The reason Youtube is getting absolutely fucking demolished by tiktok is that tiktok actually serves you recommended content that is like what you engage with and actually watch whereas Youtube recommends you the exact fucking opposite.

YouTube recommendations are like gifts from an inattentive spouse but somehow way worse. It’s like if you said “I love dogs” and your spouse was like “I know you love dogs so I gathered up all the uncollected dog shit in the neighborhood and put it in the front seat of your car.”

Video hosting is extremely expensive, and even other well-funded companies have folded trying to replicate YouTube. It's unfortunately not something that small scale cooperatives are likely to be able to fight back against.

There have been some impressive little tech demos of AI-powered image and sound compression, which could maybe fix the cost problem, but AI-powered compression is just as cursed as it sounds.

I still feel like PeerTube is our best bet, but there's honestly no getting around the fact that there just isn't much worthwhile content on PeerTube compared to YouTube; that using PeerTube is still a bit clunky, especially since most server admins as I understand it tend to be very restrictive with federation due to spam issues; and that online video hosting is going to be somewhat costly even if PeerTube has found some ways to reduce the cost.

I sometimes daydream about a fediverse video platform that long story short combines PeerTube with an alternate YouTube frontend like Piped or Invidious, but who knows if or when that's gonna happen. I'd come up with the name "VennUse" as a pun on "venues" and "Venn diagram", at least...

The algorithms must lie in the hands of the people! Fully automated luxury space communism IS possible, but the capitalist ruling class will never allow it.

I'm not trans and don't watch trans videos, but... Yeah. All the time. I get random disgusting videos, or some random home video of someone in south Asia clearly not meant to be watched around the world, videos about cooking meat (im vegan and follow several vegan channels) etc. So I'm not sure that button does anything at this point.

i mean, not to be a bummer, but if she's living with transphobic parents and they're accessing youtube from the same IP, their watching habits might be polluting her recommendations. it's stupid, but i've had it happen to me plenty of times with roommates' interests.

I do so constantly, and youtube still thinks its a good idea to recommend me PragerU and other reactionary crap. They're really pushing the detrans stuff lately.

Yes i do