How? Maybe its helpful to take a step back and reflect a bit on what everyone can do. We first need a good basis. Sure, yes, while some can help with developing more specific things, other’s can’t, and thats exactly the point.

some ideas to start

• Spread awareness and talk about all kinds of topics involved in this problem with your family, friends and everyone else, and don’t give up. Best, in such a way they don’t feel overwhelmed with the topic or as if you want to teach them anything. A good conversation starter is maybe just asking how they feel about X or how they perceive Y. I feel like we do not have enough conversations about what is going on, be it politics, tech or the current media landscape, unfortunately its all connected.

• If people are stubborn, maybe watch movies with them that portray life conditions during regimes, idk times under Stalin or Hitler or whatever suits the country you live in, provide people books and articles to read and then try to have a conversation based on that.

• Take time to teach people around you about tech, basic stuff or more advanced, doesnt matter. Explain in small portions, one topic at a time. Help your parents out for instance, but in a way they actually understand how to do it themselves. We especially need people working in IT and so on to help those who aren’t familiar all too much with what kinds of technologies they interact with on a daily basis. Idk if this is the bubble I’m in but I realized that a lot Gen Z’s for instance are pretty aware of what is going on, but feel pretty overwhelmed with the topic and nobody has a clue what to do about it. It’s actually frightning how often people admit they don’t have any clue about anything tech-related. Education is Key, so more people are able to protect themselves. No way around this. You can invent a new whatever, it all doesnt help if people dont know what to do with it or worse: don’t even know about it.

• Think about how you can contribute to reaching that goal, especially in regards to in the area you specialized in, your profession. Or think about the waya in which privacy-invading companies affect your job area, do something about it. It also helps to keep you sane as you feel you actually (can) do something about it.

• Connect with other privacy-minded people online and your area, especially the latter.

• Finally cut that last trash platform you are still using because peer pressure and start pressure yourself, be stubborn about the ways you can be contacted in the future

• Create communities on topics that interest you here on lemmy, so it will maybe be easier for others to make the move to here as there’s actual content. Or make accounts elsewhere on the fediverse and invite poeple you know. Look for different platforms to consume whatever content you need to

• get into politics or similar

• ask questions. think twice.

• add your ideas to the list

I followdiscussions on this topic so I’m aware of the VPN problems and that a solution would just be fiddling with the settings for a bit… Like I said, I’m tired of it/too lazy to even do that as I made my desicion to experiment with consuming less and independence from Youtube in general and am quite happy with how it goes at this point. There will be time I will get back to watch some very specific creators and the more girlie content I’m into as this stuff isn’t to be found elsewhere. But so far, I also spend a good chunk of that time on Lemmy or outisde irl/nature, which is kinda nice too. Still, thanks for the advice!

Im on 0.27.2, more likely VPN issue

deleted by creator

In the same boat. Besides other problems NewPipe hasn’t worked ever since the last 2 months, and honestly, I’m tired of chasing for different solutions.

I saw it coming and tried to work on my habits over the past year. Slowly reducing watchtime and cutting down the number of channels in general. It helps a lot. Also moved everything music related to other platforms.

I now gave Odysee a go as I feel its a very familiar experience. But it’s a disaster especially if I take a look at content in my native language. I’m happy with the few tech channels on there however, it will keep me afloat for a while if I have a particularily bad day and need to watch some stuff to regulate my feelings. So I’d also be interested in channel recommendations on other platforms and the like.

I was wondering if it wouldn’t be more important to take action at this point. You know, this could be a controversial topic, but I was thinking about some uniform text that everyone could use to send to their favourite content creators, informing about the situation and asking them to at least consider mirroring content to other platforms or move elsewhere. idk, just an idea. maybe it’s a starting point for further discussion on how to solve this mess.

Maybe it seems weird to do sth like this but in the end, it’s still YouTube, things tend to spread pretty quickly on there and I guess a few creators are very aware of whats going on already. So why not try. If all those still cling to this platforms, idk if things will ever change.YouTube will be happy to have those voices leave the platform anyway, pretty sure about that. But I thought more of the effect it might have if a certain crowd just decides to leave the platform.

The other thing, I know, money issues. It’s not an easy and quick thing to move a viewer base to a different platform, especially if you have the comfort of having a somewhat regular income on the other. We need to talk about solutions for this as well. And we need to ask ourselves the question how much we are willing to sacrifice in this process.

I guess what it all boils down to is: there’s other questions we need to ask ourselves now instead of just thinking about the next best solution on how we are able to consume free content again. And yes, I have a hard time with that myself.

We need more discussion, ideas, solutions, and some brains that can implement those ideas by creating the spaces we need. It’s all so difficult and so much to navigate.

sorry if this went a bit off-topic. hope you have a great day :)

Was about to say the same, definitely a good choice!

Bandcamp. You always have the opportunity to pay as much as you wish as long as the minimum amount is covered, some even offer free Downloads. It might be a question of time however how long Bandcamp will stay this way as it was bought a while back. It’s also a good place to get releases that you might not be able to find locally, for instance some lables in other regions.

It might be difficult to find some smaller Bands however, as it takes a while and a bit of sucess until Bands make the jump from just playing live to uploading Music to Streaming Services. I’d recommend looking for Labels first and dig through other people’s collections on Bandcamp.

I guess in Metal circles attending Concerts and Festivals are still very much the way to go, as many people still appreciate not only Live events but also buying Vinyls or Merch even to support Bands or as Memorabilia. Many Festivals focus on the local Music scene, you can often support them by buying Merch as well, and they are great for networking as (at least in Europe) many organization teams are in contact with each other. You should also keep your eyes open for Vinyl stores, it’s a great way to get in contact with other metalheads or discovering new Music.

I hope that helps :)

Edit: You probably know most of what I said anyway so I hope it doesnt come across in a weird way, I just wanted to express my take on it. Maybe consider getting a high-quality Record player if you feel like going down that road :)

Discord, definitely!! It might be hard to ditch but it’s worth trying. I was never a big fan of it so it was kinda easy yet I still miss being able to contact some people on there. But the more people continue using it, the harder it will be to change things.

Spotify and Chromium, I agree on both as well. Try the options mentioned above concerning Spotify. And yeah, Music streaming is a hard one… I have a dedicated mobile device for Music streaming platforms of this kind if I feel the itch as well as a modded ipod for on the go. Highly recommend getting into a habit of buying Music (digital/physical) and listening stuff you actually own on desktop. Simple cmus or sth will do the job.

Maybe Librewolf or other Firefox fork for Browser.

Edit: typo. Edit 2: I’d keep a chromium-based Browser of some sort, you might need it sometime for something. Just use different Browsers for different things.