YouTube boycott 2025

[hikatamika]

I've found that a lot of free art education, art discussion, and documentation of art process has moved to YouTube as people more easily understand how to monetize their YouTube activity compared to the art blog posts and vertical deviantArt tutorial strips of yore. So I unfortunately see myself crossing the picket line and making a lot of excuses on this one.

I agree that more-than/in-addition-to just reducing one's YouTube traffic, or… continuing to give YouTube traffic in different ways through proxy services that still have to give YouTube the traffic to get you the videos, we gotta show up and vote around the world. Cause when a few countries put in privacy-breaching age verification laws, corporations either get lazy, or want to eliminate the problem entirely by just forcing shoddy age verification worldwide.

Don't just stick it to Google/YouTube. Stick it to your local government.

[Yoylecake420]

How do you feel about those who shame or harass people for not boycotting YouTube?

[SquidDied]

How do you feel about those who shame or harass people for not boycotting YouTube?

i think that shaming people into joining a cause is pretty stupid. If you're passionate about a thing then you need to welcome people into the cause without making them feel like a morally bankrupt dick for previously not understanding/seeing your point of view. If you're going around making people feel like shit, they don't see your passion, they just see an angry asshole on some kind of crusade.

Personally my approach is to just be like "hey im not watching youtube as much, because of xyz" and lead by example, with maybe a subtle hint that they should consider it too. Its up to them to follow me if they want and regardless of their decision then its not like i can't remain respectful of their choices. I realise that asking someone to just suddenly give up a thing that they've relied on for up to 2 decades, one that has become ubiquitous with the concept of online video sharing at all, is impractical at best.

so yeah, people just using the platform as they always have aren't the enemy here, if you're aiming your anger at them you're not only embarrassing yourself but you're not actually even helping in the process. Direct your energy towards the idiots making the shitty decisions that made you want to boycott youtube in the first place.

[PurpleHello98]

I didn't even know there was a boycott going on in the first place! I watch quite a lot, mainly through V3 on my PC and laptop, but I really want to cut back. The main thing is that I use Pale Moon on my PC and I don't know if there's any sort of time-limit extension for it, though. Maybe I should join the boycott! Although I don't know how I'll restrain myself... >-<

[Techétte]

I deleted my youtube account a while back, I feel you, the website has become completely unbearable and finding anything you actually are looking for is an absolute nightmare, especially for those that love extremely tiny and obscure youtube channels

Imo the best way to "boycott" youtube is to not have any accounts, use aggregator software (freetube), use bookmarks instead of subscriptions/likes, and manually download your favorite videos using third party websites (beware of popups) or software, this way by storing your media locally on your hard drive you actually own it and it is entirely separated from youtube's algorithms and trackers and analytics. There will also never be any more ads when you watch it on your PC/phone harddrive!

(unrelated, if you also want a website that shows you random obscure youtube videos wth very little views, try ytstalker.fun )

[stephan_e_perez]

A lot of people, myself and others on this site included, use YouTube as a place to upload videos and embed them in websites for free. This is often artistic or educational that doesn't aspire to monetization. So I'm actually quite grateful to YouTube for letting us do that over the years.

It's something I've taken for granted, but of course we should keep alternatives in mind. Not sure that time has come yet, though- unless they start requiring age verification for embedded videos or so.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Imo the best way to "boycott" youtube is to not have any accounts, use aggregator software (freetube), use bookmarks instead of subscriptions/likes, and manually download your favorite videos using third party websites (beware of popups) or software, this way by storing your media locally on your hard drive you actually own it and it is entirely separated from youtube's algorithms and trackers and analytics. There will also never be any more ads when you watch it on your PC/phone harddrive!

If you are going the manual download route I definitely recommend setting up YT-DLP. No scouring through websites and pop-ups, just some command lines and total control over how things are downloaded. It can be a bit hard to set up, though, even when following the steps.

As for the topic: I've been thinking more and more about boycotting YouTube, but I do enjoy watching the videos on the platform still. For now I'll try alternatives like Invidious and see from there.

[ABlueRose]

I'm not boycotting Youtube, even though I wish I could. Finding a Youtube alternative is realistically impossible, since Youtube has twenty years of videos built up. It has so many good resources, and all of it's for free, it's just too much for me to pass up.

However! I am trying to use it less. I don't use it for music anymore, and I don't fall asleep to a video anymore either. So that's a couple hours a day I've cut back on. I've been trying to be more mindful about what I watch, and I also use an extension called "DeArrow" which replaces thumbnails with a random moment from the video, and makes the video titles less clickbaity.

I started doing this before the boycott started, but when I go to Youtube on my computer    I have it set so it brings me to my subscription page, and not the home page. It helps limit the amount of videos I get recommended