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"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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The problem is that there aren't any really viable alternatives. YouTube has three major advantages and all three are necessary. First and most critically it has a viable business model (that is it has a way to earn money to pay creators). It's a shitty business model, but it is viable which already puts it ahead of most services that are coasting on VC funds and hoping they'll trip over a business model before they go bankrupt. Second it has the infrastructure and capital to actually serve content. Running a video streaming service is the single largest bandwidth consumer you could possibly come up with and that means considerable network infrastructure costs, to say nothing of the storage demands. Third it has network effect going for it. Nobody is going to watch videos on your platform if there's only a couple dozen of them total. The sheer size and scope of YouTube means no matter what you're looking for you can find something to watch. It's a one stop shop for AV content.
Every single competitor to YouTube has failed on one of those points, usually the first one, rarely the second. The last service I saw come close to hitting all three was Vimeo, but it flamed out not even a decade after it launched. Twitch.tv is struggling to make their accounting work and isn't even a direct competitor because they're pushing hard for live streams as opposed to pre-recorded videos. Alternatives like PeerTube have no business model and will never attract creators or a mainstream audience. Paid hosting platforms like Floatplane are replacements for traditional video streaming services like Amazon Video or Netflix not really platforms where just anybody can set up a channel and start posting videos.
To paraphrase a famous saying, YouTube is the worst public video streaming service except for every other one. Until someone comes along and figures out how to make enough money to reliably pay creators and has enough capital to actually serve that content reliably and in high quality YouTube isn't going anywhere.
I wanna like Peertube as an alternative, but I can't find any content I like there. And the app is so awkward to use.
PeerTube would be great if you didn't have to self-host. And yes, I mean that. Every instance I've found that allows user uploads charges the users for bandwidth (or charges a subscription fee). I've never found an instance yet that works like Dailymotion or YouTube. When we get a big instance (like mastodon.social or one of the big two Lemmy instances), that allows user uploads freely and seamlessly, we'll start seeing it grow.
There are quite a few that allow uploads without charges or subs. But not if you start now, right now because costs have risen so much you cannot possibly cover them if someone comes in and uploads 20 or so high quality high bandwidth sucking videos because well, there isnt really the audience and the money is basically lost... and as said that is where we are. Doesn't help they only really use h.264 and don't get ad revenue. Creators have zero interest in making a video if they don't get something back, either in plenty of views or some income which currently, to be brutal, they have zero chance of achieving on peertube compared to youtube
Oh I didn't know that was the case. I've only really started using it, but I think peertube.wtf hosts some for you. I just started a new account with fedimovie today — because I can't seem to access wtf for some reason — and I think it said on their sign up page that they have 100gb for me to use.
So, when you say self-host, would I have to have an instance of Peertube myself, or can I have an account with an instance and host just the videos?
My experience is that basically, if you actually want to do anything meaningful with video, you need to host your own instance, because no one wants to be beholden to the bandwidth, especially if it gets any uptake. In which case, obviously, you're on your own for the costs. The only way I can see PeerTube working is if a few of the medium size YouTubers & Twitch streamers with decent monthly Patreon takes band together and fund it that way.
I use Odysee and Peertube where possible but yeah they're somewhat awkward, and the biggest thing I typically miss is the comments. As awful as most Youtube comments are, the critical mass is there, if you're looking for a quick link to something in the video, the summary that the author should've included but didn't, the correction where the author was wrong, or something else of actual value, chances are whatever it is you're trying to find somewhere on the top heap of Youtube comments. As with most social media, the value is not in the service itself, it's in the community. Steering that community towards somewhere where it will actually be appreciated is a herculean task when someone has to be the pioneers and live in that desert and put in the work to prepare it for the ones who will come after them.
I glanced at odysee and noped out the second the front page I was looking at was full of trump racist propaganda
Yes, until we bring the light of civilization, it will be the wild west and the natives are trying to kill us.
As much as I do complain about Peertube, I do like how it's like the old personal blog days. Just kinda quietly do your own thing. I'm actually thinking of starting a channel to teach Japanese. I'll probably have a few lines of my diary and break down the vocabulary and grammar in English and French. It's like shit nobody would give a crap about, but it'll get me to keep up with my diary and maybe someone will find the info useful, which I think the earlier days of personal websites and blogs were like.
That sounds like a great idea. I think the independence of the old web is something we should aspire to, it's a big part of what gave the internet its soul, and that's what big tech has suffocated with ads and monetization and platform-control.
Are you me?
there is, maybe, a market for more specialized, niche platforms...but it's a huge maybe.
nebula seems to be doing very well, but again: highly specialized content, and a closed/curated platform.
other than serving video content, it has little in common with yt...hence the big "maybe"!
and there's been a few similar attempts in recent years, which i don't think really went anywhere either...
Yeah, though I think that you could avoid some of that with a good cross-video-hosting service search engine, as I don't think that most people are engaging in the social media aspect of YouTube. YouTube doesn't have a monopoly on indexing YouTube videos.
But the scale doesn't hurt them, that's for sure.