Today in a Privacy community a post about YouTube. No word about privacy but all about which software or settings are needed to watch videos and the money needed to host videos. It made me wonder whether some of you can lead a meaningful life without YouTube. Or will a cold turkey bring the worst out of you ?
YouTube has one use for me - the occasional video on how to do something technical
How people watch hour after hour of other people’s inane ramblings I will never know. You must have have an incredibly low bar for what you consider entertainment 😂
Personally, YouTube isn’t other people’s inane rambling for me. It’s science education, it’s about how to identify and forage for food, it’s video essays about nuclear disasters… it’s constantly introducing me to new concepts— like why lawns are bad for the environment, how other countries tackle the problem of traffic and public transportation, why DIY air purifiers are more effective than nearly every commercial air purifier on the market, etc.
It’s a platform where the medium is video form content. Everything is available there. Both garbage and gold. It’s the way that you use it that determines which one you get. For me, it’s like Wikipedia in video form. With the occasional bit of entertainment on the side, as a treat.
Wikipedia in Video Form is a great line! I feel much the same way, but I think that’s not the entire picture. Wikipedia is a lot of declarative knowledge (i.e. what things are and Al’s maybe why they are), but YouTube is a lot of procedural knowledge for me. That is how to X. My GF and I finally found an apartment. I don’t know how to replace broken light switches, but in five minutes YouTube taught me how.
I didn’t know how to replace a faucet - now I do. I did not know how to insert a metal screw fitting into the furniture I was constructing - now I do. I wanted to measure our energy consumption, figuring there had to be a way to it it smart/connected and Open Source. YT content creators showed me how.
The list goes oooonnnnnn
I only watch movie and game trailers on YouTube, so yes, it would not bother me if they would be bankrupt tomorrow.
It would be tough in the beginning but sure. I’ve watched everything interesting anyw… oh what’s that? Another rabbit hole!
I guess yes. I use it from time to time via NewPipe to look up some bike repair stuff but I guess I could easily find that somewhere else in the web. But I think this could be a generation thing, I know many people only a few years younger who absolutely depend on random internet people explaining the news to them in video format or stuff like that.