![](https://lemmy.chiisana.net/pictrs/image/236eaaf8-0ad3-4785-ab46-b8767925bd2a.png)
![](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/2QNz7bkA1V.png)
Japan has nicovideo.jp as well. Russia has Yandex Efir (gone through a couple rebrands, Efir was the name in 2020 when we were discussing deals; it was operating under another name prior, and I think it is superseded by dzen). Off to the side I think vK also has a small video delivery presence like how Facebook has videos in their feeds. China has several platforms: Tencent Video (owned by Tencent), Youku as you’ve called out (owned by Alibaba), XiGua (ByteDance), Haokan (Baidu), and then slew of smaller ones like KuaiShou, BiliBili and that video thing WeChat tries to push. None of these are public service operated by the State, by the way. List really goes on… and I’d know, because I’ve worked in the space for almost 12 years now.
China’s great firewall aside, all these platforms are tiny in comparison, and in the grand scheme of things, and barely have any reach. In general, these regional are all taking a backseat just like Nebula and alike — if creators’ content are hyperlocal/super niche, they might be okay with smaller regional platforms; but if they’re trying to extend their reach and monetization (to ensure they have money to continue producing content), the creators’ presence on these platforms are really just auxiliary to their primary presence on YouTube.
Getting viewers to these smaller platforms is going to pose a significant chicken or the egg problem — creators aren’t incentivized to be there because lack of viewer, viewers aren’t incentivized to go there because lack of content. Worse yet, I’ve also seen situations where creators are paid for some period of exclusivity and then when the deal lapses they just go straight back to YouTube.
Real competitors do not exist, and likely will not exist for the foreseeable future. YouTube is the million pound behemoth when everyone else barely registers on the radar.
The amount of people who would pay is going to be near zero in the grand scheme of things.
Next time you’re anywhere where you could discretely look at people’s phones, see how many of them run apps with ads. Most apps will offer very cheap IAP to remove ads, but people choose to not pay it. Vast majority of the users have already decided that their time wasted on ads are worth less than whatever tiny monetary cost it would be to remove them. Same thing here: Vast majority of the users have already decided they’re not going to pay to get rid of the ads. This in turn means due to how few people who would be willing to pay, it is not going to be nearly sufficient to keep the infrastructure required up and running, as well as keep the creators compensated for creating the content.