accept terms like "blockchain" as something it
makes sense for video streaming sites to be built on. You end up with an
article that took little time to write, gets plenty of clickthroughs thanks to
its great headline. Another deadline met.

------
egwynn
The real question is whether wider audiences of valuable consumers will follow
the defecting creators. This feels like a repeat of gab/voat but for video.
Neither of those platforms seem to have broken outside of their core bases of
“original defectors” to become real contenders to their predecessors (twitter
/ reddit).

------
fbn79
Anyone remember Joost from Skype Founder?
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost)).

------
throw2016
We need decentralization and a multitude of platforms. A single centralized
platform can't scale and no amount of automation can solve that. Human
moderators are expensive and won't scale.

Who is going to vet 400,000 hours of video per minute Youtube apparently gets
or the volume of posts Facebook gets? It's not practically possible.

Before no one really cared, but as the real world consequences of a
centralized platform, surveillance and propaganda become clear the cost to
free society becomes too great.

The only half way measure that may work now is to stop hoovering up data, stop
trying to make endless correlations and inferences to offer micro targeting.
Similarly advertisers can target by location and immediate textual context but
micro targeting should be disallowed. With proper legislation this can easily
to enforced.

------
klez
I'm not sure I understand. Are these sites paying with cryptocurrencies or is
the content delivery based on blockchains? The article is a bit vague about
this.

~~~
Jyaif
The article is shit, that's for sure.

Only the payment is via cryptocurrency. The content delivery is as centralized
as ever, so this does not change anything wrt to "privacy concerns,
censorship".

~~~
DalasNoin
It uses IPFS for hosting, IPFS stores hashes on a blockchain. IPFS is
according to wikipedia a distributed file system.

------
otterpro
I like the idea of Dtube and I signed up (via steemit and took about a week to
be aproved) so I can upload video as an alternative to Youtube, but it's
frustrating to click on video and wait for few minutes of loading screen only
to get a cryptic "Error occurred while loading video", especially videos that
are older than a month old. I'm not sure why I couldn't view these videos, but
my guess is that either that they were taken down by the owner or by others
for violation, or that there were problems in IPFS. Anyway, it's been a very
frustrating experience so far.

------
sathishvj
Surprised that there is no mention of Brave and BAT in the article and in the
comments so far.

~~~
rainbowmverse
Whatever your perspective on Brendan Eich's views[0], anything he's in charge
of is a powder keg waiting to blow up. Brave/BAT will never go far while this
conflict remains.

[0] Which he refused to clarify, leaving people to make heuristic decisions
based on available info and personal experience with homophobia. He is, of
course, free to think and feel however he wants and not share details. Others
are free to decide what to invest time, energy, and money in.

~~~
maxencecornet
>powder keg waiting to blow up

I don't get it, what do you mean ? Is this related to his homophobia ?

I don't understand why so many people can't judge Eich without pointing his
homophobia, how is this even related to his tech abilities ?. The guy is a
visionary, I mean he was defending privacy when privacy wasn't an even a
mainstream issue, he invented in-browser scripting

BAT will be mainstream, no doubt about this !

------
maxencecornet
The blockchain-based alternative to Twitter, peepeth.com is worth mentioning
too

I've been using it since 10 days, it's really well made

~~~
gr33nman
There is also the holochain-based Twitter alternative, Clutter:

[https://github.com/holochain/clutter](https://github.com/holochain/clutter)

Holochain is a blockchain alternative designed to avoid blockchain’s
scalability and energy consumption issues.

------
grandinj
One swallow doth not a summer make

------
jacksmith21006
Google shared 1.6 billion hours consumed a day on YouTube up from 1 billion
hours a year earlier.

So does not look like it making a debt.

------
iamben
Doesn't all this come back to "it's better until it has to play within the
confines of the system"? I see so many articles about X disrupting Y, but if Y
is operating within the confines of the law, half the reasons people are
saying X is better are moot as soon X comes in line with Y.

WRT to the article - YouTube may have clamped down on blockchain ads and
extremist content, but what happens when DTube (or whoever) starting getting
in to hot-water relating to the content, or the ads they're showing. Or
someone decides to go hard about cryptocurrencies and taxes and they get
caught up. Then it's just another YouTube without as many users.

All that said, I applaud anyone that tries to compete against a monopoly. Just
think the odds are very much against them.

------
kauffj
Hi, LBRY CEO here (LBRY.io).

If you're interested in our technology and product, everything we build is
open-source and MIT licensed. Our GitHub is at github.com/lbryio

There is a contributing guide at lbry.io/faq/contributing . We send
cryptocurrency for all accepted PRs.

------
ruiquelhas
> All three advertising-driven sites are phasing out ads for cryptocurrencies,
> shielding themselves from potential legal liability if the ads are scams or
> the digital coins are eventually regulated as securities.

There isn't any other reason for these platforms to have any kind of usage
whatsoever as of today. The creator of one of those so-called blockchains is a
known scammer himself, so I guess it makes it full-circle.

------
slantaclaus
The financial press is obsessed with blockchain. I’m sure there is something
to that (payments? Real estate ledgers?), but this isn’t it.

~~~
maxencecornet
The tech world too... All my freelance dev. friends are learning Solidity and
blockchain programming.

It's the latest tech trend, like noSQL/mongoDB a few years ago

------
Risse
LBRY, that was mentioned in the article, has a Youtube Partner Program that
pays the content creators in crypto currency for syncing their Youtube content
to the blockchain.

[https://lbry.io/youtube](https://lbry.io/youtube)

------
amelius
If you have a Youtube channel, then how do you move your viewers over to
DTube? I suspect Youtube will ban you if you simply link to DTube (or am I
wrong?) What if you have your own website, which links to DTube?

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
That would be really bad business practices and I haven't heard of anyone
experiencing this. So yes, you should be able to post links to whatever other
website you have. Many people post links to their blogs, websites, patreons,
etc. This might change in the future, but so far it hasn't been a problem.

~~~
amelius
> That would be really bad business practices

According to stories I read, there's some dark stuff going on at Youtube, e.g.
[1], discussion [2]. So I wouldn't be surprised if they'd downrank or delete
your channel if you start linking to external video sites. (Note: I have no
personal experience with this).

[1] [https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-
your-f...](https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-your-
favorite-youtube-videos/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528942)

------
homakov
Something is blockchain powered when you use it as full node. Light node the
very least. Dtube and steem are just websites you load in your browser. None
of blockchain properties are inherited in this case.

------
kiostech
I am considering to start a YouTube channel recently, dtube maybe a great
alternative. However, apart from a donation, is there any other possible
income source for the creator?

------
wufufufu
What does it mean to be "blockchain-powered"? Your funding comes from tricking
investors into thinking adding blockchain to every aspect of life is the
future?

------
amelius
How well do these alternatives work on mobile?

And how well do they work with existing services (e.g. can I post a link to a
video on Facebook, will it open the native viewer, etc.?)

------
oh-kumudo
Opened the link, can't play. Guess blockchain overall doesn't suit me very
well. If however, it suits them, good luck, more alternatives aren't bad.

------
amelius
Is decentralized synonymous with blockchain-powered now?

------
Arzh
I zoned out about half-way, are the sites actually built on blockchain or are
they just using crypto currencies?

------
jeena
I wanted to sign up, but they wanted my phone number. Fail.

------
tobyhinloopen
Yes maybe like 10 creators

------
ForHackernews
Hahahaha, no they are not.

~~~
maxencecornet
How do you know that ? Are you familiar with Dtube or steemit ?

As a Dtube user, It's true that there are more and more content creators
everyday on the platform.

The amount of content is still veeeeery far away for Youtube's, I'm pretty
sure Youtube/Medium/Twitter don't really care about their blockchain-based
counterparts right now, because of how small and hard to scale they are

~~~
netzone
Well.. That's the point isn't it? I've never heard about it, and likely only
people interested in blockchain stuff has, I would guess.

On that note, are there any mainstream blockchain based sites or apps right
now? Would be interesting to know.

~~~
maxencecornet
>likely only people interested in blockchain stuff has

Not sure, Furious Pete has moved his audience to Dtube and he is a fitness
vlogger

>On that note, are there any mainstream blockchain based sites or apps right
now? Would be interesting to know

I think that Circle is the most mainstream blockchain based app right now,
because no one using it know that it's blockchain-based !

[https://www.circle.com](https://www.circle.com)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_\(company\))

~~~
mcintyre1994
Do you have any idea how Circle works? I guess nobody knows it's blockchain-
based because it's instant and has no fees, which doesn't sound like a
blockchain. Are they just making a loss and swallowing all the risk (covering
fees and transfering real cash before any blockchain confirmations) or is
something else going on?

~~~
ForHackernews
I doubt they're doing anything on a blockchain, unless it's a "private
blockchain" (aka database)

------
largehotcoffee
No, they aren't.

------
notspanishflu
Link without tracking
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/youtube-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/youtube-
and-facebook-are-losing-creators-to-blockchain-powered-rivals)

PS HN should snip the tracking part in OPs automatically.

~~~
pandasun
[https://write.as/b7s8ggwfu4znd.md](https://write.as/b7s8ggwfu4znd.md)

Usenet post next? :P

------
gigatexal
Good.

------
ebbv
What a load of crap. Major channels are not giving up their enormous paychecks
from Google to take a flier on blockchain powered alternatives with no
audience on it.

The only people switching are people who have a vested interest in everything
blockchain or those who are being driven off Youtube by the ad policy changes.

~~~
dingaling
But if the 'little folk' who are affected by the monetization changes find
they can make money on Dtube or wherever, who will fill the lower tranches of
YouTube? Other than those producing and uploading out of principle and without
desire to earn anything.

Unless you can ramp quickly to 4,000 hours of viewing per year, YouTube is a
penniless grind. Whereas other sites offer pay-per-view right from the first
viewer.

~~~
ebbv
Depends on your goals and your audience.

My channel is about guitar stuff, I joined an existing community and am easily
finding viewers on Youtube. It might be an uphill battle for me on one of
those alternative platforms, and frankly I have no interest in even giving
them a shot. I know there's millions of people viewing millions of hours a day
on Youtube, and I know how the game is played there.

Those other platforms are unproven and frankly I don't know who's behind them.
Just as Google decided to implement policies that favor their advertisers,
these blockchain based alternatives may decide anyone with any tweets that can
be perceived as being unfriendly towards cryptocurrencies get shut down, just
as an example.

The devil you know....

