Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:
- Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
- Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
- Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
- E-Mail (Proton, for example)
- Office (libreoffice, for example)
- Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)
However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.
I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I’d wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).
I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.
Honestly the biggest thing all of us is missing to take it down is financial capital.
To get the kind of capital you need to take down YouTube, you need investment money from the kind of investors who will force you to enshittify to afford paying them back.
The financial issue is the biggest one, when it comes to any and all of these.
There are two YouTubes. One is the “creator” YouTube, algorithms, numbers blah blah
The other is the actual content creator YouTube. These are the channels that people actually follow. If captain disillusion set up his own RSS feed for videos, and I had the method to subscribe to it, I’d no longer need YouTube
The argument that YouTube has the algorithm and recommendations etc is moot, that’s the same job that every network does, you could absolutely replace this
The video content would have to be self hosted probably. How it used to be. So we need all these tools to eat YouTube’s lunch