this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 31 points 1 day ago (7 children)

So I am completely ignorant about this, but... Would just hosting torrents to their own content work? I know the revenue might not be the same, but, would it be possible to keep it going around?

[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yea, revenue certainly wouldn't be the same. As in, there would be no revenue.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Ad revenue. They'd still get sales through their store, as well as sponsor revenue.

[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 1 points 8 hours ago

No one is going to sponsor a creator who has no way to garner an audience.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

When I worked with an influencer who made free workout vids, his ad revenue was 80% of income. It was an extreme minority from free videos to buying something in his store.

Then some algorithm change in 2018 broke his entire income, he couldn't afford me, and last I checked, he was sponsored by diet pills or whatever fake garbage.

It's a damn shame because his dream was always to provide free workout vids.

[–] Jeffool@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People with enough of a viewership would still be offered sponsorship for videos. Like YouTubers who do their own ads in videos.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

So, there are options.

You have three challenges:

  • You need to be discoverable

  • you need to be accessible

  • you need to monetize

If you just make videos and torrent them, you're not monetized, you're not discoverable and you're not really very accessable to the average person.

Youtube is this nifty one-stop-shop that provides all three to a certain point.

Peertube gives you some discoverability and lots of accessibility, but nothing for monetization.

Odysee gives you a tiny bit of discoverability and lots of accessibility, but almost nothing for monetization.

Floatplane (assuming GN wasn't feuding with LMG) gives you reasonable monetization and accessibility but almost nothing in discoverability.

edit: cut myself short

I'd like to see some form of partially federated system that works with peertube. I think the platform could scale and we could give youtube a run for their money.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Surely torrent distributed video can still have sponsorships in it, stick it up as a video on your own website is an option too. Could even go for low res video on website (cheap to host) along with an option of HD torrent.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

https://socialblade.com/youtube/handle/gamersnexus

He gets around 750 Million Youtube verified views per month , he's releasing about 5 hours of content per month.

He's not self-hosting that cheaply.

His sponsors are giving him the a nice pile of money based on his view count, he's not going to manage that on his own without the algo pumping users to him. Search engines kind of suck and video bloggers at that scale need organics to keep going.

You can't add monetization without discoverability and accessibility.

Looking at those numbers, I don't even know that peertube could handle it, he'd probably need to setup his own cluster to mirror them all.

There's a reason why we don't have a lot of competition to YouTube.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago

We need a site that points peertube users to the accounts of their old youtube favorites.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 1 points 10 hours ago

He'd probably have to have a dedicated video hosting site, not unlike GameTrailers and similars from the very early 2010s

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Theoretically, you could try to rely on patreon to have your audience pay you directly, but without discoverability, they will slowly dwindle and die. As to corporate sponsors, no one is going to pay for ads on torrented shows.

[–] xep@discuss.online 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What about Rumble? GN is on there and directly supportable.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He's got 935 followers and about 20,000 views there

Rumble only takes half the cut YouTube does, But the amount of traffic on there is microscopic compared to YouTube. There's some room there to make money.

The vast majority of the content on there is a conservative echo chamber. I'd be a little worried about his ability to maintain journalistic integrity against big companies in that ecosystem. I'm also wondering what their ads look like ;)

[–] xep@discuss.online 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The vast majority of the content on there is a conservative echo chamber.

TIL. It's always rather amusing as someone outside of America that posts containing factual information get downvotes purely based on the perceived alignment of the subject on the zero-nuance American Political Spectrum. I block ads, so I wouldn't know.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 19 hours ago

I certainly didn't downvote you.

It's definitely not a bad idea to look. Rumble is probably the second best option which is why he's there. But spend about 2 minutes looking around on rumble and it's like taking your dinner in the sewer. Anti-woke, anti-DEI, crypto, people praising armed military flooding into the streets of peaceful cities. The second most popular channel on there is newsmax which is literally propaganda. His will be able to resonate with the people that are there, But the rest of the content on the site is so edgy that it pushes away the vast majority.

One of the biggest complaints about the platform is the lack of traffic. The ease of use is there, the monetization is there, but the discovery isn't.

Easier than that. Just put it on peertube

[–] towerful@programming.dev 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeh, absolutely.
The DMCA takedown works because music/film industry execs have previously gone after YouTube for not responding to legitimate copyright infringements.
So YouTube now favours the person claiming the strike and makes it very difficult for the defendant to exonerate themselves.

Changing how they publish will sidestep YouTube overplaying.
But YouTube has revenue split with content creators, and has an absolutely massive audience with discovery algorithms and community stuff. Moving away from that platform would be an insane move

[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Well I didn't mean not publishing on YouTube completely because we know that's not possible at this point in time, I meant like having an archive of their own videos accesible via Torrent... Kinda like how some let's players are doing by putting their uncensored versions on Patreon (with swearing and stuff) or early access to their content, but in this case, putting the YouTube version in a torrent in case some shit like this happens so the access is not lost forever.

Like, not choosing only one way of publishing or another, just casting a wider net.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 1 points 13 hours ago

Oh, gotcha.
I'm pretty sure they have a patreon.
They ran a Kickstarter to fund the production of this specific 3h episode, and all levels of backers got a USB key with a copy of the video on it.

The issue isn't it being deleted. It won't disappear.

The issue is the contents potentially not reaching as many new viewers unaware of Nvidias shady behaviour and how the black market of GPUs actual works because Bloomberg (who have sponsorship from Nvidia) DMCAd the video.
Either because their articles were used as a source and the text of those articles were shown on screen (potentially reducing views those articles would have received if they were linked? Or something? No idea how you would provide a snapshot of the information as it was at the time of publishing the video, tho. Cause the article could be edited after GNs video was published, making any soft references meaningless).
Or because they used some of Bloombergs video of POTUS, which (in my understanding) cannot be copyrighted.

So to me, it seems like GNs video was frivolously DMCAd to reduce its impact on Nvidia.
The impact of that DMCA is that: as it was starting to trend it gets taken offline for ~10 days. After which, YouTube's algorithm will be unlikely to promote it via its algorithm because it hasn't had any new views for 10 days.
Effectively killing the video.
Gamers Nexus gets a "strike" against their channel (of which they get 3).
Bloomberg has 0 repercussions.

Unless we all kick up enough fuss to cause some repercussions, and support GN enough to get the exposé trending again.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Sounds like YouTubers should go after YouTube when this happens. Maybe a class action lawsuit for lost revenue?

[–] towerful@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is no good answer to it.

It is ridiculous that a channel which uploads thousands of authentic original content can lose all algorithm momentum from a frivolous DMCA strike removing their video for 10 days.
It basically guarantees a video gets killed. Even if the video gets reinstated after an appeal.

This particular video will massively bounce back. People are angry at Nvidia, people are angry with YouTube and with YouTubes DMCA process, and now people are angry at Bloomberg.
And Gamers Nexus isn't gonna let this drop, and GN has earned its communities trust (and I think trust in general) that there will be flocks of people ensuring the video doesn't die.

But if this was a smaller channel releasing a massive expose like this, it would probably just drop out off the public's radar before it gets established

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

DMCA and mass report ads from these companies. Basically fuck with their ad pipeline.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Messy. Youtube could just refuse to serve his videos because they decide they don't want to :/

They have more lawyers than God, I can't help but think the contract they all have with Google favors Google to the extreme.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeh, exactly.
It's a private company.
It's a huge platform, but YouTube can choose what YouTube is.

The only way any change happens is if YouTube gets raked over the coals by enough content producers (that they could collectively start their own platform) by media and potentially by governments (recognising them as some sort of critical communications or something and implementing regulations?).
Or if all the YouTube viewers decide they have had enough and go elsewhere (where, tho? Kinda goes hand-in-hand with creators starting their own platform).

So the pressure needs to keep building, YouTube needs to keep doing shitty things. Eventually... Hopefully?... Something changes: YouTube gets better, a new platform is born.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 12 hours ago

We need monetization in peertube, and peertube to have community tools like (or exceeding) lemmy.

I think it's a pretty low bar, but it's not just going to happen without massive interest

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nobody is gonna watch a torrent tuber, the audience would get cut to 1/100th if even that.

Too many people rely on the aggregates and the algorithms.

[–] Jeffool@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

It's funny, I remember watching The Scene from torrents (or maybe eDonkey2000/eMule?) 20 years ago. And it was relatively popular. Though I don't remember the last time I even had a BitTorrent client installed. If you're right, then we've failed ourselves. (And you may be right.)