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Only solution I don't have an alternative for is YouTube. Too many of my favorite content creators are only on YouTube. But I don't use Google search, gmail, ph

by selykg 6y ago

Only solution I don't have an alternative for is YouTube. Too many of my favorite content creators are only on YouTube. But I don't use Google search, gmail, photos, maps, or a ton of other things. It's just YouTube that I use it for.

diarrhea 6y ago
Exactly! With mail, search, maps and various others, there is no community lock-in. Who cares who else uses their same mail provider? YouTube is the only thing where I do not see an alternative, simply because that website is not about the product itself, but about the people who use it. Replacing the product is easy-ish, but the people are impossible to.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Discovery aside (not a big deal for me personally, most recent recommendations have come from HN & channels I already watched) you can just 'subscribe' with some other tool, and download or watch on youtubenocookie, or just use the site not logged in? I suppose it just depends what you're trying to achieve by 'degoogling'.
  - diarrhea 6y ago
    That works, but wouldn't for me. Discovery is precisely the primary service YouTube does for me. I really only ever click around the top two rows on the main page, all automatic YouTube suggestions. They are relevant and interesting enough for this to work consistently.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Interesting. Mine are awful, spam-level awful. (Even when I had an account and subscriptions.) But I think my point stands - recommendations don't actually need any network effect, or to be done by YouTube itself. You could have a third-party/OSS recommender, it's just pretty niche and probably doesn't exist. IMO YouTube can be used as a dumb content store. It's on the creator side that it has the 'network effect' handcuffs - it's the content store everyone goes to, so if you make content, it's where you need to store it।
      - selykg 6y ago
        Discovery for me is pretty good generally. I try to watch high quality content on YouTube, or at least high quality for the areas of interest for me. For that reason it really tends to recommend pretty good stuff for me.
ratww 6y ago
Same here. I've been spending more and more time on Nebula [1], though, since I tend to watch those kinds of videos anyway. [1] https://watchnebula.com https://watchnebula.com

by selykg 6y ago

diarrhea 6y ago

Exactly! With mail, search, maps and various others, there is no community lock-in. Who cares who else uses their same mail provider? YouTube is the only thing where I do not see an alternative, simply because that website is not about the product itself, but about the people who use it. Replacing the product is easy-ish, but the people are impossible to.

OJFord 6y ago
Discovery aside (not a big deal for me personally, most recent recommendations have come from HN & channels I already watched) you can just 'subscribe' with some other tool, and download or watch on youtubenocookie, or just use the site not logged in? I suppose it just depends what you're trying to achieve by 'degoogling'.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  That works, but wouldn't for me. Discovery is precisely the primary service YouTube does for me. I really only ever click around the top two rows on the main page, all automatic YouTube suggestions. They are relevant and interesting enough for this to work consistently.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Interesting. Mine are awful, spam-level awful. (Even when I had an account and subscriptions.) But I think my point stands - recommendations don't actually need any network effect, or to be done by YouTube itself. You could have a third-party/OSS recommender, it's just pretty niche and probably doesn't exist. IMO YouTube can be used as a dumb content store. It's on the creator side that it has the 'network effect' handcuffs - it's the content store everyone goes to, so if you make content, it's where you need to store it।
    - selykg 6y ago
      Discovery for me is pretty good generally. I try to watch high quality content on YouTube, or at least high quality for the areas of interest for me. For that reason it really tends to recommend pretty good stuff for me.

ratww 6y ago

Same here. I've been spending more and more time on Nebula [1], though, since I tend to watch those kinds of videos anyway. [1] https://watchnebula.com https://watchnebula.com