People can always just stop using YouTube. It’s getting laughable the level of Stockholm syndrome-like addiction people have for that shit service.
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.
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 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 - [...] I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries
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.
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.
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.
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 will not change until people stop using it. And people do not want to put up with the inconvenience of not having a YouTube type service again for the amount of time it would take for YouTube to change or a viable competitor to take their place, it really is that simple.
Are YouTube and Google terrible? For sure, but it only got this way because the only backstop to holding them accountable, the consumer, has proven that they will choose putting up with shitty products and services in the name of convenience 9 times out of 10.
Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
Yep, I remember when Netlfix first put it out there that they would start with the ads, and everyone on reddit was like, "Canceling my Netflix right now!!"
Netflix is doing just fine without the 5 redditors who actually did cancel it. lmao
While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it's still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it's still a bit of a Goliath.
- Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights
Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.
The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.
Regulation might impact it
I'm having a hard time seeing any bill get passed that supports the rights of users to watch videos without the ads that support the creators and the platform that they're watching.
The elites don't want you to know but "[y]ou may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home)"
Following their guide gives a local Invidious client, don't forget to 1) copy their production compose file instead of using the one on git and 2) change "hmac_key"... from my experience setting up cron (crontab -e) to restart the docker container once per day keeps the Invidious docker healthy
If you do this, I would be fully prepared to lose access to all your Google services along with anyone else who may use Google services on the same IP. Gmail, Play store, Chrome, etc, etc can easily be wiped out with a ban from Google and this can seriously fuck people's day up if they've used Gmail and have 2FA setup on any external account.
I've also ran into some issues simply accessing youtube through my vpn, but that's been going on for a while.
theoretically, they could switch the player to use a nocookie embed.
yt-dlp still works.
A spark of hope in a dim world.
Not just invidious, they've just de facto blocked video embedding:
If you're wondering how a viable competitor could arise, other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case. This is the Humble Bundle storefront, and they could pretty easily spin up a peertube instance. If that became commonplace, it could be one way for peertube to become ubiquitous.
Professional hosting for business use is not hard, and fairly common even. But these make up a tiny fraction of YouTube videos, and they mostly post there to get organic growth and be suggested to people already watching YouTube.
For those who are want something similar to invidious, you can try youtube-local (not my project, I am just a user). It is a minimal python youtube client, and functions similar to other frontends, but runs locally. You lose some amount of privacy (youtube still has a general idea of who is watching with IPs), but it is not very exact, and there is an option to use tor to get the content. You can also enable sponsorblock, or hide yt-shorts.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
