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To me, unless you want to be a boring hermit that only listens to music from your childhood and has no clue what is going on in the world, there's certain things that can't just be dropped. Because while we're cutting out YouTube, why stop there? You might as well cut out any music released by a major record label while you're at it too, and only watch movies that are exclusive to film festivals for indie artistes.

Personally, my YouTube feed is 95% music. And if the algorithm is serving you nothing but right wing AI slop, it must be something that you're doing wrong there.

I'd love to drop YouTube but I'm afraid that I won't be dropping it for some fediverse equivalent with two random people posting OC either. At this point I'm trying to find my way back to the world and actually have interesting things to talk about.

You could just... not go there? All the big companies are doing their best to make us all homeless and dead right now, so media piracy is pretty much a civic duty at this point. Loads of ways to get shows and movies besides youtube.

Deactivate yt-history to inhibit that crack-cocain-algo

My problem is the content is there. Cppcon: in person our on YouTube. As is just about every other conference. Peertube is great when you can find something but only a tiny minority of what i want is there.

Obviously first of all, Peertube! but video is perhaps the biggest challenge for the fediverse, even if simply just because of the amount of data storage needed...

https://joinpeertube.org/

I think the best way to quit youtube together however may not be to directly replace youtube yet. Instead, when linking to youtube use Invidious (such as inv.nadeko.net) links that strip all the icky stuff from youtube links for you and let people interface with youtube in a healthier way that gives everyone more agency (I recommend linking the raw youtube link too just to make sure links don't break eventually).

https://invidious.io/

Finally and most importantly in my opinion Google has done an awful job of fostering communities around their video content and I think THIS is where we can beat youtube. We shouldn't try to beat youtube at youtube, we should focus on building lemmy/threadiverse/fediverse communities around themes that feature a lot of video content, and using the above strategies link to still mainly youtube but also include alternate fediverse video links more and more as that part of the fediverse increases.

Does it really matter if we end up at youtube to watch the video if the context of why we are watching the video and the conversation we will have after watching the video is all actually located on the fediverse? Remember, youtube comments are worthless so if you want to see how people feel about a video where do you go? Our answer should resoundingly be THE FEDIVERSE!

Google has made a massive strategic error here similar to the way they have done nothing/been actively hostile to a cottage community of android app reviewers on other platforms that people could learn to trust in favor of centering Google's pathetic casino scam storefront algorithm.... In both cases they have shot themselves in the foot at a strategic scale.

If we build more video heavy communities here around topics like woodworking or whatever than even if most of the videos posted are still from youtube it creates the opportunity for change, and that is where we can make a difference I think. At any point a youtube heavy lemmy/threadiverse community can shift towards linking more to other video platforms including fediverse ones, there is no actual lock in and that is what we should be focusing on at this early stage of federated video communities in my opinion.

TL;DR

1. Communities With Interesting Discussions About "Content" > Raw Content!

2. What makes youtube so encompassingly dominant in the longform video medium also makes it existentially vulnerable, i.e. youtube tries to encompass the entire conversation and community around video and does such a bad job of it that it leaves the door wide open for us to connect that shattered landscape of youtube back into something meaningful and trustable for people.

There are other video sharing sites, like Odysee or BitChute or of course PeerTube, but there is no alternative to the 30 years of content that is YouTube.

i subscribe to specific channels using rss like normal blogs and download videos i want using ytdlp. not really moving away from it but its good enough for me

Edit your router settings to refuse packeta served from their domains.

do you want to treat the underlying problem or just swap brand of coping mechanism?

Quit youtube because you don’t want to support google or quit youtube because you use it problematically

The latter is just stop using it of course. Raise the bar to entry; delete the apps, redirect the website in hosts, delete your account, etc. all of these are easily defeated of course but a big part of changing bad habits like this is introducing a response delay so you have a better shot at controlling impulsivity.

Find replacements for it. Youtube in a problematic sense is often a function of escape so look at that and find alternatives. Eg if you’re browsing because you’re anxious and doing mindless scrolling feels like it blocks some of the uglier thoughts find more activating behaviors that are probably less immediately rewarding and engaging, but potentially more activating in the long run. Eg practicing a hobby may not feel as activating in terms of mood, especially initially, because youtube is a dopamine machine, but practicing guitar can become activating if you’re interested in it and stick to it. And if you focus on the sense of accomplishment part it may become more activating; where youtube for 4+ hours might make you feel like “what the fuck am I doing with my life” practicing piano for 4+ hours might get you to achievable and noticeable progress at a skill (“now I can play [x], cool”

If it’s to just get away from google look at what some have said already like peertube. If you self host you can get tubearchivist going; it’s a bit of a headache but then you can add channels and playlists there, let it monitor and download additions to them, and watch them locally. Take googles bandwidth and give them nothing in return (at least until they finally figure out a way to permanently break yt-dlp)

I’m tired of Google and their ai-slop videos.

It is difficult. Some of the creators that I watch also uploaded to rumble. Usually delayed upload compared to YouTube. And rumble is kind of icky with all the right winged content on it, but IIRC it is also the largest alternative to YouTube.

I have started a blu ray collection so at least I own some physical movies offline.