You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now
There's already a workaround (found, again, here), but I figured I would use this opportunity to tell people that projects like Piped and Invidious exist, which both allow you to watch YouTube without loading their ads, with improved Privacy and (in the case of Piped) even Geoblocking-Circumvention and SponsorBlock out of the box.
They're both great tools, and using something like LibRedirect you can even automatically go to Piped or Invidious when clicking/opening a YouTube link (and more).
Both don't load ads, but unless changed in the settings Individous may still make connections to Google/YouTube to load the video(s) themselves.
Bit of a shameless plug for these projects, but I figured this is a really good time to show these projects as I often see people asking what they are in threads on here
Lemmy users are just delusional in that regard. You can't just switch away from Google, its not the tech that makes in great, its the content. It's the same with messengers, if your friends arent there how useful is that foss messenger really?
Thankfully the only creator I regularly watch that does non-educational videos uploads them on their own website. For everything else nebula actually is an alternative, although I'm not subscribed to it at the moment
Maybe it's unlikely for this to happen, but I wonder if it'd be possible for yt to go down like reddit did. Yt makes a series of bad decisions, so a lot of people move from there to similar platforms. The other services don't have much content right now, but from what I here, neither did Lemmy before the "exodus."
I get that reddit and youtube are very different types of platforms and that the whole reddit thing happened because of pretty specific circumstances, but idk, maybe something vaguely similar could happen.
"go down like Reddit did" … But did Reddit "go down"? It definitely lost users and content quality dropped, but still, everyone I talk to (that isn't a total nerd like us lemmings) still uses Reddit and has no idea what Lemmy is.
I was going to try and contradict you, but I guess most of the people I know well IRL are also total nerds
Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn't use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn't seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.
You should refer her to Cory Doctorow's writing, namely his concept of enshittification. He's one of the most effective political communicators alive today. If anyone can get her to understand the import of the issues surrounding Reddit's Simple Jack routine, it's him.
I know the term enshitification, so maybe I've already read his stuff. I'm going to check it out more. Thanks!
Y'know, good point. I haven't actually been on reddit since the blackout, so I probably shouldn't be confidently basing any theories on just what I've heard about now-reddit from other people, lol. Thanks for the correction.
I guess my idea of how much reddit "fell" and how much Lemmy/Mastodon grew is a bit inflated, probably because I spend all my internet time here now.
(copy/pasted my response to another comment)
Yeah. I introduced my wife to Reddit (she knew of it but didn't use it until I kinda showed her how great it is (was)). Now her family and friends use it too. They all heard about the drama but didn't seem to care or understand and they all still use Reddit.
It's not like it's making any bad decisions right now. Pretty calculated, I'd say - they feel safe market-wise, so they can increase amount of ads/fight ad-blockers/push people to buy subscription.
Oh yeah I don't disagree. The wording was unclear, but I meant that more in the future/hypothetical tense. It just seems like that's what all the big social media sites have been doing lately, so I was assuming that yt's quality will take a nosedive sooner or later, but I guess it's unfair (and hopefully wrong) to assume that. Thx for the correction
I get where you are coming from, however it's important to remember that big players are not equal - they have really, really different people in the leadership. Elmo is just a too-big-to-fall clown with insane ego, spez is a manchild who took VC money like there's no tomorrow and in the end had no idea how to provide ROI, but youtube is ran by very competent people with solid track record and deep pockets.
Maybe they are not too innovative business-wise recently… but they are good at catching up (except live streaming - screen layout is dogshit and nobody wants to get hyped in their tiny chatbox from a fucking google account with family photo as an avatar) and at leveraging what they already have, which is quite a lot, tbh.
First reddit didn't go down, despite having an user base which had some kind of a brain.
While YouTube has everyone as users. Even like the most normie, boomer, zoomer users that think YouTube is the internet. No way they are going to switch for ideological reasons, unless the app just stops working.
This is so difficult. How many people would be willing to switch to Signal or Wickr for one friend? And then what if none of their friends don't want to switch? And then the friends of those people, etc. Trying to switch workgroups, family, friends and all of their friends as well is a lost cause, it would never happen.
that's why what we really need is guaranteed service interoperability!
https://pca.st/episode/d79ca535-186c-4ee0-b658-165a148dcca5
The alternative exists, but it costs money. Most big YouTuber accounts (at least the ones I'm subscribed to) post on either Nebula, Patreon or some platform like that. It would cost quite a lot to subscribe to them all, but still less than YouTube premium in my country. So in the worst case scenario where YouTube really blocks all ad free interfaces except paid use, that's my answer. I don't like it as I think a lot of the content is overpriced for what it is, but it's better than having $$$ swallowed up by some mega corporation that is just interested in screwing authors and viewers over as much as possible.