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Comment by mrslave | Hacker News Reader

I'll echo the sentiments in this thread except for the swear words at Google. Losing access to a Gmail for similar reasons has been a net positive, though at the time it was mildly frustrating. I haven't gotten sucked into their aggressive cross-selling of all their products, and the consequences of always being logged in. Occasionally I can't view or comment on something. You can bookmark 5 YouTube channels without Subscribing, and some Twitter feeds without Following. The oligopolies of 2020 have made the internet a much more boring place than 10+ years ago. YouTube resembles cable television more and more every day. Rather than get mad and watch poor content, I now have more time to read and think.

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> YouTube resembles cable television more and more every day.

Depends on what you're searching, there is also the perspective that YT is a vast library of content that would never have appeared on TV, such as lectures, talks, conferences, courses, demos, gameplay, cooking, home improvement, product reviews, obscure music. It's the library of Alexandria of modern age. I would be devastated if I lost access to it. Wikipedia and Arxiv are complementary collections.

Same here. I use Teddit.net for Reddit, Newpipe for Youtube and one of the nitter.net instances for Twitter. All the content without the clutter and fast, as well as a lower temptation to get into flamewars etc.

(In Newpipe you can subscribe to creators' channels, see the comments and their other videos. You just can't comment from there.)

freetube is another youtube alternative if anyone is more of a desktop user, and invidious is web based

FYI, freetube.com is NSFW

>YouTube resembles cable television more and more every day.

That's just the algorithm. There's still some amazing content on Youtube, but the algorithm will always try to offer you junk food. There are various ways to avoid this, but it becomes a problem for ditching Youtube. The positives are too enticing, and don't yet, at least for me, outweigh the negatives.

I generally hate suggesting a browser plugin to solve a problem with a service, but give this a try: https://github.com/SeinopSys/YTMySubs

You can no longer visit the home screen. Any attempt always redirects you to the subscription view. And from there, it simply becomes a matter of only subscribing to worthwhile channels. I've found it improves my Youtube addiction quite a bit.

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