The key things that have shifted can be summarized with three points:
- TikTok Takeover: The cronyism exploited to hand TikTok to Larry Ellison for a fraction of its worth, setting up the danger of its platform amplifying content controlled by the administration, and silencing dissenting voices.
- Vimeo Vulnerability: The consolidation of a number of the major streaming video infrastructure providers (including Vimeo, one of the most important) under Bending Spoons, the notorious conglomerate which not only tends to enshittify its products, but which will now also present a unified target for the same censors who went after voices like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.
- Creator Capture: The lack of available and accessible open alternatives to major distribution platforms like YouTube and TikTok — there's no "BlueSky for video" or "Mastodon for video", meaning there isn't the same opportunity for video creators to make themselves resilient to a platform takeover.
All of this is trying to make clear to video creators that they need to embrace the same radical control that podcasters have always had.
