Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
There are two main alternatives, AFAIK:
PeerTube is a federated video sharing platform, which is based on WebTorrent and ActivityPub. There aren't too many creators there yet, but here's a list of the channels I follow: https://lt27.de/jAyUHD
A YouTube frontend will provide YouTube videos with no ads or tracking. Here are a few that I like:
There are also apps:
Oh thank you for your detailed response. I will try some of those YouTube frontends as soon as I can!
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/#youtube
Peer tube is probably the closest open source freedom loving network, but the content is sparse now.
Also from a creators prespective it is neither that easy to use nor cheap. With all there is certainly problematic and wrong with Youtube, it's a really good service thats hard to beat. Videostreaming demands a lot from servers. I've yet to find a way to host vidoes for Peertube in an affordable way where I don't have to worry about basic stuff. (Any suggestions?)
I don't know what basic stuff you mean, but as a suggestion if I was looking for cheap servers with high storage and unlimited high speed bandwidth, I'd look at seedboxes.
An example on the first hit gives you: 1TB of space, 20Gbit unlimited up and management features for €14.95
I haven't used this company but I have used other seedboxes
The search engine is sepiasearch.org
piped.kavin.rocks or Freetube on PC, Yattee on iOS, Libretube on Android, SmartTubeNext on TV
I’m a big fan of Piped / Yattee, but I had a lot of problems recently, because most videos won’t load. Also privacy redirectors that redirect YouTube URLs to Piped don’t work anymore, because the video won’t load. So I had to watch a couple of videos directly on YT recently.
Possible that YT pushed some API changes or such, which makes it difficult for the privacy proxies to work. Don’t know, but IMHO it used to work much better in the past.
What instances are you using? Because I have little to no issue with my self-hosted one.
If it's anything like LibReddit, then public instances are slowly breaking due to the hgh API calls. Private ones seem to make a small enough amount that they go under their radar.
I guess I use the default one (piped.kavin.rocks).
Nebula costs ~$15/year. The content is mostly great, mobile app is a disaster.
Nebula is great. But it's not really a YouTube alternative.
Random people can't upload videos.
it's not that easy to find a real Youtube alternative, I tried it recently and got meek results, sharing them from my personal notebook:
Invidous is a libre frontend for YouTube. Find a trusted public instance or start up your own.
Odysee
The moderation on Odysee is horrible, generally should avoid.
Quite a few creators have quit Odysee due to the lack of moderation, most recent i'm aware of is TLE/The Linux Experiment.
Apparently the comment sections there are heinous now, personally the last time I visited was several years ago after Louis Rossmann mentioned he was dual uploading there
I believe that Odysee and LBRY (the blockchain-based back end technology Odysee sprung from and draws on) are separate companies with different people running them.
You don't have to touch crypto or use any crypto features to use Odysee, so I'd still suggest it as a platform in the toolbelt in addition to a lot of the other great recommendations you've already gotten here in other replies.
A real alternative of YouTube sadly don't exist, you can only stay private, using some front-ends (Piped, CloudTube, Invidious, etc.), a desktop-client, like FreeTube, or search and watch the YouTube video sandboxed in the search results of Andisearch. (Andi is an AI Search Assistant and one of the most privacy protecting search engine, anonymous, no account needed, no logs, no ads, no tracking, no SEO crap)
I haven't checked it out in about 5 years, but PeerTube instances could be worth checking out.
It's actually surprising no-one else said it, since it's open source and federated (just like Lemmy is)
Yes, PeerTube is a really good option to upload Videos, but none of te alternative sites is a alternative of YT respect content, you don't find the among of music and free movies, apart of an inbuild editor, in any of the other Platforms, at least not in the moment.
If your criteria requires the amount if music, movies and content that comes with being the most rich and popular video host in the world, then I don't think there is a competitor. You'll need at least two different tools to get the content of YouTube, or the ability to host videos outside of YouTube. If it's free music and movies you want, I sincerely recommend just torrenting it or finding reputable download sources.
It's the first you mencioned. For free content there are enough alternatives, but there is the cuestion if you find also content which fits your tastes or needs. As you say, real alternatives to YT don't exist (yet), but there are also the aforementioned methods to avoid the garbage from Google and its advertisers that is on the page and in the YT videos itself.
You can always use a privacy Frontend like Yattee, freetube or piped/invidious
FreeTube is essentially NewPipe but for desktop. It's not made by the same people or anything, but it has very similar functionality. I use it as my main YouTube frontend and it's been good