Ad blocker still works. They really want people to stop using YouTube though, don’t they.
The real problem is that barriers to entry for competition are insurmountable.
If I wanna compete, I gotta host those files somewhere. With Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. That’s basically my whole list of options.
I mean, I can opt to do it myself, but… That’s beyond David v Goliath. No way I could manage the amount of spam, CSA, DMCA, terrorism/misinformation and other shit that would seek to take the competition out.
The other reason why it’s impossible is simply that nobody would upload their genuine content to your site because it doesn’t get as much “engagement” as on YouTube. Social inertia is why YouTube can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want and people will stay.
Twitch is the same thing for livestreams. Not even Facebook using fuck-you money to literally buy exclusivity contracts with streamers could change that. People just didn’t want to watch there (although I can understand their reluctance).
Your metadata is still extremely valuable to them, and it’s not limited to just watch history and likes, but rather everything on how you engage in their services, including where your mouse cursor sits.
Parroting the angry me Yorker whose name I forgot. If you use an ad blocker your likely privacy aware and they don’t get much/any meta data from you.
Also YouTube is extremely costly to run. They are making it abundantly clear you are not valuable to them if you aren’t watching ads. You aren’t that important.
^ mostly this. Ad revenue from watched ads isnt all of their income, not even close
Queue all the people in the comments talking about ad blockers or alternative apps.
Those might be great (and ad blocking is important in general), but I’ve found I ultimately just watch YouTube less.
A good chunk of my favorite creators had been pushing Nebula for the past couple years, so I finally tried it out and it’s pretty decent. I’ve even found new channels there that would have been buried on YouTube. Still tons of room for improvement for the platform, but it’s functional now.
Other creators have their own websites with text content, or podcasts hosted elsewhere.
It’s only a small handful of channels I check for on YouTube anymore. It kind of sucks that it’s mostly small channels where video is a key component and they don’t fit with the edu-tainment vibe of Nebula, and I don’t know of another platform for them. Lots of DIY home improvement, self-sufficiency (not religious or conspiratorial lol), music videos, and channels dedicated to specific videogame franchises.
I know LTT has Floatplane too. I wonder if all of these other videos streaming options getting worse will start driving more people to smaller platforms.
You might want to give Grayjay a try. It’s a cross platform video app that lets you connect to people’s YouTube accounts but also Nebula and other video platforms. Don’t download it from the Play Store though, sideload the apk file directly from the website. I’ve only used it for YouTube so far but it lets you do the things you would have needed Vanced for before and I love it
I was kinda worried with the LTT drama unfolding since DankPods does use Floatplane as a source of income. While Floatplane and LMG are technically separate, because it spun off of LTT people might not see it as such.
And yeah, I notice I watch YouTube a lot less now, ever since they stopped allowing people whose history was turned off to get recommendations on the front page. Maybe that’s for the better. I still have a watch later backlog I should export to a text file or something.
They still build recommendations even if you’re not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it’s all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.
By that same logic, you should worry about the creators on YT when advocating actions harmful to YT.
Speaking for myself, I disagree.
YT is bad, and so is LTT, and by extension, Floatplane.
After LTT unambiguously showed their true colors, and doubled down, I unsubscribed and removed all of trace of their ecosystem from my digital habits.
YT is a bit harder to do that with, so I use alternative methods to extract the value/uses from their service. It works for me.
Ironically the linked site doesn’t show content if you’re using an ad blocker.
They’re completely lost at this point I think. The ‘skip ad’ button is brilliant from a marketing perspective, if you ask me. One can get pretty used to tuning out ads but having that skip button keeps you actively interacting. So even if you didn’t see the whole ad, if the advertiser is smart you heard their name before you skipped. Plus the user gets to feel like the ad isn’t shoved down their throat, they have control.
If I were running things I’d quit this dumb battle with the users they’ve declared and make ads extremely easy to skip - I feel like you’d have a lot fewer refugess from the site and a lot more people less motivated to install an ad blocker in the first place.
I have the god damn chromecast with the remote thing and it’s totally bullshit, and handy! But mostly bullshit. I’m a mute nazi and mute every ad immediately to the point my wife makes fun of me. Although she does admit that it makes it more peaceful to watch. I’m wait to see how they enshittify it. I give it 3 months and then they pause ads if it’s muted.
Get tourself smart tube. It’s a million times better than the youtube tv app. I got a chromecast tv specifically so I could side load smart tube cause i was sick of the youtube app on my tv
That’s seems more complex than I’m willing to attempt. I’ll keep it in mind, thanks for the suggestion!
I’m sticking with the Chromecast 2. No remote, but also no bullshit. Just cast from your phone or computer and send whatever you want from there to your TV.
No one is leaving YouTube because there is no alternative. You can go to a site like Vimeo, but no one uploads there. You can go to Nebula, but very few people want to pay for yet another subscription.
You could also pay the content creators that you enjoy watching directly. That way you can still have an ad free experience, mostly, while also supporting people making the things you like.
good thing i use revanced 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍📌
edit: not the pin
My revanced has been out of date and non functional for a while, do you happen to recall how to update it? For some reason I’m struggling to remember the install process.
Huh. My solution (for years now) has been to kill the YouTube ap entirely and watch videos on Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I may have to see if Revanced is a better experience.
Used to do that but recently switched over to ReVanced because Firefox pip would just show the corner of the webpage sometimes, or when I go to fullscreen the app would close, so I’d have to go back on Firefox again and fullscreen twice because the first time I fullscreen it doesn’t auto-rotate
apks are not the best idea even from trusted sites. There’s probably a telegram link for it. I use the extended version which has some extra goodies: https://t.me/s/revanced_extended
Revanced APKs - Automated builds and distribution of ReVanced apps (unofficial):
If your rooted you can use magisk and just hunt down the revanced magisk zip.
