this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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There isn't much left.
First Facebook with their whole meta thing, then Imgur deleting all NSFW content and images uploaded by non-registered members, afterwards Twitter and now Reddit.
Twitch made a big mistake with their new sponsoring rules, but seems like they are reverting / changing it again due to bad community feedback.
Discord had a few changes the community didn't like, but nothing ground breaking yet. But they get more and more greedy and their platform is filled with scams, hackers, bots and sadly many bad people like child predators and content which Discord support does nothing against. They seem not to care.
YouTube, well, I think they might be next actually. More and longer unskipable ads, restricting or demonetizing many videos, bad communication with their creators and less rewards for smaller creators. In addition, they might put high quality resolutions behind their already existing expensive subscription paywall. There isn't any competition which is urgently needed.
UPDATE: Bad news about YouTube continues. Just now, YouTube Ordered ‘Invidious’ Privacy Software to Shut Down in 7 Days.
Which other big social media platforms are left?
The problem with anything video is still that it costs way too much to host, unless you're a giant who already has their own data centers and massive data pipes. You can't just throw it on a cheap VPS like text-based services
Are you thinking of it as a centralized replacement to YouTube? If you're centralized, yeah, you probably need a data centre the size of Malta. There are decentralized alternatives (like PeerTube) where the cost is also distributed. If you're using PeerTube, you literally can "just throw it on a cheap VPS", and lots of people do, with no problems.
I think the real reason decentralized video isn't going to catch on is because video (and YouTube in particular) has not been a community thing for many years now. There are very few YouTubers who make videos to build a community or connect to a community. YouTubers are on there for money, and there's really no alternative that can both host the videos and pay out big cheques to content creators.
@duncesplayed @kalleboo tbh most of YTs I know either run sponsor ads, or have Patreon/paid for community. It is already slowly moving away from ads system in YT, which simply does not work.
That is a good point actually! That means they would have the freedom to move over to a new platform.
@duncesplayed imho making PeerTube or other Fediverse video service very good at UX and easy to use will allow these communities migrate when they feel like it.
I think biggest issue might be running video service like this and having running costs for video storage, etc. As always, communities might be willing to factor those costs in their pledges.
I think PeerTube needs easy to use setup / reliable network of hosters, and good UX to manage community, live streams, chats, etc.
I don't really see YouTube failing anytime soon. They have such a massive userbase, it's hard to imagine any other platform taking over anytime soon, regardless of shitty UX decisions. Creating a successful video platform like they have is an enormous challenge, the only reason they succeeded is because they were early.
@hampter @noodlejetski @Nankeru *cough* TikTok *cough*
In all seriousness, Google does not know what to do with YT. It is very hard to monetize. They tried to do whole TV thing, which fell flat on it's face. it keeps being huge money sink, and moderation is nightmare and algorithms seems to fucking up constantly.
They can't get rid of it, because it is huge, but it is not fire sure profit.
I don't know about YouTube not being profitable, but even if they aren't, you'd be hard pressed to find a company better equipped to handle a money sink that Google. In 2022, they had a gross profit of 156 billion... I don't think they are panicking, scrambling to monetize YT at Alphabet HQ.
Tiktok, Snapchat, OnlyFans
Signal would actually be a decent Snapchat replacement since it can do both disappearing messages and stories. now if only they'd finally release usernames and phone number privacy.
Tiktok is Chinese military funded. It's not going away.
Even though Tiktok isn't a one-to-one equivalent of youtube, I wouldn't be surprised to see a closer youtube equivalent come out of China, Russia, or even North Korea (the people are poor because the country puts all its wealth in the military, and it already has extensive foreign espionage and media manipulation arms - if it wanted to, it could pour a lot into controlling a major video platform to get ahold off all that data).
In a more hopeful world, maybe a different small country might invest in it on a governmental level, similarly.
Saudi Arabia is already heavily investing in the gaming industry, in an attempt to diversify their economic reliance away from just their oil.
Qatar already has a lot invested in, and profit from, aljazeera (state-owned news) poking at all its neighbors human rights abuses, too.
Saudi Arabia - or another, unexpected country - could absolutely do the same with English-language social media, especially given the current lack of competition for youtube. Government funding could scale that barrier and snag a source of income and an espionage advantage for the host country.
Especially since Saudi Arabia, though rife with human rights abuses, is allied with the U.S. and thus less likely to become the target of a "ban tiktok specifically" push.
(sidenote: the "ban tiktok" bills would ban a lot more than tiktok, including VPNs - that subject's a whole can of worms too).
Matrix synapse and dendrite aren't great implementations of the protocol so people probably won't host them, but conduit is 90% of the way there. Another 5% and I bet discords start to drop like flies.
Conduit looks very interesting. Synapse is way too bloated to run and dendrite is way too buggy in my experience. Maybe conduit will become a better home server? I feel like the matrix devs just keep adding more and more features to their protocol, but they fail to implement usable servers and clients. IMO they should've kept things more simple.
It isn't perfect. It doesn't support spaces well, and sometimes it's chasing the latest standard, and there's still a lot of missing stuff with respect to admin features. OTOH, it is incredibly light. I run it on an Atom D2550 alongside ejabbered and lotide, and that box basically idles.
There's only a few projects I personally donate to.
I was already able to deploy it on my Raspberry PI 4 without any issues. It was using a lot of CPU when joining large rooms, but now it seems to have calmed down and it's using 1-2% CPU, which is very reasonable. In comparison, home assistant runs at around 2-3% idle, and lemmy fluctuates between 4% and 10%.
Thanks for bringing this up, this is great! It's also written in Rust, and I love Rust, so I might contribute this summer. I'll add it to my list of potential project to contribute to, along with Lemmy.
YouTube has been enshittified long ago, especially after the Adpoclaypse