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.
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There are a lot of pretty good creators on there (real engineering, hacksmith, berm peak, and real life lore, for example.) .
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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.
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It has pretty much every feature (user-facing, anyway) that youtube does except for likes/dislikes, comments, and live streaming.
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It is paid with no free-with-ads option, but it is cheap (currently $36 a year) and provides a comparable experience.
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It handles podcasts well, but there aren’t that many good ones (imo) and a lot of them seem discontinued.
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It has really good discoverability, but it does not match content to the user (i.e., no personalized home page).
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It’s homepage is made up of various categories like a normal streaming service, including continue watching.
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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.
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