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 ?

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • JCreazy@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Broken@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Ilflish@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Probably one of the harder things that I could do. It’s a replacement for TV so I could try and slot in TV but I think it would be frustrating to not have the copious amounts of content

    • Scrollone@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      TV is simply not there. Some YouTube channels are about a topic that’s so niche that there’s nothing similar on TV.

  • endhits@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I dont feel YouTube has much to offer. I actually really dont like finding advice in video format. Id much rather have it as a post somewhere.

    Entertainment wise i never use YouTube.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I haven’t been to YouTube in over a decade. Granted, many embedded videos have been hosted on YouTube. I see a need for video hosting, and I’m not sure how that could be sustainable without advertising.

    Perhaps there could be something like a a torrent, where people volunteer a certain amount of free space, and files are downloaded in chunks from whomever is available at the time? There could be one central repository, with clones, that keeps track, and distributes these chunks in the most efficient way, and moves frequently accessed data to faster hosts.

  • alansuspect@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    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.