Update 11th September, 2025

Development Updates
41

It does, but that’s not a decentralised, permissionless service… from what I can see it’s a donation based ad-free alternative to YouTube… if you post what’s considered to be a conspiracy theory there, or a video with ads to help monetise content, you could be banned, and the website could be taken down by operators or authorities.

With Autonomi users will be able to choose what they want to hide vs that being done by a central authority, nobody will be able to block anyone from publishing (for better or worse!), and there won’t be a limit on how many videos anyone can publish (50gb limit from what I can see on PeerTube).

I agree this will be a huge challenge, and possibly one Autonomi has a unique advantage to challenge.

Wirh Autonomi, multiple front-ends can let users access the same content, so anyone who wants to create a new / improved / niche video browsing & viewing experience won’t be starting from zero content & network effect each time, but could have just as rich content as any other video front-end on Autonomi.

So, the network effect issue can be tackled by many teams chipping away at it in their own way, benefitting the overall Autonomi-for-video network effect, for others to build on top again & so on.

We’ve not seen this dynamic before, but it may be a game-changer in terms of having a shared-network effect.

No guarantees this will succeed where others have failed, but it is a different approach with potential.

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42

also they could decide to incorporate advertisements or not (and providers of advertisement would become service providers instead of the current model where it’s the other way round and you are allowed to get a share from ad revenue when you get a certain amount of clicks/views …)

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43

People are used to selecting a walled garden of their preference. It is hard to break that perspective.

Freeing the data from the monopoly oriented walled gardens opens up many ways to consume it.

I see above that folks are saying their browsers can’t seek in videos - try a different browser, or try VLC or any number of other HTTP streaming apps.

Can I do that with YouTube? No. They wouldn’t even want that, if it was possible, as they need the walls to stay up to make money.

I think this shows the marketing battle ahead. Perspectives need to be changed.

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44

Rather than competing directly with YouTube’s massive network effects, YouTubers could use Autonomi as complementary infrastructure - maintaining their YouTube presence while building independent distribution channels and securing their content assets in a decentralised, censorship-resistant manner. If i was a youtuber, video contet (as a business), i think i would create for “sovereignty first” and then publish derivative work from tthe original to youtube and whatever other platform, huge opportunity ie Sovereignty as a Service (SaaS 2.0) if you like.

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45

I get that, I am saying people won’t necessarily use autonomi just because its superior in most ways. It has to be seamless, easy to access and easy to migrate to. Crypto doesn’t just prevent this, it makes it as difficult as possible to use the network compared to any other youtube alternative around today. Search will also be key, people like algorithms as they feel normal (even if they aren’t) - this is going to be tricky to implement. The nostr community have been struggling to grow and retain users because the algorithms are missing or confusing. People like to be told what to look at even when they claim they don’t.

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46

I understand that autonomi is hoping to be way more decentralised than PeerTube. My point is what does youtube do that is either better or worse than what peertube (or even rumble) I can’t think of anything, youtube is the worst of all of them yet people won’t switch to alternatives that fail better.

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47

These transitions don’t happen just because we or even they recognise it would be a change for the better.

There are many reasons, but it takes time. I remember thinking how daft it was that everyone was posting bits of paper, or even faxing when myself and others had discovered email.

Things will change, we know that, but we have to be realistic about how and when.

They certainly can’t adopt things before they exist, nor as you say, if they are to hard to adopt and use. This is being worked on, but takes time, and nobody wishes Blockchain away more than myself, but I think we are stuck with it for a long time so no point waiting for it to go away

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48

The difference in these platforms is $$$. They pay good content creators in cold hard cash. Why go to all that work creating content for nothing? Some will, but the best won’t. This is what we have to figure out: how to make money with these systems to pay developers and pay the content creators without the data collection nightmare we have today. We’ll get there.

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49

OpenBazaar had been around for years The software was excellent. It should have destroyed Ebay yet almost nobody used it. People never came around because crypto is too hard. I’ve always been of the opinion that if that project couldn’t succeed no crypto for goods/services project can. I’ve yet to be proven wrong.

50

I think you are probably correct, but who really knows. I’m working on ways to circumvent these issues and so are others here and in Autonomi, so even if you are correct, we don’t need to sit and hope or think there’s no point even in that.

You know me, I hope for not ignoring issues but highlighting where I see problems. Yet I’m not despondent, incredibly disappointed with the situation, but there’s still value here. More than anywhere else I believe.

Come back in a year maybe. I doubt I’ll have done much more, but some small things I’m going to do will help and others have opportunities to make big advances on the issues you talk about.

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51

Because of censorship/privacy. That is the only reason anyone would switch from youtube and you will make little to no money because of the network effect. It would take something truly special to escape that. No company has achieved it yet even with billions of dollars of investment. Has rumble turned a profit yet? The internet is littered with failures to take account of the network effect.

Historical platforms and their fates ​

Posterous (2008-2013) ​

Why it failed: Acquired by Twitter, then shut down
Twitter acquired for talent, not product. Couldn’t compete with Tumblr’s growth. Shut down April 30, 2013. Peak: 4.5M monthly users.

Pownce (2007-2008) ​

Why it failed: Lack of revenue, couldn’t compete with Twitter
Too complex (tried to combine microblogging, file sharing, events). Acquired by Six Apart and immediately shut down Dec 2008. Only had ~100k users at peak.

Windows Live Spaces (2004-2011) ​

Why it failed: Low engagement, poor features
Microsoft auto-created accounts for all 500M Hotmail users but only 30M were active. Migrated to WordPress.com Sept 2010.

Open Diary (1998-2014) ​

Why it failed: Financial difficulties
Pioneered blogging but couldn’t afford servers. Shut down Feb 2014 after data loss. Relaunched 2018 as subscription-only.

Gawker (2002-2016) ​

Why it failed: Legal battle (Hulk Hogan lawsuit)
$140M verdict in lawsuit funded by Peter Thiel. Filed bankruptcy, shut down Aug 2016. Relaunched 2021 but minimal traffic.

Tumblr (2007-Present) ​

Why it failed: NSFW ban, cultural mismatch with Yahoo/Verizon
Lost 30% of traffic after Dec 2018 adult content ban. Sold by Yahoo for $1.1B (2013), later sold to Automattic for less than $3M (2019).

Vox (Six Apart) (2006-2010) ​

Why it failed: Failed to gain traction
Six Apart’s attempt at “neighborhood blogging.” Never exceeded 600k users. Shut down Sept 30, 2010.

Blogger (1999-Present) ​

Why it failed: Still alive but stagnant under Google
Acquired by Google 2003. Last major update 2020. Lost 90%+ market share to WordPress. Many features deprecated.

LiveJournal (1999-Present) ​

Why it failed: Sold to Russian company, user exodus
Sold to SUP Media (Russia) 2007. Servers moved to Russia 2016, triggering privacy concerns and mass exodus.

Xanga (1999-Present) ​

Why it failed: Failed to evolve, lost to Facebook/MySpace
Peak: 40M users (2005). Shut down 2013, raised $60k to relaunch as “Xanga 2.0.” Now basically dead.

Medium (2012-Present) ​

Why it struggles: Revenue model conflicts with customer needs Multiple layoffs: 2017 (50 people), 2021 (75), 2023 (unknown). Changed business model 5+ times. Major publications left platform.

Svbtle (2011-Present) ​

Why it failed: Failed to grow beyond niche
Started as invite-only “elite” network. Opened to public 2014 but too late. No meaningful updates since. Estimated <10k active users.

Ghost (2013-Present) ​

Why it failed: Struggles with mainstream adoption
Raised $5M+ via Kickstarter/revenue. Only ~2.5k paying Ghost(Pro) customers despite being around 10+ years. $200+/month pricing drives users to competitors.

WordPress.com (2005-Present) ​

Why it failed: Lost creators to self-hosting
While WordPress.org powers 43% of the web, WordPress.com has <0.4% market share. Creators graduate to self-hosted after hitting limitations.

Substack (2017-Present) ​

Why it failed: Creator exodus, content moderation crisis
Platformer, Casey Newton left Jan 2024 over Nzi content. Flat $585M valuation after failed Series C (2022). 14% layoffs June 2022. Top writers leaving to avoid 10% fee.

Beehiiv (2021-Present) ​

Currently growing (benefiting from competitor issues)
Founded by Morning Brew alumni. Raised $33M Series B at $192M valuation (Apr 2024). 100k+ newsletters, grew 10x in 2023. Flat pricing beats Substack’s %.

– from Why Platforms Like Substack Won't Make Sense for Much Longer | Daniel Miessler

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52

Medium still seems very prevalent and common in web3. Lots of companies use it to post their devblogs and updates. I would not call that one dead.

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53

Not dead yet.

54

Until its acquired I suppose :smiling_face_with_tear:

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55

Lots of failed and failing walled gardens, hoping to be the next monopoly to extract rent from their denizens. Meh.

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56

I appreciate your good work. I don’t want to just sound despondent, maidsafe offered something no other project has : anonymity, privacy and immutability. There is no competition. But annonymity and privacy are gone, leaving only immutability - but that only works if people use the network, which requires the native token - more important than a perfectly efficient network (that can be fixed later) to my mind. With no easy way to access the network, there’s nobody to use it to know how great it can be.

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57

Just curious, but what’s your ultimate point and why are you even posting? I’ve seen your criticism over and over again, don’t you feel like you’re wasting your time? The issues are known, now what?

I made my criticisms and now I rarely post. Yet you keep hammering the same criticisms over and over, why?

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58

This is key. You are clearly correct about this, but what follows is not clear. So we have different responses to this. I continue to try to make it accessible, and others are doing so too.

We may not succeed, here. But we have got very close, and others will be able to take this work and succeed, because we got so close.

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59

I hear you, but it’s not accurate to say Autonomi ‘only has immutable data.’

Meaning …

End-to-End Encryption → data is encrypted client-side, so no one (not even the network) can read your files.

Distributed Storage → no single server or provider holds your data; it’s split and spread, which makes mass breaches impossible.

Immutable Data Layer → yes, that’s core, but it’s paired with the above to guarantee integrity and censorship resistance.

And what that means in practice is privacy + security are in the design

You don’t need to trust an app or provider to ‘behave.’ They can’t read your files.

You don’t need to worry about lock-in. Your data belongs to you, mathematically.

Apps get access only to what you explicitly share, not to your entire digital footprint.

So, privacy here doesn’t mean ‘anonymous browsing’ — it means data sovereignty: you own your digital life, and apps can’t exploit it. That’s a level of privacy and security Big Tech literally cannot offer.

Yes, immutable data is the foundation, but the house on top of it is private, secure, and sovereign by design

Worth pointing out too … Autonomi’s self-encryption gives us information-theoretic security — not just ‘hard-to-break’ encryption, but mathematically unbreakable. That’s different from Big Tech clouds, which rely on computational security (good enough until computing catches up).

I tthnk there is more that has gone unnoticed … a LOT more.

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60

In the hope that devs will change course before it’s too late. I think it is disingenuous to claim this is either a private or anonymous network. It can’t even hope for that while crypto is required to access the network Normal people are locked out of the network, software developers who don’t want to use crypto can’t participate, and everyone else needs to be filing their tax returns. But my main frustration is that the team won’t talk about this, about how it plans to be all things it claims - their website describes an entirely different network. Sometimes you have to make some noise. I’m done.

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