"The family had a lot of buffers."
Because this was definitely happening during COVID.
the weird thing is that ironically, the people hurt by "youtube" (whatever "youtube" is, i'm not referring to youtube.com specifically) are often the ones both complaining and keeping it alive.
talking about youtube.com specifically, i've seen many complaints about it over the years, yet essentially only two guys (Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere from Linus Media Group) are actually developing an alternative platform (https://www.floatplane.com/).
Essentially all other youtubers are still begging you in tears to "hit like, subscribe and ring that bell icon".
the same also happens for other platforms. it's so... weird ?
Every competitor which has tried to do this has been eaten alive by the costs of bandwidth and storage, even if they have a deep-pocketed corporate backer (e.g. Twitch will not let you store unlimited VODs like YouTube will). Some companies have managed to flank YouTube and carve out a little niche like short-form video, but I think building an actual YouTube competitor with the features people demand (again, unlimited uploads and eternal storage, for free) is more-or-less impossible.
I’m less familiar with bilibili, but afaik it doesn’t do many of the revenue-sharing programs that YouTube does, so might have trouble attracting the same creators. They also have so far been pretty regional and so I’m not sure if we can use them as a sign of success yet.
RIP Tumblr
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis
Democracy sucks pretty hard. No one is held accountable for failure. Puppets with no real power get blamed and replaced to placate the population. If your pockets are deep enough you can buy laws.