Found this post at a great time where I'm slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because "youtube is evil" but I'm starting to appreciate the beauty and minimalism of just written articles and blog posts. I enjoy going through them at my own pace and I don't need to look at a guy for him to read what could have been a blog post to me or watch those stock clips while he reads it. This is especially true for code content. Obviously I'm talking about a small subset of all videos on youtube (tech/news content ish).
I was actually a long term subscriber to youtube premium but I cancelled maybe a month ago. I was hesitant for a long time because I thought the value I got from it was so great that it was worth paying, especially since youtube splits the premium revenue 40/60 or 50/50 with creators. On top of that I also had youtube music. It felt wrong to do all these mental gymnastics and go the adblock route because of the creators. The author in the post touches on this point.
But as I started getting into Lemmy and reading blog posts more and more (also started reading a book), I understood that a lot of that perceived value was because that's the only thing I used and knew. There's a whole world out there and since then I've slowly started minimizing my time on it. Again, not because it's bad but just because I feel for a lot of content there are other things out there. It's a choice. Learning to enjoy reading a light book vs watching Youtube before bed, for example.
I do think there's some dishonesty and delusion going on in a lot of people's minds when it comes to adblockers. They use adblock and think they're somehow doing the right thing and they're so righteous about it, yet they continue watching Youtube and never donate to any creators. I have a few friends like that.
Since I don't spend that much time on it anymore, honestly I just watch the ads. Not as big of a deal as I once thought, and they make me want to spend even less time on the platform. I used to also use it for white noise or background music. Now I just use mynoise.net -great platform, would recommend.
Just a random stream of thoughts on my youtube experience.
Recently I was ranting about this exact topic. I'll link the rant here, but to keep it short:
I don't blame content creators for publishing their videos in YouTube. I do blame them for doing so exclusively: YouTube (and Google, and GAFAM, and Big Tech...) is simply not trustable, it's insane for a content creator to rely solely on that platform.
And additionally, I do think people publishing their videos exclusively to YT are partially to blame for this very monopoly that harms both people who create and consume those videos.
The problem is videographers get blamed whatever platform they use.
Rumble/Bitchute, you're bad because there are righties on there.
Odysee/LBRY: you're bad because of crypto
Peertube: you're bad because nobody used that
What's left? Uploading political essays to pornhub?
IMO, With the current state of things, the best option is to just use as many platforms as possible and hope for the best.
Bingo. It might be a bit annoying to publish the same video across multiple platforms, but when shit hits the fan in one, both the creator and consumers say "glad there was a copy elsewhere".
That's the spirit! They'll hate you whatever you do, so just upload everywhere.
Dailymotion still exists, they could upload there in addition to YouTube.
I had the same thought. Why not diversify by uploading videos simultaneously to platforms like PeerTube or creating written versions of the content? The author of libre.news does this, and I love it.
Obviously, alternative platforms won't have much impact initially and will likely get zero views at first. However, I believe that if more creators adopted this approach, audiences would gradually catch on and these platforms could grow into something bigger.
As I mentioned, I'm at a point in my life where I prefer reading blog posts over watching video content. It's great that this channel provides both formats, but most creators don't.
Specifically regarding written versions of the content, it's possible they get an initial audience quite fast. Plenty people prefer video, but "plenty" isn't "everyone"; there's people like me who'd rather read than watch a tutorial 10 times out of 10.
I feel this same way. There's not really a competitor that I can see. I want to like peertube but there's just not much content and the only way for a creator to get money from it is just donations?
I'm not trying to be overtly critical or anything, but I'm with the rest of you who just want an alternative. I'd pay a subscription if it felt worth it. (I have twitch turbo for this reason on twitch). Of course, I'm poor as hell so it's like... I can only subscribe to so many things and none of the ones I've seen seem worth it.
I mean, there is Nebula, wich seems to be the exact thing you are looking. There are also a mit of great creators on there and if you get a discount (pretty mich every crestor on there has a 40% off discount link), you get it from 30 dollars a month.