The medium online video does not necessarily encourage passive absorption, that is more due to the recommendations system combined with autoplay which is tuned

The medium online video does not necessarily encourage passive absorption, that is more due to the recommendations system combined with autoplay which is tuned to keep viewers stuck to their tubes for as long as possible. Take away the recommendations and disable autoplay and what you're left with is just a way to show video content, with all the pros and cons of such. While I prefer textual content over video I know that this is not a universal and as such there certainly is a place for those videos describing how to tune a guitar, how to floss the cat and how to bake hamburger buns. As to alternative video distribution channels being "worse" than Youtube, well, yes, the average quality of the content "relegated" to alternative channels is bound to be lower than that on Youtube simply because they apply both legitimate as well as illegitimate (political, commercial or otherwise) reasons to ban content. The value of the alternative channels lies in their willingness to distribute videos which were banned for illegitimate reasons, not in their use by those who were banned from Youtube for legitimate reasons. You can simply ignore the thrash content when using these alternatives just like you (hopefully) ignore the thrash on Youtube et al.