When a common perception is supported by statistically significant evidence, it starts to be more fact than perception. That's the point I was making. They aren't relying on a perception - they've taken a good step toward proving that the perception is true.
This isn't simply "another article" - its a significant study where they did exactly the opposite of what you described. They asked young people. Methodology is part of the OP [1].
You may very well have anecdotal evidence that millenials are reading newspapers, but this study seeks to move beyond anecdotal evidence.
While large companies have their weaknesses, there's also a lot that can be learned working at one for a couple of years out of school before jumping into a startup. Even if the actual role isn't as "fulfilling," there is a lot more access to experience and wisdom that can be a lot harder to come by in a startup environment.
Unfortunately, there is another external factor playing into the risk/benefit analysis that I haven't seen mentioned hear yet - the threat of legal action. With such low barriers to filing a malpractice lawsuit and such high payouts for "victims" and devastating effects for doctors, CT scans are often ordered for the sole purpose of mitigating legal risks.
For example - someone comes into the ER with simply a headache. On its own this should not warrant a CT scan. But if a doctor does not order one, and that patient leaves and eventually comes back with a brain tumor (extremely small odds, but not zero), then the following malpractice suit would almost certainly result in a plaintiff victory and the end of a doctor's career.
Malpractice is a real thing and real victims deserve their due. But lawyer attack ads and no limits on "pain and suffering" payouts (often multi-millions) I believe are a critical part of the difficult healthcare situation in America that continues to go unaddressed.
nothing about this situation is causing anonymity to cease to be possible on the internet. It just makes it more difficult on a single video-sharing site, one run by a single for-profit company.
Freedom of choice has never before been more relevant. You as an individual in a free web (which Google advocates for strongly) have the choice to move to any number of other platforms if you prefer anonymity while sharing/viewing videos online. If enough people believe in anonymity, traffic and users will migrate to another site, and Google/YT will become less relevant and/or be forced to policy backtrack.
Whether you are for or against the new commenting policy, we should all try not to exaggerate what it means for society at large.
Sure, but isn't that the key of Lean Startup, which is what OP was hammering on anyway?
Web apps do perform less optimally, but they are also platform independent and can be done quickly. Why not start there, make sure you are hitting the right user needs, then invest in app development?