What Do We Actually Want From Streaming Platforms? A Creator's Perspective

Good morning! How's it going everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Independent Creator Podcast. It's been a while since we had a little holiday break, and now we're getting back into the thick of things with a brand new episode and a live recording with a studio audience.

Tonight we're taking a little break from our normal routine of looking at different platforms and asking you viewers and listeners: what is it that you want from these live streaming platforms? Or let's just say platforms altogether. That's what we're going to be talking about tonight. You and what do you want from these platforms.

The One-Way Street Problem

Normally when we think about platforms, streaming platforms or social media platforms, we usually look at those and say "what do you want to do for me? How are you gonna make me famous?" But here's the thing. A great majority of the time, the platforms don't really care about you. They really don't. The only thing they care about is if you as the content creator, the actual viewer, the account holder actually brings any kind of value to the platform. By that I mean ad revenue or bringing more eyeballs to the screen to the actual platform itself.

When you think about that, this is not really a two-way street, is it? It's more like a one-way street. If you are receiving something for free, you are the product. And that's the case for a lot of different things like YouTube. Yeah, it's free and you get some great information. A lot of people learn a lot of great things from YouTube, but the fact of the matter is that you are the product. YouTube only cares about you watching ads or taking your information to sell to data brokers or advertising agencies.

So it's kind of a one-way street where you give out pretty much everything, and in return you get not much of anything at all except for maybe some content that you watch. That's pretty much it. That's the only reason why you're there on YouTube: to look at some content, some videos.

This also applies to Twitter. It's a social media network, yes. Are you getting anything from it? It's kind of hard to say because nowadays there's not much there to give, but you are looking at advertisements. So again, you are the product.

The Decentralized Alternative: A Two-Way Street

Let's actually look at what we as content creators or even as viewers want from these platforms. What is it that we want to receive from these places? Most notably from the smaller places or the decentralized places. We'll look at Mastodon, PeerTube, and PixelFed. All these decentralized locations or social media networks have a different approach. It's more of what I would like to call a two-way street where we get something from it and then it receives something from us.

By receiving something from us, I'm talking about involvement, the filtering of content that we are actually interested in. Let's take a look at Mastodon for instance. The basis is that there is no algorithm. There is no feed being shoved into your face saying "oh you like cats, okay so here's a whole bunch of cats" or "you like anime shows, here's a whole bunch of anime shows." No, it's more that you are taking control of what you want to see and you have control over the stuff that you follow, the accounts that you follow, the feeds that you follow.

Your Mastodon feed is going to look completely different from mine, and that's no problem. What I am telling Mastodon what I want to see more of is Owncast blog posts, PeerTube content, stuff like that. Stuff that I'm interested in is what I am telling Mastodon. "Here, this is what I want you to direct your focus to. Tell me or show me the stuff from here, from these particular hashtags or from the people I follow."

There is no algorithm, which is the great thing because you are the algorithm itself. You tell Mastodon what you are interested in and it returns the results that you told it that you're looking for. There is really nothing else to it. It's as simple as it can get really. In my personal opinion, Mastodon is truly a great service. It's a really great decentralized micro-blogging platform that fills the need that Twitter once did.

Another great example is BlueSky. When you sign in, you tell it what you're interested in and then, as you being the algorithm, you only get the results that you tell it. And that's a great thing.

The Algorithm Problem

Looking at decentralized platforms, there really isn't any other way to increase the volume of posts without an algorithm. We have dealt with algorithms for over 20 years with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. We are kind of moving away from being force-fed stuff that a platform thinks that we might be interested in. Yes, it might have been a few nuggets of gold here and there, but the majority of it was garbage.

That's the unfortunate fact with an algorithm-based social media network: you really are force-fed a lot of stuff that you might not be interested in. It's on the fringes of what you're looking for. With places like Twitter and Facebook, you can't say "hey I want this from you" and have it respond back. It doesn't happen that way unfortunately.

Same thing with YouTube. YouTube gives you what it believes that you are interested in because it looks at what videos you are watching, which ones you click on and then instantly click away from. It remembers everything you've been doing.

With places like PeerTube, there isn't any kind of algorithm at all. With these decentralized platforms, you kind of have to give what I want from you. That's the gist of this episode. You have to think about what you are actively looking for. If you're continuing to be on places like YouTube and Twitter, Facebook, you really can't say "I want something more. Give me something more. I don't want this, I want this other thing." But you're not gonna get it.

The Live Streaming Platform Dilemma

This also applies to live streaming services and platforms. Take Twitch, for example. A lot of people say that there is some discoverability. Yes there is, it's just not as robust as YouTube or other places. With Twitch, it gives you recommendations based on what you've been watching: the streams you've been watching, the genres or games you're interested in, the categories you've been watching. It kind of gives you a recommendation like "oh this category, these streamers in this category might be interesting for you." But it's really kind of hit and miss. Sometimes it can be good. Sometimes it gives you stuff or channels that you're already following as a recommendation. You're like "I'm already following these people. Why are you recommending me to watch their channels? I'm following them."

I have to say with Twitch, they're trying to shoehorn you into looking at advertising. Everything comes down to advertising to an audience. It's unfortunately late-stage capitalism. That's what's gonna happen to most of these places after a couple years of this: shoving advertisements and more advertisements. If you want to watch this content, you have to be a subscriber. It just pushes away the viewership to a place that isn't where they want to be because they're tired of looking or watching advertisements. They want to watch the content that the content creators are making or the live streamers are making. They really don't care about the Doritos ads or the Amazon ads. They want to watch the content creators or live streamers and the content that they do.

What's eventually gonna happen is that those audiences, those viewers, are going to leave to other places, especially if a creator or a live streamer is streaming to another place that has no ads or a limited number of ads.

The Monetization Challenge

As a content creator and live streamer, I know that having to re-engineer or relearn how to do a show, a run of show, is challenging. Having to do 45 minutes to 50 minutes of content and then take a break every hour kind of ruins the flow of the live stream, unless it's a podcast like this where maybe we'll do an hour of content, take a break, and then continue on for the next segment.

I watch the streamer Flats every once in a while. He does a lot of Overwatch 2 stuff, and the amount of ads he runs is like two minutes of ads every 30 minutes or an hour and a half of ads every half hour. It's just constant. It ruins the flow of watching a stream.

That's the thing we have to ask ourselves: what do we want from the platform? Do we want more advertisements like this? Or do we want to have our viewers be able to have a better viewing experience? For us to make this content, we do have to ask for something in return, something more of like a monetary value. For a lot of content creators, that is a very big ask.

I know for myself, I really don't say "hey if you want to support me, I have a fourth wall. There's a link in the bottom." I really don't do that much, if at all. If you're watching any of my streams, I do have a bot that runs a timer that posts up "hey if you want no ads, there's turbo or subscribe." That's really my way of getting around it because, to put it truthfully, I feel like I'm trying to say "hey if you want more of this, give me your money." This is not something that comes naturally to me because I'm not a salesperson. I'm far from it. I'm more interested in doing the actual content and creating the content and getting the word out there about all this wonderful open-source alternative platform stuff.

The Business Reality

We have to actually look at the platforms as a business. Even though a lot of them are exactly that, we have to have that mindset that platforms' number one thing is to make money. Let's take the Livespace platform as an example. They have implemented the Livespace Plus program where you can pay eight dollars a month and you can get ad-free viewing. You can get unlimited VOD storage. Your VODs aren't removed after 30 days. You can also do custom thumbnails and some other things as well. That to me is perfectly fine.

With the caveat about custom thumbnails: I posted in our newsletter that you can get by going to indiecreator.space and signing up. Last week, Todd, the co-founder of Livespace, was asked a question from the live audience about whether custom thumbnails will become part of the free version and not locked behind a paygate. His response was that it has been in discussion and continues to be a discussion. So at this time, that particular perk is still locked behind a paywall.

Unfortunately, prior to this, for a good month and a half, you could add a custom thumbnail, but they put it behind a paywall. Something that was free got moved behind a paywall. That's a really hard ask of the audience and your live streaming community because it's easy to get something from behind a paywall to move to free, but to go the opposite way, to the community it feels like something's being taken away. Which it is.

The Amazon Prime Example

This reminds me of what happened with Amazon Prime. When you pay for Prime, especially at the per-year price, you don't expect anything to happen until the next renewal. You can see a change of price: "oh we're gonna bump it up a couple more dollars next year," and that's fine for the next renewal date. You can either make the choice to continue with the product or say bye-bye.

But when they come in halfway through and say "oh yeah, if you want to get rid of ads, give us three more dollars," it's like changing the deal halfway through. The experience is much worse. I was watching The Expanse, and for almost a good week, the pre-roll for each episode was nothing but "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" trailers. Every single episode. It's kind of like a hostage negotiation: "hey if you want the experience that you were paying for back, you gotta give us a little bit more cheddar and then we'll give you that experience back."

When you pay per year, nothing should change until next year. That's how they went about it, and it was disgusting in my humble opinion.

The Ad Experience Problem

The issue I have with Twitch ads is during a live stream when the host is engaged in a conversation and answering my question, I can't hear the answer because of ads. Then I have to ask them to repeat themselves. I've had that happen to me many times. You get involved with whatever is going on in a stream and all of a sudden, ads. The only recourse you can do is either make a clip and go back to watch what you're missing, but then you still miss some stuff there. Twitch clips are maybe two minutes at most.

The thing with Twitch and how they have implemented ads is that it's not good for ads in a live streaming environment unless the live streaming is directed or the run of show integrates ads. The experience for the viewer is gonna be subpar. As a viewer, you kind of feel like you're being rude when you have to ask them to repeat themselves, and you feel bad. The streamer is like "well I just said it, why should I say it again?" It's a rock and a hard place.

Better Alternatives

From my experience, YouTube has a better ad setup because within the live stream, the streamer has control of when ads are run. They're not set up like Twitch where every hour, here come ads whether you like it or not. It's like "you know what, after two hours of doing whatever I'm doing, I'm gonna take a break. Here are some ads, and if you're subscribed or you're a paid member of the channel, you don't get ads. Awesome, I'll be back." That's a great experience, and the creator has more control.

Other places like Livespace don't really have ads that I know of. Kick will never have ads because a lot of companies don't want to touch Kick with a 10-foot pole. Owncast, which is a single-channel live streaming service that you have full control over, lets you do whatever you want. If you want to do an ad, hit a button. It's not gonna do much for you monetarily, but it's for you.

I know from my own experience: if I know someone's coming in, I don't run ads. It's just the pre-rolls because I am a monetized Twitch streamer, so someone coming into my stream will get hit with 30-second pre-rolls. I tell people if you want an ad-free experience, I have options. I know I'm not supposed to do this on Twitch, but whatever: watch me on YouTube, watch me on my Owncast server which is completely ad-free, watch me on Livespace. I give them options if they want to watch my content without going through the ads.

What We Should Ask For

You have to ask yourself what you want from platforms. A lot of platforms do provide places where you can give suggestions. I know User Voice on Twitch, especially now after all the layoffs, doesn't really have many people involved these days. You can make your suggestion, but is it gonna come to fruition in 20 years?

There are some places where you can make your voice known and say "hey I would like to see this come to fruition" or "I believe that this could be a great feature set for the platform." Don't demand: "oh you need to implement X, Y, and Z right now or I'm leaving," because they're gonna look at you and say "see ya" and then take your suggestion and put it in the circular file.

You have to actually think smartly about what you are wanting from these platforms, not just as a viewer but as a content creator or a live streamer. What do you want to see out of these places that you go to? Really look at the different platforms. Do they provide you the benefits or the features that you're looking for?

Think about it: if you want to stream on Twitch, does it provide you everything that you want, or are there some things missing? Are those missing things available on another platform? If they are, great. Try it out, use it. If it's not what you thought it was, that's okay. Experiment and try different things.

That's the name of the game as a content creator, as a live streamer, and as a viewer: experimentation is the best thing that you can do.

The majority of us content creators are doing this completely for free. We're pro bono. In fact, many of us are losing money doing this. The large production value shows that content creators are doing, we're taking the hit out of our own pocketbook. All we're doing is doing this for the love of creating content and making a community that our viewers can be involved in, where they can look at other viewers or other community members and have fun and talk to each other and learn from experiences or learn from resources given. It's just a whole different mindset.

The best thing you could do is join the ToonTown Waffle community. I have a great community that is talking about different things within our Discord server, and we also have a Matrix server set up. We have forums, we got the newsletter that goes out every week called The Weekly Waffle. You can get all of this by going to indiecreator.space and signing up there.

If you're listening to this podcast episode after the fact or watching the live or the replay on video, do give it a thumbs up and leave a comment. Let me know what you think.

Thank you for coming out tonight, and I'll see you on the next episode of the Independent Creator Podcast. Until then, have a good night and later taters!

The Independent Creator