DeGoogle Yourself @lemmy.ml Dariusmiles2123 @sh.itjust.works 6 days ago

Help to get rid of YouTube

Hi everyone!

I’ve almost entirely degoogled my life, except for Youtube.

Here are my center of interests and some channels I follow:

Linux: The Linux Experiment, Tech Hut
Basketball: NBA, Andy Hoops, Heat Check, Jonny Arnett, BasketNews
Cars: Throttle House, Everyday Driver, Car and Driver
Console Gaming: GamingBolt, IGN
Tech: Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie

Concerning Linux, it has been easy to find alternatives to YouTube as The Linux Experiment is on PeerTube and I can support him for 1$ a month Through Patreon.

Tech Hut is on Odysee so I could watch his videos here and support him through Buy Me A Coffee or something similar if I wanted to.

I know I could watch everything from the Linus Tech Tips on Floatplane but 5$ a month is a bit too expensive.

Do you have any suggestions about anyone producing similar content to what I’ve described above (Basketball, Console Gaming, Cars and Tech) that I could watch on a YouTube alternative?

I don’t mind paying 1-2$ a month for a channel I enjoy but I can’t pay more for now 😇

32 comments

Patreon is your main choice I think. Many youtubers post videos there. Though you might have to pay a lot if you subscribe to a lot of creators.

You can also consider a FOSS YouTube client but the most privacy-focused ones are dead now unfortunately.
- Newpipe is a great and active FOSS Youtube client!
  
  Unfortunately it has the "Sign in to confirm that you're not a bot" issue like 99% of the clients. That's what I meant in "dead". Also it's not the most privacy-protecting one by far.
- LibreTube works just fine if you disable proxying. FreeTube / FreeTubeCordova also works perfectly fine.
  
  Libretube gives the error for me either straight away or after a few videos. Sometimes using a VPN and changing servers all the time helps.
  
  FreeTube is a desktop only app unfortunately.
- Yeah but using a YouTube client would feel a bit dishonest to me as you’re still using Youtube in the end😇
  
  I’ll look more into Patreon as I didn’t know you could have videos directly on it.
  
  I’m just using it to listen to the Linuux Experiment podcast.
- Some YouTubers also just post unlisted YouTube links on their Patreon unfortunately
- I was just about to suggest GrayJay but then I remembered it’s an Android app.
YouTube anonymous and/or ad-free is fine I think. Especially if you're not hooked in to everything else. Even with all their bullshit the last few years it's only been one or two hiccups.

-ReVanced

-NewPipe

-Freetube

-yt-dlp

The beast can be controlled.
I wish there was a YouTube equivalent of Sonarr that just uses yt-dl to auto-grab and organize YT channels you want as new episodes come out. Then you could just play with Plex or Jellyfin.
- Maybe this would be useful for organizing?
  
  EDIT: Forgot link: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
  
  I've actually checked that out and it's well made but way more than just a subscription tool, it's more for downloading/preserving entire channels.
- There is
  
  https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub
  
  I've seen that but either I'm an idiot or that is a CLI tool. What makes Sonarr nice is that it's config is all done through a web browser meaning you don't need to edit config files anytime you want to change something.
  
  Thank you for sharing though I may try and get it set up one day
- I feel like at one point I saw a way to use yt-dlp to get only the latest videos on a channel/playlist.
Not really an answer to your question, but I'll share my approach. Youtube channels have rss feeds, so you can "subscribe" using any rss reader, and don't need to login.

So I just use firefox with the following addons. A seperate youtube container + adblock + in-video ad skip + age verification skip + feedbro as rss reader.
- This is a neat workaround !! Still, for privacy reason I keep my addons to a strict minimum.
  
  However I save your comment as emergency workaround ! Thanks for the tip !
For finding content creators on alternative services, maybe use Grayjay for Android? It aggregates multiple services into a single, mostly concise UI, and when you do a search, Grayjay can search all services at once. Also recently it added a recommended tab, which should help finding new channels on the go.
If you install Freetube you'll be able to view Youtube and subscribe to channels without using an account.
Basically YouTube is the only that you can't "degoogled" you will not find any alternative to watch videos of a lot of creators or search tutorial, explanations in it. Sadly...
- Yeah YouTube is not possible to avoid.
  
  I really hope that one day we’ll have another platform where you can just pay 2$ per month to every channel you subscribe to and all the great YouTubers open an alternative channel on that platform.
  
  For now PeerTube and Odysee look like the best alternatives..
  
  Peertube is actually a really good alternative to YouTube and it means the return of the decentralized web! (Odysee is a good alternative too, but I don't know if their maintainers are okay) But the problem is that the creators would lost money if they do this for free, and people wouldn't want to pay if they can have data mining videos for "free"
There is an site to turn YT feeds into RSS (?) And then play the audio through Antenna Pod. So YouTube to podcast.

I've got it working for some things I follow where I dont need the visuals.
After looking a bit into Patreon, Peertube, Floatplane, Nebula, Rumble, Odysee and Dailymotion, I find it crazy that even when you're willing to pay, all the good content is the one that you can watch for free on YouTube (with a few exceptions of course).

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