I know Nebula is not exactly open source, but it is pitched as a creator-controlled (or, at least a creator-centric) platform.
YouTube is my main platform of media consumption, and I would prefer to find other avenues that are not quite as monolithic.
Has anyone here tried Nebula? Is it worth it, and is there anything sketchy about it I should be aware of?
I’ve been using it for a year or two now, and here are my notes on it.
There are a lot of pretty good creators on there (real engineering, hacksmith, berm peak, and real life lore, for example.) .
Though Nebula has a lot of good creators, the vast majority of youtubers are not on it, so you will really only be switching for the ones that are.
It has pretty much every feature (user-facing, anyway) that youtube does except for likes/dislikes, comments, and live streaming.
It is paid with no free-with-ads option, but it is cheap (currently $36 a year) and provides a comparable experience.
It handles podcasts well, but there aren’t that many good ones (imo) and a lot of them seem discontinued.
It has really good discoverability, but it does not match content to the user (i.e., no personalized home page).
It’s homepage is made up of various categories like a normal streaming service, including continue watching.
It is not a pay-creator-directly kind of service. you pay nebula and they give 50% of the subscription fees to creators based on view count. It is more like a streaming service version of youtube, in a good way.
Overall, I really like it. It does a lot of stuff right and I feel that my money was well-spent. I would like for there to be more of the people I watch on it (Dankpods, for example). Nebula’s pay scheme seems like a fair deal to me given the type of platform it is.
On the note of no personalized homepage - I would highlight that there’s a section of the app called “My Library” which just has all of the video by creators you’ve followed in time ordered series.
I do think the discoverability of Nebula does suffer for infrequently creating folks. I normally watch LegalEagle after seeing a new video from him pop up on YouTube, as an example.
good point, and it also does have a “recommended for you” category. I honestly think it’s a pretty good system so long as you keep in mind that it isn’t meant to be what youtube is.