VidMe or Why Platforms Aren't Your Friends

[@whynotanyting]

Update: Vidme shut down later in December of that year due to Google, Facebook, and Instragram being cited as "too competitive," by Warren Shaeffer. In 2021, A pornography company bought the domain and any article or social media post that included an embedded vidme link now contained hardcore porn.

[@SeleenShadowpaw]

*chefs kiss*

[@hauntedsunsets]

this is the funniest possible outcome, thank you so much for this vital update

[@NexusSpacey]

Thank you for the update

[@ShockedLogic]

got curious and checked what porn company bought it, something called 5 Star HD Porn (yes, literally that generic) and I daresay is the VidMe of porn sites, nothing had any views, literally 0, and everything was an upload from 'admin'.

[@merrittanimation7721]

Watching this video with this as the first comment I see is just beautiful. Like the opening monologue of Romeo and Juliet telling you how this story ends, and making it all the better.

[@Jader7777]

You have a garden You plant flowers, you get flowers You plant weeds, you get weeds You plant nothing, you get weeds

[@MrMoon-hy6pn]

If you plant flowers, you get flowers, and weeds

[@someanimal3506]

You have a garden, you get weeds.

[@crepperwlp]

You plant weed, you get high

[@charalampospapaioannou2371]

@@crepperwlp You get too high, you suffocate from low pressure

[@Calpsotoma]

Weeds have no botanical definition, only a agriculture one. It's agriculture definition is basically "a plant where it is unwanted". A stalk of corn in a soy field is technically a weed.

[@PhilosophyTube]

So glad someone else is saying that the relationship between creators and platforms is inherently antagonistic; it's an example of the relationship between capital and labour, so ofc it is!

[@mlovecraftr]

+

[@HxH2011DRA]

Philosophy Tube oh shit waddup!

[@victorbarraza4910]

so... what's the story behind your account?

[@PhilosophyTube]

Mine? When the British government chose to triple tuition fees I decided to give away my Philosophy MA for free online so anybody could learn what I'd learned without incurring debt

[@greenghost2008]

communist detected.

[@doughboydevito4529]

Personally, Dan's tone is less "salty", and more "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed in you wasting your potential, young man"

[@alex_roivas333]

XD

[@Herrikias]

When will Dan let Vidme love him?

[@vinesauceobscurities]

Getting old does that to you.

[@tomjung4960]

Calling a majority of the innocuous content creators on vidme "dregs" is pretty salty

[@Matrim42]

Tom Jung I don’t think you know what that word means.

[@stagpie6449]

Reminds me of when Digital Homicide asked Jim Sterling to be constructive and help them build a better game. 'I'm not your QA tester'. These companies have some nerve to suggest we do their literal job for them

[@Huntracony]

Not talking about that specific instance as the DH guy was clearly an asshole, but I do think it's different with individuals or very small companies. In those cases, it's usually about the art and not about the money. Not to say that large companies don't care about the art, nor that small companies don't care about money, but when the art is the primary focus, I don't mind at all when they ask people to help out a bit for free. Though they certainly have no right to demand it, like the DH guy did IIRC.

[@MegaZeta]

@@Huntracony "care about the art"? Money is the primary driver for both big and small companies. It's literally a legal obligation. If a company is not dedicated to making money for investors, it is in breach of its founding documents. That's why there's an entire, separate body of law for non-profits. I understand the desire to believe that e.g. a smaller video game company is "in it for the art", but that's not true, and it's dangerously naive. Among other problems, it leads to a deluded belief that "in it for the money" can be applied selectively as a value judgment. They're ALL in it for the money.

[@Huntracony]

@@MegaZeta The actually small companies I'm talking about are not publicly traded and have no obligation to investors because they have no investors. Of course they want to make money because they need money to live, but once they make enough to get by, art is definitely an important factor for many. I know, because I am one of them. Now go and fuck off to your happy place where everyone is a greedy bastard for no reason.

[@GladiusTR]

+Mega Zeta That's only for public traded companies. Privately owned ventures are usually run by,like, 3 people. See studio pixel for an ex treme example

[@GladiusTR]

@@doctordragon9798 I agree completely. I just wanted to correct what I saw to be an error

[@chelseajupiter2103]

The "Tell us how to make it better!" thing is just an easy way to appease onlookers. It's not about actually fixing the problem--it's about making sure you don't look bad in interactions.

[@goateeguy11221122]

I wouldn't say it's about whether they look bad in interactions so much as it is a sincere lack of understanding what they can do to fix the problem. They want to be better because someone's not happy, but they need the critic to do the thinking for them because they don't know how.

[@peregrinusoblivione4967]

@@goateeguy11221122 They failed.

[@MegaZeta]

Dan's right that it's more than that. Two low-cost ways to get people to contribute work hours to the benefit of your for-profit company are 1) to make it appear as though it benefits the contributor in some vague or general way beyond compensation, that is, without a paycheck for their work, and 2) to invoke a moral obligation on the part of the contributor, like the pressure they tried to put on Dan to submit criticism as a form of unpaid work for the company, because otherwise, the responses imply, he's being "negative" and not "constructive". "Building the community" or "helping the community", and the lie that "we're all in this together", do both. And for very little cost, it _will_ work on certain people.

[@ziglaus]

What? No. You are working under the assumption that no company can monetize their customers satisfaction, which this would definitely be a step in achieving

[@OhNotThat]

It's trying to turn critics and complainers into free unpaid market research laborers AND do some damage control to onlookers who are given at least the impression they are seeking to improve and seeking public participation. In reality, you owe them no such thing and shouldn't engage further beyond your complaint. You don't "owe" a failing business a solution to their own incompetence.

[@qetzia]

people asking for free labor on the web and passing it off as helping the community? groundbreaking

[@creamithmanning2632]

Please sign up for VidMe HEROES!

[@prod.hxrford3896]

"labor"

[@MegaZeta]

@@prod.hxrford3896 Yes, that _is_ labor. That's why, as Dan explains *(**13:56**),* the people he's addressing either have _paid_ people to do what they asked Dan to do for free, or they're incompetent. What's described is people spending their time and energy, measured in work hours, to benefit the bottom line of a company. The company can either pay them for time and energy they could employ elsewhere to earn a living, or it can use various low-cost methods to trick them into seeing what they're doing as beneficial to themselves or a moral obligation, "helping the community" being a top contender, because it uses both dishonest approaches.

[@swine13]

Yeah, im helping the community _help me_

[@barkingdoggo3331]

imagine doing art online- yeah.

[@Will-tu3fh]

It's made me realise that KZbin Premium is just returning many of the features KZbin previously had to their new subscribers

[@iprobablyforgotsomething]

Yep. For a price. Since they know the features were well received, they know they can hold them hostage until we cough up the monthly fee in return for the safe exchange of the options we already had when we began using yt in the first place...

[@lightypower3412]

@@iprobablyforgotsomething Switch to a cracked version of YT then, and *starve them fuckers*

[@mltfkyu]

@@lightypower3412 how can i do that?

[@lightypower3412]

@@mltfkyu I got "YT vanced" for my phone off the internet, but there prolly are others

[@ThisisnotTwitter]

I say that every time YT throw one of their own adverts at me offering their "best ever deal".... No. On sheer principle, I will never pay you subscription fees for what you already demonstrated could and should be free. I remember a time where it would utterly unthinkable to force you to watch one advert, let alone have multiple ads in the middle of videos! Do not allow your perspective to be lowered.

[@boiledelephant]

"As the site gets more and more traffic, your incentive as a platform shifts from managing individuals to managing the product as a whole, and pivots hard towards managing relationships with advertisers *instead* of content creators." This got REALLY relevant when KZbin removed the dislike counter.

[@zackosborn1731]

Update: Vidme just went out of business.

[@orionliketheconstellation3003]

Oop

[@MegaZeta]

Owned

[@POP-nm1ix]

Ouch

[@thegreatmajora5089]

Oof

[@DocteurRipeur]

I worked for a music platform few years ago with the same promise you describe : "it's gonna be for all the bands that are forgotten by the music business". It was music, therefore way cheaper than videos and no competitor as omnipotent as youtube (even less back then)… . But still, I can tell you one thing : you are absolutly right. Defining our relationship with musicians was out of question… my colleagues were scared to drive people away if they displayed some rules. They were afraid to look like dictators if they started to select the content… The outcome was predictably this : we had no real added value, we couldn't agree on any system to actually help the musicians (which would involve some sort of selection) so all the half-decent bands started to flee. Then, the reputation of the platform went from "meh" to "there's only garbage in there". And now… its pretty much an unknown zombie platform… that used to make great promises. I still think there's room for alternatives out there. Despite google. But it has to be done right.

[@OhNotThat]

These platforms all suffer from the same flaw as Buzzfeed and the "chasing of the good money after the bad". That is they make almost no real effort to retain, nurture or help anyone involved merely rentseek with little strings attached. BuzzFeed Unsolved as a break away hit for BuzzFeed, it was frankly the only notably success they had and what did BuzzFeed do with it? Nothing. Just took their cut and of course, "Unsolved" simply left BuzzFeed to start their own thing. These platforms are indeed mildly doomed, because they don't reward or attempt to retain any of their star performers so end up with them all leaving for greener pastures and everyone left behind are just the dregs who can't make it. Deadweight, weighing the whole platform down... the bad performers (the bad money) crowding out all the good ones. When 90% of the hosting money for expensive web servers is wasted on conservative video parodies of pop music that only gets 652 views the site is circling the drain

[@grahamkristensen9301]

Something tells me if VidMe survived a few more years, they would've gone down the same path as Gab and Parler.

[@ya9ya10]

It was already pretty much there by the end

[@twenty-fifth420]

Ehhhhh more specifically Rumble, but I get your point.

[@MananaMan]

I know for a fact that Gab, the company itself, was very vocal with it's own politics and if I'm not mistaken, so was Parler. The harsh truth is that the majority of "alt" platforms are inevitably going to get people who have fringe ideology whether the company like it or not and the platform has a choice of sacrificing its early adopters with draconian censorship or try to stay afloat long enough for people not as politically inclined to give your company it's platform. Odysee seems to be doing well but it still has yet to iron out a lot of its jank.

[@paultapping9510]

​@@MananaMan"politically inclined" and "draconian censorship" are very interesting framings of the respective behaviours.

[@MananaMan]

@@paultapping9510 Is it? They seem pretty predictable to me.

[@milhousevanhoutan9235]

"You're not paying me to do product development." I love the reiteration that work has value.

[@Torthrodhel]

Thanks for putting into words why I feel sick inside every time some social media thing tries to push this we're all friends vibe. No, you're a business. A thing that exists purely to make money. Decent work deserves decent payment, and non-decent work shouldn't be worth asking for, so asking for it kinda gives the game away.

[@wheatboi8255]

Jane Ross Not only are businesses focused only on making money but you're three times more likely to find a sociopath in a board room than a jail cell. Businesses aren't your friend and it's rediculous to think otherwise. They're more like rabbid dogs barely held back from tearing you apart by the chains of regulations and self interest. Chains which is gnaws on constantly while dreaming of day when it will finally be free.

[@Torthrodhel]

Nothing I'd disagree with there. That's absolutely where you want your thickest concentrations of your strongest regulatory chains, if you're gonna have capitalism at all.

[@GyaroMaguus]

For people watching in the future: this video came out in June 2017, Vidme shut down in December 2017, and the domain name is now owned by a hardcore pornography website

[@ImTopin]

Because of course it is.

[@saulitix]

Happy ending?

[@Jojje94]

The fact that Google are running KZbin at a deficit should be evidence that video hosting is crazy expensive and in most cases you're doomed to fail. Google is just one of those companies that's "too big to fail"

[@nathanclark2424]

As in if they fail the entire economy is fucked? Or they are so big that it is literally impossible for them to lose money?

[@minimooster7258]

@@nathanclark2424 a bit of both

[@UmbreonMessiah]

[CITATION NEEDED]

[@force6769]

that's not how you use "too big to fail"

[@BloodSprite-tan]

google has failed many times. look at google plus, that was a massive failure. google is able to take risk but they play very safely, they wouldn't put themselves in risk if they can avoid it.

[@Grillpander]

God, I'm wishing for subscribable playlist for so long now. There are many creators out there whose content interests me only partially (maybe a certain format or just a specific let's play series of them). So I don't want to subcribe to their entire channel, potentially clogging my sub box. Ah, the dreams!

[@TheNerd484]

One feature I would love is the ability to tag channels and easily go back to their pages without that channel's videos appearing in your sub feed.

[@katedoes...9783]

TheNerd484 Favourites, that's sometimes called.

[@TheNerd484]

I'm talking about this for channels not individual videos.

[@katedoes...9783]

TheNerd484 I mean on other websites you can subscribe and favourite users.

[@TheNerd484]

ok, thanks for clarifying!

[@timf7413]

I think it comes down to the simple maxim: "if you're not paying for a service, you're not a client, you're the product"

[@Journey_to_who_knows]

The school to prison pipeline summarised

[@Brent-jj6qi]

In this context though, the creators aren’t the customer, they’re an employee. The viewers are the product, and advertisers are customers

[@zyaicob]

This is a fundamentally capitalist view of the world and is absolutely correct in highly capitalist societies

[@snaifhassnan6348]

419 😞

[@bobdole8830]

Most companies these days pretend to be 'your buddies'. I used to have a tyrinacial, boss/owner with anger issues and it was less psychologically demanding to work for him than my current "buddy employer". Knowing where you're at is more manageable than walking on eggshells, not knowing when your buddy will stab you in the back.

[@aeroslythe6881]

Do you think the problem is people are under too much pressure to be nice? Like maybe niceness is a tool of oppression…

[@bobdole8830]

@@aeroslythe6881 In US working culture definitely. Just look at how American retail staff is treated and how they are supposed to behave towards the customer for example. That's neither normal nor healthy.

[@aeroslythe6881]

@@bobdole8830 Yeah you’re totally right. Well that sucks

[@snaifhassnan6348]

168 😞

[@HogandDice]

VidMe used to have an anonymous upload feature that I think was probably their original selling point. But they have since gotten rid of it. The Feature would have had a lot of potential for ARGs but it was SO easily exploitable.

[@FoldingIdeas]

Yeah, I'm starting to think their original idea was "Imgur, but for video" given their close ties with Reddit.

[@Triggerhappy938]

Then it was "we don't have ads", and now they are actively courting advertisers by their own admission. I'm not sure any feature of their platform is sacrosanct.

[@rickpgriffin]

@@FoldingIdeas Now imgur isn't even imgur anymore because of these same incentives

[@nyovyo]

can't believe i almost clicked off this video because of the release date. change "up-and-coming competitor" to "now-defunct competitor" and this could have come out yesterday. the points raised here aged really well. it's a shame nobody with the means seems to grasp that these are the real issues a true youtube competitor would need to solve.

[@blueisasomedancer]

I love that this is coming from someone who has been burned by a platform before. You obviously know your shit because you've seen it before. Also I think this plays into a bigger discussion of companies and organizations taking advantage of mostly young people to do work as volunteers that they really should be paid for. It makes it more difficult for professionals to find paying work and it takes advantage of people who don't know any better and devalues the contributions they make.

[@zerakielvmark]

It's the old "come work for us, it'll give you great exposure" trick but this time waving a few dollars in the distance.

[@blueisasomedancer]

Zerachiel van Mark Definitely, though specifically I was speaking about asking randos on the internet for site design advice and, more concerning to me is the "evangelization" he talks about briefly in the video. Asking small content creators to essentially become brand ambassadors and lead recruitment for new people on the site while not actually paying them anything for it and claiming they'll see big pay days down the line once the site is successful. It just seems scummy and exploitive.

[@DrewLSsix]

blueisasomedancer. it could be scummy, but theres always the chance that some people believe what they are saying. in other words, dont always attribute to intent what can easily be due to incompetence.

[@tornadomimicyclone6707]

This guy hasn't seen VidLii, as it's too small (but would probably change his mind). And he hasn't seen Bitchute, as you know what they put on that shit.

[@dracorex426]

I'm from the future. Vidme went out of business and a porn site bought their domain. Now a bunch of news websites have hardcore porn embedded in their older articles.

[@egoalter1276]

I find that hilarious. Linkrot is a gift sometimes.

[@FrankieSmileShow]

I think a great example of this is Channel Awesome. It wasnt exactly the same kind of platform as youtube or blip, but it seems like it had a similar relationship between the owners and the content creators. It seems like it began with genuine good intentions, but as its popularity grew, the needs of the platform and its content creators grew further apart, and things degenerated as the content creators realized this?

[@FoldingIdeas]

Yeah, the specifics are very different (it wasn't catering to advertisers) but the broad idea, that the incentives of the owners and the incentives of everyone else diverged substantially, is accurate.

[@davidk7439]

@@FoldingIdeas hahaaaaa this comment exchange aged particularly oddly shout out to my boy fred knut he knows what isss

[@MegaZeta]

@@davidk7439 oh

[@chadpursley]

This is essentially what happening with Quora. Great Q&A community, but they have made affiliate program to create spam, focus on driving traffic that advertisers like, but that writers don't care about. Then popular writers leave the platform, but have nowhere to go.

[@Brent-jj6qi]

Quora always kinda sucked anyways, as before the answers were often just fundamentally wrong, especially on anything remotely subjective or controversial

[@cc-to]

@@Brent-jj6qi Yes! Some of the-most-wrong stuff I've seen has been on Quora.

[@jameshart2622]

The number of physics questions I saw that had that problem. Especially when well-meaning people think they are protecting science by upcoming wrong answers, just because they don't understand that Issac Newton didn't know everything...

[@snowmystique2308]

A few people here are saying that you're being salty, but all I'm seeing is you being potassium-rich.

[@PasticheofSkin]

Snow Mystique K

[@theofficialmuffincrc]

+PasticheofSkin ayy

[@1berrylover178]

KCl - a salt containing potassium ions.

[@PasticheofSkin]

Duck You cloride heavy, damn those metallaic salts

[@SuperFlashDriver]

Potassium-Rich. XD That's a good way to look at this video from your point of view. =u

[@SSJFro]

I like you commented on the flaws of KZbin playlists. One of my biggest complaints with KZbin is that I can't subscribe to a single type of content produced by a creator. For example, I love the Honest Game Trailers series produced by Smosh, but I hate literally everything else Smosh makes. As much as I love the Honest Game Trailer series, I refuse to subscribe to the channel just because I don't want my subscription feed clogged up with all their other crap I don't care about.

[@adrianlopez3373]

SSJFro same for me with the Escapist, I just like Zero Punctuation

[@Asocial-Canine]

Thing is, you used to be able to subscribe to those "Show" playlists. I remember subbing to some series' on Machinima back in the day. I don't remember it working, as I don't recall ever seeing their videos in my feed, but that feature was there. YT just axed it with all their good ideas

[@Silas_MN]

This describes my relationships with both Screen Rant and Polygon. I just want Pitch Meetings and Unraveled, got it?

[@Skittenmeow]

@@Silas_MN somehow I've managed to get screen rant to only suggest pitch meetings in my recommended. I think it's taken at least a year of dislikes/ not interested in all other screen rant vids and liking/ commenting on all pitch meetings... but somehow YT algorithm has noticed

[@Zeverinsen]

@@Skittenmeow I think that's how it is for everyone, since that's the only thing people actually watch. Now Pitch meetings have their own KZbin channel.

[@alexmcd378]

Reminds me of the story about the bartender kicking out polite well behaved Nazis, because of you're not vigilant, you wind up running a nazi bar and wondering what happened

[@ng.tr.s.p.1254]

plus one has to wonder if those nazis would be so courteous if the bartender wasn't white 🙂

[@almostclintnewton8478]

That's such a spot on analogy!

[@ironbuzz_]

That bit about partition of power within a team channel is VERY important. A while back, there is this channel that uploads video of tournament matches of Smash Bros and someone accidentally renamed all of their videos to their most current upload(like Fix vs Tabu43 semi final state regional something to that degree) and it turned out to be irreversible. Just thousands of videos named exactly the same by someone who was probably an intern

[@Gomosojo]

lol I think that was VG bootcamp and it was the founder, Gimr, that made that mistake. It does show how badly the youtube system is tho. He also had to delete literally every project M match since Nintendo threatened him which was horribly depressing.

[@ironbuzz_]

Yeah didn't want to explicitly say VG bootcamp but thats what i was referring to. And i didn't know Gimr was the one who actually made the mistake thats too funny

[@4thot]

Smash Bros isn't even a real fighting game so who cares?

[@AlonMoiseyev]

4thot how is it not a fighting game

[@theleeryone]

Gomosojo No, it wasn't GIMR who did that. Where did you get that idea?

[@Babakifo]

I know I'm finding this late, but This Dude is a BEAST! He calmly, smoothly, authoritatively, and with great attention to detail, began the autopsy on the still(at that time?) living corpse, and then only bothered to do the Y incision before stating the cause of death. DAMN!!!

[@AmandaStein-l5w]

My favourite folding ideas videos are the ones that go passionately in depth about bad things that I don't care about

[@TPRJones]

Holy hell, this is the most scathingly dismissive take-down I have ever see, executed with precise professionalism at every step. Bravo.

[@ShamanEffect]

"Work for us. We'll help you get exposure." Me: "People die of exposure."

[@iprobablyforgotsomething]

*applause* I love it, will share it, thanks!

[@gentlemandemon]

watching this from the future, and its interesting to see how vidme compares with nebula. nebula seemed to address the problem by creating a walled garden for a youtube niche, rather than trying to create a direct competitor to youtube. I don't how the financials are panning out, but they still seem to be alive after more than a few years

[@sunbleachedangel]

Nebula is a black box waiting to be sold, then everyone will cash out and the platform will disappear

[@gentlemandemon]

@@sunbleachedangel I don't have their financials, so I can't say one way or the other. who knows, maybe it'll continue, maybe it'll collapse 🤷‍♂️

[@sunbleachedangel]

@@gentlemandemon not collapse, be sold out. That's how it was explained to me

[@gentlemandemon]

@@sunbleachedangel ok?

[@Dylan_Platt]

​​@@sunbleachedangelahh, good thing some genius explained it to you so you could come explain it to us. Too bad neither they nor you include any details, reasoning, context, or, y'know, any other information that would give us the least bit of confidence that you/they aren't just making shit up. "Hey y'all! This just in -- Nebula is gonna buy Twitter back from Elon and change its name to Twitbula! That's how it was explained to me" See how it reads?

[@joelman1989]

It’s shocking to me how many businesses, especially start ups, don’t invest in proper market research. So often, the vision of the company, and the development of the product, hinges on the personal beliefs of the founder. And, very rarely is that enough. Long term it’s never enough. You need to be intimately aware of what your users and partners are saying and feeling about your products. And the most successful companies are able to adapt quickly to the market demand. If users are saying your product sucks, don’t get offended! Listen to what they and the majority are saying, and adapt.

[@RJ4989]

Remember when every article on the internet had a comment section? They slowly all disappeared…Remember the feeling of being able to actually talk with other humans on sites like Reddit and even if you’re in an argument you still feel like you’re part of a community? Now just participating feels dirty because our time is the product, literally sucking life from us for giant media-opolies to churn parts of our time on earth into ad revenue. Well it used to be just ad revenue, now our interactions form “inferred identities” that (in the most tin foil hat sounding way and I can’t believe I’m talking like this) are being used to help these same monopolistic corporations reinforce their total control of how we communicate with one another, where we get our information and basically informed most of our reality.

[@jslimefeld]

This was published in June and Vidme tanked in December, btw

[@joshuacaulfield]

I know I am 6 years late to the party, however this video does a fantastic job of explaining the challenge I am facing in explaining how the national base of a federated (meaning having chapters in this context) association needs to engage with it’s chapters. While the focused nature of your video and high concept language will make it impossible for me to simply show this video and explain using our own terminology and concepts, you have still provided me with a frame of thinking that I can use as a foundation for a strategic realignment. Thank you.

[@sunbleachedangel]

The more things change, the more they stay the same

[@s.l.r.9407]

Hey good vid! Constructive criticism - don't show tweets in the subtitles area, you force the viewer to close subtitles in order to read them (example at 9:56). Hope it's useful!

[@Aspharon]

If you're on PC, you can actually just drag the subtitles upwards if they block anything! I do agree that creators should generally avoid this, though

[@s.l.r.9407]

@@Aspharon On mobile, sadly :P

[@Karma20XX]

The security concerns are a reality. One artist I follow had all of her video titles and videos redirect to some spammers website. Turns out her MCM got hacked and everyone in the network had their channels tampered with. I'm actually floored this doesn't happen more on KZbin. I think we're all looking for the next KZbin. I'm really done with the abuse of Copyright claims.

[@sunbleachedangel]

Fucking Linus Tech Tips got hacked recently, absurd

[@ianderk6527]

I have the feeling that KZbin's recent moves have been about competing with Twitch more than anything else. The change from Hangouts On-Air to KZbin Live was friendly to the tech savvy person investing in a lot of content creation, but the tools were unfriendly to casual users. My students have complained about constantly watching ads on educational videos and the poor communication about copyright concerns. A competitor that focused on developing a platform for schools or universities might have some small business potential, but it probably wouldn't have enough to compete with KZbin at this point. iTunes U was basically a good idea that became a graveyard, and that's the best example of an educationally-focused platform I can think of outside of KZbin.

[@Brent-jj6qi]

5 years later, yeah, you called it. KZbin is slowly improving streaming, while twitch shits the bed and tries to use flowery language and sugarcoating to hide the fact they’re screwing over top creators by going from 30/70 to 50/50, while YT has always been 45/55 advertising revenue, and more for donations and the like

[@laurenbastin8849]

Basically, fledgling companies will act like they’re out to help their customers until the second they no longer rely on them and can shove them into a ditch

[@Posiman]

When he talks about "substantial formalized infrastrucrure" to keep the parthership intact, it's a nice contrast to somewhat successful alternative platform Nebula. They only host creators who buy shares in the company, so they always have a leverage to not be screwed over. This structure obviously creates and upper limit on the platform growth, but that's something they seem to be fine with.

[@bcatalogrecords]

One of your best pieces so far Dan. I've ran down these same arguments as you and my approach to designing a successful youtube competitor lies in making its money through Patreon. Since many youtubers no longer make revenue from the site, content creators en masse are using Patreon to meet their wage goals. It would seem that Vidme should make its own Patreon clone and connect it directly to the site and their users. Instead of Patreon getting the percentage of donations, it would go to Vidme (or whatever hypothetical clone comes along.) That is how you would pick up a the dregs and "toxic" rejects and still be profitable. So either Vidme needs to work on a Patreon clone or Patreon needs to make a KZbin clone. The model is right there in front us though.

[@gameworkerty]

It's interesting to compare video makers with the more disjointed, more locally hosted and harder to parse podcast world

[@mlovecraftr]

I see many podcasts I follow distribute their audio through many platforms like Soundcloud, Stitcher, Podmass and even KZbin sometimes. Personally, I mostly follow them on Soundcloud but I prefer to listen on whatever is the default on their websites, which tend to be better organized. Also, podcasts use the HTML audio tag infinitely more than video content creators use their tag.

[@J1428753]

less bandwidth, easy self-hosting thanks to rss feeds and compatible podcast apps (few of which do video podcasts), and _plenty_ of hosts (audioboom, libsyn, podbean, hipcast) which treat themselves as the mere storage and bandwidth providers they rightly should be considered as (seriously, the combination of treating your product as an interface _and_ raw resources is an easy way of limiting product-to-product mobility among users--and they damn well know it). the fact that there are _options_ there is key, but more importantly is that they are cool with just accepting the fact that *money can be exchanged for goods and services.* None of that advertising bullshit that brings your platform (coughyoutubecoughfacebook) under heavy fire because--surprise surprise--ISIS likes effectively free services just as much as the next guy and the advertisers that keep your service in existence dislike ISIS just as much as the next guy. *actually asking for payment* for people to use your website not only acts as a form of quality control, but it guarantees that your existence actually depends on your value to your users compared to your competitors--_not_ your value to the advertisers that will pull out the second their brand is going to be tarnished.

[@elliel.5915]

This is pretty much irrelevant to the specific topic of the video, but I wanna scream "corporations are not your friends" to every person who finds brand memes funny. You know, things like "relatable" brand twitter, or that weird dating sim KFC made. There are simply no words for how much I hate that shit. The KFC dating sim became a meme instantly, and it WOULD be an excellent meme and an admirable commitment to a joke if it were made by some independent game developer (maybe with obvious name changes, like "Colonel Smanders", idk). But now that I know that it's essentially an elaborate ad, I can't have fun with it. And what's worse is that no one seems to mind. Everyone on the internet goes along with the joke, as if KFC is our friend. I guess it irks me because I thought memes were safe from corporate appropriation. We had all spent years making fun of "how do you do fellow kids" type ads, but now companies are memeing properly. I didn't think it would happen, and I hate it.

[@lynnclaywood4043]

idk, i just can't bring myself not to find a KFC dating sim funny. i can kind of see what you mean, and it's definitely creepy and money-grubbing, but i also lack the instinctive repulsion. it's funny AND it's awful

[@leoseling4413]

It's advertising for people who hate advertisements and it's absolutely working. This is the factory owner drinking a beer with his workers during the company christmas party before sending them back into the coal mines and it's working. Plus, as someone who grew up on the internet and has seen deviantart, I don't understand what's funny about dating/sexualising a mascot. Seems kind of boring, actually.

[@Brent-jj6qi]

@@leoseling4413 I think it’s because these companies fought it for two decades, and are now finally getting it

[@orijimi]

Hell of a video, man. Eye-opening, to say the least. I don't know if it's the case for Vidme, but it seems most of these underdog sites with the hate-mongering userbases are that way because the creators made a point to know that they, specifically, were welcome. That's their own hole they dug. I'm surprised that these sites actually were intending to compete, one would think they were intending be a more lawless version of the site they resemble and that was all that mattered. Maybe that made sense to them until they discovered that subset of mankind wasn't nearly as big as they thought. And how those people don't actually want a place for themselves, because their existence isn't validated without a wealth of respectful people to berate.

[@Novabug]

Hate mongering? Have you read the majority of comment sections in KZbin? Sheesh. Time for someone to remove Google's stranglehold I think, free market is good.

[@thegayestgoth]

Not for yt

[@CoWinkKeyDinkInc]

take a look at Voat, what was to be alternative to reddit is just filled with a bunch of braindead retards bitching about fat people.

[@GEhotpants101]

" bunch of braindead retards bitching about fat people." RIP all the little communities on Voat that aren't FPH.

[@zoot_]

god damn everything said here applies to Kick, lookin 6 years into the future with this one.

[@theeblakester002]

as somebody who used to work for the (terrible) vocal media, this video rings so true and i cant help but periodically return to it

[@MaxMarriner]

I'm glad someone's finally addressing VidMe's many, MANY problems. Honestly, given how its community operates with such heated self-serving masturbation, it's really refreshing to see serious criticism.

[@tornadomimicyclone6707]

Most of these don't affect VidLii/BitChute, so this video should be renamed to solely refer to VidMe as the problem. There are better alternatives, but VidMe just so happens to be the most popular.

[@NoahNasi]

VidLii is the worst video sharing platform. Basically, it's full of 13 year old boys that shitpost, that likely never even used KZbin before 2011.

[@100billionsubscriberswithn4]

Did Vidme even have an actual community?

[@JCOdrjones]

@@NoahNasi and now bitchute is a full on alt-right KZbin. Shame

[@KetsubanSolo]

@@JCOdrjones Dan basically predicted that outcome in this vid, from a certain point of view lmao

[@LeadHeadBOD]

11:30 like most stuff on KZbin, I am not surprised "Shows" got silently killed and has left old channel public playlists in a disarray.

[@joseaguilar3323]

It's a bit ironic that you start by saying you won't give them feedback for free and then you proceed to give them very helpful constructive criticism.

[@HeatherHolt]

José Aguilar right?? I was hoping I wasn't the only one who noticed...

[@tx7300]

youtube ad revenue

[@Flowtail]

Not like they took it

[@AzaleaJane]

That's how Dan O. do

[@ninjanippledog725]

@@tx7300 No, it's feedback *they* can seek out, instead of him just feeding them info straight to nowhere, and still helps us understand what platforms are like/how to possibly look at things instead of default 'pals'. Valuable info for us, under the pretense of what they said on twitter, and then expanding it. If they want to seek criticism, they can, and he states they should be, rather than just giving them a big email of stuff they should already know.

[@kisskissyangyang5252]

the fact that you posted this just 5 months before vidme shut down is emblematic of your know how.

[@xingcat]

I think most competitors miss the two things that KZbin has above all else, and that's performance (videos almost always play right away, play from where you left them, and play under just about all circumstances) and monopoly (KZbin is embedded in any website with the click of a button, for the most part). That's why most competitors, unless they're very focused on what they do well (Vimeo seems to have carved out a nice niche for filmmakers, for instance) will fail. Also, I consider KZbin to be, above everything else, an ad delivery platform that happens to use video search results as its delivery mechanism. Whether those videos are good or bad, helpful or harmful, big or small matters less than the fact that there's enough in the search results to keep people clicking on things that deliver ads to their eyeballs and bring data about what they searched for back to advertisers. Yes, subscribers and repeat viewers are very important, but it's my belief that KZbin would consider themselves just fine if they abandoned the subscription model altogether, though it would be disastrous for creators.

[@qtheplatypus]

xingcat I don't even have think that google's real interest in KZbin is even as an add delivery tool. It's real interest is in farming youtubes user base for information to feed its bots.

[@xingcat]

I can 100% see that, as well. Information is the key to the kingdom these days.

[@xingcat]

Or data, I should say.

[@TweenkPL]

That's not how KZbin ads work. Advertisers don't get detailed data on who watched their video, they only get aggregate metrics (e.g., this many people watched the ad and this many clicked). There are actually videos on this site that explain what advertisers can see, because buying advertising on KZbin is actually something anyone with a few dollars can do.

[@Happy156]

just found this and man, this guy was ahead of his time! this exact same thing is happening to Twitch with the new "competitor" Kick and what you said would happen is currently happening again in a whole different medium!

[@spencerrogers1103]

hey man just wanted to say your very well spoken. I find that often your viewpoints and thoughts often make me think on a deeper level. keep making awesome content man!

[@TheBlarggle]

Here's a thinker for you. You used both instances of "Your/You're" in your sentence, but only once correctly.

[@DariaPlaysRPGs]

Coming into this video very late, but was having a group discussion on what had happened to vidme, why they were terrible, and why they failed and a friend linked this video as a good summary (which it is!) but just wanted to comment that a vidme representative swooping in to defend the the platform on Twitter is hilarious because I'm a nobody, relatively, and they would do the same thing to my threads complaining about the platform at the time. Vidme was, if nothing else, very diligent about the whole social media public relations thing. :P

[@certaindeathawaits]

You talking about what a site was built to do being most important has made me reflect on Tumblr. Tumblr was created by David Karp in 2009 as a website that allowed for better self expression than other sites. The only website Karp saw similar potential in was KZbin, and (this was in 2011) he found the idea sickening, as KZbin seemed very ad-oriented. Read the TechCrunch interview with the CEO. I think that, with the right management, Tumblr could be a "good" platform, whatever that means.

[@TheTrenchcoatNinja]

7:00 transphobia is definitely the correct term to use here. It makes me really uncomfortable to have the word homophobia be used when anti-trans sentiments are being displayed, because it makes me feel like someone is equating the two yet again (gay men != trans women) I have faith you know this from the general awareness of things you show in other videos, and I respect your uncompromising willingness to speak out against toxicity

[@FoldingIdeas]

The video with the hoses, she's banging the tips together going "See, male male, don't go together, even hoses know what's right." In retrospect I wish I had said "queerphobia" instead as a broader term, but that hose video was the one that was front and centre in my mind.

[@paulisaperson0516]

I think what you’re describing is why Nebula has been so successful

[@Kuudere-Kun]

The main thing most KZbinrs want out of a potential alternative is not having such a guilty to proven innocent system for alleged Copyright violations. The problem is a website literally about Copyright law will just lead to the Government trying to take it down. The challenge is in finding out how to efficiently deal with Piracy while still respecting the Fair Use clause.

[@TweenkPL]

A better system is legally impossible unless major changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are enacted.

[@BepisJones]

The vibe of this video is like seeing someone in 1915 say "after this, the first World War, the only result of the Second, which will surely happen within the next few decades, will be a century of oppression and development of horrific weaponry. Also humans will land on the moon in the 1960s." Fine. Wine.

[@firewordsparkler]

This is such a great breakdown of the relationship between platforms and their creators. Coming back from vidcon and hearing about KZbin's new features from KZbin versus the recent history of creators on KZbin really established a disconnect. This makes it clear why that is and what other platforms can do to entice users.

[@2dopington]

It seems like some people are distracted by the pewdiepie point, but regardless: what was either harmful or harmless nearly tore down a system that supplies a good amount of creators' livelihoods. If KZbin wasn't as developed as it currently is, the possibility of a competitor taking root could've been viable. But as it stands, a competitor can only compete by building upon youtube's weaknesses (as described in the video) its kind of silly for vidme to act as buds with the creators without building a system within their own site that lends a connection between creators and siterunners. Newgrounds is a site I would consider that could be a serious competitor for KZbin if it had a somewhat more monetizable design. It's more creator-friendly but unprofitable. Seems like there is a catch around every corner.

[@QuickQuips]

2dopington I was thinking of Amazon. They have the power and infrastructure to do so and access to Amazon prime video and audio.

[@wheatboi8255]

2dopington Also Newgrounds is cesspool of bitter manchildren and trolls on par with reddit. KZbin has trolls. But the amount of hatred and derision I received upon uploading to Newgrounds was several magnitudes greater than the worst I've received on youtube. I've actually only ever received very rare and half hearted attempts at trolling here. While on Newgrounds it wasn't uncommon to find comments telling me the miriad ways I should kill myself.

[@domonizationanimation5055]

I agree, but not all content on KZbin would be appropriate for Newgrounds. (Let's Plays, vlogs, commentaries, etc. ) Newgrounds is great for art, animation, games, and music though. And you'll definitely get more exposure there than on KZbin if you're a little guy.

[@Rhino-n-Chips]

Tom Fulp probably should've made the flash portal into it's own site, because Newgrounds was the ancestor of all edgelords. No company wanted to work with a site with games about clubbing baby seals and school shootings, it was spared corporate mooching but also any sponsorship outside of porn banner ads. Plus the angry teen vibe chased away a bunch of great animators, I know a few that disappeared off the internet for all the shitty treatment they got. The site feels like it was made as an edgier counterpart to another site that never existed.

[@reneelucero2923]

...What does this video have to do with Communism? Why do americans bring politics into everything seriously wtf.

[@flyrefi]

Dan-O just tossing out those burns

[@sephreed1938]

Fuck yer burn!

[@thekylemarshall_]

You were able to put into words what I've been feeling for a while. I've dabbled with VidMe because I do think it's important not to necessarily rely on only one platform for content. But I was disheartened to see which videos were promoted on the front page. Thanks for making a well thought out video!

[@moondog548]

It's 4.5 years later and I had never heard about VIDME til now.

[@HebaruSan]

From a user perspective, I've been waiting seventeen years for the ability to subscribe to a playlist. I can bookmark playlists into the sidebar, but there's no way to make the constituent videos show up in the subscription feed as they're added unless I subscribe to the overall channel, which only makes sense if I want to follow 100% of what they do.

[@Paralellex]

From the economic side of things, monolithic social platforms (think KZbin, Twitch, Facebook, ect.) are incredibly hard to displace because of the social aspect. People are on Facebook because their friends are on Facebook, and likewise they're not on Myspace because their friends aren't on Myspace. Like you said, any platform trying to dislodge a "social monolith" as it were has to come at it with a dumptruck full of money, quite a bit of which should be used to throw at content creators in order to get them over. The interesting thing to me is that Facebook, Microsoft AND KZbin are doing just that in order to try to get a toehold into Twitch's market. Maybe they think twitch is weak right now and they'd like to grab the video-game streaming pie all for themselves.

[@Brent-jj6qi]

Interestingly, discord seems like it actually originated from humble origins, but that’s likely because all you needed when they started up was to have laid back and fair moderation along with the ability to store text, and 10000 messages is a second of video Also, two years later, yeah, you were right about twitch. KZbin is improving at a snails pace, while twitch shits the bed

[@SpottedAlien]

So, 2 things. 1, seeing this video pop back up on recommended, then getting to the part where Dan lists all the things KZbin does poorly. After six, very nearly 7 years, I don't think any of these are improved in the least. 2, when I tried to leave a comment about this on mobile, evidently the KZbin app updated to a version where, when you try to leave a comment on a video, the timestamp feature messes with the Android keyboard, functionally freezing the screen and making it uninteractable until it manages to click off. Great platform. 🙃

[@alexcaffri9091]

I honestly thought dailymotion was just a bunch of pirates pretending to be KZbin

[@yondie491]

I'd be interested to watch a Parler follow-up after the coup

[@trutherdave6005]

And a few months later, you're proved 100% correct 👍

[@gwenfranklin8242]

In the Uk "tossed off" is slang for a certain sexual act so the phrase "tossed off for a reason" made me chuckle

[@pinaz993]

10:18 He's talking about #shorts before shorts were a thing. They only way he can do that is if it's not the first time YT had tried to play that game.

[@LastDr3am3r445]

There truly needs to be something akin to a union for content creators, something to protect their interests and livelihoods, because platforms have no incentives to treat their creators with respect and decency.

[@Brent-jj6qi]

Honestly, we still don’t know if KZbin is making a profit, they just might not be able to

[@CoinOpTV]

RIP Vidme

[@desmondbrown5508]

Yeah, it's one of the problems with most businesses. They respect you when they need you... but as soon as they don't, they couldn't give two shits about what happens to their content creators... even if they are some of their best (not the ones that make the most money, but the ones that create some of the best content).

[@1917girl]

The fact that someone is willing to outright criticize PewDiePie is so refreshing

[@Sleepy-Atlas]

thats true, i dont agree with him, but its nice to see that there are multiple sides to it.

[@polygondeath2361]

Nothing brave, happened thousands of times.

[@TheDrawnBlade]

@@polygondeath2361 bit of a delayed response there, ey, buddy?

[@polygondeath2361]

@@TheDrawnBlade “delayed” implies I conceived it a while ago. I didn’t.

[@nickzanet]

Just stopping by to say hi now that a porn site bought vidme's domain so a bunch of news articles linking to vidme videos have porn in them

[@TheMasterpiece911]

No matter which of your videos I watch, they're all amazing. I wouldn't believe myself if I told myself I'd be watching KZbin commentary where a guy stands in front of a nondescript screen just talking, but your arguments, your insight, your opinions are, truly, a revelation.

[@DubiousConsumption]

Holy fuck. Amazing vid, great calm and altogether vicious takedown of VidMe and other similar platforms.

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

Dubious Consumption Yeha they aren't a viable competor but they're brand new and unlike youtube that has quite a few advantages like Google's bottomless pockets and being preinstaled as an app on 99% of smartphones and tablets I don't see how anyone can be competitive but if we don't act and put the effort in to make competition then KZbin is just going to get worse as with no competition Google has no reason to fix all our complaints

[@DrewLSsix]

Demi-Fiend of Time. I think you missed a vital point... google doesnt particularly care about your complaints. they do work very hard to address the complaints of advertisers though. heres the solutiin.... pay for it! the advertisers get consideration because they are the only source of revenue for youtube, except for youtube red. yup, that one time the viewers and creators were invited to take part in the future of youtube as honest to god contributing partners the would be partners threw a fit. its as if the vote were given to an historically marginalized portion of the populace and the response was " but I dont wana walk down to town hall an vote😢"

[@qazwsxedc562]

Demi-Fiend of Time well Since unregulated capitalism markets tend to mature as monopolies naturally and the internet is super unregulated. add the high cost of entry mentioned in the video . A monopolistic platform like KZbin was most likely inevitable. though I would say if KZbin (or google) gets too big then some government most likely the USA in the future will break it up for going against antitrust laws. or someone puts serious regulations on content platforms. due to something extreme happening. though that will probably be in the far future so the young generations of today will need to dominate politics. Since politics is run by older people and currently politician don't give a crap about the internet.

[@clairedex]

incredibly salient video for the twitch vs kick era

[@varagor23]

Your analysis about building the right userbase is spot on. This is exactly what happened to Voat when it tried to be a reddit clone.

[@franswiggidy]

I always like your take on things.

[@systemhalodark]

Because he bothers to stop and think instead of jumping bandwagons?

[@waldobutters01]

other than the odd pewdiepie dig, agreed

[@-sanju-]

​@@waldobutters01 I mean it wasn't wrong.

[@empanada223]

All of this _still_ applies today, folks.

[@zEropoint68]

the site that surpasses youtube will be built on a business model that promotes individual pieces of content based on _how much content is created in response._ the one thing everyone wants back on youtube is video responses, and from the "i've been here the whole time perspective", you can see where that video response system is essentially what _built_ youtube. the site wouldn't be what it is today if the initial purpose had been monitization instead of fostering genuine interaction between users.

[@karl0ssus1]

And 6 months after this, Vidme would go defunct, citing an inability to compete with facebook and google. Their domain would eventually be bought by a porn company, and inevitably old dead vidme embeds suddenly started displaying porn. Isn't the circle of life magnificent?

[@N7S21813634]

5 years later and when watching this video again, I can't help but think of curiosity stream/nebula

[@oneofmanyjames-es1643]

Eh, Nebula and Curiosity Stream both have a clear business model based around a niche audience of subscribers that they have successfully attracted. How sustainable that is in the long term is less clear but they've both been going far longer than VidMe

[@slightlyoffensivedadjokes]

big rant, I think curiosity stream is able to better benefit from the monolith that is its competition. it actually is centered on one of the most pressing issues for youtube, content censorship, which is why it's users are becoming increasingly frustrated and they're losing the good will of their creators. it kind of gets rid of the ad problem by being a subscription service, which actually is a good move (remember when game apps would have a $1.99 version and an ad version, and now there are no paid versions all apps are free to play but can bombard you with as many ads as physically possible? and the cost to remove ads is higher than the og cost for the paid version of the app?) bc even though we're living in a current subscription service nightmare, compared to the abominable world of youtube ads, its a solid alt approach. overall, curiosity stream just straight up solves two of the BIGGEST problems with youtube (the ads and the censorship), which imo, is the only route if any company wants to have a video platform that could compete with youtube. I don't know if it'll last, my best guess is that it depends on how much more of a shitshow youtube becomes, what their future solutions are, and will the platform keep spiraling? if it becomes more and more unusable, I feel as though curiosity stream will swoop in and become a more popular alt, assuming that it won't make abysmal management changes from what it is now. and none of this is to mention the narrative behind the two platforms. youtube is being run by incompetent, greedy fools, punishing creators and rewarding shitty behavior. they give off evil corporations vibes hard, as many of their decisions are straight up malice. curiosity stream is advertising itself as being owned and ran by creators. it doesn't contain the selfish greed and apathy of a mega corp, it's advertising itself as a more "real" place, a service where your money is going into good hands bc they really want people to feel like curiosity stream is FOR creators. and by using well loved creators as billboards, most of which have followers who share the creators frustration with their censorship and general youtube hate, it speaks to the demographic more. ik I sound like a massive shill right now but I don't even pay for curiosity stream, I just feel like it's making good decisions and is an ACTUALLY smart concept.

[@PitLord777]

KZbin has a lot of problems, but paid-subscription platforms has a big problem that needs solving before they can take on KZbin: It's a paid-subscription. Watcher: "So I wanna watch this creator who moved to this site. Can I watch them?" Platform: "Sure you can! All you need to do is subscribe to us for 55 cents a month to access the website." Watcher: "Wait, I have to pay?" Platform: "Most of it goes to the creator for their content." Watcher: "...But I have to pay?" BONUS Watcher: "I don't have a job to keep up the subscription." Platform: "There are many free services in the world for people like you. This isn't one of them."

[@michaelbuehler3897]

The problem with these alt video sites is that they are just reupload sites and don't have a lot of original content.

[@sahiliqbal98]

This is my 5th or 6th time watching this video. It’s brilliant. Filled with amazing points. Every second is gold

[@reeenji]

And now VidMe will be shutting down on December 15th

[@abbie_joan]

in other words KZbin needs to take notes from discord on how to give multiple people different power on one or more channels without complete access to the account

[@c.l.6957]

Very interesting to watch this again after the launch of Nebula

[@fanboycrossing]

Looking back at this video in light of the whole "Epic vs Steam" thing could make for an interesting followup.

[@GrieferOhhai]

Class struggle explained through youtube creators vs. platform owners.

[@spuriusbrocoli4701]

I wonder if there's ever been a "Sonic for Real Justice"-type situation w/ channel managers fighting over a single YT channel.

[@aescling]

a similar response could have been made for mastodon in the ways it has blatantly aped twitter, with an interesting development on the way it exploited its userbase in that, as open source software, it exploited (and its creator now outright profits from) outright design and implementation work performed by its own userbase

[@zpskk]

I thought about mastodon here too. Especially when he talked about curating your market - mastodon has a lot of cool people on it due to its advantages over twitter, but it definitely also hosts the "too toxic for Twitter" folks.

[@CadekFenrir]

needed to watch this again given the vidme news.

[@GreenFox1505]

5 years later and all the youtube problems mentions remain unfixed.