this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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People can always just stop using YouTube. It’s getting laughable the level of Stockholm syndrome-like addiction people have for that shit service.
I don't really think Stockholm syndrome applies here. I don't watch YouTube out of some irrational bond with the platform. I watch YouTube because it's literally the only place the creators I watch upload. I would absolutely follow the creators I watch to whatever platform the content is available on. Until then, I'm stuck with YouTube and ad blocking extensions.
I’m not saying it’s exactly the same. But there are definitely people that whine all day and night about it, and then go pacify themselves by watching even more YouTube videos.
If I hate something as much as people seem to hate YouTube, I can easily stop using it. But then again, I have enough strength of conviction to do so. I’m certainly not going to financially support them by patronizing their service. And this futile attempt to circumvent their add service was is only making them more clever about blocking people from doing so.
YouTube will always win this.
Period. End of story.
The only way to beat them is to not play. I guarantee you if the lose 50% of their viewers. They’ll change their tune.
The problem is, there's just no (good) direct competition. The audience will follow creators once enough of them switch to the same alternative platform. But as long as there's no platform with a comparable amount of money behind it, most people will continue to use Youtube.
Eh, there are some competitors:
I sub to some channels from each (as well as Twitch and YT) though Grayjay, which seems to work pretty well. I'd say about 50% of my video watch time is on YouTube, 15-20% on Odyssee, 20-30% on Nebula, and a little on Rumble. I try to watch Nebula videos on the Nebula app so creators get credited with watch time, but I honestly prefer Grayjay.
I've been trying to cut down on how much I watch anyway, so hopefully I'll be able to slowly eliminate YT from my life.
Rumble is blocked here in Brazil, not because Brazil blocked it (although there was once a strife between Rumble and Brazilian Supreme Court due to a half dozen far-right influencers) , but because Rumble themselves blocked us.
Yeah, my understanding is that they blocked Brazil due to some stuff they disagreed with. They're certainly a mixed bag.
I know about Nebula, but you have to admit, the barrier to entrance is a lot higher for most people because of the subscription fee, so it's not necessarily a direct comparison. Some of my favourite content creators are on there.
Didn't know about Odysee. As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.
As for Rumble: Personally, I wouldn't touch anything related to JD Vance with a ten foot pole (he's a pretty big investor). And one of their biggest channels seems to be by Andrew Tate (ew). To be fair, I couldn't tell you for sure that Youtube doesn't take money from any of them in some form. But they seem to be more of an equal opportunity offender lol.
I'm confused, what I'm hearing is:
That seems unreasonable to me. All three of those alternatives have no ads and have content that you would probably enjoy. You don't need to use crypto to use Odysee. You don't need to watch Andrew Tate or support JD Vance to use Rumble. You do need to pay for Nebula, but you can pay for a single month if you just want to try it out.
But at the end of the day, these alternatives need to get paid to survive. None of them are perfect, which is a big part of why I use Grayjay, which lets me sub to creators from all of them without having to see those services' front pages. I pay for Nebula and I donate to creators I like at Odysee outside the built-in crypto system. I don't like JD Vance, but I also don't particularly care if we invests in Rumble, that really doesn't affect me in any way. My goal is to reduce my YT use, and I'm not going to get there by continually moving the goalposts, so I decided to just pull the trigger and try them all out, and they're fine.
Oh, please don't misunderstand: I personally don't really care about leaving Youtube myself, but it's good to have alternatives/competition. And as I said, there's no direct competition to Youtube, which does everything they do. Low barrier to entry, a huge amount of money behind it, a self contained eco system with decent tools, barely any political affiliation (afaik), etc.
So, I was more talking about why the majority of people won't leave for other platforms.
Pretty much everything Youtube does is driven by making the platform profitable. Which, ironically, makes me trust them more with certain things. Not a huge fan of their parent company tho.
There doesn’t need to be direct competition. Just stop watching YouTube. If someone cannot do that- they have an addiction, and ads are not their biggest problem.
Because there's absolutely no valuable information that exists on YouTube, right?
Nice straw man, but I never said that.
Youtube is my main source of entertainment. I don't watch regular TV, and I barely watch any movies or series. Doesn't have anything to do with an addiction, it's personal preference lmao
Apologies, that response was meant for someone else.
Many people don't understand that youtube has a lot of use cases. But it is the new cable teevee... Got to have it.
I pay for Nebula and, although there's a lot to watch there, skimming through the boring stuff is horrible.
Same. I mostly watch a handful of channels:
There's a ton of nonsense there that I don't like, but now that I found a set of channels I do like, I mostly just look in the "library" tab so I don't have to see the other crap.
I also hate the UI tbh. I want the front page to be my subscriptions. Instead you get a weird horizontal scrolling panel on a secondary tab. I wish I could get an inbox, RSS style, so I could either watch them or skip/mark as watched.
Nebula also suffers from the homepage being cluttered with old videos that are no longer relevant. For example I don't care to watch news and tech videos from 2022.
Yeah, it could certainly be better. However, I did find some interesting old videos from someone who posts infrequently, so there's that.
Knowing better and Philosophy Tube are both rather good as well. I do miss Casual Criminalist from YouTube, otherwise Nebula has my bases covered.
I think it's a shame that CGP Grey and Philip from Kurzgesagt both bailed early on. I never quite got why, but I guess Nebula for them was just canibalizing their lucrative youtube/patreon business.
Haven't tried either one, I'll give them a follow. Thanks!
It’s good to see alternatives. I am not at the point where I need to see online videos badly enough that I’d pay for it- but it’s good to know that it exists.
That's a fair point. There's a million things you could do, and watching videos on YT is just one of them. Watching videos online has become a large part of peoples lives. Surely it has a lot to offer, but we should probably not forget it also replaces a lot of things, things we would spent are time on otherwise, if we didn't have YT as an easy time-drain, and those other things are presumably equally rewarding or more so.
Youtube isn't just a thing people use to waste time, but a source of educational content. That actually matters, and there isn't a good alternative to much of it.
That being said, I agree that people could at least drop it (or reduce their usage) if they are just using it as a time waster.
I fully agree, didn't mean to imply it's just that. But it's also that.
As someone who does a lot of DIY what are my options? I can't learn from reading and have nobody to show me how in person. Other platforms are so incredibly limited I can't ever find any content helping me learn something. What other platform is seeking to ACTUALLY compete with YouTube by offering fair compensation and exposure to the masses? It's so incredibly expensive to try that nobody is.
Pay tor youtube or watch the ads.
Or, if you're not a moron, you can Firefox, and ublock that shit.
Or use freetube/new pipe
Don’t know what to tell you. I’m Simply saying that I personally refuse to support any product that I would actively complain about online in social media posts. And if I’m willing to yell at people online about how shitty something is- yet continue to not only use it- but contribute to the financial success of said company-
I’d have to admit that I was a hypocrite.
Because “there is no other option for me to watch a video” isn’t a good reason to support a platform that treats its content creators like utter garbage, and alienates its user base seemingly daily.
I'd you have android, I recommended newpipe or one of it's fork like tubular. Or Seal or it's fork Ytdlnis.
There are several front ends for yt-dlp on Mac and Windows as well.