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.
I use a chrome extension to disable my home feed, so I can freely watch my subscribed channels. I agree, fuck the home feed. It only wastes time.
Mozilla + UBlock means ad free YouTube.
I don’t have the app on any device because I don’t do ads. If you go ad free, then you will start to notice significant changes in you mental wellbeing inside of -10min of ad hits. I wish that was hyperbole, but it is not.
There is good content on YT, but it’s stuff you’ve already discovered. The algorithm and thumbnails are trash. And it’s rarely in the shorts section.
OP, be frank, did ChatGPT wrote this? Or am I being just paranoid of em dashes and that format?
Actually, it’s not chat GPT it lumo by proton i used to write this. The reason why I used an AI chatbot to write this is because I’m so bad at spellings i recommend you try it. Here is the link https://lumo.proton.me/ yes I actually stop watching youtube