RabbitHole, a website idea some friends and I have been throwing around

[Fennaixelphox]

A while back, some friends and I were talking about YouTube and its shortcomings, and a comment I made about an idea for a "reverse algorithm", one that prioritizes less popular videos and smaller creators, caused the topic to shift to the possibility of somehow creating a competitor to YouTube.

Our philosophy mainly focuses on several core tenets, which guide us in the decisions we make for the project: fairness, simplicity, data preservation, transparency, user customizability, discovery, accuracy and truth.

Attached below is a simple sketch I've drawn of a possible UI layout. In the interest of simplicity, our algorithm only includes four factors (average star rating, view count, subscriber count and video age), and in the interest of transparency, we'll allow users to see exactly how their video will fare in the algorithm. Just for fun, you'll also be able to see just how high your video ranks, as a percentile value.

Some other features we've been discussing include allowing more diverse forms of media than just videos, as well as a download button for data-preservation purposes. Also, we won't have pre-video ads, because they're too intrusive.

My hope is that, with the genesis of some actual competition to YouTube, we will usher in a new age of media sharing as we know it.