I don’t think that’s true. If YouTube were ever freed up, it would likely survive. YouTube actually generates a significant profit for its parent company so even if it did have to pay for resources, it would be okay. TikTok would also survive if sold in the US and held independently. As would most of the major social medias which are essentially stand alone companies.

That’s also borne out by companies like Nebula existing as well as Patreon. The problem with serving videos is live video specifically which takes a lot more infrastructure than normal VOD. That at the moment is not profitable for anyone as far as I know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There’s plenty of speculation that YouTube has never turned a profit. We have no way to know for sure, though.

TikTok is quite different since it’s shorts only. I can totally see that being a viable model, because you can more comfortably cram ads between pieces of content. That’s why YouTube is pushing shorts so heavily.

Nebula is propped up by private investment. I had a quick look and found SEC filings which indicate they have raised over $9 million dollars in private investment in the past 3 years.

Patreon has almost no video hosting compared to how much revenue they have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

TikTok is quite different since it’s shorts only

Tiktok allows streaming too. It's got great discoverability, but garbage monetization.