Why do they even want you watching? Once the fee is paid isn’t it better you don’t watch kind of like the gym?

> despite its offerings being generally lower budget, they tend to represent a wider variety of "editorial voices".

There's a huge amount of censorship with youtube though. The movies and shows on cable and streaming services can still talk about dead people without being forced to say they are "unalived". CNN can talk about a pandemic without calling it a "panini". Besides censoring specific words and phrases Youtube demonitizes entire genres of content along with anything that is "unfriendly" to advertisers. If that's the future of media in the US we're screwed.

I kind of agree, and it's interesting how Nebula and Spotify (at least their video efforts) have been based on elevating and funding those ultra-budget YouTube creators. Like I watch Lindsay Ellis and Practical Engineering and SkillUp all on non-YouTube platforms now, despite YouTube being the recommendation algorithm that originally brought me there.

It's really the opposite model of the "major" streaming players who fund tentpole releases in the conventional Hollywood way, and then have a long tail of niche content (cooking reality shows and the like) that are clearly on a much tighter budget, but still basically modeled on being a cheaper version of a cable show rather than a much better funded version of a YouTube comedy troupe.

“Being an adult is staring at medium screens all day to come home and stare at a little screen while a big screen is on in the background”

https://x.com/andlikelaura/status/1392091221032460291

You're misinterpreting what "threat" means. And in fact he used the word "competition."

He was talking about the "incumbent" they are trying to displace. Netflix's challenge was not getting people to switch from watching Hulu to Netflix, but to get them not to sleep in order to watch Netflix.

Evil maybe, but nothing moronic about it.

There is some good content, but sadly the bulk of youtube now is someone sitting in a room reading an AI script for 30 minutes covering 2 minutes of content.

independent-ish creators (I'm aware that a lot of channels seem to be bought out by private equity lately), but mostly science, technology, speedrunning, mysteries, recipe guides, things like that, basically stuff that I'm interested in

Of all of the various online services, YouTube is the one where I feel I get the most value in return for paying for premium. 90% of my video and music consumption is through YouTube, and it's all ad-free. (Well, except that so much of hobby YouTube is implicitly all ad because the video is about some piece of hobby gear, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.)

I've never watched a YouTube short.

My recommendations are all very well aligned with my interests. The trick here is to go through your watch history and delete things that are leading the recommendation algorithm astray. I am ruthless about that.

There are a few ways to disable/hide shorts. One day I said to a friend, “man I wish I could block these things, they’re insulting to my intelligence and just encourage clicking around” and my friend said “I’ve been blocking them for a while, just do this.” And while I can’t remember what “this” was, it’s worth a quick google.

Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.

If you have the ads turned off, it's a lot nicer. I got that with some family bundle for more Drive space.

> Their ads are terrible.

I imagine they are that's why I pay for YT Premium, which I think is my most bang for buck subscription based on the amount of time I spend watching it

> Curation doesn't exist.

I don't find this a problem personally because 95% of my feed is just channels I'm subscribed to but YMMV depends on what you expect out of it

I watch Youtube on a Chromecast using the SmartTube app, which is a 3rd party front-end (side-loaded APK) for Youtube that eliminates all the ads, and lets you configure practically everything. Don't like "shorts", just disable them and they are gone. That's the main reason I sought out an alternative to the Youtube app, I hated the shorts and there was no way to get rid of them in the Youtube app.

I used to pay for a Youtube subscription to get rid of the ads, but that doesn't include the in-video ads that content creators put in there - but SmartTube has that covered too, in most videos I watch the in-video ads are skipped too. I have 5 chromecasts on the 5 TVs around my house, and every one of them has SmartTube installed. I wouldn't want to watch Youtube without it.

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube/releases