SomeGuyOnHisComputer said:
[#WTFU is primarily a youtube movement
It's really not. That's kind of the problem. It's about YouTube, but we've had multiple threads on this site alone talking about it. Even if we limit it to YouTube, however, the bulk of the WTFU talk is coming from users, not content creators. Unless you want to get super specific and talk about video creation, in which case I will grant you that tautologically it's content creators making videos about it, but that grossly limits the scope of the conversation.
Rather, you made a shoestring of assumptions and took me to task for the end result. These assumptions seem to be based more on your personal opinions than any solid foundation. Folks like the Nostalgia Critic (ironic) have seen a groundswell of support, sometimes from thousands upon thousands of people, and if you think they're all the ones making the videos then I don't even know what to tell you.
RedDeadFred said:
I have no idea how this shit works when it comes to the internet, but I do know that many countries which claim to embrace the free market still do have laws about monopolies, so I don't really see where your evil socialism comment applies.
Since I'm already responding again, let me add this:
You have no idea how these things work, but you don't see how my socialism comments play into it.
First, that's conflating two separate arguments. That's fine, I don't really care. My internet writings appear to have more secrets than any treasure hunt Indiana Jones might go on, and I'm the only one not privy to them.
But things get dicey when you start talking monopolies[footnote=for this purpose, "monopoly" will refer to the illegal sense, as it's perfectly possible to have a legal monopoly, as I will get into below]. See, when I phrased it as I did, the wording was deliberate. I called it a virtual monopoly because it is not, at least as far as I can see, an actual one. The reason I say "far as I know" is less because I don't know how these things work (though I'm far from an expert) and more because I don't have evidence of these things.
Google is, generally speaking, not a monopoly in the legal sense because there's little or no evidence of anti-competitive practices. A lot of people compare Microsoft's monopoly in the 90s to Google now, but they're too young to remember what it was like when you couldn't search up a rival product on a search engine. Hell, there used to be a need for workarounds just to download Netscape from an IE broswer. When we say "monopoly" in terms of legality, we're not talking about someone who simply dominates a field. While yes, a company that controls say, 80% of a given marketplace has a monopoly, they don't in the sense of anti-monopoly laws.
The problem here is that people have flocked to YouTube by choice, not because Google has tried to stifle the market. Many of the people I now follow on YouTube felt that Blip was a better platform based on the exact grounds that are the source of WTFU. It simply wasn't seeing the success of YouTube, however. Many Blip creators also hosted on YouTube (as have other sites, like...this one) because they want the views. Again, this is not a case of coercion, but rather of choice. YouTube dominates because it's considered the "better" service, whether due to content or services or ubiquity. I'd prefer Blip except I always had trouble watching Linkara or Rap Critic because their ads would fuck up constantly. I do find being able to actually watch videos to be the superior was to watch them, whether I otherwise like YouTube or not.
"Better" is, of course, subjective. It's less what makes a good service and more, as Bill Nye would say, what makes a "good enough" service. People have decided that YouYube is good enough. Good enough, in fact, that the endless complaints about it are often done by people who still use the service. And since we are talking the free market, that's enough to validate its continued dominance.
A monopoly created by such a service is not illegal. And while it's possible Google is violating antitrust laws in some way I'm not aware of, calling them a monopoly here is not enough to trigger antitrust laws. But a monopoly created by making a service people choose to use over competitors' services is not illegal. It is the free market in action. It is people voting with their wallets.
Which, incidentally, makes the sort of intervention you're talking about what those same free-marketeers call "socialism." It would be interfering with the sacred Free Market (praise be upon it).
