So it's been almost 2 weeks...

...since I last made a post.

I'm surprised it's been that long to be honest. I'm still very much alive, but haven't had a huge lot to talk about. I did pick up a couple of rare consoles, both perfectly working, though I have yet to photo them, or do a blurb for #Instagram. In other news, #YouTube is increasingly becoming more of a dumpster fire, between the "COPPAlypse", and also a spate of content creators getting their YouTube accounts hijacked and unlinked from their Google accounts, then having their videos deleted, and profiles renamed, with some losing their livelihoods in a short space of time... which is awful! Additionally, Markiplier has had some of his users get their Google accounts deleted for "spamming" in his chat, and in both instances, it seems like YouTube is doing nothing! I shared the video I learnt all this from on my Twitter profile, along with some additional thoughts, though the major takeaway is that I (and other content creators) either need to find a YouTube alternative, or post our content elsewhere, besides YouTube, as the place is clearly becoming hostile to content creators.

I've been getting set up on #LBRY, and also revamped the account I have on #BitChute, plus there's also #DTube that I need to work on, although I suspect that is only linking to the video on YouTube (or using the embed stuff), though I could be wrong in that regard. In any case, I definitely need to make sure I've my videos backed up on a HDD, but I also need to sure I post them elsewhere online, for both backup purposes, and to also make sure that there is visibility of the videos, as I've already lost some videos through my own neglect of not remembering to export them from Twitch, or getting the timings wrong, so I'm loathe to lose other videos too, as they'd essentially stop existing, apart from the "shadow" they leave, which is the fact that they're going to be counted in my Twitch stats, but's all they'll essentially be, a statistic and nothing more, unless clips were made from the stream, but that's not guaranteed to happen, so yeah...

Either way, the digital age has really proven how easy it is to wipe out someone's hard work, and even if I'm a computer geek, I still find that quite scary and worrying; likewise, I find it scary that YouTube has a virtual monopoly as well, meaning there's not really anywhere else viable to store videos and have them viewable, which means backing up becomes even more important. Sadly, none of the other video platforms have the features or reach that YouTube has, and until the Adpocalypse, the opportunities to make a living, something that's become virtually non-existant for any youtubers with a subscriber count of less than 1,000, such as myself, who was a YouTube Partner till the Adpocalypse hit first, leading me to find other ways to make money online, as I need to make it sustainable to blog, do videos, and create other content, though I'm not quite at the sustainable stage yet; I am learning a lot of stuff though!

Either way, it is very much going to be a different landscape on YouTube come 2020, although things are already changing for the worse; content creators need to start diversifying the platforms they're on when it comes to sharing videos, as YouTube is very unlikely to help people succeed any more, especially as the 'notifications' thing seems to be broken for some users too! YouTube ultimately needs competition, and no other video sharing platform comes close to challenging it right now, although I think that blockchain technology is probably going to be the only way it can be challenged, as no other companies, besides maybe Amazon or Microsoft could challenge it anyway, and they're already doing that in the streaming space with Twitch and Mixer respectively; they have no plans for longer-term video storage, because bandwidth and storage to the extent that YouTube does it costs a lot of money, which is why there are no real competitors to YouTube.

YouTube itself is making a loss to Google, even with its ads, meaning that any competitor competing on the same playing field as it is going to need a lot of cash to cover the cost of servers, storage, and bandwidth that would end up being a fair bit, given we really need a competitor to it, and there would likely be a mass influx of users on the service. This, therefore, means that blockchain and peer to peer tech is likely the only way to compete with YouTube now, as that is probably the only way to match the storage and bandwidth usage used, but even then, none of the platforms that use those methods are close to challenging YouTube's virtual monopoly yet!

That said though, it's still worth looking at those 'people-powered' alternatives, if only for somewhere else to host or back your videos up to, as there may come a time within the next couple of years where one of those platforms will start to take off. The ones I'm focusing on right now are Bitchute (waiting for the videos to transfer over), DTube (have 'uploaded' a few videos to the platform, but they still seem to be hosted on YT in some way), and LBRY, which currently has almost half of my uploaded videos, because they're the ones that have been made public so far. I need to edit my past stream videos soon, so I can back up the remaining 63 (of 108) videos to LBRY, and make them available on BitChute and DTube as well in some form, seeing as my "break" allows me to do that now!

In fact, that's partly why I'm mostly on a content creation break right now, but on that note, because of the relatively recent chaos on YouTube, I'm actually delaying my #Splinterlands stream on #Vimm to next Sunday, and every future stream I do relating to it will now be every second Sunday instead, because I need to adjust my plans to accommodate the issues with YouTube, as it really has me in shock, to the extent that I'm still a bit uncertain as to what to do!

Ultimately though, that's where things are at present, so I'm hoping that from this week onwards, I can do a proper routine with my #thrifting, as I need to think about how best to handle things in that regard; I do know that realistically, I need to keep Fridays open so I can facilitate occasional car boot sale visits, either on Saturday or Sunday, so I need to think about how best to do my Sunday streaming schedule as well, seeing as I think that I'll need to work that into a consistent thread. I will, however, be capping my stream time for the two streams during the week at 5 hours max, but closer to 4 hours, as I need to start scheduling the time I spend doing content to make sure I have free time for myself as well!

And that's really it for now. I'll try to be a bit more active on other platforms (although Twitter is by far the platform I'm most active on), but I can't guarantee that right now. In any case, do feel free to check out my Twitter when you have a chance because I am most active on there, seeing as on other platforms, I can't really do short updates! In any case, I'll keep you all updated on things as and when I can.

Until next time, take care.

#technology #blog #stormkeepergu