this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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All the people saying "I'll just stop using it, no big loss," are you only using YouTube for fun? Have you never needed to pass a class, prep for a job, work on a house, learn a skill using it?
It is such a large repository of human knowledge that is so far not widely replicated anywhere else. I rely on it for learning skills to provide for my family, as far as learning other useful abilities.
For example, YouTube taught me how to service my own vehicles. I have a specific set of old 90s Volvo cars, and there is a youtuber (Robert DIY) who does an excellent job documenting how to do maintenance on them. I have done my best to archive everything he posts, but he is just an example, as there are countless other informative tutorials and how-tos posted on YouTube.
As of now, Google has their grips on an enormous amount of practically useful data, and they know it. It's beyond fucked, and to act like it is inconsequential or ignorable is very short sighted.
To keep using walled gardens like Youtube, Reddit or Discord in an effort to share and preserve knowledge is just a losing proposition. The sooner we stop using them, the less of a headache it will be when the companies behind these gardens decide it's finally time to cash out and start to charge for access.
The knowledge you grow in a walled garden doesn't belong to you.
It reminds me of Reddit (human solutions/ideas for random problems and interests), except the costs of storing and serving video are probably really high with a large userbase. (I wonder exactly how high, though. I'm sure it's hard to put a single unit price per GB/hour or whatnot, but still . . .) It's unfortunate that so many people have put so much work into sharing their knowledge but have basically experienced vendor lock-in.
Just recently I found old reddit and forum threads and a few YouTube videos that helped me and a buddy fix her car. The solution(s) was provided by just enthusiasts and random people helping others in their spare time by documenting stuff. Although there's also a lot of unhelpful threads and videos out there too, lol.
You are absolutely right!
Knowledge is power - Google has tons of it. Not only on YouTube, but also the data they collect about every user, every click and interaction, etc.
I think the Tech-Giants have way too much power and even have some sort of monopoly. Like you said: No one has or even can recreate something like YouTube. Same with (for example) Microsoft. Even though FreeBSD, Linux Distros, OpenBSD, … gain popularity, they are nowhere near Microsoft’s Windows (or any other Product). And if you look at schools, businesses or governments, they (for some ungodly reason) use and pay for Microsoft products. Children get hooked on their Products in school!
Something has to change, I honestly don’t know what exactly, but these monopolies destroy our freedom! Maybe it would be better, if our countries had politicians, that do their work, not care about some “make America great again” shit.
What pisses me off most is that the way the internet works now is that ten years ago, someone who wanted to share about how to service your 90s Volvo that would have written it on a web page with a few photos that would have been quicker, cheaper and easier to write, quicker and easier to read, and cost next to nothing to host.
But because Google control fucking everything, that same person is now heavily incentivized to make it a pointlessly long video instead, that took days to make and edit, and is harder to use while working, and if they don't do that then they ain't getting anywhere near the top of the search results and you weren't going to find it anyway.
It sucks and I can't wait for people to wake up and tell Google to fuck off and stop ruining the internet.