VidMe or Why Platforms Aren't Your Friends
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it whenever a thread asks why clones of or alternatives to YouTube, Reddit or Twitter fail or turn toxic.
What it is
Folding Ideas uses the rise and fall of the YouTube competitor VidMe to examine why platforms are not friends to creators. It argues that alternatives to big platforms tend to attract the users banned from the original and lack a core vision.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2017 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec pdkl95 · 2017-09 · on “Google pulls YouTube off the Amazon Echo Show”
> Vid.me Unfortunately, simply cloning youtube isn't a competitor without also cloning youtube's bankroll. For a very good explanation of why, see Folding Ideas video essay "VidMe or Why Platforms Aren't Your Friends"[1]. [1] [this video]
Strong rec MrRadar · 2019-12 · on “An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads?”
Any "Reddit alternative" will have a hard time gathering users as long as Reddit exists (and doesn't alienate a critical mass of their users ala Digg). Dan Olson of the YouTube channel Folding Ideas made a very insightful video about the problem of setting up "alternatives" to popular social media platforms (having lived through several painful platform transitions himself): [this video] The tl;dw is that if your "alternative" platform doesn't launch with unique and valuable features of its own to attract users away from the original platform then you will only attract toxic people who get kicked off the original platform as the first users of your "alternative" platform (because they are the onl
Recommends anitil · 2019-02 · on “Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation”
There's a great video by Folding Ideas which talks about the issues with secondary services ( [this video] - this is in the context of video platforms) One big 'bootstrapping' problem is that the first to adopt a new platform are the people who are _too toxic_ for the original.
Recommends 8note · 2019-02 · on “Ask HN: Alternative HN-Like Communities?”
I think this is a good description of why an absolute free speech site will never flourish: [this video] what you describe is basically just Reddit, but with the people nobody wants to talk to on Reddit ... so mostly just the people you don't want to talk to on Reddit talking to each other,which has no mass appeal
Recommends anitil · 2019-04 · on “YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content”
There's a great video that goes through this phenomenon (in the context of Youtube vs VidMe) [0]. It points our exactly that the people who adopt a new platform tend to be the people most toxic for the original. I have no idea how you get around this. [0] [this video]
Recommends etchalon · 2019-11 · on “YouTube says it has ‘no obligation’ to host anyone’s video”
It would if it had a legitimate new take on the video hosting problem and wasn't just "YouTube, but for free speech", which would immediately become "YouTube, but for Nazis". Folding Ideas (on YouTube) had a solid video about VidMe, which is a case study in how NOT to do this: [this video]
Recommends oriki · 2021-11 · on “YouTube takes down independent court livestreams”
I mean, not just perception issues, but also the fact that you're inherently setting yourself up to build a platform with a core userbase of "People banned from [the more popular version of the platform they're cloning]." You build VidMe and the first people interested in VidMe are people that got kicked off of YouTube, which it turns out are rarely oppressed free speech advocates and much more often trolls and similarly unwanted individuals. If your userbase is entirely toxic, nobody wants to stay there, and your platform never really succeeds because of that. It's worth noting that I'm loosely parroting the content of a Folding Ideas video[1] that covers the discussion of the creator vs pl
Recommends Qub3d · 2022-04 · on “Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources”
That's true, but its a deeper problem with that. The moderation is a sort of "in protest" form, with lots of deliberate "blind eyes" and slow action so they don't get deplatformed by the app stores etc. Beyond the moderation, these sites have the problem that they are inherently set up as a sort of opposition haven -- "we're twitter for people banned from twitter!" This results in a phenomenon Hank Green calls the "worst people problem"[0]. I'm not a huge fan of the judgemental term, but the core idea is similar to pointing out the inherent contradiction of, say, an anarchists' society. You end up with a userbase that is defined by its desire to flaunt rules and reject any normative standard