Hey Lemmy fam,
After years of wading through endless crap—click‑bait thumbnails, algorithmic rabbit holes, and non‑stop ads—I finally stopped using YouTube. Below are the main reasons I walked away and a handful of privacy‑friendly alternatives that let you keep the content you love without the garbage.
YouTube’s recommendation engine throws endless crap at you, turning a 5‑minute tutorial into a 2‑hour binge you never signed up for.
What I do instead:
- Lemmy – I follow specific communities (
r/technology,c/firefox,c/degoogle ``) and browse chronologically or by “Hot”. No hidden agenda, just the posts I chose. - RSS feeds – Subscribe to the channels I actually care about via an RSS reader (Feedly, Newsboat, or Lemmy’s built‑in RSS). New videos appear as they’re posted, no surprise junk.
Every view, pause, and hover is logged and sold to advertisers. Even with an ad‑blocker, YouTube still harvests data through its API calls and cookies.
What I do instead:
- PeerTube – Decentralized, ad‑free video hosting. Each instance runs its own moderation and privacy policies. You can even self‑host a node if you want full control.
The algorithm recommends things it thinks you’ll like or have watched before. So if its recommending AI slop, it’s because you’re watching AI slop already. People just refuse to take the time to “train” your algorithm (and this isn’t just YouTube, it’s all algorithmic based platforms). You like / dislike stuff, hide things, give feedback, etc, and eventually you only really see the stuff you actually want to see. Sure some things slip through but 🤷♀️ I use YouTube and will continue to only bc the people I watch don’t post anywhere else, unfortunately.