That sounds like a moderation nightmare, engagement nightmare or both. Twitch is a big established platform that makes it easy to reach people. It’s nor great but it will serve his purpose better than sacrificing the message for principle.
Gonna send emails? No way, 90% of people use Gmail and you shouldn’t give Google traffic.
Stand up your own website? Well it better not be in AWS, GCP or Azure. You’re still gonna need DDOS protection and the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands of users for this event so I hope you have the money to build your own datacenter. But be sure you’re making your own ethical internet backbone. Don’t want your money going to Verizon or Sprint.
Maybe thats all a little too complicated so we’ll need to go analog. But have you ever mailed a letter? USPS is run by fascists, gotta do better. Get on a bike (can’t have those emissions!) and hand deliver your 20k political zines. But don’t put it in their mailboxes, that’s reinforcing the status quo.
Psychotic is looking at the problem we have with Big Tech and saying “yes, this is fine!”
Gonna send emails? No way, 90% of people use Gmail and you shouldn’t give Google traffic.
WTF are you talking about? You realize there are thousands of email platforms not owned by Big Tech? You could even host your own. You just chose the worst example imaginable, because email itself is free and federated.
Well it better not be in AWS, GCP or Azure.
Sure, why not? Again, there are thousands of alternatives. You can even host it on your own hardware.
I hope you have the money to build your own datacenter.
LOL you don’t need a “datacenter”.
But have you ever mailed a letter? USPS is run by fascists
I don’t ever use mail for anything that I can possibly avoid. Let me tell you about this thing called email…
Get on a bike (can’t have those emissions!) and hand deliver your 20k political zines.
You say that like FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. don’t exist.
serious mental illness characterized by defective or lost contact with reality often with hallucinations or delusions
Example:
looking at the problem we have with Big Tech and saying “yes, this is fine!”
Absolutely nobody here is doing that. Nobody in this entire comment section has said anything close to that. Car dependant infrastructure and fossil fuels are bad but you still have to get in your car and go to work if you want to not die.
You realize there are thousands of email platforms not owned by Big Tech? You could even host your own.
Gmail is 30% of global email traffic. It doesn’t matter what platform I choose, my message is still going to end up in someone’s Gmail inbox and stolen by AI.
If I was taking that problem seriously I would at least cut out Apple, Gmail and Microsoft domains and automatically lose 84% of my mailing list. Why don’t you care about that?
Sure, why not? Again, there are thousands of alternatives. You can even host it on your own hardware.
Why not should be obvious: the NYC Mayor’s office isn’t in the market of building, hosting, operating or managing social media platforms. Full stop. That takes money, time, marketing and expertise and provides zero value to his constituents beyond performative fuzzy feelings.
If you’re so smart and righteous what’s stopping you from building your own platform for these politicians? Why the fuck should Mamdani have to do it? And make sure to build up 240 million MAU while you’re at it, this has to compete with Twitch’s reach.
LOL you don’t need a “datacenter”.
Well shit somebody call up Amazon and let them know! This genius has figured out a way to host an interactive live streaming service scalable to millions of simultaneous users from his closet.
Let me tell you about this thing called email…
See my comments above, you’re sacrificing your own privacy and feeling sanctimonious about it. Snail mail has far stronger legal and physical protections than your email.
You say that like FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. don’t exist.
You. You are doing that. You’re telling me that he shouldn’t consider a different platform, he should continue generating revenue for Bozos, and that any other option is “psychotic”. I don’t know how you possibly form an argument otherwise.
Gmail is 30% of global email traffic. It doesn’t matter what platform I choose, my message is still going to end up in someone’s Gmail inbox
Why does that matter? You can make that choice for yourself, as can Mamdani. He cannot control other people’s actions (unless by law), but he van 100% control his own.
Why not should be obvious: the NYC Mayor’s office isn’t in the market of building, hosting, operating or managing social media platforms. Full stop.
My response should also be obvious; they are also not “in the market” of running Twitch livestreams. He can elect to do that regardless.
That takes money, time, marketing and expertise and provides zero value to his constituents beyond performative fuzzy feelings.
It provides a platform that his constituents can follow and engage with him on that isn’t owned by the broligarchy, and doesn’t require them to subject themselves to all the horrific things billionaires make them do. Again, this should be super obvious to anyone with an absolute modicum of sense.
Well shit somebody call up Amazon and let them know!
Holy shit, do you really think Mamdani is going to have the fucking entirety of Twitch watching his livestream simultaneously? Did you think about this before you blurted it out at all? Do you know anything at all about hosting infrastructure? Jesus Christ…
If you’re so smart and righteous what’s stopping you from building your own platform for these politicians?
…money? Money they have and I don’t? You call me a troll but you sure act like a paid actor sent to come here and ask stupid questions.
Why the fuck should Mamdani have to do it?
He shouldn’t. He doesn’t. He also doesn’t have to live stream at all. Short of those answers, because no one else is?
but don’t care about these corporate vultures?
I’m sure they’re all bad. You know what? There’s no alternative to them. Its a multi billion dollar business. You can’t say the same for Twitch. It probably wouldn’t even take $1k to set up a live streaming server that could handle Mamdani livestreaming levels of traffic.
Edit: “No alternative to shipping companies” but there’s somehow an alternative to reaching millions of people all on a single platform that they’re not leaving due to social inertia. Get on a bike loser, you can’t carry a package?
You need to educate yourself or keep your mouth shut. There are plenty of people who put a lot of time and effort into optimizing political engagement and weighing the pros and cons of all avenues.
400k people tuned in live to watch a one-off stream of AOC playing Among Us on twitch. 4.8 MILLION people watched the vod and that was nowhere near “all of Twitch”.
I want to see YOUR math on building a system that can do that with any consistency and then fit that into a mayor’s budget. Show me your road map to even sniff that audience size; where is your marketing spend going? Then on top of that, show me that there’s no better way to spend that money from the political war chest; explain how not generating a few pennies for Amazon is worth cutting N community outreach/charity events.
I’ll even help you out: we have a great comparison and it’s publicly traded so we know a bit about it. Truth social has about 6 million MAU, so we’re almost reaching that AOC Among Us scale (assuming they all engage with your stream). It took something like $5-$10M to stand up and costs $60M to operate every year. They ate a $31M deficit in their first year.
If you want a mayor to shell out that kind of money as a political stunt… I guess you must love millions of big-donor dollars that finance that kind of thing.
It is not just him, but also the people he is trying to reach. Even if he gets assistance & the resources to set up an independent platform for this, he still has to get people to use it - which is a much higher bar to meet.
That is true but its also extremely important. And will never happen until someone has the influence and the courage to make it happen. He definitely has the former.
Is he going to replace twitch and YouTube altogether with his own website? No. So this would just create friction for users, but not give anyone an option for moving off big tech streaming platforms
Because of the network effect, he’d have to spend billions to get enough infrastructure for his streaming service to be able to compete with YouTube and Twitch. Because people go where the content is, so a majority of content creators would have to start using it, rather than just himself.
Until that, it’s like Epic Games Store. They keep giving away free games and STILL nobody wants to go there because all their games are already on Steam. Doesn’t help that their launcher is shit too, but even if it wasn’t, most people wouldn’t move over.
he’d have to spend billions to get enough infrastructure for his streaming service to be able to compete with YouTube and Twitch
I was not at all suggesting that he enter the business of livestreaming…
Because people go where the content is, so a majority of content creators would have to start using it, rather than just himself.
“Where the content is” is owned by one of the richest tech billionaires in the world. One who is responsible for the destruction of more small businesses than anyone on the planet. One who bribed the President on several occasions, including with the ballroom, and with a $28M check. And I’m sure many other avenues.
As long as we continue going “where the content is” and refusing to go anywhere else, that’s where it will remain in perpetuity. Someone has to have the influence and the courage to make the content be somewhere else.
Until that, it’s like Epic Games Store. They keep giving away free games and STILL nobody wants to go there because all their games are already on Steam.
That’s not why at all. That’s because their platform sucks ass.
I was not at all suggesting that he enter the business of livestreaming…
See, the thing is, if whatever alternative platform he uses (which you proposed could be his own website) can’t facilitate a bunch of other creators moving over, then his effort is useless against the whole issue of Twitch, and only serves to make fewer people watch him. And to be fair, he’s not just streaming it on Twitch, he’s also doing it on YouTube, TikTok and several other shitty corporate platforms, because that’s where people are. At least you get a choice of which one to use, even if they all suck.
People don’t want to have to use 10 different platforms to follow the stuff they’re interested in. They want their one platform to show most of the content, and the content that’s not there might as well be ignored. Now if you had Mamdani, and several other people that some particular viewer cares about, all on one alternative platform, that would be enough for that person to consider watching content on two or three platforms, I’m sure. But nobody’s going to type an URL into their browser just for one politician in 2026. That’s how fucked we are as a society.
As long as we continue going “where the content is” and refusing to go anywhere else, that’s where it will remain in perpetuity. Someone has to have the influence and the courage to make the content be somewhere else.
I fully agree, but it doesn’t help unless there’s enough content “somewhere else” and “somewhere else” isn’t “different service for every streamer and politician”. The reason something like Nebula works is that a whole lot of content creators got together. And they pretty much all still upload to YouTube too, because they need the money - they still get the majority of their views from there, despite offering exclusive content and early access on Nebula. Now Nebula is paid so it has a higher barrier to entry for viewers, but it’s ad free and slop free.
You and I might go visit Mamdani’s website if he decides to stream on there, but millions of others will not, and he needs to reach them too. Personally, I’m not even the audience he needs to reach. I don’t live in the US, let alone NYC.
Personally I think he should also stream it here, but not get rid of the other alternatives just yet. And advertise that more prominently than Twitch or YouTube. Clearly he’s already doing multistreaming, it would be great if he could add a non-corporate platform as an alternative. He could also read comments from all platforms rather than just Twitch because there’s technology for that too, though it depends on what his solution is (not like a streaming software solution is super hard to replace though).
That’s not why at all. That’s because their platform sucks ass.
I acknowledged that, but there are tons of gamers who outright refuse to entertain the idea of using it even if it was good.
GOG doesn’t suck at all, and sees much smaller sales numbers than Steam for games that are listed on both. I know I’m personally guilty of buying CP2077 on Steam rather than GOG (despite the fact that I could still use Proton for the GOG version).
if whatever alternative platform he uses (which you proposed could be his own website) can’t facilitate a bunch of other creators moving over, then his effort is useless against the whole issue of Twitch
…no? It isn’t. He doesn’t have to support anyone else in order to not support Twitch.
Other than that, I would recommend checking out the Owncast directory to see how a federated streaming network can work. Or even look at the current state of podcasts and just apply that logic to streaming.
People don’t want to have to use 10 different platforms to follow the stuff they’re interested in. They want their one platform to show most of the content
The only reason that doesn’t already exist is because Big Tech doesn’t want it to. They could all turn on Federation and make that a reality tomorrow. Again, I refer you to The Owncast directory to see what that future could look like.
I fully agree, but it doesn’t help unless there’s enough content “somewhere else”
Once again, chicken and egg. There will never be content somewhere else until someone puts it there.
GOG doesn’t suck at all, and sees much smaller sales numbers than Steam
That’s because they only have DRM-free content, which means they have ~1\1000th of Steam’s library, if that.
Personally I don’t buy from them because they don’t support Linux/Proton, even though they totally could. So I have to choose between free games or a free OS.
…no? It isn’t. He doesn’t have to support anyone else in order to not support Twitch.
Him alone supporting or not supporting Twitch means absolutely nothing for Twitch, but quite a bit for his viewership. Just moving one creator off the biggest platform accomplishes nothing.
The only reason that doesn’t already exist is because Big Tech doesn’t want it to
And I don’t see a universe where Big Tech is going to change its’ tune either unfortunately.
Or even look at the current state of podcasts and just apply that logic to streaming.
Basically every podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, some of the major ones also on YouTube. How’s that different from streaming?
Once again, chicken and egg. There will never be content somewhere else until someone puts it there.
And I’m saying there’s no point unless it’s a coordinated effort. A single creator being unavailable on Twitch changes nothing, except that single streamer’s visibility. It would have to be a ton of people streaming outside of the mainstream platforms for people to forget about Twitch.
That’s because they only have DRM-free content, which means they have ~1\1000th of Steam’s library, if that.
Aye, but even games they DO have, they sell less than Steam, despite offering a technically superior product (DRM-free).
Personally I don’t buy from them because they don’t support Linux/Proton
Their website runs fine on Firefox on Linux and you can use any number of utilities to run games with Proton and manage prefixes, such as Bottles, umu, etc. Heroic even provides a unifying launcher for GOG and a few other windows-only stores. Are you saying the convenience of the more proprietary platform is keeping you from using the less proprietary one? You can see how it’s the same for 99% of humanity and corporate streaming services, right? The competing service needs to win on multiple points to overcome the convenience and familiarity of the existing.
I mean ideally he would put it on his own website or something. Owncast?
That sounds like a moderation nightmare, engagement nightmare or both. Twitch is a big established platform that makes it easy to reach people. It’s nor great but it will serve his purpose better than sacrificing the message for principle.
Huh? What kind of moderation do you think is happening on Twitch?
Yes, that’s the problem.
The principle is the message.
Your argument is completely psychotic.
Gonna send emails? No way, 90% of people use Gmail and you shouldn’t give Google traffic.
Stand up your own website? Well it better not be in AWS, GCP or Azure. You’re still gonna need DDOS protection and the ability to scale to hundreds of thousands of users for this event so I hope you have the money to build your own datacenter. But be sure you’re making your own ethical internet backbone. Don’t want your money going to Verizon or Sprint.
Maybe thats all a little too complicated so we’ll need to go analog. But have you ever mailed a letter? USPS is run by fascists, gotta do better. Get on a bike (can’t have those emissions!) and hand deliver your 20k political zines. But don’t put it in their mailboxes, that’s reinforcing the status quo.
Psychotic is looking at the problem we have with Big Tech and saying “yes, this is fine!”
WTF are you talking about? You realize there are thousands of email platforms not owned by Big Tech? You could even host your own. You just chose the worst example imaginable, because email itself is free and federated.
Sure, why not? Again, there are thousands of alternatives. You can even host it on your own hardware.
LOL you don’t need a “datacenter”.
I don’t ever use mail for anything that I can possibly avoid. Let me tell you about this thing called email…
You say that like FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. don’t exist.
You’re just trying real hard to be wrong.
psychosis
noun
psy·cho·sis sī-ˈkō-səs:
serious mental illness characterized by defective or lost contact with reality often with hallucinations or delusions
Example:
Absolutely nobody here is doing that. Nobody in this entire comment section has said anything close to that. Car dependant infrastructure and fossil fuels are bad but you still have to get in your car and go to work if you want to not die.
Gmail is 30% of global email traffic. It doesn’t matter what platform I choose, my message is still going to end up in someone’s Gmail inbox and stolen by AI.
If I was taking that problem seriously I would at least cut out Apple, Gmail and Microsoft domains and automatically lose 84% of my mailing list. Why don’t you care about that?
Why not should be obvious: the NYC Mayor’s office isn’t in the market of building, hosting, operating or managing social media platforms. Full stop. That takes money, time, marketing and expertise and provides zero value to his constituents beyond performative fuzzy feelings.
If you’re so smart and righteous what’s stopping you from building your own platform for these politicians? Why the fuck should Mamdani have to do it? And make sure to build up 240 million MAU while you’re at it, this has to compete with Twitch’s reach.
Well shit somebody call up Amazon and let them know! This genius has figured out a way to host an interactive live streaming service scalable to millions of simultaneous users from his closet.
See my comments above, you’re sacrificing your own privacy and feeling sanctimonious about it. Snail mail has far stronger legal and physical protections than your email.
Lmfao you’re here to shit on Big Tech but don’t care about these corporate vultures?
Bro try trolling a little bit harder.
You. You are doing that. You’re telling me that he shouldn’t consider a different platform, he should continue generating revenue for Bozos, and that any other option is “psychotic”. I don’t know how you possibly form an argument otherwise.
Why does that matter? You can make that choice for yourself, as can Mamdani. He cannot control other people’s actions (unless by law), but he van 100% control his own.
My response should also be obvious; they are also not “in the market” of running Twitch livestreams. He can elect to do that regardless.
It provides a platform that his constituents can follow and engage with him on that isn’t owned by the broligarchy, and doesn’t require them to subject themselves to all the horrific things billionaires make them do. Again, this should be super obvious to anyone with an absolute modicum of sense.
Holy shit, do you really think Mamdani is going to have the fucking entirety of Twitch watching his livestream simultaneously? Did you think about this before you blurted it out at all? Do you know anything at all about hosting infrastructure? Jesus Christ…
…money? Money they have and I don’t? You call me a troll but you sure act like a paid actor sent to come here and ask stupid questions.
He shouldn’t. He doesn’t. He also doesn’t have to live stream at all. Short of those answers, because no one else is?
I’m sure they’re all bad. You know what? There’s no alternative to them. Its a multi billion dollar business. You can’t say the same for Twitch. It probably wouldn’t even take $1k to set up a live streaming server that could handle Mamdani livestreaming levels of traffic.
Girl try disinforming a little harder.
🤡🤡🤡
Edit: “No alternative to shipping companies” but there’s somehow an alternative to reaching millions of people all on a single platform that they’re not leaving due to social inertia. Get on a bike loser, you can’t carry a package?
You need to educate yourself or keep your mouth shut. There are plenty of people who put a lot of time and effort into optimizing political engagement and weighing the pros and cons of all avenues.
400k people tuned in live to watch a one-off stream of AOC playing Among Us on twitch. 4.8 MILLION people watched the vod and that was nowhere near “all of Twitch”.
I want to see YOUR math on building a system that can do that with any consistency and then fit that into a mayor’s budget. Show me your road map to even sniff that audience size; where is your marketing spend going? Then on top of that, show me that there’s no better way to spend that money from the political war chest; explain how not generating a few pennies for Amazon is worth cutting N community outreach/charity events.
I’ll even help you out: we have a great comparison and it’s publicly traded so we know a bit about it. Truth social has about 6 million MAU, so we’re almost reaching that AOC Among Us scale (assuming they all engage with your stream). It took something like $5-$10M to stand up and costs $60M to operate every year. They ate a $31M deficit in their first year.
If you want a mayor to shell out that kind of money as a political stunt… I guess you must love millions of big-donor dollars that finance that kind of thing.
You have an astronomically high bar for the average normie
He’s not a “normie”, he’s a politician. One who purports to be different from his colleagues, and opposes billionaires.
It is not just him, but also the people he is trying to reach. Even if he gets assistance & the resources to set up an independent platform for this, he still has to get people to use it - which is a much higher bar to meet.
That is true but its also extremely important. And will never happen until someone has the influence and the courage to make it happen. He definitely has the former.
Is he going to replace twitch and YouTube altogether with his own website? No. So this would just create friction for users, but not give anyone an option for moving off big tech streaming platforms
What he is going to do and what he could do are 2 different discussions.
Again, he certainly could, very easily.
Because of the network effect, he’d have to spend billions to get enough infrastructure for his streaming service to be able to compete with YouTube and Twitch. Because people go where the content is, so a majority of content creators would have to start using it, rather than just himself.
Until that, it’s like Epic Games Store. They keep giving away free games and STILL nobody wants to go there because all their games are already on Steam. Doesn’t help that their launcher is shit too, but even if it wasn’t, most people wouldn’t move over.
I was not at all suggesting that he enter the business of livestreaming…
“Where the content is” is owned by one of the richest tech billionaires in the world. One who is responsible for the destruction of more small businesses than anyone on the planet. One who bribed the President on several occasions, including with the ballroom, and with a $28M check. And I’m sure many other avenues.
As long as we continue going “where the content is” and refusing to go anywhere else, that’s where it will remain in perpetuity. Someone has to have the influence and the courage to make the content be somewhere else.
That’s not why at all. That’s because their platform sucks ass.
See, the thing is, if whatever alternative platform he uses (which you proposed could be his own website) can’t facilitate a bunch of other creators moving over, then his effort is useless against the whole issue of Twitch, and only serves to make fewer people watch him. And to be fair, he’s not just streaming it on Twitch, he’s also doing it on YouTube, TikTok and several other shitty corporate platforms, because that’s where people are. At least you get a choice of which one to use, even if they all suck.
People don’t want to have to use 10 different platforms to follow the stuff they’re interested in. They want their one platform to show most of the content, and the content that’s not there might as well be ignored. Now if you had Mamdani, and several other people that some particular viewer cares about, all on one alternative platform, that would be enough for that person to consider watching content on two or three platforms, I’m sure. But nobody’s going to type an URL into their browser just for one politician in 2026. That’s how fucked we are as a society.
I fully agree, but it doesn’t help unless there’s enough content “somewhere else” and “somewhere else” isn’t “different service for every streamer and politician”. The reason something like Nebula works is that a whole lot of content creators got together. And they pretty much all still upload to YouTube too, because they need the money - they still get the majority of their views from there, despite offering exclusive content and early access on Nebula. Now Nebula is paid so it has a higher barrier to entry for viewers, but it’s ad free and slop free.
You and I might go visit Mamdani’s website if he decides to stream on there, but millions of others will not, and he needs to reach them too. Personally, I’m not even the audience he needs to reach. I don’t live in the US, let alone NYC.
Personally I think he should also stream it here, but not get rid of the other alternatives just yet. And advertise that more prominently than Twitch or YouTube. Clearly he’s already doing multistreaming, it would be great if he could add a non-corporate platform as an alternative. He could also read comments from all platforms rather than just Twitch because there’s technology for that too, though it depends on what his solution is (not like a streaming software solution is super hard to replace though).
I acknowledged that, but there are tons of gamers who outright refuse to entertain the idea of using it even if it was good.
GOG doesn’t suck at all, and sees much smaller sales numbers than Steam for games that are listed on both. I know I’m personally guilty of buying CP2077 on Steam rather than GOG (despite the fact that I could still use Proton for the GOG version).
…no? It isn’t. He doesn’t have to support anyone else in order to not support Twitch.
Other than that, I would recommend checking out the Owncast directory to see how a federated streaming network can work. Or even look at the current state of podcasts and just apply that logic to streaming.
The only reason that doesn’t already exist is because Big Tech doesn’t want it to. They could all turn on Federation and make that a reality tomorrow. Again, I refer you to The Owncast directory to see what that future could look like.
Once again, chicken and egg. There will never be content somewhere else until someone puts it there.
That’s because they only have DRM-free content, which means they have ~1\1000th of Steam’s library, if that.
Personally I don’t buy from them because they don’t support Linux/Proton, even though they totally could. So I have to choose between free games or a free OS.
Him alone supporting or not supporting Twitch means absolutely nothing for Twitch, but quite a bit for his viewership. Just moving one creator off the biggest platform accomplishes nothing.
And I don’t see a universe where Big Tech is going to change its’ tune either unfortunately.
Basically every podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, some of the major ones also on YouTube. How’s that different from streaming?
And I’m saying there’s no point unless it’s a coordinated effort. A single creator being unavailable on Twitch changes nothing, except that single streamer’s visibility. It would have to be a ton of people streaming outside of the mainstream platforms for people to forget about Twitch.
Aye, but even games they DO have, they sell less than Steam, despite offering a technically superior product (DRM-free).
Their website runs fine on Firefox on Linux and you can use any number of utilities to run games with Proton and manage prefixes, such as Bottles, umu, etc. Heroic even provides a unifying launcher for GOG and a few other windows-only stores. Are you saying the convenience of the more proprietary platform is keeping you from using the less proprietary one? You can see how it’s the same for 99% of humanity and corporate streaming services, right? The competing service needs to win on multiple points to overcome the convenience and familiarity of the existing.