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So in order to be consistent with my stance on why you should quit social media I feel that it is also my duty to tell you that you should quit using YouTube as well since YouTube is a form of social media and many of the largest problems that are present in other social media sites are present in YouTube, in many cases those problems are exaggerated in the case of YouTube. But unlike other social media platforms YouTube has a pretty good benefit which is the fact that you can learn a lot on YouTube you wouldn't want to give up that big of an opportunity for learning as there are free tutorials on just about anything.
But remember just like other social media sites YouTube is designed to get you addicted to it and it is much more effective at it than other social media platforms because those who post on it are incentivised to make sure you like and subscribe and then complain when you don't and not only does that mean that one to two minutes of most videos will be a waste of time but it means that when you finally do cave into it that the algorithm will try to feed you more of that sort of garbage rather than actual quality things.
So what's the solution ditch the algorithm of course I've already written about how you can use RSS to subscribe to YouTube channels without actually subscribing, but this is not a perfect solution since if you ever have to search anything you have to go right back to YouTube and fall vulnerable to its traps. In order to solve that problem you need to use an alternative platform and there is really only one alternative platform (for anything not just YouTube) that I can endorse, and that's LBRY, or I guess they're calling themselves Odysee now.
The great thing about Odysee is that it is open source meaning that it has nothing to hide. Google is collecting your data through YouTube and using it to waste your time with adds creepily targeted twards you and exposing things like your age, location, religion, political leanings and anyting else you may not want the world to know. Odysee doesn't do this, they don't even serve ads, instead they pay you for watching.
LBRY/Odysee takes advantage of blockchain technology which means that through some wizardry they are generating their own crypto currency and they share that money with their users along with creators who post on their platform. There are a lot of things that do this as well and typically you should not use a piece of software because it will give you money for using it it's actual useability and quality is what you should use it for, Odysee does not lack in quality and I mostly ignored the fact that it gave me a daily reward for logging in but today out of curiosity I decided to look at the worth of the LBRY crypto currency only to find that it has shot up a bunch in the last few days (possibly there is something going on in terms of current events which is causing people to loose faith in traditional currency) I realized that by simply casually using Odysee I racked up $20 worth of crypto, and that was really just for a month or two of daily use back when I used it more often. While that is not much money to make a living off of it is enough to fund this site for a few months, I'll probably have to look into cashing that stuff out soon. It would be quite funny if the server costs of this site were funded just through watching a video a day on a safe open source platform rather than an invasive closed source data mine.
But really like I said the reason that you should use a piece of software is its quality and that is why I like LBRY/Odysee, when you subscribe to a channel you LBRY will actually show you their stuff on the front page, the benefit of that is that if it is showing you a bunch of junk then all you need to do to stop having it pushed on you is to unsubscribe from the channel that posts junk. I've found that a good chunk of the actually good YouTube channels also post to Odysee so you can always be sure that you are being shown quality stuff and once you run out of quality stuff for that day Odysee won't push anything else on you to waste your time, you can feel justified in leaving knowing that you've seen all the good stuff that day.
So I encourage you to join LBRY.Odysee today. I should tell you that that link (as well as the one a few paragraphs back) is a special referral link and if you register using it we both get some of LBRY's crypto I think it's about a dollar's worth at the current market price for them which isn't bad. I may also post videos there at some point, I wouldn't expect that to be a regular thing but I do think it would be interesting to make videos out of a few of my posts here (like the one on the Murray Gel-Mann Effect) so that may be something that you'd want to look out for. But regardless of any money behind the endorsement I do think that Odysee is a good platform and for the most part it is a better use of your time than YouTube is.