il make this point again once more. aimed specifically at platform or user monetization.
Policy change.
What has that to do with monetization ? Look at the youtubers who got taken off patreon because their views were politically incorrect. Paypal have skirted with this idea too (can’t remember if they actually did anything). All the financial players who act as a crowd source or transaction handler are involved in the same level of peer pressure to remove certain content. They fear their business might suffer, punished legally or in worst cases they actually agree ideologically with censorship.
Sorry i know it sounds negative but imo there is no building a new super ‘alt-tech’ site with mass adoption whilst the political climate remains this hostile.
I do think Small, alternative, decentralized, platform for enthusiast groups will work ( that’s what forums are if you think about it ) hence why bitchute will work for us here. But nothing right now is a real alternative for TV and nothing is a real alternative for Youtube (in the context of mass adoption). The sooner those two combine the sooner it can all be said and done and people can choose to either switch off or accept it.
Maybe the question should be more "what video site alternatives are there for alternative thinkers " I don’t see alternative news being compatible with megacorp platforms in future unless the law is specific on allowing such things.
the writing is on the wall, the internet is changing.
They used to have that I think. They used to be a little bit elitist about what they would host (wasn’t all that bad though).
By now their only requirement is that it’s your work I think.
The best thing about vimeo is that they actually care about video quality.
A lot of people seem to recommend d.tube again and again, but every time I even try watching something on there it shits the bed as soon as I set the quality to HD. And it’s not my bandwidth, I can watch youtube4k and netflix and whatever else at the same time no problem. It’s also not a temporary issue, as it happened every time I tried it over the past few months.
/edit
Huh… funny… just tried it again and it seems to be working on the one video I tried.
But I think ryan mentioned that they had issues with the upload limit, like 3GB or something?
as much as i love the level 1 content if i had to pay to watch videos weekly or monthly it would be an immediate nope. ( i do not keep a credit card/ debit card in my name active for more than a month. even with throwaway cards.)
as for a usable platform that is viable vimeo is my first choice as it is not complete garbage.
d.tube works but its kinda sketch as to how long it will last and if it can even turn a profit for the creator is an unknown.
pornhub has the porn problem so no viewing at places with porn filters. ( creator pay out is also an unknown)
bitchute does not look to bad but not many “normies” will adapt to using it as it does not follow the google and mass media trend of this is what we need you to be brainwashed with feel to it.( personally i like it easy to use for a first timer, and does not look like it has censorship problems. )
as for the rest of the hosts ( excluding floatplane monthly sub auto out) are almost use able but have under the hood problems for most.
all bitchute needs is decent mobile apps and it’s basically ready to rock. not sure if it was listed or not, but LBRY might work, though you need to run a client last I checked.
I’ve used LBRY, and it really sucks. You have to use a client, which was very slow at the time I used it. And they fell for the muh blockchain meme, so it takes forever to launch if you haven’t used it in more than a week. The content availability is poor, as in some videos just wont load (ever).
Bitchute I do actually use, there are people who post on it that I watch, and the videos always load. I do wish there was a mobile client, because I like to listen to videos on my phone. But as a platform it’s rock solid.
To be fair, you can use bitchute on a mobile browser. At least on android that is.
@looming-hawk YouTube has pretty much just become Jimmy Kimmel, main stream news, and pirate streams of family guy. To the normie, they probably don’t look at user generated content off the site all that much.
Yeah I know, rise from the dead my pretty, necrophilia etc etc…
Today something weird happened to me.
Youtube played 2 ads in a row one right after the other. Unskipable. The advertisers got smart and are making 6 seconds ads you don’t really have a chance to skip anyways, but I absolutely despise the fact there is the option of 2 ads back to back, because it’s not far away when there will be 3 ads back to back and that’s just the start of the youtube video. Midvideo ads are a thing and then we are talking about up to 9 ads in a video if we only have one ad break mid video. It’s getting ridiculous…
So are there really any viable alternatives to youtube? Meaning actually having content and not overdoing the add stuff so I can watch the stupid video?
Also the fucking Google know I have been looking for a washing machine so all my adds now are persil, somat, calgon, etc chemicals…
Yeah, I hate when that happens. It doesn’t happen often tho. And when those ads happened to me, they were both just 15 seconds long. So it was just a half a minute of ads, which isn’t huge but also sucks a lot.
I forgot the name of the site, but it used YouTube servers for the back end and used their own front end, the videos didn’t but have ads on them. I wish I remebered the name.
The cool thing about it is that you can play videos in the background on mobile. Jumping forward and backwards in time also works as expected and is fast, unlike on YouTube which takes a while sometimes.
And for a long time there will be no real alternative, if it ever arises. I’m talking about a real player nr2 on the market, not various marginal projects that are trying to pretend to be youtube. Or some frontend solutions that they do only nice wallpaper on youtube face.
Unfortunately, youtube is currently a giant. For a real alternative to appear, you need a very large $$$ and the conviction of a large number of creators to add an alternative as a second source next to / or instead of youtube otherwise the monopoly on the market will remain.
There are far better methods for ad problems and spyware than marginal alternatives …
I don’t watch ads. I block everything. I know I’m a bad man and I don’t let people make money on youtube.
The 2 ads thing is nothing new, they’re doing that for years already. If an ad is skippable or not depends on the advertiser of course.
Generally I don’t mind the ads, YouTube and the Creators both have costs to cover so yeah… but it gets annoying when it’s long and not skippable.
I remember back when ESO launched they had a 3 minute trailer playing as an “ad” on Twitch, and Twitch ads are not skippable no matter what. That’s fun. And those were times where Twitch streams crashed even more often then they do now.
Just since i’m playing with it:
You could go with one of the subscription downloaders based on youtube-dl. I’m running a cron job every hour that automatically downloads all my subscriptions. I’m working on a script that generates nfo files for kodi to make every channel into a “series”.
That gives you the option to have a series library in kodi, including “new episodes” and, if you incorporate the youtube rating, also a “best new episodes” thingy.
It’s not so great in terms of discoverability, but it skips the adds before the video and the whole “sharing your preferences and algorithm” thing. Not a real alternative, but a less intrusive/add riddled way of getting the videos.
I actually have a premium account for a while now and given how much I watch and the fact that google music is included (which replaced spotify for me), I think it is well worth it.
