

The advantage of the fediverse is how well it should be able to scale, thanks to its federated nature. A big part of the problem with YouTube is that its large scale but centralised nature means that they just throw AI at the moderation problem, and it is infamously terrible. Censoring important conversations and sensitive subjects, while letting through actual child abuse. And because it’s centralised, users (both viewers and creators) don’t have an easy option to turn somewhere else without losing the whole network effect.
It’s compounded by the fact that the majority of monetisation on there is driven by advertising. Direct funding via a Patreon-like model (optional payment to receive some minor bonuses, primarily for supporting the creator), a Nebula-style model (subscription to access content), or a BATish model (forget most of the actual details of BAT, especially the crypto, but imagine a system—which could be voluntary or mandatory depending on the individual system, creator, or piece of content—in which users stick a bunch of money into a wallet, and it is automatically shared with the creators whose content they are viewing in some fair manner). Not having actual advertisements, combined with better, more local moderation decisions, would help stave off the biggest problems with YouTube.







They have a 3 day free trial by default. And members can also give out a limited number of “guest passes” which act as a 1 week free trial.
That’s probably part of it. It’s also a marketing tactic. They’re positioning themselves as a premium service. They want customers to know that if something is on Nebula it’s going to be good. Similar to the way Apple positions themselves as premium by not selling a $200 smartphone, or Mercedez-Benz, or Louis-Vuitton.
It’s also about trust. One of the things they’re trying to do with Nebula is to provide creators a space to safely discuss controversial topics without censorship. But with that, along with the fact that they have a coop-type structure, comes the need to be able to trust that the people uploading on their platform aren’t gonna be Nazis.