Hi everyone!
I’ve almost entirely degoogled my life, except for Youtube.
Here are my center of interests and some channels I follow:
- Linux: The Linux Experiment, Tech Hut
- Basketball: NBA, Andy Hoops, Heat Check, Jonny Arnett, BasketNews
- Cars: Throttle House, Everyday Driver, Car and Driver
- Console Gaming: GamingBolt, IGN
- Tech: Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie
Concerning Linux, it has been easy to find alternatives to YouTube as The Linux Experiment is on PeerTube and I can support him for 1$ a month Through Patreon.
Tech Hut is on Odysee so I could watch his videos here and support him through Buy Me A Coffee or something similar if I wanted to.
I know I could watch everything from the Linus Tech Tips on Floatplane but 5$ a month is a bit too expensive.
Do you have any suggestions about anyone producing similar content to what I’ve described above (Basketball, Console Gaming, Cars and Tech) that I could watch on a YouTube alternative?
I don’t mind paying 1-2$ a month for a channel I enjoy but I can’t pay more for now 😇
Patreon is your main choice I think. Many youtubers post videos there. Though you might have to pay a lot if you subscribe to a lot of creators.
You can also consider a FOSS YouTube client but the most privacy-focused ones are dead now unfortunately.
LibreTube works just fine if you disable proxying. FreeTube / FreeTube Kordova also works perfectly fine.
I was just about to suggest GrayJay but then I remembered it’s an Android app.
Newpipe is a great and active FOSS Youtube client!
Unfortunately it has the “Sign in to confirm that you’re not a bot” issue like 99% of the clients. That’s what I meant in “dead”. Also it’s not the most privacy-protecting one by far.
I’ve never had NewPipe present me with a sign in prompt or any not challenges, that’s a very strange scenario to be facing.
Not everyone faces it but a lot of people do. That error means that Google noticed you’re using a custom client and IP banned you from watching without signing in.
Do you use a VPN?
Yeah but using a YouTube client would feel a bit dishonest to me as you’re still using Youtube in the end😇
I’ll look more into Patreon as I didn’t know you could have videos directly on it.
I’m just using it to listen to the Linuux Experiment podcast.
Some YouTubers also just post unlisted YouTube links on their Patreon unfortunately
There is an site to turn YT feeds into RSS (?) And then play the audio through Antenna Pod. So YouTube to podcast.
I’ve got it working for some things I follow where I dont need the visuals.
After looking a bit into Patreon, Peertube, Floatplane, Nebula, Rumble, Odysee and Dailymotion, I find it crazy that even when you’re willing to pay, all the good content is the one that you can watch for free on YouTube (with a few exceptions of course).
I wish there was a YouTube equivalent of Sonarr that just uses yt-dl to auto-grab and organize YT channels you want as new episodes come out. Then you could just play with Plex or Jellyfin.
There is
Maybe this would be useful for organizing?
EDIT: Forgot link: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
I feel like at one point I saw a way to use yt-dlp to get only the latest videos on a channel/playlist.
For finding content creators on alternative services, maybe use Grayjay for Android? It aggregates multiple services into a single, mostly concise UI, and when you do a search, Grayjay can search all services at once. Also recently it added a recommended tab, which should help finding new channels on the go.
Not really an answer to your question, but I’ll share my approach. Youtube channels have rss feeds, so you can “subscribe” using any rss reader, and don’t need to login.
So I just use firefox with the following addons. A seperate youtube container + adblock + in-video ad skip + age verification skip + feedbro as rss reader.
