I'm not surprised. YouTube has a constant stream of new material, curated to each user's exact interests. And more back catalogue than you could watch in a thousand lifetimes. It's definitely the service I use the most.
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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If you curate your Youtube experience decently by subbing to worthwhile creators only it's damn high quality content.
Never paying Youtube a single cent though. I'll consider donating to the creators directly (or buying from their store) if their efforts are sufficient.
This is the way. The key is to ignore the clickbait, politics, low-effort content, and sensational bullshit, and just go after stuff you really like.
There's even videos for every schedule. We seem to be back to 30-50 minute videos these days, but there are still some micro channels around. Like "Sandwiches of History", where every video is at most two minutes.
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And if you pay for Premium you get all features and zero ads. Many of the competitors have paid options that still include ads.
Whether or not Premium is worth it is another debate entirely, but the fact of the matter is that it is simply a better deal compared to other streaming services.
And if you pay for Premium you get all features and zero ads
I like that I get music too. I honestly don't mind my Premium subscription, I get decent value out of it for the amount of content I view. I just wish creators saw more of that money.
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And a portion of your money goes to the creators you watch, and you get YouTube music included. I always say if you're gonna pay for one service, the one that makes the most sense is YouTube.
There's a lot to shit on yt for. But they do actually pay people real money for their work. It's still surprising to me after all these years.
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Seemingly every video still includes sponsor segments. I use ublock origin with sponsorblock and actually see zero ads.
While I love the content on Youtube, I'd like to pay for no ads and I'd like to support the creators, I just can't bring myself to pay for a service where the UX is so catastrophically bad.
Search is basically non functional at this point. Video quality has to be adjusted manually for each video to not get pixelated mess. Even at 1080p the quality is barely better than DVD. The app caches so little ahead that the slightest network interruption pauses playback. Forced auto rotation makes you grab the device each time you return from full screen to the video list. Subtitles have completely gone to shit and it's wild that in the age of forcing AI on everyone, that auto generated subtitles are still as bad as they are.
To name just a few...
Sorry for the rant
Correctly configure ad blockers will also get you an ad free experience and without that pesky monthly payment.
You're not wrong, but that is not the point I was making.
Adblocking YouTube is 100% the best option. I agree there. But if someone does want to pay for membership then YouTube is, by far, the best deal. Their competitors are absolutely horrendous.
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As someone who is constantly on YouTube and has been since the pre-Google era, their algorithm is ~~shit~~ now. It keeps giving me the same crap over and over and even though I click Not Interested, I continue to get things I don't want to see. WTF
"Shorts" and "Games" are like herpes. No matter how many times you try to get rid of them, they just keep appearing.
I do not want short form video, nor do I want to participate in "gaming" that is just poker machines reskinned as a "game" to take your money.
The "not interested" button, it does nothing!
The “not interested” button, it does nothing!
When combined with "don't recommend channel" and removing videos from your watch history, it works for content. Unless you actually partake in related content. For example: If you watch political content, you will regularly get recommended stuff opposite to what you like, regardless of many times you click "not interested".
Although it should be mentioned that "not interested" does literally nothing when it comes to not seeing shorts in general, for that you need an extension, app or ublock filter that let you hide them.
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The only new things it recommends is alt right stuff or closely related alt right. I’m good with getting the same recommendations…
As someone who is constantly on YouTube and has been since the pre-Google era,
Finally, someone else who remembers the singular year that Youtube existed independently
YouTube has a subscriptions feed that shows videos only from channels you follow.
I've found that turning the watch history off results in more accurate and relevant recommended videos from videos you watch from your subscribed channels.
When the recommended videos suddenly go off kilter, it's telling that the video you're watching is somehow related to the weird side of YouTube.
Yup. I've built a system where I tell it every video "not interested" after searching 1 topic. It literally doesn't give two shits about all the subs I have with content I'm actually interested in. It's like "oh shit you watched that one popular video, time to fill your entire feed with ADHD shorts and slop bullshit. We're just going to ignore your historical data completely"
I've definitely noticed this, you watch one or two videos that are from a popular genre, and all of a sudden that's half your recommendations. I've found the "not interested" option does work though.
They do have a lot of viewing history to work with though.
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I'm just gonna not pay for anything, pirate everything and use an ablocker and clients to get Youtube for free.
I don't really care about being morally right. I'm just going to steal as much content as possible without giving any kind of a shit forever, unironically.
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Disney also owned April’s top streaming title, Grey’s Anatomy, which notched 3.9 billion viewing minutes and benefited from its multichannel and multiplatform availability.
WTF how are so many people still watching this show agter 20+ years? I honestly find this pretty shocking.
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Nielsen = king of guessamation
It's an educated wish.
What are people even watching on Disney all day? I assume it’s just a constant stream of cartoons for toddlers?
They have a ton of non-Disney stuff. Many old movies and shows. Like Buffy, Aliens, Monk.
And of course Star Wars.
And sports:
Disney’s 0.2 point gain over March was partly driven by cross-network coverage of the NFL Draft, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship and the first round of the NBA Playoffs.
The chart isn't about streaming services, but companies. So this is covering everything that is owned by Disney, which includes broadcast and cable channels in addition to Disney+, and probably Hulu and maybe even other things that I'm not even aware of.
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I prefer Dropout
It’s such a game changer!
How much attention is paid? I frequently throw on YouTube for background noise. I only hit up Netflix or Disney if I actually want to watch something. I bet I'm not alone.
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Wow I didn't realize Netflix had fallen so far.
They have almost no content library these days. I’m actually surprised that it is as high as it is.
It‘s all about raising the stock for them lately so I expect viewership to fall further.
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Interesting chart. Note that this is eyeballs, not profits or subscriber numbers. YouTube is free. Most all of the other services are paid, even when subscribing with ads.
Also there’s no WBD channel, so this is lumping all channels by conglomerate ownership. It would be interesting to see this by channel. Hulu viewership is being lumped in with Disney, I assume. Tubi and Pluto bolstering Fox? and Paramount numbers.
There is a paid version, and it's good value for money in my view.
I would probably pay for Youtube if they stopped sabotaging their own platform and making it worse (e.g. adding shorts, releasing those horrible Rewind videos, preventing playlists with "content made for kids" (e.g. every music video of a song from some Disney movie), mixing in unrelated content into the search results,...).
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I don't consider YouTube to be in the same category as these other streaming services. I use YouTube way more as the content is more interesting to me. But still...
- Most of the streaming services have subscriptions (some with ads). YouTube is completely free with ads (ublock origin saves the day).
- Content on YouTube is very different from other streaming services. I know YouTube have dipped its toes in the tv show market e.g. the karate kid series but nothing compared to the big productions like white lotus or lord of the rings.
- Length of content. YouTube is anywhere from 1 minutes to infinity (almost). Traditional shows on streaming services often is around 45 minutes +/- 15.
- YouTube had the worst recommendations algorithm nowadays. Seems to be the general opinion yet YouTube aren't listening.
Probably more points I haven't thought of.
Totally makes sense. I either watch YouTube or shows/movies I own on my Emby server.
Might be a silly question, but is YouTube TV considered a part of YouTube here?
youtubes also a place for people to binge on right wing content, that youtube love to push, when your not logging in, it can get people hooked easily.
I have never understood people who just watch whatever is served up to them. It's like they go out of their way not to have a preference.
If you actually curate your content it's actually a pretty nice experience and it's been consistently a nice experience for well over a decade. All the crap YouTube pull mostly affects people who use it not logged in. Also install sponsor blocker.
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