Fallacies of Youtube

I had a Youtube Subscription mainly for using Youtube Music since last year. I used to be on Newpipe before that. However, the mobile app always made be feel uneasy. From not being able to choose system wide video quality for all Youtube videos at once[ seriously, there is like 'High' or 'Data Saver' only and explicit options are available per videos only ] to Youtube nudging me to purchase/join a Youtuber's membership channel really irked me [I just paid you, Youtube ; why are you constantly asking me to pay more for something I don't want? Why can't I disable those notifications ?]

I have some time remaining on my subscription but converted to Tubular [Newpipe fork with Sponsorblock] simply because it doesn't treat it's end users like trash. Even for YTM, I switched to Revanced version which offered endless customization. I could hide useless stuff like cast, share buttons to even functions in the Account tab. The granular control was so much that I was able to get a simplistic neat looking UI setup.

In the transition, I understand, I lose some of my playlists [under a throwaway Google account since I don't wish to risk my main one getting banned] but I understand that the only true way anyone controls their music[or any form of data is by truly owning them and streaming services don't allow that]. It might sound stupid, but I have been downloading music from Soulseek for some time and now just plan to transfer some of my favorites over to the SD card.

It was never a money problem. It was an experience problem. I paid money to Google and all I got was Shorts, Games and other stuff I didn't wanted. I never got customization or fine grained controls. The open source community offers that. Sorry for the long rant.

13 comments

Gabe Newell put it well.

The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.

47
It's almost always not an issue with the money, just bad product/service and the selling of private data. If a company would be genuine and honest in their service I would stay with them until I die.

28
- Calculated misery by Tim Wu explains a lot of this. Goes on to show how airlines and other industries as well. I think the paper was published in 2014.
  
  12
I watch a stupid amount of YouTube so I pay for YouTube Premium. I wish that meant I could have premium features like disabling shorts, disabling those annoying themed sections that keep popping up (right now it's the olympic games), a search function that actually searches for what I want instead of shoving more suggested videos in my face, and changing every "not now" button into "don't ever ask again".

Despite the fact that I'm a voracious consumer of YoutTube videos and a long-time paying customer, I have to accept that I am not the target audience. They want passive users who endlessly watch whatever gets put in front of them so that they never leave the app. If there was a respectful alternative that worked well with iOS and AppleTV I'd gladly pay for that instead.

12
- I also pay for it and watch it on my android TV. And I completely agree with you. But for now it's my main source of TV and I mainly follow channels I subscribe. I don't listen to music on YT, i do follow some live music channels
  
  3
  
  Have a look at SmartTube. You'll have to transfer the apk to your AndroidTV and sideload it.
  
  1
- Yeah I have paid for YouTube Red since it was YouTube Red.
  
  I'm pretty sure they don't want want me anymore cause they have made my whole experience worse and trying to get more and more money and attention out of me.
  
  I really should stop paying too but they are literally making it so there is no alternative and I hate paying on patreon but watching on YouTube with ads
  
  2
I love YouTube, but the site often annoys me in many ways. On my computer I use newsboat along with yt-dlp to download all the videos I want to watch offline. This way, I can watch content without dealing with any of the site's frustrations....

9
- I used to have a similar setup but had it stream directly into MPV using the ytdl hook. Do you have it download the videos into a cache automatically and then load from file later and if so, how did you set that up?
  
  4
  
  Forgot to mention that mpv is how I actually watch the videos. Newsboat downloads a list from each channel kinda like an RSS feed. I can then select any video & download it by pressing a keybinding. It's been a while since I last had to actually set this up, but off memory, here's some quick info....
  
  The file ~/.newsboat/urls contains URLs similar to the one below. Just replace CHANNEL_ID with the actual channel ID. You can find the channel ID in the URL of the channel's page..
  
  https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID
  
  With the URLs in place you can edit your newsboat config file to set up a key binding for downloading videos using yt-dlp. It should be as simple as adding something like the following to the config..
  
  macro d set browser "yt-dlp %u"; open-in-browser ; set browser "xdg-open %u"
  
  This binds the d key to use yt-dlp to download videos.
  
  5
My idea is to allow premium users to have third-party apps that can be more customizable. Google barely has to lift a finger, premium would get more popular, and the experience would be so much better.

4
Why not use Revanced?

2
I love yt-dlp because it has built in sponsorblock & no ads obviously all you need is storage and patience to sort what you want to watch.

2

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