the solitary review

We’re seeing people fleeing Musk’s Twitter for Mastodon. Which, by being decentralised and slowly building a base of left-leaning / alternative viewpoints, has gained ground quietly to the point where it is a viable alternative to Twitter.

But in this year 2022 can we still not have an alternative to YouTube? I for one am tired of its incessant adverts – those for one company in particular that I seem to get all the time – and of the comments, which if they’re not literally made by 14-year-old boys, are made with the mindset of a 14-year-old boy.

But there is no real rival. Viewer stats for Online Video Platforms from the start of this year show that YT hosts over 8.5 billion (yes 8,500 million) videos. The next largest is Dailymotion, which hosts 65 million. Vimeo (often publicised as an alternative, and pitched more at the creator than the consumer) has 18.2 million with Odysee, frequently touted as a promising newcomer, at a mere 10 million.

There’s also Nebula, but it’s more a streaming service than a free-to-access video host.

I used to mirror my videos to Dailymotion, but haven’t done so recently. It is a good site if its ‘next up’ algorithm is a bit strange (or is it that with so many fewer videos to choose from than YT, the links may be more tenuous).

My strategy recently has been to go over to podcasts, listening to Spotify (other platforms are available. Yes, they are. Go figure) instead of watching YouTube videos; but this still leaves the issue of where do you get your video content? And where do you host it?

When will we see a decentralised video-sharing community platform that can bypass the YT? We need one. We need one a lot.