
Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators - rahuldottech
https://watchnebula.com/
======
stcredzero
Here's the impression I'm getting looking at that page: It's like YouTube
Originals. Curated, safe, sanitized. As an adult, this is like the last thing
I'd want in a YouTube-like site, for my viewing. I don't feel like I'm likely
to find something unusual or unexpected.

On the other hand, if I was a parent looking to distract my very young kids,
curated, safe, sanitized, and ad-free is exactly what I'd want.

EDIT: Issac Arthur is on there. Maybe I'll give it a try. Maybe this site can
use YouTube as its "Bush Leagues." That's only going to work if it can portray
itself as "The Majors."

~~~
duxup
Yeah I've sworn off YouTube for my kids... you can't whitelist anything and
the amount of garbage even on YouTube kids is terrible.

~~~
bscphil
That's a reasonable choice in my opinion. If you want to make any videos
available to younger kids, you might have a look at Youtube-dl which would
allow you to store pre-viewed videos offline on a device for them to watch.

~~~
ericd
Youtube-dl is great, especially paired with a NAS running Plex server.

------
themagician
This is so funny to me. The vast majority of creators really don't understand
their "role", so to speak, in the YouTube ecosystem. The ego, I think,
consumes them.

Most content on YouTube—most views, most videos, most trending content—is just
slightly better than nothing at all. The bar is both surprisingly low and high
at the same time. Most people will not pay for most of the content that gets
upload to YouTube in any way. And the reality is that the people who complain
about demonization—the vast majority of them—would have zero revenue anyway
because no one is going to pay to advertise against their content either.

The keyword is most. There are a handful of creators whose content is more
valuable than nothing at all. They are not bound by YouTube. Never have been.
They choose to host on YouTube because it's a good deal for them, but they
could just as easily survive hosting their content somewhere else.

If you've got valuable content you can host it somewhere else and people will
watch it. They will share it far and wide. Some people will spend money for
it. Advertisers will gladly work with you and you'd be surprised just how
quickly they find you and want to cut you a deal for a :30 spot. But most
content isn't valuable outside of YouTube. Most content isn't even valuable
enough to pay for the bandwidth it takes for people to watch it.

The YouTube alternative already exists. It's called hosting the content
yourself.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
> If you've got valuable content you can host it somewhere else and people
> will watch.

I'm not sure I agree. Discovery is a big deal. There are many lifetimes of
content out there that I want to watch, and some of it exists in places I've
never heard of. Content that's already famous will be fine, but quality
content alone is not enough to attract viewers, in the same way that a quality
business that nobody knows about goes out of business.

------
Bukhmanizer
I'll play devils advocate here, and say that I could potentially see this idea
working.

The difference between this and the plethora of different video services, is
that the product here may not be the actual video service, but can be seen as
a way to support the various video creators.

Most of the creators on Nebula are already drawing in pretty large followings
on Patreon, so it's clear that they are able to retain dedicated audiences
that will pay for content. Even as someone who doesn't watch much Youtube, I
can recognize a lot of great channels, like CGP Grey, Lindsay Ellis, Crash
Course, etc.

Also, I can totally see the advantage of having a service like this compared
to youtube for kids. It's a bit scary how fast children are being exposed to
the internet nowadays.

All that being said, it's clearly very difficult and risky to start a video
service nowadays, but I think this has a slightly higher probability of being
sustainable compared to many of the other offerings I've seen.

~~~
zrobotics
As someone who supports multiple youtubers on patron, I am really sceptical of
these alternative services. For instance, I really enjoyed motortrend's
roadkill series, but haven't bothered once they moved to motortrend.com. One
huge advantage, and one of the reasons I canceled Netflix, is that I can
easily see in one place what is new. If I have a half-hour to kill, I don't
want to have to check 8 different sites, I'd rather just open up my
subscriptions tab.

Perhaps what is actually necessary is a RSS equivalent, since I fully
understand how YouTube is screwing creators. But this (and the equivalent
projects, like LinusTechTips' floatplane) just seem like they are destined to
follow vimeo.

~~~
Bukhmanizer
The problem is that a lot of creators already have RSS feeds, but almost no
one uses them.

Also, RSS doesn't address the problem of having a sustainable business model.
As much as people may criticize youtube, it's really the only service that has
come up with a long-term business model for video creators. It's a massively
flawed model, but it's still a model.

------
jasode
_> No algorithm._

A personal observation...

On that Nebula site, I see creators like CGP Grey, Wendover Productions, Real
Engineering, etc. I learned about their existence from _Youtube 's algorithmic
suggestions_. Probably 99% of any channel I watch regularly on Youtube came
from algorithms instead of url referrals of HN or reddit.

Yes, algorithms have a dark side such as the ElsaGate situation. All I can say
is that they were effective in suggesting the type of topics (education) I
like.

~~~
untog
Of course, that's why YouTube insists on keeping recommendations despite the
horror stories. It works 98% of the time. But .2% of the time it assembles a
playlist of content finely tuned to the tastes of a pedophile.

But you can't take the smooth without the rough. The plus side of the
recommendation algorithm is great, but is it worth the bad side?

~~~
chasontherobot
what happens the other 1.8% of the time?

~~~
egypturnash
Hi! Would you like to learn about why all the non-white races are inferior?
It'll be fun! Just click on this thumbnail we keep on suggesting.

------
elliekelly
I (naively) expected the platform to be paid for by the _creators_ in a way
where they all shared the operating costs while finding some “fair” way to
allocate advertising income.

Instead they’ve taken Jay-Z’s Tidal strategy: create a premium platform for
the content creators and expect the content consumers to pay a premium price
for it.

~~~
notatoad
Tidal is a perfect analogy. It's a bunch of artists sitting around saying
"hey, what if we just stopped caring about what our customers want?"

~~~
kjsbfkjbf
Rather, it's a bunch of artists sitting around saying, "Hey, what if we got
paid fairly?".

~~~
pjc50
It's not enough for the artists to agree on what "fair" means, the customers
and whoever's actually paying have to agree too.

~~~
kjsbfkjbf
Not really.

An individual can absolutely value their output at any value they so choose
and be correct. The idea that "the market" is a "fair" determinant of value
should be challenged at every step lest we allow people to suffer because they
do not have enough money to pay for the "fair" amount for healthcare.

That is not even mentioning that we do not have perfect information (to come
to a "fair" value) and that facets orthogonal to product value (i.e.
marketing, brand inertia) play a huge role in determining what customers are
willing to pay for.

But even playing along with the naive model: Tidal has a non-zero amount of
paying customers. Some people enjoy music (+ Tidal exclusives) enough to treat
it as more than a cost:convenience ratio.

~~~
pjc50
> An individual can absolutely value their output at any value they so choose
> and be correct.

I don't think a value can be "correct" or "wrong" in an absolute sense, it's a
subjective property. You can value it at whatever you like but you may not
find a buyer. If people are happy paying for Tidal, then it's fair to them.

> lest we allow people to suffer because they do not have enough money to pay
> for the "fair" amount for healthcare.

These are very different, given that one is far more essential than the other,
which can also be duplicated for near-zero marginal cost.

------
cartman82
> No algorithm

They are conflating what they care about vs. what the audience cares about.

~~~
smaddock
This seems be directed at creators interested in their platform, which would
be their audience at this stage. The "algorithm" on YouTube can decide whether
or not a video will be discovered. Guaranteeing that subscribers will see
their recent content could be a good selling point.

~~~
bscphil
>Guaranteeing that subscribers will see their recent content could be a good
selling point.

Sorry, doesn't Youtube already do that? I subscribe to 20-30 channels, and in
my subscriptions feed it simply shows all the videos from channels I'm
subscribed to in reverse chronological order - exactly the way people say they
want to see these feeds.

~~~
maxton
Youtube used to do that, until at some point they added the “bell” feature and
converted all subscriptions to subscriptions-without-a-bell which means only
some videos get put in your feed. Of course, if you go the extra step to click
the bell icon you get the notifications like usual.

~~~
ihuman
I thought the bell was just for push notifications vs no push notifications?

~~~
bscphil
That is also what I thought. My subscriptions feed shows only videos, not
other posts and notifications. As far as I can tell it shows _all_ the videos.
This seems like a reasonable default to me.

~~~
rezonant
That is how it works to the best of my knowledge, but most users don't browse
that way; they browse from the home page. Hence it's a perceived issue to a
lot of creators. Not saying I agree that the answer is no recommendation
engines ("algorithms"), though...

The bell controls notifications about new content, which was a change from
older YouTube, where they would notify for all new videos for subscriptions on
mobile. But as the userbase grew, so too did their subscription lists, so it
really is a reasonable feature. So this is the "change" the YouTubers talk
about.

~~~
bscphil
So basically the issue, from the creator standpoint, is that Youtube gives
users the ability to browse their subscriptions, or to look at a set of
recommendations, and many users choose to look at the recommendations? Sounds
like you have an issue with your subscribers, not with Youtube.

------
rfwhyte
Seems like more and more "content creators" are getting into the platforms
business, and I genuinely don't think many, if any of them are going to
succeed. If Legendary Pictures, with their Chinese government money and big
acquisitions of Nerdist and Geek and Sundry couldn't make their subscription
site work, what makes these guys think they'll be any different? As a consumer
of content, I don't want dozens of different platforms, all taking a share of
my wallet and attention, I want one single platform with all of the content.

~~~
cannonedhamster
There were failed social media platforms before Myspace and Facebook. If you'd
have said Facebook would outgrow Myspace people would have thought you were
crazy. At some point someone is going to unseat YouTube. It's going to take
timing, luck, and a product that delivers something better or different than
YouTube. Is this it? Who knows? Most likely not, but that's why you keep
trying.

~~~
sgillen
The person you are responding too isn’t saying that youtube will never be
overtaken, he’s saying he doesn’t think it will be overtaken by dozens of
smaller content platforms, but rather one large one.

~~~
cannonedhamster
But you don't become a large company without first starting small. Even large
corporations tend to use pilot programs in order to establish product market
fit. Disney for instance tested their software on less valuable material
before deciding to create Disney+.

------
robot
[https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-
now-120b40becafa](https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa)

~~~
dymk
And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would
surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed.

Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable
model over ads after this one?

~~~
awalton
It's way beyond Try 2.

And the last company to try this exact model, Vessel, was snapped up and
murdered by Verizon to keep it from being a threat...

------
philwelch
I like this idea, but they need more content. Right now, this site is a paid
service where you can get a handful of good YouTube channels. Thing is, this
only has maybe 1/3 of the good YouTube channels I actually subscribe to. If I
just use YouTube instead, I can watch all of these channels, plus Scott
Manley, The History Guy, Military History Visualized, a handful of gun
channels, Essential Craftsman, a bunch of genuinely worthwhile sports
channels....

------
aerovistae
When I land there I don't see videos and content, I see a sign up button and a
sales pitch with a subscription price tag.

 _Instant failure._ Zero chance.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
>No programmatic ads

The "programmatic" qualification has a weird smell and makes me suspicious.

~~~
64738
Same here. The moment I saw "programmatic ads" I thought, "then what kind of
ads _do_ they have?"

~~~
khrbrt
Maybe they mean they don't add ads before/during/between the videos, but leave
in sponsored ads the creators put in the videos themselves.

Is there a better word for that? Is there a broadcasting term for the type of
ads you'd see more in the '50s, ie. "This program brought to you by Lucky
Strike! Hmmm, it's toasted!", where the ad is embedded into the show and not a
separate block of 15, 30 second segments?

------
opan
I don't see this working better than something like peertube. We don't need
centralized alternatives, we need decentralized alternatives.

~~~
trazire
While I agree, decentralized video shouldn't be considered any more then it
actually is; a tool for serving videos with lower bandwidth costs.

------
paxys
"Alternative to YouTube" where you can't upload videos?

It's funny to see a bunch of content creators who got to where they are only
because of YouTube and its algorithms now decrying all of that as evil. And to
fight that they are creating a closed community where new contributors will be
carefully selected by them, not the users.

------
ilovetux
They need more selection. If they had "codyslab" and "extra credits" I would
probably sign up.

I know it's probably weird to suggest specific channels, but honestly these
two channels represent the only real genres of YouTube that I watch.

------
whisdol
Dave Wiskus, one of the co-creators of the standard.tv network behind this
platform, gave some insights on the /r/CGPGrey2 subreddit [0] and on Twitter
[1].

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey2/comments/bs52a1/nebula_an_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey2/comments/bs52a1/nebula_an_educational_streaming_service_from/)
[1]
[https://twitter.com/dwiskus/status/1131587829136601088](https://twitter.com/dwiskus/status/1131587829136601088)

------
radicalriddler
It's cool to see that they have some quite popular channels on there already.
Crash Course is on there, as well as some of my personal favourites;
PhilosophyTube and Coding Train.

------
desireco42
I think these initiatives are great. But they lack a tiny bit of thought to
pass the hurdle of adoption.

------
user00012-ab
I clicked "browse all channels" to see what kind of content they had, but they
just show me a bunch of pictures and if I want a description I need to click
on each one? This interface is mostly useless unless you already know all of
these people.

categories would be nice.

------
jonaphin
This business positioning reminds me of what "App.net" did to Twitter a few
years back.

~~~
stcredzero
What's that? I just went to app.net and all I found was a mostly empty map.

~~~
chrisseaton
Exactly... they ended up doing nothing.

------
dvduval
How could they possibly challenge a Monopoly like YouTube?

~~~
ALittleLight
My perception is YouTube has a hostility toward independent creators, and this
niche could be better served.

1\. Copyright system is easy to abuse and harshly punishes people perceived as
infringing.

2\. Videos demonetized for unpredictable reasons.

3\. Trending page is basically off limits to YouTubers in favor of corporate
media. E.g. Logan Paul requires 11 million views to hit the trending page
whereas ESPN requires 500k. Naturally ESPN trends much more than more popular
YouTubers. httpss://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18642833/youtube-trending-
coffee-break-pewdiepie-late-night-sports-highlights

4\. YouTube's discovery system is opaque. I have a small YouTube channel and
my most successful video has about half a million views. This video has worse
metrics than my other videos proportionally but somehow gets recommended a lot
whereas my other videos don't and I have no idea why. Conversely, imagine
YouTube shared details about what metrics you need to hit to get recommended
or surfaced in the search page.

5\. Discovery. As a small channel, it's tough to get views. Why not gamify
this: if you average X watch time and Y likes on 3 videos, we'll put your
video in the suggestions for 100 people who wouldn't see it otherwise. There
should be an easy way to see who is streaming too, which is difficult for some
unknown reason.

6\. Help with content creation. YouTube must know what people are searching
for on YouTube and what search queries have good or bad results. Why not give
that information to creators? I could check and see that X people search for
Y, and Y has really weak results. Okay, great, if I like X, I can put together
a video to answer the query and collect some sweet views helping me and
YouTube.

~~~
kkarakk
you do realize logan paul is ALSO a corporate creator right? there is a whole
consortium of people that fund his antics in exchange for him shilling their
stuff. It was an artificially created brand right from the beginning...Dude
was a disney actor,why do you think his channel is indie in any way?

your point stands but your choice of example is strange.

~~~
ALittleLight
I picked him just because his figures are mentioned exactly in the article.
It's also true of more independent creators.

------
dlbucci
How is this any different from vessel? (Apart from being more expensive than
the $3 per month that site was?)

------
greenhatman
Seems like there are a few bugs. I still subscribed. I hope this succeeds.

------
ajna91
I may sign up for this solely to support the kind of future I want.

------
vorpalhex
I was checking their ToS to see if they'd allow creators demonetized by
youtube and found this clause:

> Refusal to vaccinate your children may result in the termination of your
> service and, probably, your children.

While I agree refusal to vaccinate your children is dumb, they're starting off
on the wrong foot by already setting a very awkward line in the sand. What
about hawking fake cures for cancer like vinegar?

Either they need to go full moderation/walled garden, or entirely hands off.
Trying to land in the middle is going to end with a bunch of people exploiting
their precise ToS and legitimate users being annoyed at lack of clarity.

~~~
corobo
> full moderation/walled garden

They are full moderation. It's a curated bunch of creators. I think the
submission's title has confused 99% of the folks commenting on this post. It
is not an alternative to YouTube. It's an alternative place to YouTube _to
view these content creators ' videos_

------
vecplane
How will this service succeed where so many others have failed?

The audience, algorithm, and network effects of YouTube are what make it a
valuable and viable platform for content creators. You can't put this content
behind the paywall of an unknown service and expect to get anything close to
similar results.

As much as I would like to see competition in the online video market, I would
be surprised to see this still operating a year or two from now.

------
tus87
> Refusal to vaccinate your children may result in the termination of your
> service and, probably, your children.

Did you say something about wanting my money or was I just imagining it?

