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YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

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Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#141

Post by Sabinus »

amelius wrote: post #117
mrtksn wrote: post #15

You know what's interesting? A Decentralised media platform used to be huge and actually is still huge: Torrents. There's a huge community that consumes media that's not hosted anywhere particular and there are apps like Popcorn Time that offer viewing experience almost as good as Netflix. The problem, of course, is that up until now there was no way to reward the creators and almost all the media consumed on Torrent…

Perhaps the biggest problem with Youtube is discoverability. Youtube's algorithms determine what you will see next. How is that solved on the decentralized platforms? How does discoverability work, what assumptions does it make, and can it be "gamed"?

Why does the algorithm have to show you what content to watch? Just have it a good search and tagging system and the user will figure out what they need.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#142

Post by DennisP »

bloak wrote: post #75
mrtksn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I just triggered a Vegan :) I have respect for Vegans despite being a huge meat lover. What I mean by extremism is that Vegans are extreme and controversial form certain philosophies and eating habits and those serious about Veganism more often than not claiming that people who eat meat are murderers and should be treated as such, framing this as "Us the spotless goodies vs them unredeemable baddies". In my b…

We already have Quorn burgers and they're great. The problem with going vegan isn't burgers; it's decent cheese, and milk to put in my tea. And something to replace eggs in cake. And something to make boots out of if veganism is to go beyond food. I hope these problems will be solved one day. We can't stop animals from getting harmed. They harm each other in the wild in terrible ways. All we can do is keep our own ha…

Those other things are actually easier than lab-grown meat. There are startups right now working on lab-grown milk, egg whites, and leather, expecting to get products to market in the next couple years. For details, see the excellent new book Clean Meat.

https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Meat-Growing-Without-Revolution...

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#143

Post by vinceguidry »

nailer wrote: post #131
mattmanser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I believe it's because it's against the law. They have rules on what they can and can't do because they're publicly funded. It's to allow the commercial operators a way to compete. And even if it's not, they have to operate in a political context, the Tories are always looking for an excuse to shutdown the BBC so their donors can pillage the public commons and eat the corpse.

Perhaps a commercial BBC that could actually sell it stuff to people who want it would help a) the BBC b) people who want it? > Tories are always looking for an excuse to shutdown the BBC so their donors can pillage the public commons and eat the corpse. Or maybe it's because it's not the government's job to run TV channels and radio stations, nor is it the public's job to fund them?

> Or maybe it's because it's not the government's job to run TV channels and radio stations, nor is it the public's job to fund them?

Public broadcasting is great, so many wonderful shows in the US would not have been able to have been made without it. But go ahead, sacrifice public media to the god of market economics. You might not miss it when it's gone, but it will be a sad day indeed.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#144

Post by freeone3000 »

ghaff wrote: post #76
koonsolo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with your Netflix story. Most people don't prefer free, they prefer convenience. Spotify almost works properly as a centralized platform because almost all music is on there. But I know a few albums that aren't, and it's too bad. For Netflix, I have a subscription. But guess what I do when I want to watch the latest Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. I want it convenient, preferably legal, but most of all…

How is subscribing to HBO inconvenient? It's a combination of price and convenience. There's some upper limit to the monthly price you (and everyone else) is willing to pay for content.

In order to subscribe to HBO in Canada, I'd need to call CTV, get a cable hookup to my apartment, schedule a time for the cableman, stay there while he's there, he'll hook up some box to the wall, I'd set up one account with CTV then another with HBO, and then after paying two companies and a real-world three-week delay, I'd be able to watch HBO. (Not to mention this would cost around $80/mo.)

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#145

Post by ryanianian »

prepend wrote: post #86
ghaff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is subscribing to HBO inconvenient? It's a combination of price and convenience. There's some upper limit to the monthly price you (and everyone else) is willing to pay for content.

HBO Now is a much worse experience than torrents. The navigation is slow, the updates to new episodes are poorly placed under a bunch of clicks, there are ads for other hbo shows over and over (even after I watched every single West world episode they still show me ads about a “new show”), streaming bugs (Although this improved quite a bit). It wasn’t the price that moved me away from HBONow, it was their lack of con…

> Netflix however is awesome because it’s very UX focused.

Except for the thousands of A/B experiments that incessantly drive you to spend every ounce of attention on Netflix. E.g. the auto-playing preview that starts whenever you stop moving the active selection. It strongly encourages you to start playing the thing rather than being thoughtful about whether you actually want to or not. Personally I hate this - it drives my anxiety nuts - and I find HBO's tactics much less user-hostile (although agreed the ads for HBO's own content are outright stupid).

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#146

Post by rhino369 »

ams6110 wrote: post #118
rhino369 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are willing to pay for convience, but only so much. A lot of what gets torrented is easily and very conveniently available on iTunes, Playstore, or Amazon Instant, but it costs 5 bucks. What isn’t convient about HBO Now (assuming you are in the USA)?

Pay per view is not convenient. You have to make a decision each time "do I really want to watch this, is is worth it" and then have buyers remorse afterwards. Pay a monthly, automatically recurring, fixed fee is convenient. Out of sight, out of mind.

That sounds like price anxiety to me. If you didn’t care about cost you’d just buy. If Netflix cost 100 bucks a month you’d have the same anxiety.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#147

Post by neffy »

toyg wrote: post #83
fredley wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Game of Thrones it's not such an issue, but I do feel bad if there's e.g. an old BBC film I want to watch, but there's no way to get it legally, sometimes at all. Other times it's £20 for a DVD. No way I'm paying three months of Netflix subscription (or a large fraction of a license fee) for that. The BBC has such an extensive and amazing back catalogue of content they wholly own. Why they don't chuck it on iPlay…

> Why they don't chuck it on iPlayer is beyond me. Because they would devalue new productions. The more license-payers watch old movies, the less they will watch Top Gear or Strictly or whatever it's supposed to be big now. This would mean less interest in new productions, less stuff sold by BBCWorld (or whatever it's called these days), less money going around... like all companies and organisations, the BBC wants t…

No, it's not that. The BBC is tied up in the same licensing mess as everybody else in the media industry. Everything is licensed... scripts, individual rights, director rights, ownership is transferred, tracked, ends up with third parties. It's a complete, unholy, worldwide mess of ownership spaghetti under the hood, and that's at some level why the only alternative is torrents.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#148

Post by rhino369 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #125
cornholio wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly don't need blockchains and distributed databases to reward creators, centralized solutions like Patreon work perfectly fine. If you want Netflix style monetization, that is not a technical problem but a social one, Netflix relies on the concept of copyright. Any community that does not respect copyright will switch to the free alternative, leaving voluntary donations as the only monetization option. May…

Patreon is better , because a few relatively wealthy supporters can fund zero-cost release of cultural products for the many free riders.

Paetron can be better. But it’s not going to fund something like Game of Thrones.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#149

Post by mtgx »

cornholio wrote: post #54
mrtksn wrote: post #15

You know what's interesting? A Decentralised media platform used to be huge and actually is still huge: Torrents. There's a huge community that consumes media that's not hosted anywhere particular and there are apps like Popcorn Time that offer viewing experience almost as good as Netflix. The problem, of course, is that up until now there was no way to reward the creators and almost all the media consumed on Torrent…

You certainly don't need blockchains and distributed databases to reward creators, centralized solutions like Patreon work perfectly fine. If you want Netflix style monetization, that is not a technical problem but a social one, Netflix relies on the concept of copyright. Any community that does not respect copyright will switch to the free alternative, leaving voluntary donations as the only monetization option. May…

Not so well for small amount donations, in case you forgot the recent controversy surrounding Patreon.

Also, I think it's better not to depend on a single company for such transactions (remember PayPal, and it's awful censorship?). Plus, I believe cryptocurrencies offer much better liquidity once you start to use any cryptocurrency.

Re: YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals

#150

Post by JulianMorrison »

rhino369 wrote: post #148
JulianMorrison wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon is better , because a few relatively wealthy supporters can fund zero-cost release of cultural products for the many free riders.

Paetron can be better. But it’s not going to fund something like Game of Thrones.

Nor is anything besides mega-scale capitalism. But TBH, if I had to do without super shiny movies to end capitalism, I'd give them up in a heartbeat.
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