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 ?
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.
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.
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.
At least 60% of my internet time is YouTube. I rely on it for entertainment, news, education, discovering music, technical help, ETC…
Could I live a meaningful life without it? Probably, people have been living meaningful lives before the invention of the computer in general… But I wouldn’t give it up because there is an immense amount of incredible content there that genuinely makes my life better.
I used to use Reddit every day. I just replaced Reddit time with Lemmy and YouTube.
If YouTube goes down… I’ll live. It’s not a life support thing like income or housing so I’ll just find other things to fill the hole.
Will it suck? Sure. Will I live? Yep. I’d prefer they put out a reasonably affordable subscription instead of just nuking themselves with ads and more enshittification, but it’s 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. I’d do the same for YouTube.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Live? Yes. Remain sane? That’s to be determined.
Really though, I watch it for entertainment purposes 95% of the time. If YouTube were to seize to exist, I’d 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.
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 can. But I wouldn’t.
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 😂
Personally, YouTube isn’t other people’s inane rambling for me. It’s science education, it’s about how to identify and forage for food, it’s video essays about nuclear disasters… it’s constantly introducing me to new concepts— 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.
It’s a platform where the medium is video form content. Everything is available there. Both garbage and gold. It’s the way that you use it that determines which one you get. For me, it’s like Wikipedia in video form. With the occasional bit of entertainment on the side, as a treat.
I don’t use YouTube at all.
YouTube is perfect for me for music videos and educational stuff. Medium format stuff. Too long for TikTok, too short for TV.
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 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.
