I imagine a lot of you are probably familiar with Metatron, but if you aren't he's been on youtube for almost a decade now, making primarily very detailed and well-researched historical videos. Almost 750k subs, and over 800 videos during that time.
Couple days ago, Youtube decided to fully remove all monetization from his channel (his (extremely naive IMO) video on this is here).
Personally, I think it is obvious why this happened. Two weeks ago, he made this video pointing out that the ancient Greeks were, in fact, not actually pro-gay which got over 1 million views. And a week ago he made this other video talking about how the black Cleopatra thing was rubbish and that there were better choices to pick from if they wanted black warrior queens which got over 500k views.
And then his channel suddenly just loses all monetization? Such a strange coincidence!
Honestly, I wish they'd do this to more people. The only way YouTube will ever have a viable competitor as if they push people with large audiences on to another platform who bring their viewers with them.
I agree, but normies are stupid.
"I don't want to move to [alternative site here] because it's full of NAZIs!"
Well, yeah, obviously, because they were the first to get pushed off the platform and had to find (or create) the viable alternatives first.
It's like arresting skateboarders for riding in public then complaining there are too many skateboarders at the skate park they built.
I think it's more like,
"I don't want to move to <alternative site> because I'm a weak and lazy creature of habit and uncomfortable with change, plus I don't really care if someone I agree with gets booted from Youtube so long as I can still watch stuff."
I'm not sure that is the reason. It wouldn't help if Nazi content is proactively served to normies, but more important is the network effect and the fact that the tech of these other sites isn't as good as that of Youtube (for good reason). And people don't juggle various sites, they pick one. Even I don't go to Rumble unless I know exactly what I want to watch (e.g. GG's show).
Even if many creators move to Rumble, Youtube will still have orders of magnitude more creators that they - and we - like.
It's far more about being lazy than stupid.
There's far too much inertia. It's similar to Twitch. Other streaming sites are offering better experiences, but Twitch is still #1 because people refuse to move.
The problem is the other sites just don't have enough money to pay creators. Most ad sponsers won't associate with them and it just isn't financially practical to pay for every creator I like to watch.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but if YouTube demonetizes your videos, you're not getting paid either.
I'm sure there's still some value to posting on YouTube because you get a larger audience and you can pitch for donations or direct viewers to the mirrored copy of your video on another site where you do get revenue, but I wouldn't count on YouTube allowing that forever- I'm surprised they tolerate people pitching other sites in their videos; perhaps they just can't catch it unless somebody reports it.
YouTube makes money from advertisers because of their content. If they're not willing to share that money with the content creators the creators need to go somewhere that does.
That's not really true though. Rumble pays Russell Brand millions and offered Joe Rogan an obscene contract. The problem is that viewers stick with their regular, favourite sites and don't feel a need to move because doing so feels like an unnecessary sacrifice. They're comfortable with the familiar and aren't convinced a change should be made, and even often get defensive if you bring it up.
No doubt in an attempt to bootstrap their platform. Often, big creators get sweetheart deals and smaller ones get nothing.
That's why the winning move would be to pay 1,000 small/medium channels the same amount you would've paid the one big one to change over. It costs you the same, but with a thousand people making content, you've got an actual reason not just to come over, but to stay.
It's working with Rumble. Ramzpaul has a great model where he starts his shows on YouTube, keeps things as kosher as possible for the first half, and then tells everyone to head over to Rumble for the 2nd half where he cuts loose. But he uploads the both halves of the show to Rumble, so it encourages people to just start the show on Rumble rather than switch in the middle.
Metatron made an Odysee, at least: https://odysee.com/@Metatronyt:5