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De-googling, so far

blog.nradk.com

41–50 of 197 posts

Re: De-googling, so far

#41
Man yeah I'm trying my best to do the same. it is so hard. I pay for kagi and email services.

Buut yeah can one of you hackernews geniuses please create an alternative to youtube? The only alternatives I can find are crazy republican right wing websites that I have no desire to help or support.

Re: De-googling, so far

#42
Nice write up. I've had a similar journey. I've been using Android auto on grapheneos without issues FYI. I did switch from nextcloud to Baikal as was using seafile for the file storage anyway. I gave up on protonmail and am using migadu with great effect. My plan was to eventually to switch to immich so perhaps a weekend evening project.

Re: De-googling, so far

#43
post #37
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 find it crazy that someone will say "I still consume it more than any other type of video media" but somehow just paying for it isn't an option. You can pay to make YT ads go away. And the payments go to the video creators (eventually).

I’m conflicted on this. I pay for YouTube premium - for background playing on my phone and for Ad-less on my TV.

I pay more for Netflix, and I use it a lot less.

So I’m airing on the side of agreeing, but I also think Googles tactics have been incredibly shoddy, and I can understand someone not wanting to support that.

Re: De-googling, so far

#44
post #37
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 find it crazy that someone will say "I still consume it more than any other type of video media" but somehow just paying for it isn't an option. You can pay to make YT ads go away. And the payments go to the video creators (eventually).

I don't want to send google money. I happily pay nebula though.

Re: De-googling, so far

#45
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…

It's harder to avoid bad quality videos that now you can't see downvotes.

As for the video being unnecessarily long - I have played with copying the transcript from the video into ChatGPT, but they tend to be too long for ChatGPT to handle.

Re: De-googling, so far

#46
Duckduckgo has been my search engine for years now, never use google anymore.

Only other search engine I use is yandex, which is very useful for search terms that US-hased search engines mess with the results of.

Re: De-googling, so far

#47
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.

Depends on what you're watching.

I mean, everyone on YouTube is playing the algorithm game somewhat -- assuming they want to have their videos watched, and they do, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.

Having said that, I watch a ton of YouTube videos. Not randomly, like zapping through TV channels (do people still do that, by the way?). I watch videos from the dozens of channels I'm subscribed to, by authors I enjoy watching and about topics that are relevant to me. YouTube is unbeatable for this, because almost everyone is on YouTube, but few other video platforms are as universal.

And yes, I pay for YouTube Premium because ads absolutely break YouTube. Ads make everything worse. I'm still upset about the recent trend of authors placing "sponsor segments" embedded in their videos (looking at you, Squarespace -- you can go f*ck yourself); I wish paying for Premium automatically skipped these segments too, but oh well. At least some authors make self-deprecating jokes about their sponsored content.

Re: De-googling, so far

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" but…

> It's a feed, and it responds to your use. I click on longform educational content, I get lots of longform educational content.

Yup. You still get the occasional dud, but most of the feed is relevant in my case.

I once browsed YouTube without being logged in. Do not recommend. I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I imagine it's a similar experience to browsing the web without an adblocker.

Re: De-googling, so far

#49
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.

Same, with a few exceptions. Once in a blue moon, I check if one of the two creators I care about has something I want to watch.

Re: De-googling, so far

#50
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.

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