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Chris Trottier Sep 29, 2025

Tired of YouTube calling all the shots? It’s time to build something better—together.

Here’s the slide deck for a proposal to launch a PeerTube co-op.

Right now, there are three of us ready to get this off the ground. I’m looking for two more founder-members to bring us up to five. With that core, we’ll have the resources to make a PeerTube server not just viable, but sustainable—and built to last.

This isn’t about joining someone else’s platform. It’s about creating one. As a founder, you’ll have a real voice in governance and a direct hand in shaping content policies, by-laws, moderation rules, and more.

We’re staying early stage by design. This is the moment to get in, shape the vision, and build something that actually challenges the status quo. If that excites you, message me.

Slidedeck in .odp format: https://drive.proton.me/urls/ZRRBNK4XBM#RmYXrnhKXx3C

Slidedeck in .pptx format: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LgJvocTe6hH8bCw-yy-2o5QWSYCABkyL/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108163627088117284715&rtpof=true&sd=true

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8 Oct 4, 2025

@atomicpoet I have thought a little about this previously and came up with an objection to a content creator co op.

The potential for different audience sizes in a creator co op is nigh unbounded. In the event of extreme success a co op member can be lured by for-profit models, leaving the co op to absorb start up costs but paradoxically not have any security of income in the event their members are successful. You can try to manage this with governance sure, but maybe there are alternative models.

By contrast a consumer co op, or watcher co op in that the peer relationship can be the focus of collaboration, can be that lure through crowdfunding grants on the terms of the audience. The snowdrift funding model is an idea I find compelling, for example, and I think it would suit a content consumer co op quite well.

Do you have any thoughts about crowd funding a vehicle for a consumer co op, and seeding it with content creators want to make, rather than relying on creators to wear platform risk as well as creative risks? A co op art collective patronised by a much larger audience co op feels like a more sustainable idea. The art collective providing leadership to the consumer co op even makes sense in that model.

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Chris Trottier Oct 4, 2025

@octarine_wiggle That’s a really thoughtful comment, and I think you raise some good points about governance, scale, and platform risk.

That said, I think there’s a bit of a misconception in how you’re framing the co-op model. A co-op isn’t a non-profit or a crowdfunding vehicle. It’s a for-profit business—the difference is who owns and benefits from it. In a co-op, the surplus goes back to members (or gets reinvested), rather than to outside shareholders.

So if a creator joins a co-op, they’re not leaving a for-profit model for a non-profit one—they’re moving from a shareholder-owned for-profit to a member-owned for-profit. The incentives can actually be stronger, since the platform’s value accrues to its members instead of external investors.

Also, this doesn’t have to be “creator vs consumer.” Multi-stakeholder co-ops exist, where different groups (e.g., creators, viewers, workers) each have roles and representation. That structure can handle the kinds of scale and governance questions you’re raising without defaulting to a grant-funded or donation-based model.

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8 Oct 4, 2025

@atomicpoet I think that's fair and I shouldn't have framed it as for-profit vs non-profit. I definitely think that cooperative commerce is a strong attitude. I wonder if there's a more focused mission then to try out some of these ideas rather than need them to all come together at the same time. Maybe a YouTube editor co op that curates content on a moderated platform? It seems really prevalent that a successful creator will advertise a private discord or Patreon where early access to the editorial process is monetized. Taking that to a platform scale could be interesting, and putting that back onto the more open web is a virtue in itself.

I hope to see you succeed in whatever you choose to do. I am keen on a consumer co op, and can envision a day when it simply becomes inevitable due to the obvious success of prior models.

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Chris Trottier

@octarine_wiggle That’s a great clarification, and I really appreciate the way you reframed it here.

I actually see what we’re doing as laying the groundwork for exactly that kind of experimentation down the road. A multi-stakeholder co-op gives us the structure to host those kinds of models—whether it’s a creator-run editorial collective, a consumer co-op, or something entirely new that emerges once the foundation is in place.

Right now the focus is on building a legal, financial, and governance framework that’s stable enough to support whatever creative directions come next. That’s where a co-op really shines: it creates the shared container, and then the people inside get to shape what happens.