I may trust that slightly more. Or Amazon’s bedrock. Or Github. But wait, do I see copyrighted code on GitHub Copilot, which is owned by Microsoft?

My background is in building distributed systems for self-sovereign ownership and make them easy to use and available to everyone. Like https://qbix.com and https://intercoin.org

You should have the software infrastructure of Facebook and Twitter but choose where to host it.

In addition, I prefer Wordpress, Discourse forums, GitLab to GitHub, Redmine to FogBugz, etc.

When it comes to YOUR art, your code, your content, your relationships, you should be able to run it on your own servers.

Any analysis of your data should be done locally, with local models. You should have the open source software and the weights, and you should be able to choose which hosting company to trust, or host on-prem. Villages should be able to do this without needing server farms in California. This should be obvious stuff. But we the people need the software!

But hey, the documentation and teasers and trailers should go on YouTube and TikTok.

It isn’t even about them scraping all your content and training on it. It’s about not giving Twitter all your followers and YouTube all your hours of video production and content so they can give you pennies for being “an influencer”. Own your community!

Someone had to build it, and in the Web2 space nearly everyone sold out to venture capitalists. I was sure that in the 12 years we built Qbix and 5 years of Intercoin someone would make a better open source alternative to Big Tech and Big Finance. Nope. They all either sold out, or have a solution that doesn’t compete on features (eg Mastodon). I would say the closest is Matrix!

I mean, are you suggesting (for example) that someone who wanted a career in short-form video essays should skip YouTube and host their own videos? I don’t see how that could possibly work in general.

They should treat youtube as another marketing channel (as a showcase on the street is), but not as their main source of income or backup for example.

- They can run a website with their own personal brand and collect emails there. - They can backup their videos in other services in case youtube close their account ...

You don't see how, say, someone who wants to teach a class and collect tuition might not want to put all their content on YouTube and get a pittance?

And now replace teaching with pretty much any other content. A musician giving a concert, TED talks, etc.

Well, the concern I have is about alternatives. Joanna Videoessayist might not have the technical know-how, the business acumen, or the capital to build her own platform — she just wants to make great video essays. Eliminating platforms like YouTube wouldn’t make Joanna better off, it would just cause her to return to her marketing job.

No one is eliminating YouTube. We're making a better open source alternative.

If it's good enough, she will leave YouTube just like her mom left AOL and embraced the open Web. Why did content creators leave MSN, CompuServe, et al ?