• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    41 day ago

    Youtube is not just entertainment tho - the catch is that Google has way too much actually useful info hostage, like lectures, guides or documentaries.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      51 day ago

      It’s somewhat of a catch, that’s generally how monopolistic moats work but you really shouldn’t be relying on google as a backup service for obscure videos you wish to keep.

      I’ve no idea of the amount of lectures, guides, documentaries and other non-entertainment media that is available exclusively on youtube, but again it isn’t an archiving service.

      They can, will and have deleted whole channels for various reasons, most of which were bullshit, if you find something you absolutely have to keep, download it.

      That being said, the process of downloading, archiving and curating content on anything more than a trivial scale can be much more involved than it seems, especially if you want backups/redundancy.

      I’ve never been a big youtube user so my opinion on this is coloured by the fact that i don’t have that much invested in the platform.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21 day ago

        I am now downloading everything I personally need or like. Wish there was, say, a torrent index of Youtube videos)

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 day ago

          Not sure how versed/willing you are to selfhost but I’ve heard good things about tube archivist.

          There are also a bunch of ui’s for yt-dlp, though i can’t vouch for quality.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            11 day ago

            Neat finds) That was not my point though. I just use yt-dlp and don’t feel the need to have a server for my multiple files. I just was wondering if I could help share the preserved content somewhere. I could just link to the torrents on my website, but that wouldn’t be of much use because no one ever would think of searching there…

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        31 day ago

        True. But I am not even talking about dedicated content creators (for whom it is indeed an option!). I am talking about, say, an old laptop disassembly guide that a random master uploaded and just forgot about it. People not actively managing their content are not going to bother.