Proton and Tutamail are both nice imo.

Agreed.

Some also argue dislikes are used for censoring, but I’d conter-argue that dissidence is a form of opinion. If people are using the tool illegitimately, it doesn’t make the tool itself illegitimate. Rather, investigating suspicious behaviour, of which there are tools one can use on Youtube, should be the way.

And I’d further say the removal hurts not just the content creators, but their followers too. If the creator uses likes ratio as a quality assurance metric, or to know what they should or shouldn’t focus on, the lack of the metric will make the service he/she provides worsen, and by extension the experience of their followers.

I’d say Youtube is a case of lack of competition making an oligopoly. And sadly for quite a few matters, it’s still the “least worse” option.

Still, I’d urge to people, though I know it’s an uphill battle, to at least keep alternatives at hand.

I think they’re going for the former in slow steps, so the impact is not as quickly noticed.

For you to remember, perhaps not needed. As Reannlegge mentioned, if a banking or payment service you use allow setting recurring payments, that’s a good option. Also if the developer or developers are on platforms that allow recurring payments, like Patreon, it’s also interesting.

For reminding others, when talking about such projects, include a reminder to support every now and then, though avoid spamming or speaking only very sporadically.

People often push back because of the link being YouTube

Idea to mitigate this (or for any other domains people get screechy at):
First entry to be some redirect script, even perhaps a community-maintained one as from what I dug on the matter a while back, replacing the domain in a link with e.g. Violent Monkey is pretty trivial, at worse requiring some regex and JavaScript knowledge.

Also as I sent the reply, I remembered something, if posting here in the fediverse, maybe worth making a community just for that, or finding an already existing one. While intent would be legitimate, these posts could be seen as spam in more general communities for being a type of ad.

Something I’d suggest is to keep a list people can suggest products to, and make a post for each of your finds, the post itself pointing to the list. It would be pretty much just you feeding the list in the beginning, but with enough patience, and a healthy influx of posts (no spam but also no overly sporadic posts), people should start joining in the discussion.

I feel like there’s an additional intent there. Short bursts of dopamine in quick succession are a pretty addicting drug, and thus making people more distracted and sedated, and if they don’t have ADHD, they may get the same focus troubles people with ADHD have.

If you must consume those, I strongly advise to at least redirect to places autoplay or replay isn’t triggered. In Youtube’s case, there are browser plugins for redirecting, yt-dlp, mobile and PC players, etc.

And expanding a bit, since it’s not a problem exclusive to Google…

For TikTok and Odysee, I don’t consume their short-format videos so can’t comment on those. And for Loops, part of the fediverse, watching externally, e.g. on Mastodon, should give the video in a plain form, without the addicting features.

~15 minutes account already has two posts spamming the same thing. Smells (reeks) like scam?

If I may suggest, already start finding alternatives where those you follow are. Helps with both timeouts, and at making less painful to stop using Youtube altogether if/when the need comes.

Also, as others said, @Untamed_Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone, if the game is on a DRM-free-oriented platform, like GOG, Itchio, etc., you could look for those.

Additionally, looking for sources of a given game can help find where it’s less of a hassle to get it, specially through databases or adjacent, like PCGamingWiki, ITAD, NeoDB (fediverse-compatible!), GameFAQS, etc. Also apparently it isn’t uncommon for databases to cross-reference each other, so one can lead to another.

If the game is only on Steam, install Linux on a VM, install Wine in it, run SteamCMD through Wine, download the build you want, and move to your host OS.

SteamCMD is a minimalist/terminal-based version of Steam. The Windows version can be downloaded separately. However, it downloads needed libraries and I’m not sure how good Steam is at escaping Wine’s environment, so a VM adds an extra security layer. Also the command changes depending of whether it’s 32-bit or 64-bit, if it’s for Linux, MacOS or Windows, or even if it’s a previous, still public update, and it’s been some years since I used those and I don’t have the commands noted down, so can’t help with that at least right now.

If something’s allowed to be pirated, it can’t be pirated.

Paying for whatever you find worthwhile, but in the scope of the original question, for services that pose as alternatives of Youtube.

Also interesting, wasn’t aware of Odysee being open source. Living and learning!

Imo, one form of investment anyone can do is adoption. No use being the best option available if no one uses it. And Peertube channels are treated as communities on Lemmy/PieFed, have native RSS, and Grayjay and the *Pipe apps have integrations for it, so plenty of ways to follow. Then as adoption grows, so does relevance, and the more relevance there is, the higher is the chance is for people with the perfect alignment of interest, skills and time to improve the engine to appear.

Direct financial investment also helps, though that grows expensive fast, so worth being careful not to overspend in supporting. And as the local saying goes, if something is free, you are the product, which helps being ever more suspicious of how platforms like Youtube stay afloat indeed. So the better option, for those willing to support with money, is also to go slow and steady.

On a last note, Odysee’s open source? Never heard of that.

Directly, I don’t think so. Youtube letting anyone join in, and generally being free to use, are the opposite of what Nebula does. Closest to Youtube afaik are Peertube, Odysee, Rumble and Bitchute. Other platforms come to mind but imo it starts getting a bit too small/niche at this point.

Nebula, and Dropout if I may add, from what I understand and checked, would be closer to cable TV, or Netflix and the sort if they were more generalist (or let their creators be). Still, subscribing to both, I think the two are worth to have around.

Now, on tangent, but still in the scope of escaping Youtube, from my experience, it is something hard to achieve. Constantly seeking redundancy for what I follow, still about half the video channels are Youtube-only, and jumping across sites only helps to annoy and want to stay at a single place (imo the intended experience from what I call the “2010’s sites”).

To avoid this annoyance, if you can, I’d suggest trying to aggregate all alternatives in a single place, like RSS readers, Grayjay/NewPipe/PipePipe, here at the fediverse through tracking bots, Peertube channels being treated as communities, etc., and/or other aggregators you may find. Helps at easing the process and not be annoyed into submission sticking to the more overarching platform.

@gatitaQwQ@mastodon.social pois, eles tiveram décadas para ganhar hegemonia. E qualquer reversão é demorada e desgastante, sendo fácil de se pensar que é um esforço inútil até que resultados enfim comecem a aparecer. Paciência e resiliência são necessárias para tirar da própria vida uma presença constante como essa. Também é interessante, creio eu, buscar concientizar outras pessoas, buscar alternativas, reverter leis feitas em prol do Google (ou do que ele representa) ao invés da população, e por aí vai para “desmerdificar” o que o Google e outros na mesma linha estragaram.

In English:

[OP] So annoying that you try to abandon Google but half the apps have trackers and everything’s connected to Google sites you visit, Google kinda controls everything people do. Even changing the OS in your phone, Google is always watching us.

[my reply] yeah, they had decades to achieve hegemony. Any reversion is slow and tiring, being easy to think it’s a vain effort until results finally start appearing. Patience and resilience are needed to remove such looming presence from your life. It’s also interesting, I’d argue, to seek to make other people aware of Google’s problems, to seek alternatives to it, to revert laws made for the sake of Google or what it represents instead of being for the population, and so on to “deshittify” what Google and related made worse.

!demeta@programming.dev crosspost candidate =)

One that’d probably be closer, though I’m not too familiar with it for discussion-oriented threads, is the StackExchange network, in special for the context, https://android.stackexchange.com/