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."
"Self-help" videos targeted at men often lead to that too I've found. I might be watching a video about how to come across as more confident to people, or tricks to becoming more disciplined, and with just four or five clicks via Peterson/Milo/Shapiro videos you'll get to the "Lib CUCK get's destroyed by FACTS and LOGIC" side of YouTube.
This is honestly a really dark pattern that I feel has trapped a lot of unsure/insecure adolescent men. I had a college roommate who had a lot of trouble talking to people, and constantly watched a lot of self help videos (which is honestly a pretty good indicator of self-improvement). However, he was exposed to a lot of rabid political rhetoric at the same time.
All it took to steer him away was getting him outside and with some nice people, but those who are more withdrawn I think are increasingly being exposed to this kind of content at their most impressionable time. It almost feels manufactured.
Fascism has always had a kind of "self-improvement" as a core of its appeal: it offers the freedom of scapegoating, of blaming others. It's a lot easier to go out and denounce someone than recognise the parts of yourself that need work and work on them. And it's very easy for people to enjoy being part of an angry mob, or reinforce their masculinity through street violence or weapons accumulation.
The "pick up artist" ecosystem had a similar appeal, of selling self-help to the vulnerable. That collapsed into the "incel" subculture of blaming everything on women and percieved more attractive men.
as a core of its appeal: it offers the freedom of scapegoating, of blaming others. It's a lot easier to go out and denounce someone than recognize the parts of yourself that need work and work on them. And it's very easy for people to enjoy being part of an angry mob
The above could also apply to the toxic segments of the "social justice" mobs.
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.
What I'd like is a feature that requires kids to completely finish watching a selected video once before another will start. On Plex or YT.
Maybe I'm just "old", but something feels very unhealthy about enabling kids' propensity to flip between shows as soon as one gets the slightest bit slow. Or make them get up and walk over to the TV to switch channels :).
So tired of the unrelated drivel youtube recommends. I will gladly watch a few favorite channels all day but youtube wants me to either watch "similar" channels of 5% the quality or "top 10 hot girl fails" which, btw, I have _never_ clicked on why does it still recommend this to me?
Every few months I find another channel that is absolutely incredible and in line with what I already watch and I wonder "why was that not recommended before? why lower quality or unrelated videos?"
I have to imagine that there is a market out there for SAFE low-ish budget content created to distract kids. I can imagine a "youtube kids" but where every video has actually been vetted by a responsible adult.
Disney has a bunch of shows that are just kids doing stuff. It’s scripted, but has the same ability to occupy kids time. They have production quality, but seem less than some homemade youtubers.
As a parent, I’ll settle for not having flatearth videos in my kids feed.
Disney owns ABC. ABC owns America’s Funniest Home Videos. AFV owns decades and decades of some of the best, curated, family-friendly, user-submitted home made videos the world has to offer.
AFV was YouTube before the internet. I’m certain AFV will have a lot of content on Disney+ specifically to capture that audience of kids interested in more organic content.
Is there any service that sells homemade kid videos? I was specifically talking about paid quality content. Disney+ will not only have Disney and Pixar films, but decades of Disney channel content too. That, along with Youtube Kids + whitelist, and you should be pretty set.
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.
> 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.
By the very name YouTube was about individuals creating content, and not a select few creators. YouTube is a successful example of the old saying "content is king". People just wanted to be entertained, and cared little for the quality or lack thereof (whether in the content or the encoding). Even Vimeo hasn't quite the traction that YouTube has even with it's focus on encoding quality.
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.
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.
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.
The biggest mark against this site is that it's basically what YouTube has been trying to do for years, and had failed at. If YouTube and their huge install base can't do it, I'm skeptical that nebula can.
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.
You are kinda getting at the problem, but I don't think you fully hit it with your comment. The reality is that for small services, hand curation works perfectly fine. This right now is a platform with a couple dozen hand picked creators, and if you like a some of them, chances are you will like the others too.
The issue with that is that these platforms don't really scale, and will always be gated by some magical hand. Getting on there is probably more about having the right connections. As long as Nebula stays small, it'll probably be fine, but this greatly limits to breadth of the site.
One great example would be early Steam, and what Epic is sorta trying to re-create now. As the site got bigger and allowed more and more games, finding something you like became impossible. You had to dig through piles of crappy low tier games to find anything good. That's where algorithmic recommendation becomes a must.
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?
<gruesome>
>But .2% of the time it assembles a playlist of content finely tuned to the tastes of a pedophile.
I knew about this stuff since pokemon go in the summer and I mean in 2016 What I used to do is search on YouTube something like "pokemon go challenge" and then look at videos posted 1 hours ago or today and then see videos of with children. Then if you looked at their channel you'll sometimes find gold because kids are bored and record themselves and put it online.
I don't think much has been done they just stopped the comments with timestamps of poses
</gruesome>
I am assuming they are referring to YouTube giving up on the old definition of "subscribe" and re-ordering peoples feeds to improve engagement. They want to be YouTube Premium with a guaranteed sequential subscription timeline.
The ordering of the feed page is driven by an algorithm. And it seems many people have too many subscriptions and just look at some of the top videos in the feed before moving on. This means as a creator you have to appease the algorithm even for your subscribers, to win against their other subscriptions.
I am unsure if there is something misleading there.
I don’t want any push notifications, ever. I do want my subscriptions list to include exactly the things I subscribed to in reverse chronological order.
Most of the content that I watch and the content creators that I'm subscribed to comes from the recommendations. As far as I'm concerned, the algorithm works great.
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.
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.
> 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.
From the few content creators in my circle -- they all despise advertising as a way to monetize their production. It almost forces the content creator to refactor their content in such a way that plays nice with advertising. Not to mention income from advertising is inconsistent.
I much prefer the model Nebula uses even if I'm not their target audience (I do not consume much YouTube these days).
If you look at the creators on there, the majority of them create fairly similar content. Most of them are either educational or video essay channels. They are mostly banking on the fact that if you like some of these creators, chances are you will like most of them. It seems like they are targeting a specific niche of people and it's definitely not meant to be for everyone. It's their own little walled garden, a shared patreon if you will.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A quick check shows that every video posted by one of my subscribed channels (in the last week) appears in that feed. If that's not happening it sounds like some kind of bug.
> This seems be directed at creators interested in their platform, which would be their audience at this stage.
I rather doubt it. There's no information presented about how to sign up as a creator, and from statements elsewhere, they don't seem all that interested in bringing in new talent from outside their circle. (They believe they're already "the smartest, most creative people online" and "highly selective about who we work with" [0].)
Meanwhile, the niche that the creators represented here target is likely already conscious of YouTube's "algorithm" as an issue, thanks to countless video-essays on the topic authored by those creators over the years.
Based on what creators I watch on youtube frequently complain about the problem with youtube is less the recommendation algorithm and more the constant changing of rules around how the UX works, with little/no documentation. There's also the seemingly arbitrary demonetization of videos with little to no recourse from creators.
An example: you used to "subscribe" to a youtuber to get notifications about new videos, but then notifications frequently don't happen, then they added the little bell toggle which supposedly controls whether you get notifications or not, but then notifications still don't seem to happen all the time.
The trick is, you want to not screw with viewers you already have while still having discoverability tools for the rest. Theoretically this would be like what the sub page SHOULD be plus the home page that recommends stuff based on your viewing habits. Gimme both well segregated and I'm interested.
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.
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.
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.
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+.
>> I want one single platform with all of the content.
Startup idea: what is really needed is an aggregation service similar to RSS for video. I agree, I don't want to waste my limited time checking multiple sites, which is the real value of my YouTube subscriptions tab. Trouble is, it's only that one site. Instead of another platform, what would actually be useful is a site which would aggregate my YouTube subscriptions with other platforms. The extra friction of checking an additional site just guarantees I will start ignoring the content.
Since the beginning of television, there have been commercials and sponsored television programming. NPR/PBS has made the user supported thing work along side the sponsored programming. The audience is willing to put up with ads in exchange of viewing free content. However, those commercials never had the ability of doing me or my viewing platform any harm. Apart from malicious ad networks, my biggest complaint over the ads is there entirely total lack of concern for placement. Content created for commercial television has breaks where ads occur. YT and other platforms just randomly place an ad based on some formula for number of ads per total run time.
I honestly think it is, and becoming more so. I've personally already signed up for YouTube premium, because I hate ads. I've signed up to this as well.
I'd gladly pay for quality content. My time is worth it. And are most people's.
Well, obviously someone will find some actually unrelated reason for why this will fail. Let me try one: the thumbnails don't autoplay when I hover. That's why this failed. There's going to be a God of the Gaps thing going on here.
Oh oh, how about "this doesn't accept crypto. it's doomed"
It is a viable method, you just won't get many customers. For a smaller userbase, it is entirely feasible and profitable to do stuff like this based on subscriptions. Ad revenue can be higher, but is volatile and harder to implement. Personally, I feel like this is delving too close to other SVOD services. While a potential four figure CPM is alluring, I don't think we'll truly begin to see it.
How is a smaller user base more viable? You can look at Patreon to see just how few accounts make anywhere near a fulltime salary, let alone enough to pay for top tier video production. This model depends on scale.
Ads are harder to implement correctly. Obviously, you can get an AdSense script tag and probably get it working in a couple days, but if you want a good CPM, that's not plausible.
A smaller user base is more valuable as they're more targeted and likelier to buy subscriptions. There are your outliers like those Patreon accounts and Netflix, but they're not very common.
There have been hundreds of attempts and Youtube itself already has direct monetization options.
Video is the hardest because of the cost of production and hosting, but subscriptions just don't scale very far. People always forget that the vast majority of people on this planet cannot afford these rates, and putting up a paywall only prevents them from getting access.
Considering how well paid tech is, and how willing we are to resign ourself to our little HN bubble, I'm unsurprised to see the claim made so often here.
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....
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?
"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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm deeply annoyed with YouTube and their policy of extracting any minute of possible attention from my eyes. I watch less and less YouTube and I would happily pay for quality contents.
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.
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
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.
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."