this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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What he is going to do and what he could do are 2 different discussions.
Again, he certainly could, very easily.
Because of the network effect, he'd have to spend billions to get enough infrastructure for his streaming service to be able to compete with YouTube and Twitch. Because people go where the content is, so a majority of content creators would have to start using it, rather than just himself.
Until that, it's like Epic Games Store. They keep giving away free games and STILL nobody wants to go there because all their games are already on Steam. Doesn't help that their launcher is shit too, but even if it wasn't, most people wouldn't move over.
I was not at all suggesting that he enter the business of livestreaming...
"Where the content is" is owned by one of the richest tech billionaires in the world. One who is responsible for the destruction of more small businesses than anyone on the planet. One who bribed the President on several occasions, including with the ballroom, and with a $28M check. And I'm sure many other avenues.
As long as we continue going "where the content is" and refusing to go anywhere else, that's where it will remain in perpetuity. Someone has to have the influence and the courage to make the content be somewhere else.
That's not why at all. That's because their platform sucks ass.
See, the thing is, if whatever alternative platform he uses (which you proposed could be his own website) can't facilitate a bunch of other creators moving over, then his effort is useless against the whole issue of Twitch, and only serves to make fewer people watch him. And to be fair, he's not just streaming it on Twitch, he's also doing it on YouTube, TikTok and several other shitty corporate platforms, because that's where people are. At least you get a choice of which one to use, even if they all suck.
People don't want to have to use 10 different platforms to follow the stuff they're interested in. They want their one platform to show most of the content, and the content that's not there might as well be ignored. Now if you had Mamdani, and several other people that some particular viewer cares about, all on one alternative platform, that would be enough for that person to consider watching content on two or three platforms, I'm sure. But nobody's going to type an URL into their browser just for one politician in 2026. That's how fucked we are as a society.
I fully agree, but it doesn't help unless there's enough content "somewhere else" and "somewhere else" isn't "different service for every streamer and politician". The reason something like Nebula works is that a whole lot of content creators got together. And they pretty much all still upload to YouTube too, because they need the money - they still get the majority of their views from there, despite offering exclusive content and early access on Nebula. Now Nebula is paid so it has a higher barrier to entry for viewers, but it's ad free and slop free.
You and I might go visit Mamdani's website if he decides to stream on there, but millions of others will not, and he needs to reach them too. Personally, I'm not even the audience he needs to reach. I don't live in the US, let alone NYC.
Personally I think he should also stream it here, but not get rid of the other alternatives just yet. And advertise that more prominently than Twitch or YouTube. Clearly he's already doing multistreaming, it would be great if he could add a non-corporate platform as an alternative. He could also read comments from all platforms rather than just Twitch because there's technology for that too, though it depends on what his solution is (not like a streaming software solution is super hard to replace though).
I acknowledged that, but there are tons of gamers who outright refuse to entertain the idea of using it even if it was good.
GOG doesn't suck at all, and sees much smaller sales numbers than Steam for games that are listed on both. I know I'm personally guilty of buying CP2077 on Steam rather than GOG (despite the fact that I could still use Proton for the GOG version).
...no? It isn't. He doesn't have to support anyone else in order to not support Twitch.
Other than that, I would recommend checking out the Owncast directory to see how a federated streaming network can work. Or even look at the current state of podcasts and just apply that logic to streaming.
The only reason that doesn't already exist is because Big Tech doesn't want it to. They could all turn on Federation and make that a reality tomorrow. Again, I refer you to The Owncast directory to see what that future could look like.
Once again, chicken and egg. There will never be content somewhere else until someone puts it there.
That's because they only have DRM-free content, which means they have ~1\1000th of Steam's library, if that.
Personally I don't buy from them because they don't support Linux/Proton, even though they totally could. So I have to choose between free games or a free OS.
Him alone supporting or not supporting Twitch means absolutely nothing for Twitch, but quite a bit for his viewership. Just moving one creator off the biggest platform accomplishes nothing.
And I don't see a universe where Big Tech is going to change its' tune either unfortunately.
Basically every podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, some of the major ones also on YouTube. How's that different from streaming?
And I'm saying there's no point unless it's a coordinated effort. A single creator being unavailable on Twitch changes nothing, except that single streamer's visibility. It would have to be a ton of people streaming outside of the mainstream platforms for people to forget about Twitch.
Aye, but even games they DO have, they sell less than Steam, despite offering a technically superior product (DRM-free).
Their website runs fine on Firefox on Linux and you can use any number of utilities to run games with Proton and manage prefixes, such as Bottles, umu, etc. Heroic even provides a unifying launcher for GOG and a few other windows-only stores. Are you saying the convenience of the more proprietary platform is keeping you from using the less proprietary one? You can see how it's the same for 99% of humanity and corporate streaming services, right? The competing service needs to win on multiple points to overcome the convenience and familiarity of the existing.
We've already discussed several times precisely how it does. If you don't agree, that's fine, but you can stop repeating the same nonsense over and over.
Not as long as people like you continue to advocate against it.
Because they're also available without them. And YouTube does not have podcasts.
Brother you can't just start at 5 million. Everything starts at one. Fortunately there are already hundreds, but none of them as influential as the mayor of NYC.
I don't care about their website. I want a client where I click a button and the game launches.
It only works like 10% of the time. While Steam works 99%. Even when it works it doesn't support a bunch of features that GOG desktop does.
No I'm saying one supports free operating systems and the other doesn't.