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[-] Mihies@programming.dev 42 points 1 week ago

A big problem with peertube is monetization. There should be some sort of mechanism that'd do that automatically. Otherwise there won't be much content ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that it exists but just don't see it replacing even few % of YouTube as it is.

[-] Chozo@fedia.io 34 points 1 week ago

If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.

Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.

I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.

[-] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare.

Believe it or not, YouTube Premium is one of them. A Premium view is worth more than an ad-supported view to a creator.

(Obviously Patreon is better, as they can’t make a living off of only Premium views because it’s a smaller group; the population of ad-supported users is much much larger. But YouTube Premium does benefit the creators more than ad-supported YouTube does.)

[-] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

you're gonna have to get ads

I don't think that necessarily follows.

Have you heard of self-hosted Patreon-similar Ghost ?

[-] Chozo@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

No, and neither has anybody else. Not saying that to be rude or dismissive, but just using their own numbers on the front page to paint a picture. They have ~3,000 paying members as of right now. Patreon has over 10,000,000 paying members, and even then only a tiny, tiny fraction of their creators are actually sustainable.

Paid subscription services like this are a great idea, in theory; I'd love to get away from ad-supported platforms. But the truth is that they just don't work for all but a few lucky people.

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Where would the money come from?

[-] Mihies@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago

I'd be perfectly fine with some sort of subscription. That gets distributed to authors I watch. But I can see technical challenges to it.

[-] chunes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Monetization itself is the problem.

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
630 points (100.0% liked)

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