Libb

Can’t agree more :)

So it’s more “discover as you go” if I understand correctly, and peertube is just where videos happen to be hosted but discovery generally happens outside of it.

for me, yep.

Can’t say I like it much. Maybe if they did some actual moderation instead of letting it be flooded with, as you say, questionable content.

Like with peertube, human-curated recs may do a difference.

none. We watch discs.

Exactly. Algorithm are trained to keep up unsatisfied, they’re literal drug dealers.

How exactly does one go on peertube?

For me, it’s by word-of-mouth. You stumble upon someone mentioning a video you might be interested in. A bit like the web used to work prior to its corporate take-over (and its ensuing enshitification), aka thx to careful curating made by actual people that want to share quality/useful info. So, a good starting point would be to start reading blogs focusing on whatever you may be interested in (not IA written or SEO-optimized crap, obviously) or to chat with actual people on forums related to that same interests of yours.

There’s probably a lot of instances and it seems kind of overwhelming to “choose an instance I like”.

One doesn’t go on peertube like one go on YT. There are many instances and that’s one of the quality compared to YT, imho. It’s not owned by a single corporation, the price being that’s is messier and less centralized (ease of use is the main Trojan horse used by corporations to make their ‘service’ so popular and, very quickly after that, a must have/use). With peertube almost anyone can (dedicate resources to) create a peertube instance. Like on Mastodon, or here on Lemmy. So, no one can force you to use ‘their’ instance (or can prevent you from watching whatever content they decided to not stream, and can’t force you to watch some other content either).

If you want something more centralized (but filled with questionable content) you may want to consider odysee.com. Also, keep in mind there is no alternative to YT: it’s unbelievably huge, you wont be able to find a 1-1 equivalency content-wise anywhere else. I think I explained in other thread that I severely reduced the amount of ‘creators’ I watch and not just on YT, in general.

I don’t take recommendations from machine learning models

I made up my mind sometimes ago but I do really think if a lot/enough of us were to stop using that nasty thing, corporations would be forced to reconsider the way they interact with us.

This probably sounds quaint, but i have returned to paper for my news/arts/culture stuff.

Not to me. I draft all my texts longhand, sketch and paint the same, and now over a year ago I quit reading ebooks because of privacy concerns, going back to print, including mags and newspapers… And my agenda is paper too.

Now, I am an atheist and very open about it (without, i hope, being a dick). But i found a church that is compatible with my beliefs and they do some nice community outreach

I’m one too but had an almost two hours long discussion yesterday afternoon with a catholic priest I went to ask questions about some passages I was reading in the New Testament. I was impressed by how available the guy was, and how open to discussion knowing I wasn’t a believer, and by how close our view points were on so many things (beside the God/Salvation part, obviously) and we both happily agreed on meeting again to discuss further.

I’m not surprised by what you’re saying about feeling connected. It’s something that could very easily happen to me with that priest and his little congregation. I offered to help him in my field of exper… in those things I’m not completely incompetent, and will renew my offer next time we meet. Then, I’ll see if he sees any use in it or not. Meanwhile, he gave a me a couple books from the church’s library for me to read.

And weirdly, my mind keeps drifting back to 2006. I don’t even know why exactly — maybe because it felt slower. Simpler. The internet was just fun and weird, not all-consuming.

It’s up to us to make it like that again.

Anyone else feel like this? Have you figured out how to shake it — or at least live with it in a way that makes sense?

I stopped participating/consuming into anything that is algorithmically managed. It means that I cut back on everything online that is not… man-made. I don’t do Twitter/X, Facebook, Reddit, and so on. I even almost completely quit using YT beside a couple channels. So, I use Lemmy, watch vids on non-YT platforms (peertube, for example) and I do read blogs and websites… all contents that are all created by actual persons (not some SEO-optimized or AI-crap), actual people that care about what it is they’re talking about.

I feel… detached. Like I’m watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to feel like mine again.

The thing with those corporation-owned ‘occupations’ is that our live don’t belong to us anymore. It’s theirs. Our live is a product they are exploiting (mining) and at the same time it’s… a service they’re selling back directly to us, as well as to other people that the algorithm thinks will (dis)like us.

Realizing that, I decided I did not want to be the product anymore no matter how much I liked their ‘services’.

And that was liberating. I would not want to go back to their precious little apps and algorithms. I spend a lot less time online, but I appreciate almost every second of it. Which to me at least seems like a good compromise ;)

edit: clarifications & typos.

I think the internet has a lot of potential

I only mentioned social media apps, not the Internet which is much older (I started using BBS in the early 80s and my first web browser was Mosaic). So yeah, the Internet has the potential, and always had. Not sure it will have for much longer though but that’s another question.

The issue is that for more and more people ‘the Internet’ is nothing but an empty space in which they can find their ‘app of choice’ or their service of choice. And they have no idea there is a thriving world that is well-alive outside of those walled gardens Including the many remaining blogs—like mine, which is tiny, and so many others. A lot of blogs are and non corporate owned websites also try to monetize their content, though, but many, like mine, do not.

Edit: clicked publish too quickly, added the rest of my reply.

How do we consume less content and be more social/productive in a way that isn’t concerned with profit?

I’m not sure to understand what you mean?

We consume less by doing more. Say, we watch less YouTube about what we want to do and start doing more of what it is we want to do.

And we’re less concerned by profit the moment we start doing stuff or going more toward people (spending time with them) without expecting much if anything in return beside enjoying their company and/or enjoying doing that stuff we are doing. Without expecting to be paid anything in return.

As far as being more productive, I’m not sure to understand what you mean either but, here again, doing more is a fine starting point.

It’s consumerism that wants us to believe we need to endlessly consume (aka spend more money and time) to do stuff. We don’t.

Well, yes, we do need to consume a little resources and we also need to feed/teach our head (ideas as well as art don’t come out of nowhere), but we certainly don’t need to constantly be stuffing ourselves with new content or tools—think obesity, but for the mind.

So, if we want to be able to do interesting stuff on our own. We start by learning to do (interesting) stuff. Aka, by doing crappy stuff. And that’s true for every single things we may wish to do.

Or, should we consume more content that is conducive to being social? What type of content would that be?

We don’t need to consume any content to be social. But here again maybe I don’t understand the question, what would be a type of ‘content conducive to being social’?

BTW, our species have existed (aka being social) for million of years, meanwhile Twitter/X and the others have existed since around 2005. So, we clearly don’t need them to be ourselves but they absolutely need and want us to think otherwise so they can sell us more ads and make more money.

Congrats :)

A few years ago, that was the first step that led me to stop using Apple computers and slowly switch to Linux and easy to fix PCs. Something that, back then, 50 years old me would never have imagined doing: I had been an Apple user since the early 80s and never imagined not being one.