Today in a Privacy community a post about YouTube. No word about privacy but all about which software or settings are needed to watch videos and the money needed to host videos. It made me wonder whether some of you can lead a meaningful life without YouTube. Or will a cold turkey bring the worst out of you ?
Nope. Just this week YouTube helped me fix a squeaky dryer for $18. Repair guy wanted $100 to come out, estimated a $300 repair. The amount I saved there has paid for premium for a year and I use it for everything. Fixed my washer, ran 220v for my new stove, countless baking recipes, woodworking tips. It’s not like Netflix where you only get entertainment from it, there is actual good info.
Many of those information are also available in other places. When I need to fix something, I’m usually able to find what I need on the web (manuals, blog posts, etc) before resorting to searching youtube videos on how to do it. Some truly niche stuff are only available on youtube though (e.g. some dude filming himself doing his niche job), but I can count on one hand the instances I needed one of those.
The video makes it so much faster and easier to understand. Plus the top comments usually have supplemental information that helps. If you didn’t use YouTube then you would still use another Google entity to find it.
If you didn’t use YouTube then you would still use another Google entity to find it.
The thing is I don’t use google anymore to search these days now that other search engines noticeably produce better results.
Which search engines produce better results than Google?
I’m not comment-OP, but when I use a VPN, google insists on making me do captchas before letting me search. So I just started using duckduckgo because it’s usually “good enough.”
Sure, by some metrics google is probably still better, but I’d rather not waste my time training their AIs.
Someone actually did a comparison recently. Pretty interesting if you got the time to read it: https://danluu.com/seo-spam/ . tldr: google and bing bad.
There is also a recent study by researchers on Leipzig University that confirm google is getting worse : https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf
Many of those information are also available in other places.
with the death of forums and the rest of the internet, for most things, not anymore.
With AI absolutely exploding… It’s very easy to ask for step by step directions to accomplish things. AI clearly still needs to mature… But… The times I’ve asked it for some basic, step by step directions, it’s been effective.
While I don’t disagree videos make a lot of things easier (I for sure am a visual learning, no question), the step by step instructions for things I’ve gotten have been good, and very easy to follow.
100% agree. I found information to help me file my taxes correctly. I used it regularly to supplement lectures when I was still in school. I use it as one of many tools to learn a new language. With some effort, I have found a couple news channels that help me stay informed on politics to the degree I want, with minimal amounts of partisan BS.
I also watch YT videos for entertainment.
lack of content from other competitors
I only really use Youtube to watch like a couple specific channels and sometimes to look up music. I could easily fill that space with something else.
Yes? I’d miss it for about a week, then I’d fill the time I’d spend on Youtube with other things. My to-read shelf has a healthy number of books on it. I could subscribe to a science news website or two. I’d really miss the how-tos, but there are ways to get that information too.
Yes/no.
I lived without YouTube / a Google account for years.
But I still use YouTube through a privacy respecting frontend:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/#youtubeI usually go for:
- On desktop: Invidious or Piped
- On Android: Tubular or NewPipe
YouTube is perfect for me for music videos and educational stuff. Medium format stuff. Too long for TikTok, too short for TV.
The only thing I use it for is Dreaming Spanish, and it’s months since I’ve watched any of that content, so I’ll say yeah, I think I’ll be ok in a world without Youtube
I wouldn’t really miss it all that much. I’ve always treated YouTube as a fun novelty where I can watch people’s homemade videos, but it’s almost all polished commercial grade content now, with some exceptions.
Those software and settings that make it tolerable, such as Tubular and using uBO/Sponsorblock/Firefox, are extremely easy to find and use. But I wouldn’t miss it all that much if it became unusable.
The majority of the online entertainment for me is YouTube, so I probably couldn’t just quit it. I bailed on reddit to come here, but reddit was only 2-3 hours a day, YouTube is like 10+ hours a day for me.
Have you timed this?
No, but basically anytime I’m on my laptop youtube is running, and I spend all of my time on my laptop. If I play a game, it’s typically taking up 2/3rds of my screen so i can still have youtube playing on the side.
He spends 13+ hours a day on just two platforms. Why would anyone lie on the internet?
I use less Lemmy than I did Reddit, and I don’t use Reddit at all anymore, so it isn’t really 13+ hours. Also youtube can run while I’m on Lemmy, so in the space of 2 hours I can be on Lemmy + YouTube for 4 hours.
Maybe you just didn’t consider that I have minimal interaction with actual people outside of work, and I don’t work much.
Especially with the Premium algorithm, it’s just so good at finding super niche stuff that’s pretty interesting. Been watching some Netflix shaming levels of documentaries made by super passionate people.
I kind of hate the privacy nightmare but it actually delivers really well for me.
Does Premium actually use a different recommendation algorithm?
I’ve been on it for way too long to know, but when I added my wife to my family plan she commented on the immediate increase in suggestion quality. Although it could also just be less junk/ads in the front page, I don’t think it’s advertised as a feature.
Yeah it’s undeniable that YouTube is getting difficult to get rid of. There do exist some alternatives like Vimeo or peertube, but as others say, lack of content is their biggest problem. Using alternative frontend is relying on YouTube after all, so there’s no way we can live without it, unless they do something very horrible, like what Reddit did to us.
Vimeo is explicitly not competing with youtube
No, i’ll die. What a question
i dunno, especially the music is really vast availability of full albums etc. Youtube + ublock is kinda my go to music. Used to search and store gigabytes, but it’s just not the same, not as easy. If youtube dies (ergo: it succeeds in blocking adblocking and third party such as newpipe), i’ll have a hard time finding alternatives tbh, that are just as user friendly.
I don’t use YouTube at all.
I sometimes take music from there to add to my offline collection, other than that I very rarely use it.
Everything I need can be found somewhere else
