We all hate google and youtube, but overall as a community we’re all simultaneously lukewarm and non-committal about pushing towards using an alternative. I admittedly cling to invidious frontends for dear life.
It seems like whenever somebody asks for an alternative to youtube, they’re offered Odysee and Peertube, but inevitably many others chime in about the shortcomings of both of those platforms.
Can we as a community come to a consensus as to which of these platforms should be pushed forward?
I don’t even think it needs to be a binary choice. Obviously youtube cannot be immediately replaced for it’s archival of educational and tutorial videos, but we can at least push newcomers towards using invidious frontends for those instances.
Maybe Odysee is better for some type of content over Peertube. Let’s discuss which platform works best for what and try to be more active about sharing and promoting them not just to viewers but potential creators as well.
If you go to share a youtube link, try to see if that video exists on an alternate platform first and share that link instead. I think that’s a good first step towards getting away from youtube in the privacy community.
But youtube alternatives are still very much on the fringe and I’m hoping this post will at least inspire some discussion about changing that.
Some people have managed to diversify their income, but a hefty chunk still comes from ad money. That income is also wildly unpredictable, so it really makes economic sense to diversify. Being entirely dependent on a single source puts your business in a very precarious position. If your company fails as a result, it’s just bad strategy. On the other hand, you could also blame YT for being unpredictable, wild and turbulent.
The way I see it, the core of the problem is economic. Making videos takes money. Storage and bandwidth cost something too, so doing this on a small scale won’t make much sense.
There are a few medium scale platforms like Nebula, and they seem to be doing just fine. IMO those platforms are the way to go.