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Exploring the world of alternative platforms and services for the independent creator. We take on the mission to find those nuggets of information many of us look for as we journey on our path to being truly independent creators.
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Good morning. How's it going, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Independent Creator Podcast. It's been it's been a while. Now we had a little holiday break and just now getting back into the thick of things, as it were, with a brand new episode and a live recording with the studio audience, as we usually do here on the Independent Creator Podcast. Tonight, we are actually going to be taking a little break from our normal
looking at different platforms and other stuff like that, but actually asking you, the viewers and listeners, what is it that you want from these live streaming platforms or let's just say platforms altogether? So that's what we're going to be actually talking about tonight is you and what do you want from these platforms? Now, normally what we think about with kind of
platforms, streaming platforms, or social media platforms and stuff like that is that we usually look at those and say, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to make me famous as it were, figuratively and literally? And most of the time, actually a great majority of the time, is that the platforms don't really care about you. They really don't. The only thing they care about is if you...
As the content creator, the actual viewer, the account holder actually brings any kind of value to the platform. By that, I mean like with ad revenue or bringing more eyeballs to the screen, to the actual platform itself. And the thing about that is kind of like, well, this is not really a two way street, is it? It's more like a one way. And you if the old saying is if you.
are receiving something for free. You are the product. And that's the case for a lot of different things like, you know, YouTube. Yeah, it's it's free and, you know, it's, you know, get some great information. A lot of people learn a lot of great things from YouTube. But the fact of the matter is that you are the product. YouTube only cares about you and giving or beating you ads.
for you to watch or taking your information that you are giving it to in order to sell to data brokers or advertising agencies or anything like that. So it's kind of a one way street where you give out pretty much everything and in return you get not much of anything at all except for maybe some some content that you watch. But that's pretty much it. That's the only reason why you're there on YouTube is to know.
look at some content, some videos and other stuff like that. This also takes the cake with like Twitter is that it's a social media network. Yes. Are you getting anything from it? It's kind of hard to say because nowadays it's not much there to give. But you are looking at advertising. I should say advertisements. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
So again, you are the product. So let's actually look at what we as content creators or even as viewers, what do we want from these platforms? What is it that we want to receive from these places? Most notably from the smaller places or the decentralized places. That's what we're going to focus on right now is we'll look at like Mastodon PeerTube and PixelFed.
Pixel feet, no, it's PixelFed because it's 1E. And all these decentralized locations or social media networks, that is not what the general consistency of being a platform is. It's more of a, I would like to call from like a two -way street where we get something from it and then it receives something from us. By receiving something from us, I'm talking about, you know, involvement.
the filtering of content that we are actually interested in. Let's take a look at Mastodon for instance. It is a basis that there is no algorithm, there is no feed being shoved into your face. It's like, oh, you like cats, okay? So here's a whole crap -ton of cats. Or you like anime shows, here's a whole bunch of anime shows. No, it's more that you are taking control of what you want to see and you...
have control over the stuff that you follow, the accounts that you follow, the feeds that you follow. And it's something that where it's like, oh, okay. So let me show you on my Mastodon here, just one second.
Now, of course, your Mastodon feed is going to look completely different from mine. So that's no problem. What I am telling Mastodon, what I want to see more of is owncast blog, not blog entries, but a post, a Peertube NodeBB stuff like that. Stuff that I'm interested in is what I am telling Mastodon.
is here, this is what I want you to direct your focus to tell me or show me stuff from here, from these particular hashtags or from the people I follow. I want I'm interested in any content that they provide or they post up on Mastodon. And now, again, as we know that a lot of this stuff is that there is no algorithms, which is the great thing, because you are the algorithm itself, you.
tell Mastodon what you are interested in and it returns the results that you told it that you're looking for. And there is really nothing else to it. It's as simple as it can get really, because this is my personal opinion is that Mastodon is truly a really great service. It's a really great decentralized microblogging that Twitter was and that it fills the need.
to say, hey, this is what I want. Another great thing is also blue sky. There is no, of course I haven't signed up on here. It only tells you what you're interested in. So of course, you know, it's cat pictures and dog pictures and some random randomness. But when you sign in, you tell it what you're interested in.
And then as you, the algorithm, you only get the results that you tell it. And that's a great thing. And now going, looking at decentralized platforms and stuff like that, there really isn't any other way to look at increasing the volume of post sans algorithm because.
We have dealt with an algorithm for what 20 something, a little bit over 20 years with the likes of Twitter and Facebook and the likes of those places. So. We are kind of I should say we the royal we are kind of moving away from being force fed stuff that a platform thinks that we might be interested in. Yes, it might have been a few nuggets of gold here and there, but the majority of it.
was no garbage. And that's the unfortunate fact with an algorithm -based social media network is that you really are force -fed a lot of stuff that you might not be interested in. It's on the fringes of what you're looking for. It just knows over time what you're, especially when you're interacting with other different platforms and stuff like that, it knows what you're looking for.
Especially with like the likes of Twitter and Facebook, those places really you can't say, hey, I want this from you. And then and it responds back. It doesn't happen that way, unfortunately. And same thing with YouTube. YouTube gives you what it believes that you are interested in because it looks at what videos that you are watching, which ones that you click on and then instantly click away from.
And it kind of remembers everything you've been doing with places like PeerTube. There is completely again, I want to say that with these decentralized locations or these decentralized platforms, there isn't any kind of algorithm at all. There isn't. And you kind of have to give what I want from you. That's that's the gist of this night's episode is.
Exactly. You have to think about what you are actively looking for. And, you know, if you're continuing to be on places like YouTube and Twitter, Facebook, you really can't say, I want something more. Give me something more. I want I don't want this. I want this other thing, but you're not going to get it. You see what I'm saying? And also is part of, you know, live streaming services and platforms as well.
Twitter. A lot of people, not Twitter, Twitch. A lot of people say that there is some discoverability. Yes, there is. It's just not as robust as YouTube or any other places. Like, again, I'll say Facebook, but Facebook there really isn't. I'll take that back. There really is some kind of discoverability, but it is...
rudimentary at its heart, so to speak. But with Twitch is that it gives you, especially for the recommended, it records what you've been watching and any kind of streams that you've been watching, the genres or the games that you're interested in or picking up on the the games, the categories, I should say, of what you've been watching. And with that, it kind of gives you a recommendation like, oh,
this category, these streamers in this category might be an interest for you. And they're really it's kind of like a hit and miss, really. Sometimes it can be good. Sometimes it gives you stuff or channels that you're already following as a recommendation. You're like, I'm already following these people. Why are you recommending me to watch or to go to their channels? I'm following them. So. In essence, you should not be recommending me these.
So then Twitch, I have to say with Twitch, it's kind of, I'm not going to say that they lost their way. They kind of, they're kind of more in the line of they're trying to shoehorn you into looking at advertising again. I shouldn't say again, but everything comes down to advertising to an audience. And it's unfortunately, you know, it's late stage capitalism.
That's what's going to take for, you know, to most of these places to break after a couple of years of this late stage capitalism of shoving advertisements and more advertisements. And if you want to watch this content, you have to be a subscriber. It just kind of pushes away the viewership to a place that, you know, isn't where they want to be. Because they're tired of looking or watching advertisements because they want to watch the content.
that the content creators are making, or the live streamers are making. They really don't care about the Doritos ads or the Amazon ads or anything like that. They wanna watch the content creators or live streamers, the content that they do. And what's gonna eventually gonna happen is that those audience, those viewers are gonna to leave to other places, especially if a creator or a live streamer is streaming.
to another place that has no ads or a limited number of ads and be like, hey, if you're tired of this, especially if people are involved in their community or they follow them on other places, they'll understand because the creators are talking and saying, hey, I'm getting tired of, you know, being, I know you guys are being tired of being force fed three minutes of ads every hour.
I am too. I have to take a break every hour. I mean, yeah, it's it's OK. But it's just kind of like for what? Almost a decade, let's say, of Twitch streamers and the cultural entity of no live streamers and how they've been doing stuff for so long is that having to re -engineer or relearn how to do a show, a run of show like
is, OK, we're going to do 45 minutes to 50 minutes of content, and then we're going to take a break every hour. And it kind of ruins the flow of the live stream, unless it's a podcast like this, where, OK, maybe we'll do an hour of content, take a break, and then continue on for next segment or something like that. So it kind of, as a content creator and a live streamer, yes, you do have to.
understand that sometimes change is good for the betterment of your actual content itself, but the viewers are ingrained in one way and it's even more difficult to try to get them to understand. I have to run ads, especially if I monetize, in order for you to not get free rolls.
when you first come in or I'm going to take a break. I'm going to run ads. And of course you see it all the time. I watch every once in a while, especially now I'll have a streamer flats. He does a lot of Overwatch 2 stuff and the amount of ads I think he does like two minutes of ads every 30 minutes or a minute and a half of ads every every half hour. It's just a constant.
And it's one of those things where it ruins the flow of watching a stream. And that's the thing that we have to ask ourselves is what do we want from the platform? Do we want more advertisement like this? Or do we want to have our viewers be able to have a better viewing experience to actually understand for us to make this content, we do have to ask for.
for something in return as something more of like a monetary value in return. And that is for a lot of us, a lot of content creators, that is a very big ask. I know for myself, I really don't say, hey, if you want to support me, I have a fourth wall, there's a link in the bottom. I really don't do that as much, or if at all, I really don't have that.
If you're watching any of my streams, I do have BeatBot run runs a timer that posts up. Hey, if you want to see ads, there's Turbo or subscribe.
And that's really my way of getting around. Because to put it truthfully, I feel like I'm trying to, what's the word, not shill, say, hey, if you want more of this, give me your money. And it's just not something that I know I probably have to get past.
to get past that little roadblock. But it's something that I do have to eventually get over and then just have it be part. It doesn't come naturally. And that's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't come naturally to me because I'm not a salesperson. I'm far from it. I'm more interested in doing the actual content and creating the content and getting the word out there about all this wonderful open source alternative platform stuff. But I don't focus on, hey,
If you like what I do, give me money. That's really I don't really do that kind of thing. So. We have to actually look at. The platforms as a business, even though a lot of them, that's what they are, we have to have that mindset that platforms are. That's the number one thing is to make money and. Let's take.
the LifeSpace platform as an example. They have implemented the LifeSpace Plus program where you can pay, I forget, it was like 12 bucks or $8 a month. I think it's $8 a month where you can get ad free viewing. You can get unlimited VOD storage. Your VODs aren't removed after 30 days. You can also do custom thumbnails.
and some other sort of other things as well. That to me is perfectly fine. With the caveat with the custom thumbnails, I have posted up in our newsletter that you can get to by going to tootwakfowl .com, signing up for the newsletter. You get that every week. But in there, I posted up that last week, Todd, the co -founder of Lifespace, had made mention because they got he was asked.
a question from the live audience is that will custom thumbnails become part of the free version and not locked behind a pay gate? And his response was that has been in discussion and that it's continuing to be a discussion. So at this time as a platform, that particular perk is still locked behind.
a paywall. It's unfortunately because prior to it, for a good month, month and a half, I think it was, it was something that you could do. You can add a custom thumbnail.
but they put it behind a paywall. Something that was free got moved behind a paywall. And that's really hard ask of the audience and your live streaming community to see that happen because it's easy to get something from behind a paywall to move it to a free. That's no problem. But to go the opposite way to the community, it feels like something's being taken away, which it is something that has been taken away.
And I only think that, I only hope that they look at it and say, okay, we'll take that off and give it back to the free accounts. So everybody can put in custom thumbnails because you really, even on a free plan, if you have a custom thumbnail and your VOD disappears after 30 days, it's still fine in my opinion.
It's not the best approach, especially with disappearing VODs, because we see that with Twitch. After, what is it, seven days is the VOD disappears unless you're a Amazon Prime member or a monetized account. And it's 14 days. The partner, I believe it's 90 days or something like that.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Sort of like Amazon Prime videos. I used to watch commercial free movies. Now that the ads are unless I paid it. Yes, that brings a good point there. GZDR forever. Sorry, I butcher names galore. That is another thing that I am seriously. When you pay for prime, especially at the per year price.
You don't expect anything to happen until, you know, the next renewal. OK, I can see the change of price. Oh, we're going to bump it up a couple more dollars next next year. And it's OK. That's fine. It's the next renewal date. I can either make the choice of continue with the product, with the the account or say bye bye. But when you come in like halfway through and say, oh, yeah, if you want to get rid of ads, give us three more dollars.
It's like, no, you're changing the deal halfway through or even not even halfway through. And the experience is much worse, especially I posted up, I talked about it last week. I was watching The Expanse. I've been starting watching The Expanse again, starting from the beginning and the pre -roll for each episode for like a good, almost a good week.
was nothing but my big fat Greek wedding three pre -rolls. Every single episode of the pre -roll was that movie trailer. So after watching an episode, and of course you get sometimes, and it's also, I guess in my area, the law firm Farah and Farah has decided to give law money to have lawyer ads inside mid -rolls, which I hate.
So it's kind of like a hostage negotiation. Hey, if you want the experience that you were paying for back, you've got to give us a little bit more cheddar, and then we'll give you that experience back. But it's an extra $3 a month. That's some utter BS right there. When you pay per year, nothing should change.
until the next next year when you can add in, you know, these new things. OK, for next year, you'll pay a higher price or you might have ads. It depends. That's that's take it or leave it. Or if you do month to month, I can see with month to month. But for many of us, we pay it per year. A majority of the people pay Amazon Prime annually. So it's kind of. How they went about that.
was disgusting in my humble opinion. And it's just something that I wish a lot of places would. I can see how by adding advertising is like the holy grail of getting more money because content is not cheap, especially when you're spending, was it hundreds of millions of dollars on rings of power.
per season and you're getting another season. Say, okay, well, fine. Why are we having to take the brunt of that? Your accountants are saying, hey, you can make the show. Can you make it for a little bit less money? And that's a hundred. That is a movie style budget for a two and a half hour movie, but you're making it for six hours or 10 hours or however long the episode or how many episodes you have in a season.
That's just ridiculous. But it's kind of like the gold nuggets in the mines. It's like, oh, advertising. Yeah, let's add some more of that. Our viewers love it. So if we do a ad tier for low price, yes, I'm paying the chance to watch or I'm paying.
the opportunity to watch your content, but give me ads or I can pay more for ad free viewing. And that's the option I usually go for all the time. Like Hulu ad free Disney Plus is I'm still ad free on that Amazon. I'm like, I'm sticking. I'm like, I know it's three more dollars. That's BS. I'm kind of like, should I do it? I don't know. Is it pissing me off even more?
But it's like, what are we asking from from our platforms that we're we're actively involved in? And. Especially for let's let's go back to the Twitch content creators and when people when the streamers are running ads and you see it all the time, you see people posting up in chat, oh, ads of one of nine. Take well. Yeah.
It's 1 of 9, you're watching a free service.
You can get rid of the ad experience if you're an Amazon Prime, use your Prime sub, that's okay. Pay the $5 .99 or whatever it is, depending on which country you're in, or pay for Twitch Turbo. And you have the options of doing it or to say, hey, I'd rather watch your content somewhere else if they're multi -streaming to another location like YouTube or...
some other platform that doesn't have ads. And that's the choice that you have to make is that you have to think about the content creator. We're doing this for free. And there really isn't, I gotta change that. That's wrong. That's old. The content creator, we're doing this, majority of us are doing this completely for free. We're.
We're pro bono. In fact, many of us are losing money doing any like the large production value of shows of content creators are doing the stuff, taking the hit out of their own pocketbook. And it's just like. All we're doing is doing this for the love of creating content and making a community that our our viewers can be involved in.
can look at other viewers or other community members and have fun and talk to each other and learn from experiences or learn from resources given. And it's just a whole different mindset with this. And looking at, you know, Disney Plus, you're you're paying for a product. That's that's a platform that I'm going to give so much money per month or per year, and I'm going to receive something back from it.
And if it's something that I don't feel that I'm getting my money's worth, I can easily say stop payment and I'll come back if the product becomes better. This is the difference between different platforms is the content creation platforms and then the was it the live streaming services. I know sometimes we get those those to conclude.
confused with each other like streaming and live streaming, providing services or any. Anyways, that's what I'm mostly talking about is the live content creation platforms is that what are we going to actually put in ourselves to get more out of these platforms? And in the Twitch's case, we're not really getting much except for, you know,
Dan Clancy, hey, Twitch provides you a stage as the foundation of, no, I'm sorry, sorry, Dan, but Twitch needs to provide a little bit more to make us as content creators and the community that we're growing something a little bit more than just, oh, you stream together. I know it's like, if you go into a bar, like stop, Dan. Stop with your...
sales jargon. It's getting tiring. And it's kind of like the stream together stuff was it's a nice thing if it came out, what, five years ago, six years ago. But nowadays, a lot of us that if we do collab type of content or podcast kind of stuff, we use other services that we have been using for years like Discord.
Or in my case, I use Ecamm that has an integrated collab call in type of feature that I can have sent out a link to co -host or guest and stuff and they can come into the show. And I have set up for, you know, two spots for myself and a guest or myself and two guests. It's a whole production that's easy to take care of. The foundations of this stuff.
has been going on for years. So it's just kind of like it's hard to watch that a place is so gung -ho and they know they spent so much time and resources and getting this stuff up and running when it wasn't needed. Instead of focusing on making something better that a lot of people are asking for, that you'll continue to ignore.
And it's kind of like, why should we continue to utilize Twitch when we can go to YouTube, have, you know, transcoding for whatever and stream at so many different things? It's kind of like they're not listening.
Uh, yeah, the issue I have with Twitch ads is during a live stream, had to host this engage in a conversation and answering my question. I can't hear the answer because ads then I have to ask for exactly. I have done that. I have been, uh, have had that happen to me many a times and where you get something, you're involved with whatever is going on and on a stream and all of a sudden ad and you're like,
And the only recourse that you can do is either make a clip and to go back to watch what has been you're missing. But then you still miss some some stuff there. And especially Twitch clips are what to maybe two minutes at most that you can go back onto. And it's kind of the thing is with Twitch, how they have implemented ads is that it's.
Not good. Ads in a live streaming environment, unless the live streaming is directed or has been, you know, the run of show integrates ads in it. The experience for the viewer is going to be subpar. And I hate having it to sit there and be like, well, I'm missing a great whatever is happening.
or to maybe answer my question. And I'm like, well, do I ask it again or say, hey, can you, like you said, you won't have to ask them to repeat themselves. And it's kind of as a viewer, you kind of feel like you feel like you're being rude. It's like, hey, can you repeat what you just said? Even though you're making a little bit like some pennies on the dollar. I did not hear it. And you feel bad. And.
Of course, the streamer or the creator is like, well, I just said it. Why should I? Other people listen to us. Why should I tell? Say it again. It's kind of like that. It's a rock and a hard place. It's just like I mentioned earlier, a lot of creators or streamers are still in the mindset of just just continuing the flow, going, playing some great some games and you're going into this boss battle.
and you don't want to miss out and then add and they go through the boss battle and they something happens and they're so excited. And then by the time you get back into the live, you missed it entirely. Oh, you can see it in the little picture and picture. But it's like that thing is useless. It's just it's kind of like rubbing your face and crap. It's like, see, see what you're missing. Just give us more money.
pay for turbo, you know how to get your nose rubbed in it. And it's just that mindset is kind of counterintuitive of making great content. Someone told me if I turn on subtitles, I will see the text while the host is answering. Haven't tried it. Most of the newer channels I visit don't have the ads. Do you know if that works?
I am not entirely sure, but if the subtitles are on, I believe it would not.
Because it's listening to majority of the subtitle extensions I know of is listening to what's going on within the browser itself. Like the streamer has the Chrome extension inside Chrome and it's listening to what's going on in the stream. So. No, I don't think it does work. Something I might might test one day. Or see if I can find out.
But if the subtitles are on, it more than likely would be picking up the advertising that's going on in the main feed because it's not picking up the picture in picture because that is being muted. It's showing you the video, but the audio portion is not there. The only audio you're getting is from the advertising.
So that actually is a good question that I would definitely have to check out on, see if that is something that is possible or if it's myth busted.
But yeah, it's the live streaming experience, especially in Twitch. And if it's a monetized channel and they're running three minutes of ads every hour and they're not integrating breaks every hour, it's kind of like a subpar experience. And I know from my, if, I know when someone comes in, I don't run ads. It's just, it's the pre -rolls because I am a monetized.
Twitch streamer. So someone coming into my stream will get hit with the 30 second pre -rolls. I had done the three months of ads during like the holiday season because, you know, why not? It's free, free 20 cents. I would say if you want like an ad free experience, I have options. I know I'm not supposed to do this on Twitch, but whatever. Watch me on YouTube. Watch me on my own cast server, which is completely ad free. Watch me on LiveSpace.
I have options that are available to people who are tired of the ad experience on Twitch. I give them the options. Hey, you have options. If you want to watch my content without going through the ads and stuff like that. There's like three other places that you can you can watch the content or you can watch the VOD later on YouTube. And again, with YouTube, YouTube has a better.
I would say in my experience is a better ad set up because within the live stream, the streamer has control of when ads are run. Like they're not set up like Twitch. It's like, oh, every hour here comes ads, whether you like it or not. It's like, well, you know what? After two hours of doing whatever I'm doing, I'm going to take a break. Here is some ads.
And if you're subscribed or you're a paid member of the channel, you don't get ads. Awesome. I'll be back. And you know, that's a great experience. And the creator has more control. Other places like LifeSpace, they really don't have ads that I know of. They don't have...
I know they ran a couple of months ago, they did some ad testing, like pre -rolls where just like, hey, this is ad pre -roll testing. Kick will never have ads because a lot of companies don't want to touch kick with a 10 foot pole. Owncast, which is a single channel live streaming service that you have full control. You can do whatever you want. If you want to do an ad, hit a button. There you go. Or put a...
Play a video. It doesn't, it's not gonna do much for you, but it's for you. But what other places? Facebook. It's been so long since I've been on Facebook. And I don't think they had ads in there, but then you also have, what's the other live streaming place?
Uhhh, let's kick LiveSpace Twitch, YouTube, Facebook.
Oh, and TikTok, if you want to, TikTok, live streaming, I don't think that is its own separate entity I have no experience with. I don't want to get involved with that because, you know, whatever. I don't have the time for that, really. But again, what you have to ask yourself and what you want from platforms is something that a lot of the platforms do provide places that you can.
Give suggestions. I know User voice on Twitch and especially now after all the layoffs and it's not really my understanding that there's not many people if at all are in control or part of user voice these days, so it's kind of like You can make you can make your suggestion but is it gonna come to fruition in 20 years, I mean I
It's, you know, whatever. But there are some places that you can make your voices known. Say, hey, I would like to see this come to fruition or I would believe that this could be a great feature, feature set for the platform. And I would like like it if you would look into it. Don't demand is like, oh, you need to implement X, Y and Z right now or I'm leaving and they're going to look at it and be like.
I see you and then take your suggestion and put it in the circular file. So you have to actually think smartly of what you are wanting from these platforms as not just as a viewer, but as a content creator or a live streamer. What do you want to see out of these these places that you go to? And really looking at the different platforms, do they provide you the
benefits or the features that you're looking for. Think about that is like, OK, you want to stream on Twitch. OK, does it provide you everything that you want or is it something that there is some things missing? Well, is there is there's things missing available on another platform if they are great. Try it out. Use it. And if it's not what you thought it was, that's OK. Experiment and try different things.
But that's the name of the game is as a content creator, as a live streamer and as a viewer, experimentation is the best thing that you can do or you can ask anybody to do for yourself or suggest to other places. And the best thing that you could do is actually join a two tone waffle community by clicking on that follow button or just or hit that subscribe button down below on YouTube. I mean.
What's going to cost you? Nothing, right? I have a great community that is talking about different things within our Discord server. And we also have a matrix server set up. We have forums. We got the newsletter that goes out every week. That is the weekly waffle by going to twotonwaffle .com and signing up there. I have all the links for the forums and Discord and all sorts of stuff like that. And if you're listening to this podcast episode after the fact or watching the live or
the replay on video, do give it a thumbs up and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. So thank you for coming out tonight and I'll see you on the next episode of the Independent Creator podcast. Until then, have a good night and later taters.