The open web is dead.
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?