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De-googling, so far

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Re: De-googling, so far

#21

Post by throw_pm23 »

annexrichmond wrote: post #14
least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

I've personally been watching YouTube less and less. The ads are insane. I would normally spend more time watching videos but it's become so disruptive I think most of us can agree that many videos are unnecessarily long (as it's incentivized by the creator for ad revenue), so there's far more fluff in it. With the rise of LLMs, etc for getting knowledge fast , I just can't see how this model is sustainable. I don't…

Where do you see ads on Youtube? I have seen maybe one or two in 10 years.

Re: De-googling, so far

#22

Post by itishappy »

mobilejdral wrote: post #11
least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.

> Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes.

It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content. I find the act of opening clickbait videos in an incognito window along with judicious use of the "not interested" button has kept it quite usable.

Re: De-googling, so far

#26

Post by jdpedrie »

schaefer wrote: post #18

For me the degoogling sticking point is that I have a custom domain (registered through Google domains) that i use for both for my email addresses and my small personal home page. It would be nice to find a host that offers both hosting and email through a custom domain too.

Fastmail lets you use custom domains for email and offers DNS and simple hosting.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000280141-Ho...

Not affiliated, just a longtime customer and fastmail enjoyer.

Re: De-googling, so far

#27

Post by smaudet »

annexrichmond wrote: post #12
autoexec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is that none of the content you care about is Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance to jump ship, just like we are as watchers. In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Ne…

Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network, targeting, etc.

Yeah, the important 3rd wheel of the video space:

1) Hosting space/cpu/bandwidth. Video is one of the most intense data jobs out there, behind I suppose maybe AI and Big Data (if anyone is still doing that). You need Terabytes of drive space, petabytes of traffic, all the CDNs, processors capable of encoding inefficient video uploads to efficient video downloads. 2) Network effect. People need to actually want to come, so that people come. 3) Paying for all this - People don't like donating, don't like paying, but hard drives/servers/power banks are not free. So you either charge premiums or use ads.

I wish more people had been willing to pay for Youtube Pro, e.g. (I still do), they're (still) getting worse because the ad-supported version(s) are still the bulk of their income. And so the ad-supported version is messing up everything, being very aggressive, etc. You/I pay for Netflix, why wouldn't you pay for Youtube?

You can't influence the dynamic with capitalism at all when something is free. Sure, companies can "en-shittify", but at least for video this is fairly simple - when it costs too much/works too terribly on one video platform, you can move to the next one. 1) and 2) Make it harder to start a new paid platform, but not impossible - you can directly reflect the costs to your users. YT is just a black box at present...but would have been less so if Youtube Pro had been more popular (ads might have been easier to block, even).

Re: De-googling, so far

#29

Post by readthenotes1 »

mobilejdral wrote: post #11
least wrote: post #5

The only thing irreplaceable for me is Youtube. Even if it's gotten worse as a platform over time, I still consume it more than any other type of video media and there are no good alternatives for much of the content that I enjoy watching.

That is so wild to me. I only consume media there if I am sent a link. Every time I have gone there I find content that is literally optimized to use up and waste as much of my time as possible under the incentive of maximizing viewer minutes. I wonder what it would be like to spend a day in your shoes.

Live the speedup ability in YouTube videos. Minimum 1.5x, some faster (because it's pretty obvious the creators slow the content down)

Re: De-googling, so far

#30

Post by marcosdumay »

annexrichmond wrote: post #12
autoexec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is that none of the content you care about is Google's. As soon as someone else provides a space for content creators to move to you can get rid of Youtube and never miss a single thing about it. Google has successfully pissed off enough youtubers that they're just waiting for the first chance to jump ship, just like we are as watchers. In the meantime, try to give as little as you can to Google. Use Ne…

Yeah but operating a service like YouTube is such a money pit (given on recent HN threads I've read). It seems like they've been mostly able to work because of their huge ad network, targeting, etc.

It's not inherently a money pit.

Google and Facebook have a complete oligopoly over the ads market and are manipulating it so nobody else can prosper.

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