Forget Youtube
Date: 2020-10-12
I think this video is very timely right now for a lot of people. We are in the last quarter of 2020, a year that a lot of people will describe as hell.
While it may not help that much, but what I recently really payed attention is what kind of video youtube offers me through their very shitty algo. I just call it algo, because let's face it, whatever you pay for these people, I would give 0 USD. Why? Because that algo is superstupid.
I never ever search anything suicide related in my whole life (well basically since mid90s when I starte to use the internet, but back then a lots of things were different), but I still got one video today, on my youtube main page. I don't use any account btw, ocassionally check it, if there is something interesting. I use mostly invidious and my RSS feed is full of videofeeds thanks to it. Seriously, you need to check it out.
Youtube is full of negative shit. No matters if it is the pandemic, or you just might be want a little abit of news across the giant Atlantic Ocean, you got shit. There is absolutely no positive news.
And a tons of people got booted out either with fake reasons or no reasons at all! What kind of platform who call itself "YOU"tube does that?! I mean it's certainly not about YOU right now, but about Google, what they allow you to say. I am still surprise that some people are allowed to do videos on it, but I guess October will have another nice purge under the "they violated our guidelines", although they won't provide any concrete proof, what that violations were or will be.
Seriously, forgot the youtube, and if you need to use it, just go and search for an invidious instance. Did I mention the one click dark mode? On youtube that takes like 3 clicks. Also RSS feed from the channel page. Amazingly simple. If you don't enable javascript, you won't see comments. Their is no reason to look at comments, people. Sanity prevails!
And you don't even need to remember invidious, just use the Privacy Redirect extension (both for Firefox and Chromium based browsers), which automatically redirects a bunch of sites to a more privacy respected solution (including twitter, youtube, google maps, and instagram). You can changes instances if something doesn't work.
If you want an app-like interface, you can check out Freetube.
If you are on mobile, I think there is an app like Newpipe which does the same thing. Doesn't give any information to Youtube, and you can still follow your favorite channels.
It can also help if you just block Youtube on the computer you use it. Honestly we all need to do it!
If you are a video creator, you need to find another site, and revenue source if you are interested making money from it. There is no reason to trust Youtube. Save your videos, upload them to another site, changes links in profiles and start advertising the new link. LBRY, Peertube and other sites can be good alternatives.
Youtube and Google needs to go down, and one way to help them to shrink, is not using their site and their app on any of the devices you own. And tell other people about these alternatives.
This post is day 75 of the #100DaysToOffload project. I am really close to finish, so the next 26 days I will write something every day!