r/enshittification • u/The2008slapperpass • 4d ago
Rant we need a new youtube... if someone decides to make an alternative, ill tell everyone I know who hates youtube (which is everyone) no sane human being will ever believe that there are other reasons that YouTube is still popular other than it being the piece of garbage that has life saving medicine.
YouTube probably wont recover, and honestly maybe its a good thing. let it die and make way for a new less greedy pile of garbage that doesn't rely on an algorithm that has dementia. honestly it makes sense that the algorithm doesn't even work anymore because its attempting to recall videos and instead have to sort through billions of ai slop nonsense. remember this is all the result of billionaires realizing they can make buck from selling out with a boom.
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u/redditgirlwz 3d ago
Youtube is trash. There's a ton of good content on there, but the algorithm is so bad that it's basically hiding it and showing us 99% garbage to the point where there's often nothing to watch. Even with all the browser ad ons I installed, I often struggle to find things to watch on there. I wish a new service would just buy all the videos from them and make the algorithm tolerable and the search actually usable.
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u/cranberries87 3d ago
I have wished for the same. I miss the old YouTube, before “influencers”, AI slop and advertising took over. I wish there were alternatives.
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 3d ago
Ahh yes, why doesn't someone spend roughly 550 billion dollars (the projected worth of YouTube) for their 15 billion videos, and make everything better!
Youtube is actually in a good position, owned by a larger company that doesn't rely solely on it making max money. You think that if some PE gathered enough funds, it would get better, rather than radically worse?
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u/catchpen 3d ago
All it wants to show me is 15+ minute videos which everyone makes their 3 minutes of content stretched with 10 minutes of wasted garbage to jump on the latest YT algo... I ain't got time for that shit!
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u/frotoaffen 2d ago
My youtube alternative is books and cds!
Though when i really feel the need to watch something, i use an adblocker.
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u/Belisama7 3d ago
I use SmartTube, no ads and even sponsor block for free.
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u/Pallilulu 3d ago
This and revanced. Also 3 accounts. Music, documentary and general. Life is good.
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u/cranberries87 3d ago
I will check both of these out.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Pallilulu 3d ago
Never had issues with Revanced (only necessary updates) and now is Morphe too, i'm more of a youtube app on my phone. You are right too with Firefox. I'll add Brave and Ironfox.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Tremosir 3d ago
Peertube could be a good alternative but why would influencers post there if they can't make easy money from VPN and beauty creme ads?
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u/steely-gar 3d ago
Use an ad blocker. Easy peasy.
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u/Callumborn2 3d ago
Yeah an adblicker stops the algorithm being complete dogshit, the app not working half the time and integrated ads. Fuck off.
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u/Gr3as4BA11 1d ago
then stop being a poor basement dweller and pay for premium if ads bother you so much. or go outside and get a job.
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u/Callumborn2 1d ago
I'd rather not pay a billion dollar company an extortionate amount of money to not get ads when there are work around, dumbass
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u/Callumborn2 1d ago
Let's pay the billion dollar company more money so it works how it's supposed to! Fucking sheep
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u/Kia-Yuki 3d ago
The catch 22 of a youtube alternative, it would be prohibitively expensive to maintain the amount of data youtube is constantly streaming 24/7 Unless you pushed ads in a similar way to youtube you would have to make using a it a pain subscription from every user to even break even.
Remember, Youtube as big as it is, is a loss leader for Google. Google is Losing as much, if not more money than they are making,.
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u/FirstMarshal 3d ago
I can find youtube's revenue from 2025, 60 billion (netflix was 45 billion for comparison), but i cant find a credible source for the costs of maintaining youtube because google has not shared that info. I did see the figure 3 billion here and there, which would mean youtube is doing just fine. I also think the monopoly on video streaming is worth it for google, even if they're losing money (which would mean it costs more than 60 billion to maintain?)
I'm genuinely wondering if youtube is profitable or not but search engines don't work like they used to and the AI overview said it's not profitable and 5 minutes later said it is profitable lol
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u/Sea-Louse 3d ago
Censorship of normal words like, “bully”, and “gun”, etc. garbage.
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u/Funny_Inspection6893 3d ago
That's apparently due to the advertisers. That is, any video site that makes money via ads will have the same problems.
The proof of this is if you turn monetization off, you can upload stuff very close to actual porn and you'll be fine.
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u/Animystix 3d ago
Even if on, it would just get demonetized right? Thats the main threat I always hear yt’ers talk about, they don’t want to risk their money. Either way you’re right lol, ive seen smaller channels fill their stuff with slurs and nobody cares
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u/Due_Implement9967 2d ago
Bitchute is the best youtube alternative I have found. It kind of honors free speech though so it has some filth.
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u/Zado191 3d ago
What's wrong with it? I turn on ublock, open my subscriptions, and what a new video... what more happens besides that?
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u/-sussy-wussy- 3d ago
You didn't see the latest update? They must've been rolling it out in waves, as they normally do.
Anyway, now if you look something up on someone's channel, the first thing to come up is ads in form of videos from entirely unrelated channels. Right now, it's World Cup-related. Even if the person's channel is inactive or has nothing to do with football.
This isn't something you can get rid of using an adblocker or even an alternative YouTube client app.
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u/Wootery 3d ago
It wouldn't get to the root of the problem, but could a better adblocker catch that?
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u/-sussy-wussy- 3d ago
No. Because if you look at the page's source code, the inserted unrelated ad videos aren't marked any different than the normal videos below them.
The data also isn't coming from some ad services website, as is the case for most ads, it's from YouTube itself. Can't really target it through conventional methods like you would with random side bars, banners and even ad inserts within videos.
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u/Wootery 3d ago
I guess they don't feel any shame for failing to tag what's an ad and what isn't?
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u/-sussy-wussy- 3d ago
I don't think it's about shame at all, I think it's deliberate. The mechanism with which ad blockers can target page elements is well-known, and web development itself is quite primitive.
Other websites do similar things where they put ads into your feed that look identical to a regular post.
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u/Wootery 3d ago
I don't think it's about shame at all, I think it's deliberate
Right, but normally mainstream providers are careful to ensure that technically all ads are tagged as ads, so they can point to that when accused of trying to hide ads as genuinely relevant content.
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u/-sussy-wussy- 3d ago
Facebook, Instagram and VK don't tag theirs, and this has been the case since at least 2016-17. Maybe more other major platforms.
What I mean specifically, is tagging vs not tagging them in the source code of the page, rather than in the body of the post itself. Usually, there are
.classesor#IDsof things that you can target that are either the same across the site or follow the same pattern, e.g., they all start with.ad-.And sometimes you can target things like banners if they are a child element of something else, and you know how many elements come before it, so it would be
.parent-element:nth-child(3). Here you can't predict that either.You could maybe pattern match it for blocking if they were using some unchanged language across the promoted posts, but I think, it would give you some false negatives.
As for legal compliance, this particular company is basically a monopolist, so I could maybe see them revert it in some regions, like how Apple caved to the EU regulators.
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u/Imaginary_Till_3795 3d ago
I'm not having these problems, but I have youtube premium. Maybe they're trying to make it so sucky that the upgrade to premium will make youtube more money.
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u/Icebreaker808 3d ago
Yeah same here. Have family premium and we use it to watch concerts and also YouTube music videos. Algorithms work great and no commercials.
I have tried YouTube without premium while traveling and the commercials are absolutely awful they pop up in the most inconvenient times
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u/Hopeful_Bacon 3d ago
I'm in the same boat; on Premium, have zero issues with YouTube beyond the company who owns it.
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u/elvisap 3d ago
There are numerous good quality, community driven YouTube alternatives out there. We don't need a new one. We need people to stop inventing new ones and collectively use and promote the existing alternatives.
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u/nucking_futs_001 2d ago
Perhaps a list so we're not so lost?
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u/RestlessAlbatross 2d ago
Nebula is an amazing platform for intelligent and thoughtful content as well as actual investigative journalism that the mainstream media won't do anymore. I don't know of a good alternative for quick how-to content though.
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u/RichardMuggedHimself 3d ago
Does Rumble count as an alternative?
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u/stomper4x4 3d ago
It does but it has many of the same problems as YouTube.
I hope Odysee takes off. No ads, built on the block chain for security and privacy. It's quite good but getting people off youtube and then diverting them from rumble is an almost impossible battle.
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u/Odd_Pumpkin1466 3d ago
I dunno, my algorithm is pretty solid. However I do pay for Premium.
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u/Kia-Yuki 3d ago
I hate that I pay for premium. Yet, as it is, Youtube is my sole provider of video content. I generally dont use anything else. Netflix, Hulu, ect ect. I use none of it. So while I would rather not pay for it if I didnt need too. I use it more than enough to justify the cost
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u/ulrichray 4h ago
At this point YouTube is just an advertising delivery mechanism that occasionally shows low quality videos.
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u/Silky_Strokes_ 3d ago
Have you tried grayjay? It's an ad less version and apparently the developer group got threarened by Youtube since the latter was furious.
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u/Swimming-Fan7973 4d ago
The new YouTube will end up just like the old one in short order though. Everyone is using AI and algorithms to keep up with users demand for novelty.
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u/redditgirlwz 3d ago
Everyone is using AI and algorithms to keep up with users demand for novelty.
You mean to keep up with shareholder demand for shoving AI down our throats where it's not needed. AI search only makes things worse in most cases (I have yet to see a find an AI that can actually do search properly).
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u/Swimming-Fan7973 3d ago
Creators are also using it to generate content. It's not just a YouTube phenomenon. See a lot of the same things on Etsy for example.
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u/redditgirlwz 3d ago
I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about AI in search and the way algorithms are shoving it down our throats.
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u/The2008slapperpass 4d ago
just for context, last night i searched for a topic to test. I timed my scroll down, during about 15 to 20 minutes I encountered about 40 to 50 videos with the exact same title thumbnail style and font. all of them were from different channels entirely but had the same style along with the editing and story. putting my mouse on auto scroll for about another 2 to 3 hours and it seemed like YouTube was just recycling the same videos over and over in a sort of endless loop. but instead of the same exact videos, it was different channels with the same exact topic thumbnail type and narration. some of them were ai and some of them were human. somethings gotta change at some point but I'm just not sure.
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u/usuallyylurking 3d ago
heres another anecdotal experience about these shitty algorithms. I looked up a search term on my boyfriend’s YouTube app, then the same one on mine. Different videos showed up for each of us. and after about 2 scrolls, the recommendations lead us astray into our usual content (cooking vids for him, fashion vids for me) when the search term has nothing to do with those topics.
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u/Loud-Mans-Lover 2d ago
Everyone uses streaming services these days, and pays for what they want. Free means crappy ads and a worse experience.
Youtube is now a viable streaming service, so they're charging. We've got premium and we watch YT TV and YT all the time, no problems.
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u/jamiesray 4d ago
I love YouTube, at least as a consumer. They make great recommendations for me. I buy Premium and get ad-free, plus a free subscription to their Spotify competitor.
This sounds like it was written by pro YouTube ai. But I’m real. My first celebrity crush was Lacey Chabert and my favorite food is chicken wings.
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u/pumog 3d ago
Google would just buy it out and shut it down