Vidme’s Shutdown, YouTube’s Downfall and No Clear Path Forward: Suggestions For Future Platforms
Vidme is suspending it’s operations. Vidme had amazing branding potential with it’s layout and mascot and it’s creator community focused team of entrepreneurs and developers. Now, I say creator community but in reality a lot of people that do videos on politics were set aside for your run of the mill “Let’s Play” videos that were uploaded to such high volume that it drowns any other content. Nevertheless, Vidme had potential. Not potential to be a free speech platform but potential to be better than YouTube. A low bar admittedly when we’re talking anything other than obtaining a large market share of frequent visitors.
Unfortunately, Vidme didn’t grow to the point of being in the same position YouTube was in where YouTube could have told advertisers to go pound sand. YouTube instead completely capitulates to the demands of advertisers at everyone’s expense, even going so far as to create secret codes of exclusion for advertisements. Advertisers are hurting themselves in the long run by wanting their ads to get the most mileage per dollar to the point where they require sites like Vidme and YouTube to do everything short of watching every single video to determine if the video is “suitable for ads” which by the way just seems like the result of a scheme from all the companies invested in legacy media to make advertising as difficult as possible on video sharing platforms. Of course, I am just speculating, but it does seem that is what’s going on. You have a television station who’s advertising rates are far more expensive, who’s demographics are far more broad and yet websites and content creators can’t seem to make any money unless they get views in the hundreds of thousands despite all the data collected from Google that can really narrow down who the advertisers want to target. It seems backwards, honestly. Plus, a lot of the online audience is untapped. Then we also have the double-standard of legacy media’s South Park being able to have Cartman larp as Adolf Hitler, which is very offensive and also very funny-- advertisers didn’t hold Viacom hostage over that bullshit as far as I know. Plus, we had CoCa-Cola sponsoring the Vegas shooting on CNN despite advertisers not wanting their ads being played on YouTube videos tackling such subjects. You can see now why someone would think this is just some scheme by the legacy media, right? And with YouTube Red and YouTube’s TV packages to help pick up the slack, come on…
Here’s what I would like to see in choices of video sharing platforms.
· First and most importantly; video blog software that can do for video what wordpress did for blogs. Not a wordpress extension, but an actual dedicated web application that aims to have the features and functionality of all the video sharing sites. Watermarks, annotations, monetization, analytics(YouTube and Facebook will always have the best analytics because they siphon the most private information), variety of formats, optional peer to peer sharing of bandwidth, everything, all the best features. Perhaps building upon clipbucket is a great starting point for this idea. Just so happens I also have a favorable bias towards php as well.
· Bitchute.com, it’s own documentation even states that it wishes not to be a free speech rendition of a YouTube wannabe. I look at bitchute as a free speech index of videos and a service best used to mirror videos should any of them be censored or restricted in some way. Also, it’s a great platform to show WebTorrent’s software in action in that bitchute uses the bandwidth of it’s visitors to help distribute data across the network. In some ways alexandra.io and lbry.io are better choices than Bitchute but if you’re considering Bitchute you may also be the kind of person who would cover all bases anyways. Just don’t rely on these services to help gain you more exposure. You may also want to check out d.tube.
· Essentially what vidme was.
For a more centrally owned, developed and provided platform, I’d like a creator community focused video sharing platform attempting mainstream success by deleting spam and deleting some certain content within reason. Now, I said “within reason”, but YouTube and Twitter has totally messed with our idea of what is reasonable for a private company to restrict on their platform. It’s getting to a point now where we are going to be suspicious of any website that gets rid of child abuse, incitements to violence, hate speech that gets too popular, lewd and obscene content, ISIS beheadings, you know.. things that we probably wouldn’t have had a problem with if Twitter and Facebook didn’t become the massive dickheads they are and if YouTube’s crappy priorities and content regulation bots weren’t run amok deleting channels like Team Conan of all channels out there to delete.
I would want a new, better, more successful version of vidme because I don’t think there will ever be a unifying protocol for all these video sharing sites to use to make it easy for a third party to index their content in a unified search engine, giving decent results to all these places. Ideally, we’d have this, too.
The law will have to change also. All of these sites, PewTube and BitChute included, do not seem to have as hopeful an outlook that h3h3 won their case in which they were sued for basically exercising their rights of fair use. H3h3 won and we have yet another case in where Fair Use is solidified and upheld. Are we waiting for a constitutional amendment in order for parody like Team Four Star to flourish in this new age of video sharing? Is it really still that much of a liability in this country? I guess so, after all, these are big corporations that can afford to buy influence in other corporations and government and most of us complacent plebs who don’t pirate King of the Hill and The Wonder Years after Netflix gets rid of it.
On top of the unified search engine and the ideal alternatives I propose the following laws.
· Legally protect all noncommercial distribution of all copyrighted media.
· Legally protect all fair use scenarios. Especially for parody and commentary purposes
I’ve heard a suggestion once that if places like YouTube were made into public works of some kind, they would no longer need to worry about the kind of speech they’re hosting and advertisers wouldn’t hold YouTube liable but I think that’s a step in the wrong direction. It sets in stone YouTube as a monolith, the sole provider of video content, an artificial monopoly chosen by the state. That will be an even bigger more impossible dragon to slay should the wrong administration come to power.
It’s not looking too good for those of us who want a platform that is feature rich, mainstream, a proponent of free speech and fair use as well as incorruptible. But it is technologically possible and I will offer advice to entrepreneurs and content creators who wish to help in what is essentially marketing. Bare in mind that I’m not a graduate of any sort and that I haven’t worked in these industries but everyone involved has been doing a piss poor job so humoring my proposals isn’t going to dig your holes any deeper, so hear me out. Some of the proposals will be in the form of a criticism of YouTube, vidme and others. Much of this will be in jest too but do mule over this. Some of this is going to be obvious but I’m not a big fan of brevity when it comes to these things, unfortunately, much of it in jest, too, but seriously.
Spoiler alert: Centrally owned closed source video sharing is destined to fail as a product or fail it’s customers.
· Make use of a smarter WebTorrent technology to save on bandwidth
As I mentioned earlier, something like WebTorrent but nodes can also distribute chunks of data to serve other videos that other people are watching. Don’t be like bitchute and make it your default option, of course. Instead, make it an option available to users and reward people who are helping you save on bandwidth cost. For every gigabyte served the node is rewarded tokens that they can either use themselves or sell to someone else.
· Discourage Spam
I look up cooking videos, kitchen appliance reviews, program tutorials… stuff like that. Very often for any of these, I will come across a stupid picture slide show video that tells me nothing or worse yet, they use make-your-own-video-logo stuff and have some text-to-speech engine rattle off garbage in Chinglish or worse. This needs to stop. This isn’t beyond spam. This is the “Peppa Pig Getting Her Teeth Pulled Out” of informative videos. It’s not even good enough to be fake news. It’s trash taking up bandwidth and time. It’s clearly fraudulent to the point where I think free speech couldn’t be able to defend it. Content like HowToBasic or idubbbz’s unboxing videos wouldn’t be effected by this because there is artistic value in that. It’s satire, it’s comedy, it’s legitimately artistic, it’s entertaining. These other videos though? They’re not even helpful. It’s a vain attempt for someone in the third world to generate youtube bucks so that they can buy sacks of rice. Wouldn’t be surprised if these videos turn out to be some kind of prison labor scheme.
Here’s an example of this fraudulent video trash I’m referencing. Usually rife in plagiarism too.
Also, when someone uploads copyrighted material and they mess with the audio and video of it, it should be deleted for being in poor quality. That should be the official reason given.
· If You Offer Premium Service Plans, Make Sure Another Service Doesn’t Offer It For Free
This is self-explanatory. If you have to convince yourself that this is a good idea, it’s not. If you think it’s a good idea without having to convince yourself, you’ve lost and somebody else needs to make decisions. It’s a reason for someone to NOT use your service and people already have a very good reason to not use it: nobody else is.
· Decentralization and Federation is Good
Being the first team to market and develop this new video platform will solidify your “dominance” in the federation. I can make arguments for why this is the case but consider this. The Linux Foundation funds the development of Linux. Bitcoin and Litecoin continue to dominate the coin markets despite literally thousands of forks from both existing. And unfortunately, Mastodon poisoned itself and made itself shitty. But, I don’t think any ambitious entrepreneur is going to like the idea of taking a comfortable pay cut despite this being arguable the safest route to go. Like Linux, investors aren’t going line up for it either until it is already robust enough to be functionally appealing.
All my talk earlier about WebTorrent and users donating bandwidth and third party search engines and unified protocols and stuff, hopefully another company like minds, if not minds themselves, sprouts up and takes that on for video. This is the only way advertisers will know their place, the only way platforms will gain trust and confidence and the only way users can grow on a level playing field, where their content thrives due to it's merit or the hustle of it's creator. Otherwise, the conventional way will continue to fall into the same traps vidme and YouTube and possibly vimeo is falling into.
Who knows, maybe normies will stop being little bitches and accidentally promote bitchute into being a free speech youtube wannabe after all and then they’ll do everything I’ve suggest here, all on their own, without ever humoring me on this article. Maybe minds well shift from being a facebook alternative and become a video sharing social network alternative and we’ll be even closer to what is being described in this article.
What about creators? What can they do to help? (Continue reading if you’re a video sharing website entrepreneur)
You people need to start shilling and using some of your profits to buy ads for yourself. If enough people did that, these sites would have an advertiser economy that wouldn’t be all centralized to a bunch of stupid big corporate companies. I know people look down on content creators who shill, but screw that.
Some sites you could do some good shilling with, your mileage may vary depending upon your content.
Ting - mobile that makes sense
Dollar Beard Club
Get paid cash for filling out surveys, no minimum withdraws
digitalocean simple $5 cloud hosting
Visit the websites of companies who sponsor your favorite bloggers, podcasters, youtubers.. it’s likely they’ll have an affiliates program you can enter without needing to see how big your e-peen is.
It's time to make decentralization mainstream and easy for normie plebs.
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references:
Vidme: Goodbye For Now https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa
Nerdcity: Youtube's Secret Codes REVEALED
Ethan Klien (h3h3): CoCa-Cola sponsoring Vegas Shooting https://twitter.com/h3h3productions/status/914747203997990912?lang=en
Clipbucket: Open Source Video Content Management System https://github.com/arslancb/clipbucket
knowyourmeme forums: youtube randomly deletes channels on thanksgiving http://knowyourmeme.com/forums/general/topics/55614-multiple-youtube-channels-terminated-including-idubbbz-in-what-may-be-a-glitch
Judge Katherine B. Forrest's Ruling In Favor Of Fair Use: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3946577-Hosseinzadeh-Klein-ruling.html
The Sun: Creator of Peppa Pig video nasties says parents are to blame when kids are tricked into watching upsetting YouTube clips https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3221568/creator-of-sick-peppa-pig-video-nasties-says-parents-are-to-blame-when-kids-are-tricked-into-watching-upsetting-youtube-clips/
Mastodon Sucks: https://sealion.club/notice/7248528