During my DeGoogling, dumping YouTube was easy, and was made easier when they started permanently banning leftist feeds like Party Girls. The struggle for me was Google Maps. Lots of substitutes, and I do use CoMaps, but none are quite as slick as the Google version...yet.

Nebula might be worth the $5/month. The platform is run by the creators, so that money goes to them. DM me if you’re interested. I can gift you a free week.

The very platform you're clinging to is on Death's Door and they're actively breaking YouTube's terms of service while still using the service.

None of the other platforms are even close to replacing YouTube. They can't handle the scale or the features. And none of them are heading towards being able to accomplish this.

YouTube is a capitalist utopia funded with more money than God. They provide unlimited free storage and transmission of all videos sent to their platform. They fleece videos for copyright and legal impingements. They gather corporations willing to spend on advertisements and link them directly to end users uploading data, and when they reach a threshold, they pay them.These funds pay for the unlimited amounts of storage at levels that no other platform could handle.

The other platforms that are open to us don't make enough money to do any of those things. We're relying on the funding, development, and administration of a couple of generous strangers.

Nothing can compare yet to YouTube.

The main reason is: YouTube is not only a distribution channel. It is also its own promotion channel tied to a search engine which magnifies that promotion.

You open YouTube and it offers similar videos tho what you've been watching. You search for something and there is probably a video (or many( matching what you are searching.

Other platforms are currently only distribution channels. You upload the video and promote it through other channels. Whether your own website or posts somewhere else.

Si, if you are a content producer and want to share, the current fediverse solutions are great, however it will need critical mass to attract content consumers.

And without content consumers, it will be hard to attract content providers who want a broad distribution and exposure.

So, let's start moving out own content to the fediverse and use other channels to promote them. Let's create a snowball effect. We could even post to several and see where the content consumers gravitate to.

I mean if peertube was based on torrents...would that work?

I use peertube as much as I can, but there's only like 3 people that I like from Youtube that's also on Peertube: Veronica Explains (@veronicaexplains@tinkerbetter.tube), The Linux Experiment (@thelinuxexperiment_channel@tilvids.com) and Gardiner Bryant (@gardiner_bryant@subscribeto.me). I guess I watch Tafotin (@trafotin@spectra.video) from time to time as well.
I hadn't even used Odysee before, but just a cursory look I did find someone whose content I enjoy there, Naomi Brockwell. From the looks of it, it has some sort of crypto feature? (ew)
Also, how in the world does decentralization work there? There's only one website, that's odysee.com, that doesn't seem very decentralized to me.

I'm just so sick of the censorship on youtube, and the shadowbanning of comments. It feels like 90% of my comments aren't seen by anyone, not even myself.

I like the idea of PeerTube, but I tried running an instance and was unable to sustain the experiment for too long. I made it very open and it got quickly flooded by pirated TV series and spammy and heavy content.

After that, I had a difficult time at some point finding an instance to host some videos I wanted to upload - and, having had that failed experiment before hand, I can see why the instances that do survive are often those with more stringent filters and less generous with resources.

So, I am sorry to "chime in about the shortcomings", but hosting a PeerTube instance can be a demotivating experience. You set up the infrastructure expecting to contribute to a space reminiscent of the old youtube, and you see it filled with spam. The signal-to-noise ratio is just awful and it is expensive. To avoid this, you can be an aggressive gate keeper - but this makes the platform less friendly to people who are looking to find a space to share their original content. Gate keeping is also an additional effort that you need to make. In the end I chose to just shut it off as it was more of a hassle than fun. By comparison, hosting a Lemmy instance is fun, much much cheaper, and little hassle.

I still haven't given up on the idea of Peertube, though... I have some video ideas, and when I finally get to making them I plan to make another instance to host only my channel. Then, I would be able to host my own channel using my own infrastructure via a federated network. This use case would work very well for me, and it can probably work for many others. So that is one way of building the Peertube network.

General permissive video uploads is something that makes YouTube such a powerful platform though, and that is very difficult to replicate.

Yesterday, but today is good as well. :-)

I personally run two. My own at video.firesidefedi.live.

And started a nonprofit that I'm still working on getting 501(C) 3 status in the US called BT Free, and currently running a moderated instance TubeFree.org. open for sign ups, but if you want to post video I need to see it first as again, heavily moderated. Eventually I plan on having storage costs for tax deductible donations, but idk when that'll be. And hopefully in the future can do revenue sharing or have a way to post creators.

I know Ben Pate, whom I talked with on fireside fedi and is creating emissary and bandwagon, is working on pay systems. As well as other folks.

very much on the fringe

When mainstream is mostly consumerist attention grabbing bullshit, is it genuinely a problem?

getting apps into appstores would make a big difference but if someone follows a particular person or if its free on youtube they are going to go there. I watch colbert on youtube.

The best time to switch away from youtube was several years back, after the growth phase of our few remaining tech players ended and maximizing revenue started.

The next best time is now. They will only get worse, and bow to powerful interests even more. Them demanding we prove age by providing commercially valuable info they will keep no matter what they say, should be the last straw for all of us.

Find smaller competitors, youtube and google are lost causes we need to quit both.

Let’s be clear : how YouTubers will survive without ads money on another platform ?

It's very difficult to get away from YT, too long time with free hands converted it to a monoply with all its abuses. Yes, there are alternatives like Odysee, PeerTube and some others, but they lack of contents, front ends, like Invidious, PokeTube, etc are getting killed more and more by Gargle. For music there isn't such a big problem, most content can be listen in Bandcamp and other streaming sites, but for other contents only can be found, eg. in the homepages of the Public TV (Movies, Live streams, Documentals,....). Another possibility are Desktop clients, but eg. FreeTube relays on Invidious and with this most Videos are blocked, VLC or SMplayer still working mostly. It's certainly a Mess and it will take years to be able to substitute really YT. Only manner until now is to use protection against the profiling and tracking (VPN, Proxies, ad/tracker blocker anyway mandatory, etc).

The last I heard Youtube actually makes a loss in terms of cost and ad revenue but is worth maintaining because of the user data it makes available to its parent company. The low ethical standards and backing of one of the worlds biggest corporations allow it to outcompete any alternative.

If we're serious about dealing with the problem we need to deal with antitrust and privacy.

I doubt they will do it but video creators need to organise and put pressure on government to enforce the law on this.

It’s kind of wild to me that the alternatives to YT aren’t… better. I mean, it’s not as if YT is brand new.

The PeerTube iOS app is just a mess. And I’m not sure, but I think the Odysee app hasn’t been updated since the Second World War.

Holy crap, my entire response sounds like a whiny kid. Maybe instead of me complaining, I should throw up a PT instance and do something meaningful.

We need to split clients from providers.

Invidious and freetube could diversify to accept multiple alternative sources besides youtube content.

If the content exists on multiple platforms the user could set a preference and orded or backup providers.

As creators make a switch to smaller platforms the users who use these clients are unaffected. It works similar to our fediverse, a community can just change instance and everyone can still access it the same.

Creators could test migration by posting to multiple providers themselves. Those reliant on YouTube money specifically could premiere on youtube and after some time reupload elsewhere.

Those that dont rely on youtube money can do the reverse where the later youtube upload serves more as an ad to their alternative main channel.

You could make a service that is objectively better than YouTube in every single way but unless creators are getting paid >90% of them won't use it. There's a reason TikTok creators always try and grow their YouTube following and its because it pays significantly better.

Nebula is pretty great.

What does a different front end do for you? Serious question.

The problem is that there are no good solutions hosting and serving video with transcoding g is expensive. They do the best they can, but its not enough. This is where tech giants thrive, in the really expensive stuff that gets cheaper thanks to the economy of scale (is that the term? I forgot). Those are the big strongholds of YouTube, twitch, AI,