Hello guys, I have noticed that all the big internet services are starting to get worse and worse. And I am forced to migrate to foss alternatives. I have moved from Windows to OpenSUSE, from Reddit to Lemmy, etc. But I have an issue with moving from youtube. It is not that my favourite channels are not bringing me alternative they do but it is somewhat fragmented. Some of them are on PeerTube, some on Floatplane, and some on Nebula and I would rather pay those than youtube. My issue is that each of these has its app and I would like to have them united in one app to which I link all my accounts to. Does something like this exist?
You must log in or register to comment.
Some previous discussion on that topic: https://lemmy.world/post/1003513
Good work!
You can’t really make your favorite content creators switch to other platforms, so the best thing you can do for now is use a privacy-preseving frontend for YT. I can highly recommend Piped for PC and LibreTube for Android. They allow you to watch all YT videos and manage your subs/playlists without having a YT account or using the YT site or app. You can even self-host a Piped server if you want to.
@shrugal
What about NewPipe? Its nice and it also works with peertube, soundcloud, bandcamp. Its neat to have all these in the same app
@opensourceSounds interesting. I’ll try that out.
I was wondering if there would be app which is not hosting videos itself only shows me content from nebula and all other services maybe including youtube in one convinient place so it work kind of like wefwef.app just provide me nice interface for existing services so to check if there is new interesting video i need to check only one app and not the whole bunch of apps.
What you mention is similar to NewPipe, isn’t it?
It’s hard, I’ve been trying to use peertube, but it’s still kinda lacking. Most creators are still sticking with YT
On the other hand, I download youtube videos I want to watch using yt-dlp. That’s been working well for me for the past 5 years or so.
Can you eli5 yt-dlp? I’ve seen it around but I’m not sure how to use it. Sounds like something worth putting on kodi?
it’s a library / command line software to download youtube videos.
There’s more information here
Basically install the tool, and run
yt-dlp [put your youtube links here without the bracket]to download the video. I haven’t directly used the official command line for years though, so you might want to read the documentations.And that’s because, I wrote my own terminal-ui using their python API, for personal usage and requirements (you need to know at least some python or knowledge using the terminal to use it)
https://codeberg.org/mister_monster/youtube2peertube
I made this to help people solve this problem.
More on the “I want all my things in only one app” complaint, this is a marketing tactic by companies like YouTube. It’s not a reasonable expectation. If you want to watch videos, they’ll be on the video host that hosts them. Imagine if all the websites were on one website. That would suck, just like youtube and reddit. Just get over it.
We do have a technology to help us though, it’s called RSS. You can subscribe to just about anything using it, including youtube and peertube channels. Any website that doesn’t have RSS is not worth subscribing to.
I highly recommend SmartTube for Android TV, YouTube with no ads and SponsorBlock.
If I may offer a new way to think about things - YouTube ads support creators by allowing them to make a living making their videos. It’s quite different than Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, where a company is just hosting and monetizing people discussing and sharing things with each other. If you want to see good content, YouTube decentralized alternatives will really only take off if there is some sort of crowd funding going to creators. Which would most likely take the form of a subscription. And…that is essentially YouTube premium anyway. And I might add that I’ve had YouTube premium for years and it’s my favorite subscription I have across the entire internet.
YouTube is making millions off the back of creators. They’re not helping them apart from giving them some level of visibility in the unfair jungle that the algorithm is.
A form a subscription to your favorite creator on a platform like LBRY, Odyssey, Peertube goes directly to the creators without feeding the awful beast that google already is.
The problem is visibility. YouTube owns the monopoly of popular videos, and if we want alternatives to work, we need to support independent creators by tipping them, spreading the word and boycotting google.
That’s how we’ll see good content, without ads.
I’ve subbed to nebula, hope more creators move there.
At Google I’m already the product so I’m not paying them if I can. And for now I can.
I’m considering to give it a try too. Have to look up their business model more and how much creators make there.
Practical engineering, extra history and legal eagle are the most prominent YouTube migrators for me.
Real engineering and city nerd I’ve discovered there
I hope nebula figure out a way to hook into the fediverse, as there’s an overlapping ethos with the fediverse and anything they can do to get more subscribers for the content creators there should be done.
Of course they’re paid subscriber only, which isn’t quite what the Fedi is used to, but IMO, it really should mature into accepting paid subscriptions as normal so long as the governing institutions are creator owned, non-profit style bodies.
Directly integrating their content into the feed where you can only watch it with the appropriate authentication, but can still cross post or link it or discuss it, would be cool.
I’m also considering a try, but first could you tell me if you find all type of videos? I’m into Linux, PlayStation, basketball, cars and (paradoxically) ecology. Usually on other platforms than YouTube I tend to find only geeky stuff…
Yeah there’s not really a lot there on gaming stuff. I mean theres very few things in comparison to youtube. But I wanted to support it and happy to do so, but it pales in comparison.
However, just like comparing Lemmy to reddit, an alternative has to start somewhere, you can’t expect it to be the same overnight.
Thanks a lot for your answer. I might try for a few months then.
Well I’m starting on Nebula right now and sadly the content isn’t there yet.
Maybe it’ll come but I found more things which interest me on Odysee or Dailymotion for now.
Still I really like the idea of paying for a subscription and not being the product anymore.
Ads just suck all the way up and down. I don’t want to support anyone who makes money, even indirectly, from advertising.
Yes i agree that creators need money for their great work but i will prefer to pay them through floatplane or nebula or patreon because with yt premium you also support google and i really dont like what they are doing recently with chrome but that is topic for another time.
Don’t rely on YouTube to pass money to your favorite content creators. Most have their own site (where they sell merch or have a way to donate directly to them). Your Premium subscription goes right in Google’s pocket. I’m sticking with YouTube Revanced and SmartTube.
I’ve used it since 2006 but honestly I’ve given up on it due to a lack of proper moderation.
Best advice right now is to install F-droid (package manager) on your phone and then Newpipe. Newpipe can import all your subs from YouTube.
Then you just use newpipe and don’t have to use other services. Nothing is as good as YouTube today, and since it costs so much money to own a video service, only big tech corps can afford it.
Peertube is a good alternative but its just not polished enough and the content is questionable. Video is harder than a reddit replacement.
