I've published 500 videos in 18 years on my YouTube channel.
It was different back in 2006, when I moved from Google Videos over to YouTube. Monetization wasn't a thing, and we all just posted video online for the fun of it.
Fast forward to today, and it seems like AI slop is set to take over the entire platform, proving the Dead Internet Theory right. You have AI videos with AI bots watching and commenting, and YouTube enables it by plastering unskippable ads everywhere! They make money, AI farms make money, everyone's happy!
...except for you and me.
They took away dislikes, so we lost one of the best signals for avoiding slop. And then they push shorts and products so much, it's harder for creators who want to do things with intentionality.
The tl;dr?
- YouTube's been great, but it also scares me
- Because of that, I'm now also on Floatplane!
This blog post is a lightly edited transcript of this YouTube video:
What's Floatplane? I'll get to that soon.
For me, YouTube's a lot more about the community, the interaction, and the learning than the TV aspect.
What I mean by that is you go to a TV and pop a video on just to be entertained for a bit.
But you don't normally do that if you're going to sit at your workbench and work on something. Or if you want ask questions and discuss things with the person who made the video.
It can happen, but as we see more of a move towards TV and mobile, the interaction, the part that made Web 2.0 special, fades away.
And I hate that.
Besides that, YouTube's ad and business-friendly policies over the years have led to some unfortunate realities.
One of those realities was I got hit by my first community guidelines strike last year:
After being published on my channel for over two years, YouTube put a strike on my channel for my video showing people how to set up Jellyfin on their NAS, for promoting "dangerous or harmful content" pic.twitter.com/xs6mbrOFv3
— Jeff Geerling (@geerlingguy) October 2, 2024
YouTube said my video on self-hosting Jellyfin had "dangerous or harmful content."
It was a bit scary thinking if that happens twice, my entire YouTube channel—in fact all my YouTube channels, could just disappear overnight.
Luckily, after that Twitter post, I got someone inside Google to remove the strike.
But if you watch the news, you'll see this isn't an isolated incident. And unlike my case, or Sinevibes more recently, not every creator has the reach to get in touch with Google.
So we see some channels just fade off into nothingness—and that frightens me.
On top of that, the viewer experience on YouTube is getting worse. It's a sad state of affairs when people have to rely on extensions like Return YouTube Dislike, ReVanced, or SponsorBlock just to not hate the UX. And I don't begrudge anyone for trying to make it easier to watch YouTube.
But in light of all that, as a hedge, I want to make sure my content is also available somewhere else; something like a 'RAID 1' for my online video content.
Floatplane
Floatplane has zero ads and zero algorithms. Subscribers can download all my videos in 4K with no DRM, and even integrate my channel into their local, self-hosted media library!
I'll still upload everything to YouTube. Nothing's going behind a paywall.
If you haven't heard of Floatplane, it's one of a few creator-founded video hosting platforms.
It seems like any channel on YouTube that grows large enough eventually sets up shop somewhere else. And the biggest creators often build their own sites. Like there's Corridor Digital, Nebula, Dude Perfect, and of course Floatplane.
But on Floatplane, some creators are invited to create a channel, and people can pay to access their content. There are no ads, the user experience is centered around video, and most of the money people pay makes it to the creator.
People who are deeply invested in 'tech YouTube' likely know of drama surrounding Linus Tech Tips (which is Floatplane's primary focus), Gamers Nexus, and Louis Rossmann. I've never had any bad interactions with any of the above, so I have nothing to say about the drama. I approached Floatplane as a platform for my video content, nothing more.
(I did enjoy LTX 2023, and LMG paid for my flight and hotel to attend, just to be transparent.)
While we're on the topic of things that scare me, the whole idea that "you're either with me, or you're my enemy" permeating social media is a bit annoying.
The best thing about Floatplane (in comparison to YouTube) is there actual humans I can reach.
As an aside, while I love Floatplane's simplicity, there are some warts with the platform, especially from an accessibility perspective. I'm documenting those on my GitHub.
Why not Nebula?
When I initially announced this on Twitter, a few people asked why I didn't join Nebula?
First, it seems like Nebula is an invite-only platform (similar to Floatplane, though Floatplane has a form for content creators to fill out—which seems to go into a black hole right now).
Second—after one conversation with someone from Nebula about the possibility of my joining—I have three things that put me off, for now at least:
- Lack of enthusiasm for comments
- An exclusivity clause
- Potential reliance on affiliate marketing for platform income
Comments might be the biggest thing holding me back. Honestly, a platform like Nebula feels more like a Netflix or an Apple TV than a YouTube.
Half the things I learn from video, I've learned from the comment section, and I've had plenty of extremely useful conversations in comments (on my channel and many others).
It's really the community aspect I think is missing. Having to send someone off-site to Reddit or elsewhere feels wrong. This blog would be the natural tie-in, but the conversations had around written content and video tend to be different, and I'd rather not mix the two.
As an illustration: most of my blog posts, including this one, which closely follow a video's transcript, still have major revisions, as video is an entirely different mode of communication than blogs.
In other words, even through the strange parasocial relationship dynamics on YouTube, I like and respect the people who comment on my videos, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
The two other reasons are smaller but still important. From what I can tell, if you post videos on Nebula, that's the only place you can post them, outside YouTube. And exclusivity deals feel weird to me.
If I had to sign something like that for Floatplane, I probably wouldn't have signed up for it.
The last reason is on how creators on Nebula make money. This is partially speculation on my part—I need to talk to some Nebula creators directly about this to know more, but it seems like a substantial portion of potential revenue comes out of how many people you get to join Nebula.
I just don't like affiliate marketing. It's something a lot of creators do, and I don't think it's bad necessarily... It's just, I just don't feel comfortable relying on affiliate marketing for income.
"But Jeff!" I know someone is typing, "what about Amazon Affiliates? You have that blurb in the footer of your website!"
Yes, I'm a member of Amazon Affiliates, and I have been for over a decade. But let me introduce you to a great line from Technology Connections' recent video on how Algorithms are breaking how we think:
Wait. Nuance? On the Internet? THAT'S ILLEGAL!
I publish all my sponsorship, affiliates, and product sample policies on GitHub. If you have any input, please leave a comment here or on GitHub :)
What about existing Patrons?
And what about Patreon? I'll keep my Patreon (and GitHub Sponsors) going like it's always been. My goal online—just as it has been since I started allowing sponsorships for my open source work—is to give people the option to support me in what I do. It's less about benefits, though you do get access to my Discord.
Floatplane of course, is a little different. For me, it's kind of the emergency escape hatch (RAID 1 for my video content). But for people who want to support my video work, it has the side benefit of giving a better viewing experience—as long as you don't need closed captions :(
YouTube giveth, YouTube taketh
YouTube's been amazing for me. It's allowed me to finally pursue my passion of learning and teaching in a way I could've never done working in a traditional school.
YouTube is also the only reason I was able to repair this ridiculously over-complicated sliding door on our minivan a few months ago.
But that which giveth, taketh away...
Jeff, his face black, his eyes red.
YouTube, when the walls fell.
Comments
Have you considered a platform such as peertube?
Floatplane is yet another company and it's likely just a matter of time, till enshittification happens there too.
Peertube on the other hand is free and open source, part of the fediverse so users can choose a wide range of platforms they can follow you from.
When I read the title my first thought was "Jeff doesn't have backups of his videos???" :)
The link you provided for revanced is unofficial and may distribute malware in the future. Please change it to the official one, revanced.app.
Yikes! Sorry about that, will have it updated in a moment.
Thank you for the post. I like how you addressed the “elephant in the room” regarding what Linus has done. I have I do have a Nebula (the lifetime tier). It has its moments but I do agree with the tings you noted.
Your GitHub repo has been useful with a couple projects. I have noticed some YouTube “tech” content creators (which I follow) are not as helpful or interesting. It is hard to point a source — but the common element is quitting their job or shifting way from their old income source to focus on only video content. I have wondered if chasing YouTube algorithm has caused the content to be a particular format, a limit to the video limit, a failed series completion, etc.
For the last 30 days I have been debating to unsubscribe for many YouTube channels. The main reason is due to the content change, ads or the vlogs are more a possession flex.
I will probably subscribe to your content on floatplane.
I have honestly decided that I cannot afford to watch videos anymore. I need to limit myself to reading long-form, old-school blogs from actual humans that do not push content to me via notifications or algorithms that I cannot control, but that I can pull from at my own convenience.
Reading + RSS >>> Videos for sure.
Sadly, blogs and the 'old internet' (like here) are just... not what they used to be.
I still write out of passion but it certainly is hard to keep sites like this going without succumbing to the newsletter-ification of all blogging activities, with giant popups asking people to subscribe, or dozens of ads plastered on the site!
Yeah, not trying to yuck your yum. You do cool stuff, and more power to you. I love your blog and the community you've built around it. I just find the YouTube experience, even with nice adblockers, too painful to engage in these days with all the algorithmic encouragements to find other "related" videos and notifications and enticements to get sucked in. It reminds me of why I quit FaceBook as it started to make me feel more drained than otherwise.
If you are trying to make a living just off of a blog without ads, it's tough. Beyond Patreon/Ko-Fi/BuyMeACoffee and things like substack etc., it's not exactly easy.
Registered on floatplane but that is not for me. I'm not going to pay each channel seperate to see their content. You can imagine how much that is going to cost..
Perhaps a model that shows content with different degrees of latency, like 2 days after publishing for x dollars per month would be better. If you are really a fan you can pay to see it when released.
Indeed; it'd be nice if they could figure out other ways too, besides just the direct 1:1 content subscriptions. Though it's kind of more a Patreon with a video focus than strictly a YouTube alternative.
For me the fragmentation and distrust in new services makes it hard to migrate. For as long as yt-dlp works there literally can be no better alternative for me. I enter a video ID, I have the file, and Google pays for the servers.
That some troll falsely flagged a video is terrible, but it was resolved. I currently am experience a migration fatigue from people telling me you must leave "platform A" because it is owned by "Evil Guy C" and join "platform B".
It's good to have redundancy and alternatives, as long as they remain optional. For some reason though I am bewildered. Your videos never had true backup? Sorry I cannot imagine that to be the situation.
It's not about the video files, it's about public access to videos. I have three copies (two local, one remote offline, with all three on different media) of all my videos and original source footage—that's not my worry.
I could self-host them on like PeerTube, but that would put more of the hosting burden on me, and not provide any sustaining benefit except for the average <1% of viewers providing direct support. So Floatplane offers 'RAID 1' protection for access to all my video library for anyone who registers.
I don't ever plan on leaving YouTube, unless YouTube forces me to.
Why not to upload the videos just here, on the website? Why do you _need_ a platform for that, given you already have your own place on the internet?
Self-hosting video content for more than 5-10 viewers is an extreme challenge (I've done it in the past)—you need CDNs that cost a lot of money to host a video that's played 50-100k times, much less anything that could be played a million+ times.
Then there's the means of monetization/paying for it. YouTube uses advertisements... I would need to figure out a way to replace that revenue.
Hi Jeff,
In the video, at 2:30, you made a terrible mistake!
You are showing the UI of revanced[dot]net, while the real site is revanced[dot]app. See the link on the github: https://github.com/revanced
revanced[dot]net is distributing badware and open po*n/random website popups. It is blocked by uBlock origin, you should use it to protect you!
The issue with your video is that it will "legitimate" this website for unknowilgly people that would take this for the real site. Moreover, this bad site is always the first when you are searching for revanced on google :(
I fell this is really a big mistake, this part of the video must be corrected.
I've updated the link above—had no idea there were two sites for ReVanced, and I had grabbed the legitimate-looking site from Google while grabbing clips for the video.
Unfortunately YouTube doesn't allow editing of videos, either. Luckily, I don't advertise the URL for the site really, so people will hopefully find this blog post or go through GitHub. It may be useful for more people to report the invalid site to Google though I half-wonder if Google would rather people don't find the right one :P