We all hate google and youtube, but overall as a community we’re all simultaneously lukewarm and non-committal about pushing towards using an alternative. I admittedly cling to invidious frontends for dear life.

It seems like whenever somebody asks for an alternative to youtube, they’re offered Odysee and Peertube, but inevitably many others chime in about the shortcomings of both of those platforms.

Can we as a community come to a consensus as to which of these platforms should be pushed forward?

I don’t even think it needs to be a binary choice. Obviously youtube cannot be immediately replaced for it’s archival of educational and tutorial videos, but we can at least push newcomers towards using invidious frontends for those instances.

Maybe Odysee is better for some type of content over Peertube. Let’s discuss which platform works best for what and try to be more active about sharing and promoting them not just to viewers but potential creators as well.

If you go to share a youtube link, try to see if that video exists on an alternate platform first and share that link instead. I think that’s a good first step towards getting away from youtube in the privacy community.

But youtube alternatives are still very much on the fringe and I’m hoping this post will at least inspire some discussion about changing that.

  • moseschrute@piefed.social
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    1 hour ago

    Nebula might be worth the $5/month. The platform is run by the creators, so that money goes to them. DM me if you’re interested. I can gift you a free week.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    3 hours ago

    The very platform you’re clinging to is on Death’s Door and they’re actively breaking YouTube’s terms of service while still using the service.

    None of the other platforms are even close to replacing YouTube. They can’t handle the scale or the features. And none of them are heading towards being able to accomplish this.

    YouTube is a capitalist utopia funded with more money than God. They provide unlimited free storage and transmission of all videos sent to their platform. They fleece videos for copyright and legal impingements. They gather corporations willing to spend on advertisements and link them directly to end users uploading data, and when they reach a threshold, they pay them.These funds pay for the unlimited amounts of storage at levels that no other platform could handle.

    The other platforms that are open to us don’t make enough money to do any of those things. We’re relying on the funding, development, and administration of a couple of generous strangers.

  • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
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    6 hours ago

    Nothing can compare yet to YouTube.

    The main reason is: YouTube is not only a distribution channel. It is also its own promotion channel tied to a search engine which magnifies that promotion.

    You open YouTube and it offers similar videos tho what you’ve been watching. You search for something and there is probably a video (or many( matching what you are searching.

    Other platforms are currently only distribution channels. You upload the video and promote it through other channels. Whether your own website or posts somewhere else.

    Si, if you are a content producer and want to share, the current fediverse solutions are great, however it will need critical mass to attract content consumers.

    And without content consumers, it will be hard to attract content providers who want a broad distribution and exposure.

    So, let’s start moving out own content to the fediverse and use other channels to promote them. Let’s create a snowball effect. We could even post to several and see where the content consumers gravitate to.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    4 hours ago

    getting apps into appstores would make a big difference but if someone follows a particular person or if its free on youtube they are going to go there. I watch colbert on youtube.

  • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
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    6 hours ago

    I use peertube as much as I can, but there’s only like 3 people that I like from Youtube that’s also on Peertube: Veronica Explains (@[email protected]), The Linux Experiment (@[email protected]) and Gardiner Bryant (@[email protected]). I guess I watch Tafotin (@[email protected]) from time to time as well.
    I hadn’t even used Odysee before, but just a cursory look I did find someone whose content I enjoy there, Naomi Brockwell. From the looks of it, it has some sort of crypto feature? (ew)
    Also, how in the world does decentralization work there? There’s only one website, that’s odysee.com, that doesn’t seem very decentralized to me.

    I’m just so sick of the censorship on youtube, and the shadowbanning of comments. It feels like 90% of my comments aren’t seen by anyone, not even myself.

  • Salamander@mander.xyz
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    9 hours ago

    I like the idea of PeerTube, but I tried running an instance and was unable to sustain the experiment for too long. I made it very open and it got quickly flooded by pirated TV series and spammy and heavy content.

    After that, I had a difficult time at some point finding an instance to host some videos I wanted to upload - and, having had that failed experiment before hand, I can see why the instances that do survive are often those with more stringent filters and less generous with resources.

    So, I am sorry to “chime in about the shortcomings”, but hosting a PeerTube instance can be a demotivating experience. You set up the infrastructure expecting to contribute to a space reminiscent of the old youtube, and you see it filled with spam. The signal-to-noise ratio is just awful and it is expensive. To avoid this, you can be an aggressive gate keeper - but this makes the platform less friendly to people who are looking to find a space to share their original content. Gate keeping is also an additional effort that you need to make. In the end I chose to just shut it off as it was more of a hassle than fun. By comparison, hosting a Lemmy instance is fun, much much cheaper, and little hassle.

    I still haven’t given up on the idea of Peertube, though… I have some video ideas, and when I finally get to making them I plan to make another instance to host only my channel. Then, I would be able to host my own channel using my own infrastructure via a federated network. This use case would work very well for me, and it can probably work for many others. So that is one way of building the Peertube network.

    General permissive video uploads is something that makes YouTube such a powerful platform though, and that is very difficult to replicate.

    • rozodru@piefed.social
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      9 hours ago

      You pretty much summed up the problems with Peertube and why I feel it’s the weakest amongst the fediverse platforms. it is SO hard to find a decent instance unlike Mastodon, Piefed, lemmy, etc. And some of the decent Peertube instances you wouldn’t even know are Peertube with the way they’re branded.

      I mean I still can’t find a good peertube instance. I’ve considered setting up my own much like I have my own Akkoma/Mastodon instance but I don’t want to bog down my server with it. And I think that might be the root of the problem overall for Peertube.

  • ozoned@piefed.social
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    8 hours ago

    Yesterday, but today is good as well. :-)

    I personally run two. My own at video.firesidefedi.live.

    And started a nonprofit that I’m still working on getting 501© 3 status in the US called BT Free, and currently running a moderated instance TubeFree.org. open for sign ups, but if you want to post video I need to see it first as again, heavily moderated. Eventually I plan on having storage costs for tax deductible donations, but idk when that’ll be. And hopefully in the future can do revenue sharing or have a way to post creators.

    I know Ben Pate, whom I talked with on fireside fedi and is creating emissary and bandwagon, is working on pay systems. As well as other folks.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
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    7 hours ago

    very much on the fringe

    When mainstream is mostly consumerist attention grabbing bullshit, is it genuinely a problem?

  • hector@lemmy.today
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    8 hours ago

    The best time to switch away from youtube was several years back, after the growth phase of our few remaining tech players ended and maximizing revenue started.

    The next best time is now. They will only get worse, and bow to powerful interests even more. Them demanding we prove age by providing commercially valuable info they will keep no matter what they say, should be the last straw for all of us.

    Find smaller competitors, youtube and google are lost causes we need to quit both.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    It’s very difficult to get away from YT, too long time with free hands converted it to a monoply with all its abuses. Yes, there are alternatives like Odysee, PeerTube and some others, but they lack of contents, front ends, like Invidious, PokeTube, etc are getting killed more and more by Gargle. For music there isn’t such a big problem, most content can be listen in Bandcamp and other streaming sites, but for other contents only can be found, eg. in the homepages of the Public TV (Movies, Live streams, Documentals,…). Another possibility are Desktop clients, but eg. FreeTube relays on Invidious and with this most Videos are blocked, VLC or SMplayer still working mostly. It’s certainly a Mess and it will take years to be able to substitute really YT. Only manner until now is to use protection against the profiling and tracking (VPN, Proxies, ad/tracker blocker anyway mandatory, etc).

    • brownmustardminion@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 hours ago

      To play devil’s advocate, I could argue the monetization of YouTube has lead to all of the quirks of the platform people like us hate.

      • Shilling scams and shitty products
      • Biased reviews
      • Corporate pressured censorship
      • Age restriction
      • Algorithm optimized content
      • The general corporatization of YT (see YouTube Rewind feature Will Smith and a bunch if other celebrities)

      The list goes on.

      Although I agree there should at least be some way for creators to recoup the expenses they put towards producing videos. An ad-free patreon style donation system seems the most practical and balanced from what Ive experienced.

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Isn’t most of their incomes from sponsorship? What YouTube offers is a large audience that makes sponsorship valuable to advertisers.

      • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
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        52 minutes ago

        Some people have managed to diversify their income, but a hefty chunk still comes from ad money. That income is also wildly unpredictable, so it really makes economic sense to diversify. Being entirely dependent on a single source puts your business in a very precarious position. If your company fails as a result, it’s just bad strategy. On the other hand, you could also blame YT for being unpredictable, wild and turbulent.

        The way I see it, the core of the problem is economic. Making videos takes money. Storage and bandwidth cost something too, so doing this on a small scale won’t make much sense.

        There are a few medium scale platforms like Nebula, and they seem to be doing just fine. IMO those platforms are the way to go.

    • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
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      13 hours ago

      Probably like most opensource developers begging for donations and having a regular job somewhere.

  • oeuf@slrpnk.net
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    12 hours ago

    The last I heard Youtube actually makes a loss in terms of cost and ad revenue but is worth maintaining because of the user data it makes available to its parent company. The low ethical standards and backing of one of the worlds biggest corporations allow it to outcompete any alternative.

    If we’re serious about dealing with the problem we need to deal with antitrust and privacy.

    I doubt they will do it but video creators need to organise and put pressure on government to enforce the law on this.

    • brownmustardminion@lemmy.mlOP
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      5 hours ago

      I’m not sure whether you’re asking why to use a frontend vs YouTube rawdog or conflating Odysee/Peertube with a YouTube frontend. I thought they were frontends as well for a long time.

      If you’re asking why to use a frontend proxy for YouTube, there could be a few reasons. The obvious being privacy concerns, but other people prefer the less cluttered interface, no ads, no YouTube premium or sign in with google popups, no manipulative algorithm.