I haven’t really noticed that tbh, though I definitely believe it. A sizeable portion of people who populate ‘alternative’ platforms, are the people who get kicked off of, or censored on, mainstream platforms.

Unfortunately, that often means that those platforms struggle to attract regular users and content, since regular users are scared away by the existing users bad behavior…

The only way I can see those platforms really getting over that hump, is when the major platforms make stupid, overreaching, and greedy decisions. Pushing their regular users away, and onto those alternative platforms.

I don’t know what it will take to get ‘regular’ users migrating off of youtube. But I can tell you right now that I will NOT accept watching ads, nor will I ever pay a cent to google.

The day that I am unable to block ads on youtube will be the last day that I use it.

You could give Odysee a try. I was pleasently surprised at how well it works, and how nice the UI/UX is. Especially considering it is a decentralized platform.

It’s missing a lot of the content that youtube has. Especially if you trying to look up a specific video or niche topic. But there’s still a lot of great content available if you are happy to browse.

Odysee is a great, decentralised alternative if you are looking to jump ship.

If you do end up sticking with youtube, ReVanced is good. Smart Tube Next is good for TVs, and firefox + ublock origin on desktop.

Check out Odysee. Open source, decentralized, great interface. It’ s a great youtube alternative but is unfortunately still a little lacking in content.

Hopefully youtube continuing to pull shit like this will drive users there, much like reddit has driven users here.

Google is an ad company. To them, a web browser is nothing more than a tool for collecting user data and delivering ads.

When you use a chromium based browser you are allowing google, an ad company, to decide what the future of web browsing should look like. And this is the result.

Firefox is the ONLY browser which is genuinely competing with google. Do you think ad and tracking blockers are going to get better or worse once they die out, and literally every major browser is running on chromium?

Use firefox and u-block origin. Enjoy a superior, ad free, browsing experience, and support the future of an open web.

LineageOS for microg: degoogled android. DuckDuckGo: search. Firefox: web browser. Ublock origin: ad blocker. Proton: email. OsmAnd+: maps.

Only google product I still use is youtube, but I have made some efforts here:

On desktop pc I use firefox with sponserblock and ublock origin to hide ads and automatically skip sponsered content. I also have an addon called unhook, which hides recommendations, ‘people also watched’ etc.

I also use and recommend Odysee as a youtube alternative.

On my TV I use SmartTubeNext, on my phone I use revanced.

I host my own music server with navidrome (and my own video media server with Jellyfin). But when I dont have access to that, I also use ViMusic as a youtube music replacement for (degoogled) android.

Can absolutely recommend any and all of the tools I listed.

The problem is that defederation is that it causes damage to the wider network, and can be far too easily abused.

It makes instance selection very important to the user (which is already a major friction point). And causes terrible UX when users can’t figure out why content is unavailable to them.

It can also be used as a weapon by powerhungry admins to force centralization around their instance.

I know there aren’t really great alternatives to defederation for content moderation right now. But I think that these could easily be implemented. For example, instances could maintain a ‘blocklist’ which users could automatically be subscribed to upon joining, but they would be able to inspect and ‘opt-out’ from blocking certain instances or categories if they desired.

I think this is a good balance of protecting users, and also respecting their freedom.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean they could POST rule breaking content. (They are still users of your instance after all). Just that they would have the choice of which content they feel comfortable with VIEWING.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And defederation is a nuclear powered sledgehammer lol.