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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

Without even taking this into account, I deleted the Google account I had for YT a few days back. I noticed a lot of the creators I was subbed to where also on Odysse, alas not enough of the tech related ones... So it was not a major hit. There is very good content over there...

That whole vibe of borderline criminalizing ad blockers did it for me... that and the fact that lately is echo chamber after echo chamber, you search for some content, and because everything is so polarized, it only take a few videos to have your entire feed populated by radicalized content...

And to be honest, at times, on the Odysee comments, you can feel like it's a counterculture userbase, but at least in there I dont need to feel like I'm stealing from my overlords by using ad blocker...

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> it only take a few videos to have your entire feed populated by radicalized content

I watched a few videos on weightlifting and my "shorts" feed was quickly repopulated to mostly gay content.

I watched maybe half a dozen shorts of The Next Generation and all of a sudden everything was gay (and other LGBTQ+) content. I wonder what the trigger is.

ublock origin still block youtube ads fine.

And everytime I bring this up I always get some angry replies from Google corporate drones telling me that it is "unethical" to block ads.

Let me disagree and here is why: It is my device that is used to display ads. Everyone should have the right to tweak things the way they want to prevent displaying what they don't want to see on their laptops. Google has no obligation to send me the video after I request it, but I also have no obligation to display arbitrary content on my laptop.

In the end this is a cat and mouse game.

I support some content creators by paying them directly or through patreon. Cut the middle man.

I've been trying to use Odysee for the last couple years. The site itself is fine and I want to support it in theory, but the three main problems for me are:

1. Only like 20% of the creators I follow I copy their posts over and none of them comment or remove duplicate postings. I find maybe one good video a week.

2. Literally 90% of the comments are by full-blown Nazis. The recent Veritasium video on Fritz Haber[1] was especially bad as essentially every comment was on he didn't do anything wrong because Zyklon B is really harmless and the Holocaust didn't happen.

3. Odysee's recommendations are way worse than even YouTube. Where YouTube pushes very lowest-common-denominator, mainstream, simple stuff, Odysee pushes clickbaity, totally worthless videos at best or absolutely insane conspiracy videos at worst. The only way I've found to discover anything with any educational or entertaining value on Odysee is to look through YouTube recommendations and see if those people are on Odysee too.

[1]: https://odysee.com/@veritasium:f/the-man-who-killed-millions...

  > I noticed a lot of the creators I was subbed to
  > where also on Odysse, alas not enough of the tech related ones

I had never heard of Odysse, thanks. I just checked some of my top Youtube subs, but absolutely none of them are there. Ave, justrolledin, Practical Engineering, nothing. It seems that some of the usernames are taken, with subscribers but no uploaded videos. It seems that the site has been ruined by spammers and squatters already.

> you search for some content, and because everything is so polarized, it only take a few videos to have your entire feed populated by radicalized content

I'm so glad that this hasn't happened to me. The algorithm generally doesn't work well for me, but in this case it seems to be fine.

Just wanting to add that this might just be perception. The most harmful bubbles are the ones you don't realise you're a part of

I get very few recommendations that are even remotely political in nature, not even ones that I am inclined to agree with. I like that, and it's one of the few things that YouTube gets right for me.

Given all the hubbub about ad-blocking on Youtube, I've started to poke at other places to watch video. I like the idea of PeerTube, but it feels to me like right now it's mostly right-wing conspiracy theorists and material that just violates the basics of common decency. And it's all mixed together.

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