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Is Nebula worth it?
Is anyone here using https://nebula.tv? Multiple creators I watch are on there, and I'm considering getting a subscription, but I'm just not sure if it's really worth it. Most channels on there don't seem to upload any exclusive content, so I'll basically just get the same videos but for $5/month instead of for free. I've also heard that the app and UX isn't that great.
People who use the service, what makes it worth it for you? Is it just a way to support the creators more?
I have it, but honestly it's more because I appreciate their business model and want to support a model that benefits creators and workers instead of just shareholders, rather than for the content. I don't watch it very often, and when I do, I find it kind of difficult to find content that matches what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that it continues to grow and becomes better in that regard. It's also entirely possible that there's more content there that I'd like than I realize, and it's my failing that I'm not finding it.
One thing it needs is better discoverability functionality. I think they're intentionally avoiding going down the recommendation algorithm route that every other service uses, but I guess it's hard to come up with a good alternative.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with adding similarity search to the side of a playing video. The problems arise when you tune that search to optimize for unhealthy metrics - like more watch time even if it means people are becoming radicalized and fed lies.
I agree but I would also additionally add that why does it need to be a site initiated recommendation? I have yet to see a mainstream site with solid granular search based on the data that would be used for the recommendations but that is not a question of technical possibility.
Because the site knows what it has, but you can only guess. This is also the fundamental legitimate purpose of advertising: to make the would-be customer aware of a choice.
This can easily become exploitative, but fortunately that kind of exploitation is contrary to Nebula's business model. Ad-driven social media profits from view-time (through advertisements), but Nebula profits from its subscription fee. Nebula profits most if you remain interested enough to renew your subscription, but beyond that your watch-time is just a cost (hosting/bandwidth).
Maybe it didn't sound that way but if it is both, and the automatic recommendation can be disabled then that is basically ideal.
I can also guess a lot better and explore the site at my own pace if it gives me tools to do so instead of the mainstream standard atrocious forced fuzzy search hiding any sort of helpful structured data. But I did not really use Nebula so this mainly in general sort of statement.
Same boat here, I like the business model and appreciate the extra content. There's a couple channels that I had been following before on YT (Adam Neely, Real Engineering, Thomas Flight, Patrick Willems, Polyphonic) so it's nice to support them in this small way.
I originally had the Curiosity Stream bundle but found I only rarely watched content on it so that got the chop when they split with Nebula.
Thomas Flight is one of my favorites.
I had it until they had the dispute with SecondThought. I discontinued after that.
What happened there? The only time I've heard of Second Thought was this rather damning video, so I'd guess he was kicked off for saying some crazy tankie stuff.
Huh.
(From the stream on this twitter link.)
That's incredibly messed up.
…from Vaush? Eugh.
I haven’t heard Vaush say anything worth listening to, and I have tried. Color me skeptical on that one.
Anyway, he wasn’t kicked off anything. J.T. has said multiple times that he felt Nebula’s stance on Israel-Palestine was too both-sides for him to be comfortable with, so they agreed to part ways. It was amicable, and there was no bad blood.
This comment should be higher up. Both because of actually knowing the facts about the situation and so I knew the linked video was from Vaush so I could disregard all the related drama.
Occupiers are not civilians if he's talking about the West Bank. They are operating as colonial settlers. It's comparable to the Europeans colonizing America. They are not there legally and they are typically very well supported by the IDF. It's not damning at all and it outlines a general lack of understanding of the overall conflict. Are occupiers citizens of Israel? Certainly. The argument JT is making in the twitter clip is referencing how Zionist settlers operate in the West Bank. This should be considered a non-controversial, fact based statement. Settler colonialists in the West Bank are non-citizens of the West Bank.
In the twitter clip he's responding to a question about hostages taken though, no? He seems to be referring to all Israelis as 'occupiers', at least in the context of this clip.
I follow all three of the people on the podcast of the original clip (Hakim, Yougopnik, and SecondThought) and none of them have ever maintained that ALL Israelis are occupiers, to my recollection. That's an incredibly reductive analysis of the Israeli people in general and I do not agree with that as there are Israeli leftist that oppose the Israeli state's policies on this subject matter.
I attempted to watch Vaush's analysis of the Authoritarianism but his intro was absolutely disingenuous and in no way represents JT's actual positions. WIthin the first 60 seconds of his video he states:
The opening 90 seconds of Vaush's analysis on SecondThought is just blatant misrepresentations of SecondThought and it makes it really hard to listen to the rest of the analysis of the video knowing that's the starting point.
Vaush is a tough person to listen to and kind of one of the intrinsic reasons that the "left" doesn't gain traction, if all he seeks to do is tear down other leftists for not being his brand of leftist. Leftist infighting and purity signaling is a problem.
I don't want to be petty and only talk about your first paragraph; however I haven't watched the Vaush video and so can't comment on your analysis of it.
It seems to me you're not really addressing the twitter clip? Like sure maybe they haven't expressed the viewpoint that all Israelis are occupiers in the past, but in the clip they answer the question "Did the Palestinians take civilian hostages, or is that fake news?" with "I don't care, occupiers aren't civilians," which is pretty damning. Like maybe you could make the argument that the guy saying "occupiers aren't civilians" is starting a new line of thought, but that seems like a stretch.
You're more familiar with their content than I am, so maybe I'm missing something, but I don't know how you could seriously argue that they aren't saying "the hostages taken aren't civilians, they're occupiers, therefore its ok to take them hostage."
I haven’t delved deep into the clip, and so I only really have feelings to speak to, but in the interest of not having it go unanswered, I’ll just say a couple things:
Being as the Israel-Hamas situation is so ridiculously complicated, there are obviously millions of additional details I could expound upon here; for example, the massive difference in power between the two groups, or the inevitability of violence given how oppressed Gaza has been for so long. But I’m not trying to write an essay. Suffice to say: Taking civilian hostages is an unsurprising outcome, but it is still bad.
All in all, I am inclined to believe the statement was a mistake, and that more nuance is present in J.T.’s actual beliefs. It is however worth noting that I am, as a frequent watcher of their content, obviously biased.
I do still have questions regarding this clip, though. I can’t find myself very trusting of the person who posted it (seemingly extremely pro-Israel), but I also want clarification from J.T. as well. I might be able to get more details later. If I do, I’ll try to post about it here.
The app and UX has improved imo, it's no worse than the Youtube app on our TV. So I wouldn't worry on that front. And the Nebula exclusive content we've watched has been very good. But ultimately the factor that keeps me subscribing is knowing that watching videos on Nebula pays the creators way more than doing so on Youtube. The price seems like a pretty low cost for that. So I'd say it's worth it, but ymmv.
I suppose it's also worth noting that it's cheaper than ad-free Youtube through Youtube Premium, so even just the ad-free-ness might be worth it if you don't pay for Youtube Premium and watch enough creators who are on Nebula.
I'm a big Jet Lag: The Game enjoyer so getting the episodes a week early to me is worth the $30 a year I pay (I think I signed up through some creator's code that dropped the annual price down)
I don't think I would pay $50 a year but $30 seems about right for what's on there. Lindsay Ellis has been putting up all her new content exclusively on there as well which I've found enjoyable. But you'll pretty quickly run out of exclusive content.
To me it's more a "nice to have" than a must have and if they raised my subscription price I'd probably cancel.
The app and UX are fine in my experience. It's nothing special but I've never felt it get in the way of anything. It works fine and does the job.
Does the $50 -> $30 price drop when using a creator code last forever, or is it only for the first year? $30 does seem like a better price for it.
Have a $30 subscription, can confirm it lasts forever.
Not necessarily forever, but the Nebula CEO stated a few months ago that they don't have any plans to change it.
When/if there are more creators uploading content that interest me, and the site has better functionality to discover content and personalize your feed; I would be fine if they increased it to $50 in the future. But as it is now I would cancel if they increased the price.
Anyone have a source for those $30 codes? I could get on board for that price.
If I go to Jet Lags Nebula page then there is a banner at the top that Jet Lag fans get a discount, you should be able to use that.
https://nebula.tv/jetlag
If you haven't watched Jet Lag, I highly recommend it. It's a great game show. Season 3 is a good place to start and then go from there, S1 and 2 aren't as good imo, but worth watching when/if you enjoy the show.
I am subscribed, but I don't watch it as much as I would like.
Honestly, I get annoyed at the site when I load it up. I was hoping that it would be a place where I could see less of the clickbaity crap that ends up on YouTube. It is absolutely filled with channels that post the exact same video and thumbnail to both places.
Worst of all, I can't even just block the channels from showing up. When I see a particularly annoying thumbnail on YouTube, I can use the built in function to never show me anything by that channel again. I use that feature a lot. When I open Nebula right now, I am met with a picture of a Gatorade bottle pointed at a slab of meat. I would block that thumbnail and channel immediately if they had a button. Slightly further, I see a bunch of videos with titles like "A TOTALLY normal day in the NAVY" and "72hrs aboard an ACTIVE NAVY SHIP" and I have absolutely no desire to see a video creator that feels the need to scream in the title regularly, but I can't just block that either.
Just below that there is another link to the exact same video creator under a "channels you might have missed" header. There is no way to tell the system that I didn't miss them, I actively avoided them.
Overall the videos on the site are pretty good and absolutely worth the $5 a month. I am mostly paying for the principle rather than the value though. Increasing the feature set would go a long way in getting me to use it more regularly.
According to this comment on their subreddit, they didn't originally plan on the homepage being used as much as it is, and expected people to just use their subscription feed. So the easiest way to avoid the annoyance you describe at the moment would probably be to subscribe to the creators you like and change your bookmark to your subscription feed. Not a perfect solution, but the only surefire way to avoid ever seeing creators who title their videos in ways you dislike.
The comment I linked mentions they're looking into developing more customizability for the home page, but the comment's a year old so development is either slow or it ended up not being a priority.
Hey, just want to let you know that I watched that video on YouTube and it was actually the video after which I made this post lol. And they do actually grow meat cells inside of Gatorade, that channel is actually pretty cool, you should check it out.
But I do get what you mean, I do look at the Nebula "explore" page sometimes and I did see the clickbaity stuff.
I have the lifetime. Love it, use it regularly and yes it’s great. I would personally say it’s completely worth it. Even just as a curation or discovery of good content.
The series I like such as Jet Lag, I enjoy watching them a week in advance and there is often exclusive content.
I love it honestly. My favorite creators either upload to Nebula first or have extras on it. I don’t know why people are thinking their UI is bad, because I honestly think it’s the best streaming platform in that regard; sure, it’s features are minimal, but they are very well implemented and stay out of the way of the watching experience.
(minor edit: I forgot to mention that it also has markedly better quality than YouTube; the picture is usually clearer and seeking is snappier.)
That being said, YMMV based on which creators you follow because some of them do not take Nebula seriously. I’m considering unsubscribing from FD Signifier just because I am frustrated with how he treats Nebula as second class. He doesn’t keep the Nebula audience in mind when creating his videos and often has them uploaded after it’s been up on YouTube for a while.
I've had it for a few years now and like having it. Supporting the channels is a big part of that. Some do more than others with having extra/longer videos, but ad free without paying Google for a service that keeps getting worse isn't nothing. I don't think the UX is bad necessarily but it's not built for stumbling upon new things as much as YouTube. It works fine for following YouTubers you already know about, but I get that that's not ideal for them as a 'separate'/competing platform.
I do think the "Enhancer for Nebula" browser extension is nice. Among other things puts a link on YouTube videos with Nebula counterparts and optionally can automagically open them on Nebula instead.
I am subscribed mostly to support better revenue source for creators, but I don't watch nebula often. Among my biggest issues with it is that it doesn't have the wealth of browser extensions that 'fixes' the experience, like I have for youtube. Like DeArrow which removes clickbait titles and thumbnails.
You can add feature requests to Enhancer. Might be worth a shot.
I'm going to go against the prevailing opinion here and say no, it isn't. The content is sparse, and the management of what you want to see on the page is awful. The vast majority of what I come across is cross-posted to YouTube anyway, and I really don't care about a few-week exclusive.
I sub, as I like supporting creators directly, but I cannot honestly say I enjoy using the service, and unless things improve, I will probably not renew next year.
[Edit]- Full disclosure, I do most of my watching via the FireStick app, so that may be affecting my opinion.
The prevailing opinion in this thread is definitely agreeing with you, where people are more interested in supporting the idea/creators than seeing a lot of value.
No. But I pay for it anyways because this business model is far far superior to youtube/twitch/facebook and I want to encourage it to grow.
I bought the lifetime and it's one of the avenues for "de-googlification" for me.
I love nebula as a concept, and from what I've seen in general, the quality of videos seems to be higher. More akin to the brand image vimeo gives me. It's a no-nonsense platform, providing top tier content, without all of the noise of most video platforms.
You have sparked my interest. I knew about Nebula for long time, but reading commenta here made me think again and a bit harder.
I'm probably one of a few tech savvy people that don't use any ad blocking tools. Since Youtube started pushing a lot more ads lately (unskippable pre-roll and mid-roll and also "immediate mid-roll when you skipped manually somewhere") I basically stopped visiting the site.
I follow many people on Odysee, which is (mostly) ad free and not as good experience (but still very usable) - people who use Odysee as kinda backup, so they have the same videos on YT and Odysee. These include EEVblog, ElectroBOOM, NileRed (or Blue? One of the channels for sure), bigclivedotcom, Hardware Unboxed and many other I don't remember on top of my head.
I pay for LTT (all.channels) on Floatplane.
So my situation is a bit... dire? Well, not really, I'm not a slave to videos that much. But having the means to watch worthy creators may be worth those money for me. I'm really thinking about signing up for at least month (5$ is nothing compared to what I may be ale to discover) and going through the creators and then see if it's worth investing for yearly subscription.
It's unbelievable how big players that keep f**king up with their services - be it everyone having their own service like Disney+, Nerflix, Amazon Prime... Or Youtibe that keeps pushing ads heavily in the "free version" - pushed me to actually put my money into streaming... But in different way then they expected - by paying the creators instead of distributors.
I'm setting up Nebula account right after I hit "Post comment". I have to start at some time and it is now :-)
EDIT: Done.
So I subscribe but I don't actually use it that often. I have YouTube premium so I don't get Google ads on YouTube, and not every channel I watch is on Nebula so even for those that are on Nebula I usually find out about their new videos from the YouTube feed. Sometimes if it's a long video or the creator specifically calls out bonus nebula content I'll switch over to the Nebula version, but mostly I see it as a sort of meta-patreon for a bunch of creators where I want to support them, but not enough to sign up for 50 coffees a month of individual patreon subscriptions.
If you have it i STRONGLY recommend subscribing to your various channels in your rss feed. That way you can keep track as by design it’s not the kind of site you will be on constantly like YouTube.
Personally i think it’s worth it if you can easily afford it, but i do have a lot of creators who I wish would move over
It's my way to support creators without paying for Youtube Premium, because refuse to support Googles bussiness practices. The UI has significantly improved, but discoverability is still a problem
I love watching Jet Lag and apart from the merch which have unfortunately high shipping prices to Europe, I didn’t see any other way to support them but Nebula.
As far as I’m concerned, the 30$ a year Nebula subscription I took was just to support them and there is the added bonus that I discover other quality shows without ads.
I subscribed for a bit for some specific creators I liked, but once I got through their backlogs I found I very rarely visited the site. I might have kept the subscription if it was easier to find other creators, but as other commenters have mentioned the homepage/discovery isn't great. That said, I did really like knowing more of the money went to creators than it would have on other services like YouTube.
I might rethink the decision as I was trying to save money at the time, but so far the only streaming service that's ever managed a permanent subscription from me is Dropout.
I watch tl;dr news regularly and some of the other channels occasionally. What sucks most for me is that it's heavily oriented towards humanities and "content production" meta. I would love for it to have more STEM videos, to be honest.
Paid for it with the yearly deal a couple of years ago, really tried to give it a good run but consistently could not find content that was interesting enough. I found that after a year I had basically not used it at all. While I love the idea of competing services that aren't big corps like YT/Google/etc, Nebula was just not compelling to me at all.
I love Nebula in general, and always watch stuff there first before going to YouTube to catch up on the creators I follow who aren't on Nebula.
From a cost perspective, I listen to The Climate Denier's Playbook podcast and would normally subscribe to their Patreon to get ad-free episodes. Since their episodes on Nebula are also ad-free, for the same price as their Patreon tier I can subscribe to Nebula instead--that makes it at least a wash right there even if I didn't love a bunch of other creators and exclusive content on Nebula.
I like it. I love their business model, and I love a ton of the creators they have on their platform.
One thing I wish they had, was some sort of algorithmic curation. Or at least some way to block certain topics from appearing on the home page. I've done a good job of getting YouTube to pretty much never recommends content related to politics or current events. Since some of the most prolific creators on Nebula are providing daily news roundups, they almost always fill the "latest" section, and honestly I'm tired of being reminded that we're already in another disgusting election year...
I had it for years and didn't enjoy using it. Perhaps if Grayjay was around I would have appreciated it more. There's just far too little content and difficult to find something I want to watch. I also dislike them pivoting into purposefully exclusive content since that's anti-consumer in my opinion
I know some creators have joined and others left on bad terms, so generally I'm not even sure they're an organization I want to support
I subscribed for a year or two when I got a great offer (from Strange Parts), but I just don't have the time to watch any of the content.
We're at a place where there's more great or amazing content coming out than I have free time to watch it, so I need to heavily curate what I spend time on. A person can watch only so many four hour Youtube plagiarism takedown videos in a week.
I paid for the lifetime subscription (don't know if that is still a deal they have) and have it added as a source to my Grayjay app. I really enjoy the content, and want to ensure the creators have something to live off of without using Alphabet as a middle man and seeing endless commercials (it's mind numbing). So for me it is mainly a way to reduce the hassle of choosing which creator to fund while also supporting a commercial move away from youtube.
If you buy a lifetime subscription like this, how do content creators actually receive any revenue from your views now that you're not contributing anything for the service anymore?
Nebula made a blog post about this when they were offering the Lifetime Memberships -- which were incidentally limited in both how long they were available and how many were offered).
In short, having the money up-front is more useful for them as a business than the promise of future memberships, and this was right after they broke up with Curiosity Stream, who had previously been covering all their marketing spend. It was a way to get a quick cash injection without turning to VC funding.
Ahh very cool, thanks for sending that link! It was informative in seeing how it impacts them.
I will admit thaty own disillusion and annoyence with subscriptipn services (it's hell for me to manage) is certainly also a draw in this case, and I'll admit that after a certain point in time the monetary value of a continuous monthly subscription would exceed what I paid for lifetime access. I don't remember how long that would be (some number of years, I think two, not accounting for inflation).
As the creators get their money as a fraction of the company's profit (currently 50%) then naively half of the money would go to the creators that were active at in that month giving them an extra bonus.
But that is probably not how that worked.
I assume that the people that run Nebula are at least competent, if not very competent, and as such they would only make the offer of a one time payment for lifetime subscription if it was a good idea for them. Now there a many scenarios where a bog lump sum now would be more valuable for them than a bunch of small sums perpetually. Monetary crisis, expensive development, the setup of secondary profit from investment. The actual specific case interesting, but not relevant.
What is relevant is that a lump sum now is worth more than the same sum later or the same sum divided out over time, and that any specific circumstances can increase the difference in value.
Now there is still the matter of how this money will support the creators after the point in time at which the lump sum is worth as much as a continous subscription (assuming that the circumstances thatnled Nebula to offer the life time subscription wasn't that they lacked funding to survive, which I think is an actual possibility). I look at this as a gamble on my understanding of my own nature. A fickle thing I am, and easily distracted, so itbis not certain that I would stay subscribed to a service for so long that I would be able to supply them with the same amount of value as I gave with the lump sum. I have a feeling that having to pay a monthly subscription would at some point annoy me enough that my interest in the creators through association with the service would be damaged. If I'm right, then by this action I've giving the creators mpre value than if I'd started on the monthly subscription and failed. Now I'll never know if I'm wrong in this regard, but I can always reevaluate if I want to give creators I love more resources in the future.
And in any case, it certainly has made my enjoyment of Nebula as a whole much more clean. It's much easier to root for something that you aren't chained to through monthly payments.
Edit: I'm a verbose motherfucker. Sorry not sorry.
Thanks for the detailed explanation here, no apologies needed for the verbosity. It's a very insightful response to my question, I appreciate it!
Lifetime also has a secondary effect that anchors the annual subscription as the best value unless you intend to subscribe for more than 6-10 years. This works out good for them because annual gives them a more consistent budget and negates churn at the monthly level.
I have it, but admittedly I haven't gotten much use out of it. I mostly keep it around because I like the idea of it and want to help give it a little longer to grow into something.
I'd say my main complaint is a counter-intuitive one: The content leans very high quality video essay from professional creators, to the point where I'm not sure at a glance if it's cool for random people to upload useful mundane stuff. I'd say half my use of YouTube is "how do I" kind of things where someone shows how to use a program or change a bearing or grout tile or something, and Nebula doesn't seem like a place where that content fits in right now. It's possible my watching habits just aren't a good fit for it.
This looks way too much like YouTube to me. People pay for this sort of content? If I'm paying for TV I want it to feel like TV.
So far only Dropout has earned my money. I would love for Adult Swim to follow this model and jump back into live action