Today in a Privacy community a post about YouTube. No word about privacy but all about which software or settings are needed to watch videos and the money needed to host videos. It made me wonder whether some of you can lead a meaningful life without YouTube. Or will a cold turkey bring the worst out of you ?
YouTube has one use for me - the occasional video on how to do something technical
How people watch hour after hour of other people’s inane ramblings I will never know. You must have have an incredibly low bar for what you consider entertainment 😂
I’ve been using Youtube so long that it kind of isn’t a problem. I’ve got a bunch of creators I follow, most of whom have stable release schedules. The likes of RedLetterMedia, Astrum and SEA (two unrelated yet adjacent “European guy talks calmly about space” channels), Summoning Salt, TierZoo, etc. Recently the folks behind The New Yankee Workshop have been uploading the show to Youtube, and I’ve been enjoying that.
Yeah I guess if you’ve been using it for a long time and have favourites built up that would work. I remember when YouTube started and it was pretty good, but with every video trying to game the algorithms I couldn’t imagine trying to start afresh now.
Personally, YouTube isn’t other people’s inane rambling for me. It’s science education, it’s about how to identify and forage for food, it’s video essays about nuclear disasters… it’s constantly introducing me to new concepts— like why lawns are bad for the environment, how other countries tackle the problem of traffic and public transportation, why DIY air purifiers are more effective than nearly every commercial air purifier on the market, etc.
It’s a platform where the medium is video form content. Everything is available there. Both garbage and gold. It’s the way that you use it that determines which one you get. For me, it’s like Wikipedia in video form. With the occasional bit of entertainment on the side, as a treat.
Wikipedia in Video Form is a great line! I feel much the same way, but I think that’s not the entire picture. Wikipedia is a lot of declarative knowledge (i.e. what things are and Al’s maybe why they are), but YouTube is a lot of procedural knowledge for me. That is how to X. My GF and I finally found an apartment. I don’t know how to replace broken light switches, but in five minutes YouTube taught me how.
I didn’t know how to replace a faucet - now I do. I did not know how to insert a metal screw fitting into the furniture I was constructing - now I do. I wanted to measure our energy consumption, figuring there had to be a way to it it smart/connected and Open Source. YT content creators showed me how.
Really though, I watch it for entertainment purposes 95% of the time. If YouTube were to seize to exist, I’d probably find an alternative or stick to streaming services like Twitch.
Not to detract from your point, but the word you’re looking for is cease. Seize is to forcibly obtain something, like “seizing the means of production.”
Probably one of the harder things that I could do. It’s a replacement for TV so I could try and slot in TV but I think it would be frustrating to not have the copious amounts of content
I guess I know where the good stuff is in the trash heap? I’ve been a user of Youtube since before Google bought it, and…I think the algorithm just has so much data on me that I don’t see a lot of the swill newcomers will. I do believe the platform is enshittifying from several different directions though, particularly from Alphabet.
I don’t get the appeal of YouTube. I use it for maybe the odd music video or something, but often you’ll just get someone’s annoying commentary instead of the actual thing.
Blows my mind with the responses on here. I use YouTube maybe once a month, if something interesting pops up? Or for a music video or a science related subject. Reading is just so much more pleasant than trying to go through all the spam, trash, ads, and bad videos. I don’t know how you all stand youtube personally.
There are a lot of great creators on YouTube, and I would definitely miss their videos. But if YT gets much worse (and it’s getting worse by the day), I can live without it.
Nope. Just this week YouTube helped me fix a squeaky dryer for $18. Repair guy wanted $100 to come out, estimated a $300 repair. The amount I saved there has paid for premium for a year and I use it for everything. Fixed my washer, ran 220v for my new stove, countless baking recipes, woodworking tips. It's not like Netflix where you only get entertainment from it, there is actual good info.
100% agree. I found information to help me file my taxes correctly. I used it regularly to supplement lectures when I was still in school. I use it as one of many tools to learn a new language. With some effort, I have found a couple news channels that help me stay informed on politics to the degree I want, with minimal amounts of partisan BS.
Many of those information are also available in other places. When I need to fix something, I’m usually able to find what I need on the web (manuals, blog posts, etc) before resorting to searching youtube videos on how to do it. Some truly niche stuff are only available on youtube though (e.g. some dude filming himself doing his niche job), but I can count on one hand the instances I needed one of those.
The video makes it so much faster and easier to understand. Plus the top comments usually have supplemental information that helps. If you didn't use YouTube then you would still use another Google entity to find it.
I’m not comment-OP, but when I use a VPN, google insists on making me do captchas before letting me search. So I just started using duckduckgo because it’s usually “good enough.”
Sure, by some metrics google is probably still better, but I’d rather not waste my time training their AIs.
With AI absolutely exploding… It’s very easy to ask for step by step directions to accomplish things. AI clearly still needs to mature… But… The times I’ve asked it for some basic, step by step directions, it’s been effective.
While I don’t disagree videos make a lot of things easier (I for sure am a visual learning, no question), the step by step instructions for things I’ve gotten have been good, and very easy to follow.
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