A brief primer on some YouTube alternatives
To the shock and panic of millions of netizens, YouTube went down earlier today. No more cats in boxes or celebrity vlogs for the masses. It also lead to a spike in searches for alternatives to the popular video site. You might be surprised, but they do exist, and some of them are actually halfway decent. Here’s a quick primer on a few.
DailyMotion
Type of content: Mainstream general audience
DailyMotion is one of the elder statesmen of the tube sites. It’s been around as long as YouTube, though it’s never quite gotten the same level of attention as Google’s juggernaut. Out of all the alternatives out there, it’s the only one that’s backed by a large media conglomerate. Vivendi has owned them since 2015.
Due to its ownership, DailyMotion has the most mainstream content outside of YouTube, which is largely targeted at a general audience. The site has creator channels but heavily pushes content from traditional television media outlets.
DailyMotion supports videos up to 4K resolution and 60fps, with an upload limit of either 60min or 2GB per video. As they are located in France, expect them to be subject to EU copyright laws. Like YouTube, they offer ad revenue sharing for creators. However, the site does censors content. Unlike some other alternatives on here, their servers are probably the most robust and can handle a large amount of traffic. Plus it has smartphone apps for iOS and Android.
Vimeo
Type of content: arthouse and documentary films
Vimeo is like the college arthouse of the internet. The vast majority of its content revolves around independent short films and documentaries. It twists its monocle in scorn of the low brow content available on other tube sites.
While there’s not much general interest content here, what does exist tends to be professionally produced and polished. Even if it is mostly small arthouse projects. For creators though, Vimeo has strict upload restrictions unless you pay for higher service tiers. These can cost up to $900 for the year while only offering very limited disc space and upload sizes. It does support 4K content though at 60fps. Like other commercial sites, Vimeo also censors content.
BitChute
Type of content: Political and conspiracy
The unfortunately named BitChute is a relative newcomer to the streaming scene. It’s primary goal is combat online censorship of creators through decentralization. They don’t rely on their own servers or ad revenue to operate the site. Rather all content is delivered by peer to peer network. This makes the site ludicrously cheap to operate, and highly resistant to censoring.
The downside is performance. BitChute appears to be limited to SD content. Plus video availability and download speed is heavily dependent on the number of people seeding content. The up side is there doesn’t appear to be any limits on video length or upload size.
Since silicon valley sites have clamped down on conservative content, many popular right wing channels have moved over to BitChute. Either entirely or as a backup in case big “progressive” sites start throwing their muscle around. The rest of its content is mostly made up of conspiracy and let’s play gaming channels. There’s not much in the way of mainstream or general interest content here. Not yet anyway.
D.Tube
Type of content: General interest and cryptocurrency
D.Tube is another newcomer, brought to you by the folks behind the Steem cryptocurrency. It has the same goals as BitChute, to create a decentralized and censorship resistant video platform. However, rather than traditional P2P, it leverages Steem’s blockchain technology, and their Steemit social media platform.
The site has no ads or ad sharing, but tips its creators with its own cryptocurrency. There are no upload limits or restrictions on the type of content. However, it would seem that, like BitChute, you’re limited to 480p SD.
So far, the number of videos being uploaded to the site is quite small, with most of them targeting cryptocurrency hobbyists. Though more general interest content has started appearing in recent months. Popular videos seem to get a respectable amount of views for the site’s size, largely owing to the sizable user base of its crypto community. Out of all the independent alt-video sites, D.Tube probably has the best chance of succeeding.
