Comment by jeffbee
20 hours ago
A lot to unpack here, but the article fails to tackle the question of distribution. Creators put their videos on YouTube because that is the way to reach a nearly global audience at zero cost. I can assure you that although you can probably figure out how to host videos that nobody sees, you cannot afford to host a popular video.
The author clearly spent a lot of time writing and presenting this, but the facts and conclusions don't seem to warrant the presentation. In particular the (useless, in the narrative) section about antibiotics shows that the author is a deeply unserious person suffering from some pretty severe fallacies. Nobody can have seen a chart of childhood mortality over the 20th century and still believe such things.
> Creators put their videos on YouTube because that is the way to reach a nearly global audience at zero cost.
If a tree fell and there was no one around, did it make a sound? A cursory look through r/newtubers would show you that there are a lot of people who get no views on their videos. Youtube's distribution mattered when it was looking for user-generated content to splice ads into. Today, it is filled with that content, and no longer has to encourage people to post by giving them thousands of views overnight.
Besides that, people starting Youtube channels are looking for fame, which is why they unquestioningly follow all the usual tricks for "going viral": inane thumbnails, one-minute preambles before the "like and subscribe" beg, engagement bait content to draw in comments, etc. This kills whatever original voice the uploader may have had, before their first video is even posted.
This just sounds like a you problem. Don't watch those channels. Don't upload those videos.