It's not for everyone, but I think it's reasonable to pay for a platform that pays its content creators fairly. I spend a lot of things watching videos, and even though my income is limited, some kind of payment for the service makes sense.

I don't mind blocking ads on YouTube because they used unfair practices (endless resources from Google) to destroy the competition and become the only video provider. They put us in a corner and deserve to be put in one too.

People have been saying this for years now.

Then it's not an alternative

If it pays "a good bit more per view" than YouTube when basically no one on YT pays and many users have adblockers, someone is getting ripped off here

It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted).

Do you really expect more than even 5% of all youtube channels to do it? You have high hopes.

compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers

I believe it's done in a kinda P2P way? Didn't really check, but wouldn't that just not work with NAT internet connections, which many people have because that's just more secure this way? Also, bad for privacy.

Using a TURN server would also add huge costs so it's basically like hosting your own server

Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

I don't so I wouldn't, but if I was, I would be wondering, as I always do. Anyways, I believe XMPP doesn't store stuff and only transmits, and Matrix doesn't store things forever (and doesn't store videos like YT), and the main instance is funded by donations, and smaller instances are just pretty small and have media wiped when needed

it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary

That's the POV of people in !technology@lemmy.world or selfhosted. Most people can't be bothered with this shit and are pretty tech illiterate. Some don't want to waste even a minute. And that's the case of the very vast majority of people on the internet.

I think I should be more clear: I agree that it is reasonable to pay a platform that is fair.

The comparison to youtube is where it gets lost for me:

The issue is that, in general, the value of watching what is typically on youtube is about the level of free. If it cost me money, I could do without, it just isn't that important. I will find better ways to spend my time. So with Nebula, you have a platform that is more like just another streaming service, albeit a good one for independent creators. But that leaves me thinking what do they have that I would bother watching? Which is a pretty high bar (I didnt even own a tv for nearly 20 years). It seems less like youtube and more like HBO for independents on paper, and without free access how would I know the difference?

I mean that's fair : value is relative.

The main value of Nebula is no ads. I have YouTube on Firefox with uBlock Origin, so no ads either, but shitty performance due to YouTube fighting the AdBlocker. But more importantly I don't think the ability to watch YouTube with no ads is a given, so I want to have a viable alternative.

And secondly, I want to support the creators and a platform that sees me as a customer, not as a data-cow to be milked.

I'm sure Nebula will eventually have a free tier, but that can incur high costs and degrade the experience for paying users. They'll do it when they feel comfortable.

Just to be clear before I respond to the rest of this comment, my position is that Peertube solves the sustainability problem and in no way am I suggesting Peertube will replace YouTube

I do not expect the vast majority of channels to survive the end of YouTube, as is normal for any paradigm shift.

P2P is completely achievable using NAT Hole Punching. I have no clarity on if Peertube is doing this but since there's already a trusted server involved it would be silly not to.

In a hypothetical, unlikely future where YouTube dies and people generally move to Peertube, I expect the majority of content creators to pay small fees to have instances host their videos. I expect small, free but restricted instances will continue to be the home for amateur videographers as they are today. The more technical folk will likely self host, and groups of like minded creators will pool efforts to run group specialist instances (not unlike Nebula).

Frankly the most likely scenario is YouTube dies and everyone starts posting videos to Instagram or Tiktok or something equivalently anti user.

I tried using the Daily Motion Chromecast app the other day, until it served up an hour-long lecture as an advert with no “skip” button.

Use Firefox + ublock origin.
Start the video, get out of the app/lock you phone, then swipe down and click on 'play' on the media controls.

This works on andriod, unsure about ios.

And as an added bonus yt-dlp defaults to maximum quality! Even more strain on YouTube servers!