I've, unfortunately, gotten in to the habit of having YouTube playing on my second screen when doing anything at my computer. Can't fall asleep without some history documentary playing.

Bad habit on my short list for eradicating.

I only go on YouTube about once a month and I use it exclusively with either Newpipe or heavily modified on my PC. I mostly use it to watch trailers of games I am interested in, so I think that I would not be really affected.

Yeah it’s undeniable that YouTube is getting difficult to get rid of. There do exist some alternatives like Vimeo or peertube, but as others say, lack of content is their biggest problem. Using alternative frontend is relying on YouTube after all, so there’s no way we can live without it, unless they do something very horrible, like what Reddit did to us.

Especially with the Premium algorithm, it's just so good at finding super niche stuff that's pretty interesting. Been watching some Netflix shaming levels of documentaries made by super passionate people.

I kind of hate the privacy nightmare but it actually delivers really well for me.

I sometimes take music from there to add to my offline collection, other than that I very rarely use it.

Everything I need can be found somewhere else

I guess yes. I use it from time to time via NewPipe to look up some bike repair stuff but I guess I could easily find that somewhere else in the web. But I think this could be a generation thing, I know many people only a few years younger who absolutely depend on random internet people explaining the news to them in video format or stuff like that.

It would be tough in the beginning but sure. I’ve watched everything interesting anyw… oh what’s that? Another rabbit hole!

Honestly it depends. A lot of my online time in the last ~5 years has strayed away from YouTube. Most of my time is just spent playing musicbee while browsing anidb/ MAL/ MFC, searching for rares / chatting on soulseek, or watching anime / movies. But YouTube does come undeniably handy for those times where you want something you can't find anywhere else online, like people going solo into hard-to-access countries to record their journeys, or tutorials that explain things in much more detail than text could due to visual demonstration, or more in-depth reviews of products where the video makes it a lot easier to feel the size / scale of the product I'm looking at.

Could I do it? Sure. But it would definitely be hard for a long time, as I track down various blogs / self hosted websites with what I liked to use YouTube for. But honestly that kind of internet might be better. Or if a smaller platform would gain more traction so YouTube wasn't the only option. I think that would be ideal.

I used to watch a lot of YouTube stuff (like probably a good ten hours a week) for years. Since covid lock down (4 years ago!) I have barely watched anything on it. I still add videos to my watch later play list but I know I'll never watch them all as I've got hundreds of videos there...

I barely use YouTube in the first place

If YouTube died tomorrow I'd be sad to lose a lot of my regular content, especially edutainment like Steve Mould, Veritasium, and Tom Scott.

But I'd probably just replace that portion of my time with some other form of content consumption, like streaming more shows or more reading.

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.

I live without it and it's great! Try it.

I watch it basically all of the time but if they made it paid-only I would drop it immediately.

With alternate interfaces? Absolutely.

If not though... I mean I would live, but I'd really rather be able to at least use it occasionally — at least for educational purposes. There just aren't any adequate alternatives.

Yes? I'd miss it for about a week, then I'd fill the time I'd spend on Youtube with other things. My to-read shelf has a healthy number of books on it. I could subscribe to a science news website or two. I'd really miss the how-tos, but there are ways to get that information too.

Not if you're into music or you work in the industry (venues, producing, etc..): everything is on YouTube and Spotify, light years ahead of places like SoundCloud, Beatport, etc

I've been paying for Nebula account for a while now. It's got high quality stuff and it's owned by creators making the content.

There's also peertube and other fedi variants.

Works great for me, I don't feel like I need YouTube or I'm missing out on important stuff.

NewPipe/Piped to watch occasional video linked from an article.

Yes.

I wouldn't really miss it all that much. I've always treated YouTube as a fun novelty where I can watch people's homemade videos, but it's almost all polished commercial grade content now, with some exceptions.

Those software and settings that make it tolerable, such as Tubular and using uBO/Sponsorblock/Firefox, are extremely easy to find and use. But I wouldn't miss it all that much if it became unusable.

Maybe yes, Maybe not.

Most of the youtubers I used to watch years ago have become full-time Twitch streamers and their channels now only serve for highlights. My currently watched content revolves mostly around memes of specific games (most of which may also be available in other platforms at the expense of subtitles).

At least for now I can say that I could live without Youtube as ~90% of my entertainment on the web currently comes from outside the platform.

Yes, I can live without youtube I survived the 1980s and 1990s - I'm not saying my life is or was "meaningful" though - that'll be discernable if the maggots enjoy their dinner whenever the time comes.

I also think there were at least a few generations of humans before that, some of whom may think they led at least slightly meaningful lives.

I don't think youtube makes anyone's life more or less "meaningful", it's just a way to pass the time - but that's just my opinion on carbon-shuffling in general. If you accept peoples own objectives instead of mine, then youtube might help them learn stuff - but even then I'd look to measure the content of their consequent actions, much more than learning in abstract. They've still got to put their new knowledge together with skills , practice and the real world circumstances to before anyting "meaningful" happens - and that's due as much to their hard work as much as to their teacher.

But I do prefer to watch a few people's videos on there as entertainment, only a few of them post on that p2p thing "lbry" or whatever so i dont use that. I will continue to watch youtube videos given the choice, and not having somethign better to do, until those people move their videos to somewhere else.

I've recently been finding out that freetube client removes much of the front end unpleasantness.

I never watch videos unless I have to so yeah

The only thing I use it for is Dreaming Spanish, and it's months since I've watched any of that content, so I'll say yeah, I think I'll be ok in a world without Youtube

I dont feel YouTube has much to offer. I actually really dont like finding advice in video format. Id much rather have it as a post somewhere.

Entertainment wise i never use YouTube.

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.