I’m boycotting YouTube primarily because of their recent human right censorship against Palestine. But I’d generally like to reduce YouTube’s dominance in the streaming space, even if it means supporting a few alternative US-based platforms like Nebula, though obviously PeerTube would be ideal.
Edit: The comments here mention that it would be good to tie the email to monetization, so I’ll also be mentioning my support on Patreon in future emails.
Here’s the kind of email I’m sending to my favourite creators. You can usually find their email in their channel bio.
Subject: Please consider alternative video platforms
Hello <First Name/Channel Name>,
I’m writing to ask you to please consider uploading your videos to alternative streaming platforms, in addition to, not instead of, YouTube.
I’ve personally started to move away from YouTube because <INSERT reasons>. Here’s another creator who also recently wrote about their reasons for moving off the platform: https://joshgriffiths.site/youtube-is-awful-im-not-posting-there-anymore/
I’m currently consuming video content on <INSERT alternatives> instead of YouTube.
<INSERT reasons I’m a fan>. I would love to continue watching your content on any other platform, and I’m sure others would appreciate the option to do so as well.
Cheers,
<Name>
That’s like a reverse gofundme/kickstart with an escrow. Money held by a reputable 3rd party and if either side falls through the money goes back to the original holders
I don’t want to pay monthly for someone to produce a variable number of videos, or even pay to subscribe to a whole platform to be distributed and support content I would not like to support financially. But I could very realistically consider how much I’d be willing to pay for one of their videos
A creator like Technology Connections? 100% willing to put money on the table to show there’s an audience for the video. I’d be willing to pay less for a video from a streamer who plays games and puts out a video a day. They both bring entertainment value but also the production value and informational content is vastly different
I was interested so I looked into it:
From https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/209777053-How-to-bill-members-customers
alt text
"Per Creation was our first-ever billing model. Based on a “choose what you pay model,” you can create differently priced tiers, however, paid content is shared with all members. To bill members, you must designate which posts you want us to charge for. We create pending bills for your active members when the designated posts are published. Pending bills begin to process at approximately 12:00 am PT on the 1st of the month or when a member cancels. Members can set a monthly maximum
Members subscribed to a creator who bills per creation can set a monthly maximum of posts to support in a given month – this ensures that members aren’t charged more than they can agree to. A member’s monthly max does not impact their membership access."
Seems like that’s what patreon was originally intended for, but they’ve deprecated that feature
A lot of creators have turned to merch which I also don’t really want to buy, unless it’s practical like a tool because I don’t like wearing branded or logod things and have no need for knickknacks (stickers are an exception but they go on water bottles). Besides, the markup is ridiculous for very basic commodities
And this is why anything well fail. We don’t want to pay.