Can you live without YouTube ?
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.
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.
No, i'll die. What a question
Can I? Yes, I grew up before YouTube and got to see both the growth of the public internet and YouTube. So, I know how to get along without it.
Would I want to? Not really. YouTube is like many things which have come about in human history, it's got it's good parts and it's bad parts. But, on the balance, I think the good outweighs the bad. The important bit is finding that balance where you get more good out of it than bad.
One of the great and terrible things about YouTube is the low barrier to entry. It's very easy for someone with a passion in a niche area to start posting videos. This means that we can get hundreds of hours of videos showing people removing hornet nests. Or, any other random thing I would have never seen in a world of serial TV. You can also get videos showing you how to do almost anything. Granted, those videos can be outright wrong, dangerous or just really bad. But, you may also be able to discover and start a hobby you would have never known about. YouTube has democratized video sharing in a way which didn't exist before it. And I suspect that, were YouTube to disappear tomorrow, something would pop up in it's place to replace it. People want easy video sharing. People want to be able to find copious amounts of weird and strange things. Sure, if you dig too far into the darker corners, you are going to find something you find objectionable. But, that's always a problem with large groups of people, there's always a few rotten apples which need removing.
So overall, I'm pretty positive on YouTube. Yup, it has problems and those need to be worked on. However, I'm far happier to have a place where video sharing is highly democratized, which has problems with that ease of sharing being abused; than I would be without it. The free flow of information necessarily means that objectionable things will be able to flow as well. That sucks, but it's much better than the alternative.
Best answer.
YouTube is my streaming app. They have me by the throat. I could give up every other video app before I gave up YouTube. I wish it weren't true, but it is. YouTube just has the best content.
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.
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/#youtube
I usually go for:
lack of content from other competitors
Honestly I think I would find that one difficult. It essentially replaced conventional TV for me in the last 10-15 years. I use a privacy-respecting front-end so I'm never at youtube.com itself but if they killed it off I would find it difficult to adapt.
As of today no. But I'm going by steps :
My goal is not to go full private or open-source but just less dependent on YouTube. Onfortunately so many youtubers are solely there.
Anyway, I believe that the day big for-profit intrusive company will stop leading the video hosting business, the format will get noticeably less popular as it is extremely ressource intentive. It will mostly replace by podcast and illustrated articles.
I feel as though I missed the heyday of youtube, and only really started using it within the last few years, so perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed, but I don't really get the point of a lot of content on there. A lot of the content I consume could easily be replicated elsewhere, or in a different format. A good deal of tech content I consume would be improved, in my view, if it were just a website with an associated discussion forum for clarifying or expanding upon any points people don't fully get. Plenty of food channels would be better if they were just a cookbook, because they waste so much time on stuff nobody cares about in order to hit a magic length for the algorithm. Most of the long form stuff I come across could just be podcasts without losing anything of value for me.
I'm entirely willing to say this may well be my "old man yells at clouds" moment, but I just don't get the majority of youtube content. The appeal of things like Lets Plays (outside of seeing exactly how to beat a spot you're stuck on) and Vtubers is completely alien to me. I do enjoy travel content, but I find a lot of the stuff uploaded by independent youtube creators to be pretty exploitative and don't enjoy watching it. I don't think BBC or Arte or the like willl disappear with youtube. I doubt I'll miss it very much when it eventually gets killed and Google launches a worse video site one of these days.
There are a lot of long form researched videos that I like on yt. They could definitely be hosted on a different site but having stuff like those in a central location lets people find them more easily.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/F2sk_Cy9mdU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I used to watch let's plays as a teen because I couldn't play the games myself... Also used to talk about some of them at school with friends so like watching a TV show I guess.
I kept saying "yes but", as I read this. But then you said podcast, and I was like ooooh yeah I can do without YouTube. Just need my guys to ship their audio as a podcast.
YouTube has one use for me - the occasional video on how to do something technical
How people watch hour after hour of other people's inane ramblings I will never know. You must have have an incredibly low bar for what you consider entertainment ๐
Personally, YouTube isnโt other peopleโs inane rambling for me. Itโs science education, itโs about how to identify and forage for food, itโs video essays about nuclear disastersโฆ itโs constantly introducing me to new conceptsโ like why lawns are bad for the environment, how other countries tackle the problem of traffic and public transportation, why DIY air purifiers are more effective than nearly every commercial air purifier on the market, etc.
Itโs a platform where the medium is video form content. Everything is available there. Both garbage and gold. Itโs the way that you use it that determines which one you get. For me, itโs like Wikipedia in video form. With the occasional bit of entertainment on the side, as a treat.
Wikipedia in Video Form is a great line! I feel much the same way, but I think that's not the entire picture. Wikipedia is a lot of declarative knowledge (i.e. what things are and Al's maybe why they are), but YouTube is a lot of procedural knowledge for me. That is how to X. My GF and I finally found an apartment. I don't know how to replace broken light switches, but in five minutes YouTube taught me how.
I didn't know how to replace a faucet - now I do. I did not know how to insert a metal screw fitting into the furniture I was constructing - now I do. I wanted to measure our energy consumption, figuring there had to be a way to it it smart/connected and Open Source. YT content creators showed me how.
The list goes oooonnnnnn
What do you do for entertainment?
The people that say it's their main form of entertainment must have to wade through so much crap to get to anything good, I just don't see the point.
I've been using Youtube so long that it kind of isn't a problem. I've got a bunch of creators I follow, most of whom have stable release schedules. The likes of RedLetterMedia, Astrum and SEA (two unrelated yet adjacent "European guy talks calmly about space" channels), Summoning Salt, TierZoo, etc. Recently the folks behind The New Yankee Workshop have been uploading the show to Youtube, and I've been enjoying that.
I mean, you can say the same about every form of entertainment. Music? Majority is crap. Movies? Crap. Sports? Crap. Books? Crap. Video games? Crap.
I used to use Reddit every day. I just replaced Reddit time with Lemmy and YouTube.
If YouTube goes downโฆ Iโll live. Itโs not a life support thing like income or housing so Iโll just find other things to fill the hole.
Will it suck? Sure. Will I live? Yep. Iโd prefer they put out a reasonably affordable subscription instead of just nuking themselves with ads and more enshittification, but itโs not like life itself depends on YouTube.
Their current subscription is too pricey. At least last I looked.
They can get some of my money if they put out a sufficiently lower priced option. I paid for Reddit premium and used none of the features I just liked the site before Steve Huffman decided to be super extra shitty. Iโd do the same for YouTube.
Of course you can, billions of people do it allready, it'll be annoying at first, but then you'll adapt.
I watch hours of YT every day, but if it stopped working/existing my life wouldn't end, just as it didn't when I left Reddit, I'll find other things to do and services to use.
I quit YouTube along with reddit last summer. I don't use alternate interfaces. I haven't found a replacement for most of the niche content I liked to watch there -- and yes, that sucks.
I've mostly been watching offline content (like DVDs and things I downloaded years ago) when I want video entertainment, and doing other stuff with my free time.
You might think that'd mean more time playing games given my interests, but I've found I'm a lot less enthusiastic about playing through games if I can't watch an LP or two of it afterwards. So, I'm actually playing (and also buying) less of those than I used to too.
doing other stuff with my free time.
The real secret.
Live? Yes. Remain sane? Thatโs to be determined.
Really though, I watch it for entertainment purposes 95% of the time. If YouTube were to seize to exist, Iโd probably find an alternative or stick to streaming services like Twitch.
Not to detract from your point, but the word you're looking for is cease. Seize is to forcibly obtain something, like "seizing the means of production."
Yeah, you right.
Just a small correction (hope you don't hate me), but it should be "cease", not "seize" in your sentence.
If I had to give up YouTube I'd move to Nebula. It's been growing and is steadily getting better.
Yeah, they've got a ton of great documentaries there, plus some other series that are pretty great.
I spend most of my free time watching YouTube. At times I wish it would go away. Even though they are a lot of valuable videos, there are also far more videos that I'm not interested in. I also don't view YouTube with ads. I refuse. I'll up YouTube before I watch ads.
Of course anyone can live without YouTube, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of enjoyable content that I would miss without it.
I used to watch A LOT of youtube. Since I started educating myself about google and corpo stuff I lost most interest I had. Now I only watch gameranx and gamers nexus from time to time.
I started watching (and hosting peertube) some time ago and slowly add new channels to my list. Its getting better. Linux and tech stuff kind of works on there imo. Everything else needs more love.
Weโre at a particularly rough time imo since peeps are trying to switch but many hurdles work against them. Federated social media in general is still WIP, funding is a huge issue, accessibility is an issue and a healthy testing workflow (asking users for consent of automated bug reports, making them actually useful, shielding devs from too much user critique, etc.)
As someone with both accessibility needs and experience in customer relations I often see wasted potential because too few peeps with a samdwich skillset (between user and dev) are actually in the foss scene, particularly in small projects.
I really hope foss will endure these growing-pains.
Do you have any recommandation that is not linux or tech related. I struggle to find content there but I'm sure I missed many things.
Iโm not really the right person for such recommendations as my interests are quite narrow. Gaming, PCs, Linux, Programming, etc.
If you can muster some patience play around with the search form on https://sepiasearch.org you should be able to find some cool stuff.
But remember, this is the same as early youtube. There were rarely any huge productions and everything was kinda indy. One needs to keep that in mind imo.
I can. But I wouldn't.
Blows my mind with the responses on here. I use YouTube maybe once a month, if something interesting pops up? Or for a music video or a science related subject. Reading is just so much more pleasant than trying to go through all the spam, trash, ads, and bad videos. I don't know how you all stand youtube personally.
High five! I love reading ๐
Yeah. It would suck, but I'll make it.
I guess I know where the good stuff is in the trash heap? I've been a user of Youtube since before Google bought it, and...I think the algorithm just has so much data on me that I don't see a lot of the swill newcomers will. I do believe the platform is enshittifying from several different directions though, particularly from Alphabet.
I use YouTube for instructions on how to do things. I can listen to podcasts anywhere.
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.
I donโt use YouTube at all.
I'm all in if something like Peertube gets adopted more fully, but given the sheer amount of space YouTube takes up it seems unlikely to be at the stage it is currently with a provider like Google.
For my own usage: I could substitute background noise with music (either through another provider like Spotify or locally hosting the music and streaming it with Jellyfin), and then more long form content could be done with other providers (Netflix, Disney+, or renting from Google lol) or again using DVD's or locally hosted videos, but it would certainly be a challenge and I'd miss a lot of the content.
I barely watch YouTube as it is. Sometimes I have to watch a tutorial or review that I can't find information on elsewhere, but literally every time I wish it was a blog post instead.
I did for years before it existed. Did for years after it came around.
It's a great thing to have the video guides and lessons that are available there, but the rest is just entertainment, and there's always entertainment somewhere that isn't full of shit.
And those useful things, well, humanity made do with written directions for decades before video became a realistic option back in the eighties with VHS. TV "lessons" before that amounted to being only cooking shows, and a handful of PBS awesomeness that wasn't really aimed at practical, modern things.
I will absolutely miss instructionals for specific devices being that easy to find, but as long as places like ifixit exist, I can do just fine.
Why would you want to live without the biggest video platform? I learn so so so much there. Wish there was berry decentralized options as the current ones are all very thin on content.
Why would leaving YouTube bring out the worst in anyone? Is this what the OP fears of the self? I donโt get it. The entire Internet has many issues and one could hair avoid entirely and live just fine, but the trade offs are just not worth it even with the privacy concerns.
It would be a lot easier to not look things up with YouTube if search engine results weren't destroyed by quora and Reddit posts
So I think the answer for me is no, but I definitely think I use it very differently than most people who watch YouTube. I donโt watch new things on YT, I donโt follower any YouTubers, itโs basically a repository for MST3K for me, old music videos, and then I will pull movie clips/scans of old films from it for my academic work. I donโt know who the baby gronk rizz king is or whatever, but Iโve found a lot of stuff on YouTube that I probably would not have found elsewhere (other than sometimes Internet Archive)
Also, I always watch in private and I use a downloader tool to make my own copies
Yes. I blocked it a year ago, and it's been such an improvement.
I've, unfortunately, gotten in to the habit of having YouTube playing on my second screen when doing anything at my computer. Can't fall asleep without some history documentary playing.
Bad habit on my short list for eradicating.
I could survive without it but I would miss it. Not so much YouTube but a service like it.
The problem with YouTube is there isn't an alternative.
Anytime I think it's morphed to a state where people will leave for the next great thing, they don't.
The content is there, and alternatives don't have that backing them so it's too inconvenient to move on. Once people have that pain point, they go back.
YouTube is perfect for me for music videos and educational stuff. Medium format stuff. Too long for TikTok, too short for TV.
When I inevitably move away from Google, YouTube will be the last thing that remains. I use it a lot, and there is absolutely no sufficient replacement.
I lived 30 years without it, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to do without it. It's fun, but not necessary.
I have been living without YouTube for years. That includes alternative front ends too.
Although I must admit, i have a Netflix subscription which I use very actively.
I haven't personally used YouTube as often as before, since nowadays many creators just try to be clickbaity (and yes, I do use the DeArrow extension). I watch YouTube on the TV with my family, though
Absolutely. Almost never use it anyway.
I guess yes. I use it from time to time via NewPipe to look up some bike repair stuff but I guess I could easily find that somewhere else in the web. But I think this could be a generation thing, I know many people only a few years younger who absolutely depend on random internet people explaining the news to them in video format or stuff like that.
I only go on YouTube about once a month and I use it exclusively with either Newpipe or heavily modified on my PC. I mostly use it to watch trailers of games I am interested in, so I think that I would not be really affected.
Honestly it depends. A lot of my online time in the last ~5 years has strayed away from YouTube. Most of my time is just spent playing musicbee while browsing anidb/ MAL/ MFC, searching for rares / chatting on soulseek, or watching anime / movies. But YouTube does come undeniably handy for those times where you want something you can't find anywhere else online, like people going solo into hard-to-access countries to record their journeys, or tutorials that explain things in much more detail than text could due to visual demonstration, or more in-depth reviews of products where the video makes it a lot easier to feel the size / scale of the product I'm looking at.
Could I do it? Sure. But it would definitely be hard for a long time, as I track down various blogs / self hosted websites with what I liked to use YouTube for. But honestly that kind of internet might be better. Or if a smaller platform would gain more traction so YouTube wasn't the only option. I think that would be ideal.
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 itโs 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 thereโs 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
Not for the lack of trying though. They've been trying to destroy alternative frontend apps for a while, but the devs just keep rolling out workarounds. You know when your app is buffering endlessly that is time to check for an update.
I barely use YouTube in the first place
I used to watch a lot of YouTube stuff (like probably a good ten hours a week) for years. Since covid lock down (4 years ago!) I have barely watched anything on it. I still add videos to my watch later play list but I know I'll never watch them all as I've got hundreds of videos there...
It would be tough in the beginning but sure. Iโve watched everything interesting anywโฆ oh whatโs that? Another rabbit hole!
If YouTube died tomorrow I'd be sad to lose a lot of my regular content, especially edutainment like Steve Mould, Veritasium, and Tom Scott.
But I'd probably just replace that portion of my time with some other form of content consumption, like streaming more shows or more reading.
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
I don't get the appeal of YouTube. I use it for maybe the odd music video or something, but often you'll just get someone's annoying commentary instead of the actual thing.
I live without it and it's great! Try it.
Yes.
Not if you're into music or you work in the industry (venues, producing, etc..): everything is on YouTube and Spotify, light years ahead of places like SoundCloud, Beatport, etc
