Youtube still has pretty much everything unfortunately - there's not yet a proper alternative for content (depending on what you want). I use Newpipe and Freetube to watch it (I would use RSS with mpv if I didn't have so many subscriptions).

PeerTube isn't a replacement but it's a fascinating alternative with some good channels/instances.
https://joinpeertube.org/

In addition to the other LBRY/Odysee comments, see this recent news: https://odysee.com/@lbry:3f/lbryandodyseeevolving:7 (Odysee might not/probably won't be open source in the future)

Its really surprising to me that more channels don't put their content on torrents... that's what I do at least.

Torrents don't really handle content discovery, but they have pretty much solved the static data distribution problem. Something with even 2 or 3 available seeders can't be shut down.

Most torrent clients can even handle rss feeds, which would work perfectly for most youtube like channels. All that we're really missing is these existing platforms like peertube using torrents directly (maybe through a native client or browser plugins ) instead of webtorrents, which haven't gone anywhere for many years now.

I rarely if ever use youtube. The only experience I have with youtube is content made for the sake of profit and not for the sake of actual content. i.e. tutorial videos are split into multiple parts for more ad-revenue and it's difficult to find the information you need as you can't just ctrl+f the keyword you're looking for, so if you scroll through the video because it's 5+ minutes long to try and find it, you'll end up spending 10 minutes just trying to find the damn thing by trying to avoid all the meaningless fluff.

If I want information or entertainment, I much prefer to get it from articles or forums. Sadly, youtube is massively profitable and more and more people are making fluff videos rather than writing a concise article. I really don't know why anyone would need or want youtube/videos other than the aforementioned migration issue.

Odysee/LBRY is a great alternative. But to be real YouTube is still king. It's one of the few I haven't stop using still. But a way to improve your privacy is to use alternative YouTube apps like NewPipe on Android and Freetube on desktop.

What do you like watching on YouTube? Personally, I find short-form video incredibly irritating, most of the videos on YouTube would be more useful and accessible as a blog post (actually most of them would be better not existing), but YouTube is much more effective at monetizing content than blogs ever were so that's where people have gone.

My video-watching behavior has changed a lot over the years. These days, I hardly watch any videos from start to end and almost never at their actual speed. Also, I skip around a lot, which is bad to do on YouTube due to all the advertisements. So I try to avoid the main site by using the NewPipe app or invidio.us instances in the browser. And I never log in, so as to avoid the algorithms (thus I never comment, like or subscribe either).

I just download the music I listen to and listen locally, and stop watching content from YT since they're getting boring and clickbaity. The only channels I subscribed to stopped updating for years.

You can try rokfin.com for content.

Nebula is a subscription service started by some significant youtubers to share revenue and get out from under youtube's enormous thumb (if possible). Most of the content you can find also posted on youtube for "free", but Nebula is ad-free and has some unique content, and tries to support creators more equitably.

It's not exactly a worker's co-op, but maybe as close to it as we viably have for streaming video so far. See the FAQ. It's not FLOSS, or even free, but it is an alternative to potentially consider.

For free and FLOSS, TILVids node of peertube might be of interest.

odysee without a doubt u.u

I am using Piped which is an YT frontend with LBRY integration. In my experience it is faster and more stable than Invidious instances.

I've been told to look at Odysee, Rumble and Minds.com. I'll take a look