Live data from Hacker News

Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

watchnebula.com

81–90 of 122 posts

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#81
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube giving up on the old definition of "subscribe" and re-ordering peoples feeds to improve engagement What do you mean by this? When I subscribe to someone, they show up on my subscription feed page. Hasn't it always been like this?

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.

The subscriptions page shows videos in reverse chronological order. The recommended page may or may not show new videos from subscribed channels.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#82
post #27
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one?

It's way beyond Try 2. And the last company to try this exact model, Vessel, was snapped up and murdered by Verizon to keep it from being a threat...

[deleted]

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#83
post #66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the bell was just for push notifications vs no push notifications?

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.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney+ is going to completely rule that market.

Not necessarily. Kids like short home made videos as much as Disney quality films.

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.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#85
post #45
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Even the bell is no longer reliable.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#86
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> YouTube giving up on the old definition of "subscribe" and re-ordering peoples feeds to improve engagement What do you mean by this? When I subscribe to someone, they show up on my subscription feed page. Hasn't it always been like this?

Subscribing is not a guarantee that you'll be presented with every new piece of content of a creator, unless you also hit the bell icon

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#87
post #86
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube giving up on the old definition of "subscribe" and re-ordering peoples feeds to improve engagement What do you mean by this? When I subscribe to someone, they show up on my subscription feed page. Hasn't it always been like this?

Subscribing is not a guarantee that you'll be presented with every new piece of content of a creator, unless you also hit the bell icon

Even on the subscription feed page, or just the home page and below videos?

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#88
post #67
post #14

>No algorithm. A personal observation... 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 the…

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?

>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

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#89
post #73

>No programmatic ads The "programmatic" qualification has a weird smell and makes me suspicious.

Same here. The moment I saw "programmatic ads" I thought, "then what kind of ads do they have?"

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?

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#90
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mobil…

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.
Post reply on HN