yt-dlp is the goat

I second Freetube. Not a perfect app (think it's Chromium based), but it gets the job done and they're pretty good about updating it pretty quickly whenever YT successfully breaks it.

It's a very difficult business model to make profitable without an already massive userbase. In fact, I think YT was actually losing money for Google for a while after they bought it. I could be misremembering though.

Hard to do if you watch directly from your TV using some dongle and don't know or can't modify your router to block ads.

Amazon Premium started this trend. They're shameless.

Yes but not everything needs to make a profit, just not make a loss. Also it could be community supported with donations and stuff:)

SmartTube is on AndroidTV

Kodi can be installed through the play store, you can transfer files over smb and ftp and move the apk using it.

You're welcome.

Excuses:

I use a Roku or Roku TV

Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.

I use AppleTV

Don't, buy a $25 Android TV box from walmart.

FTP? SMB? Apk? What are these, words?!

These terms can be searched for and learned about.

Why not just use Kodi?

You're ahead of the game, find a plugin pack and enjoy

Absolutely. And they update pretty quickly when YouTube breaks something.

I mean, yeah. What did you expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I believe the main cost is in hosting all the videos. A lot of them are probably junk that were never meant to see the light of day. I certainly use it as an extra backup for many of my videos with no context and random UUID titles.

For everything else, a potential solution is to have everyone come in with their own videos hosted elsewhere and the platform just integrated with a bunch of APIs for fetching and serving those videos. For small time creators, the cost should be fairly low to none since a lot of platforms allow you to store a small number of files for free.

I just use a frontend to remove ads + Extra Privacy too

I should just read a book at this point

The RandomVideos is joking, not z3rOR0ne

Or Freetube on pc, a FOSS desktop client

Thats true, I once had to repair my washing machine and I could only find 1 video about the same model and same repair. It was a large Russian man that I could not understand (this was before auto generated subtitles).

Anyways, I just looked at the video and copied everything he did and I fixed my machine.

My dude I know, some people need to use iPhones tho. I have a solution anyway and sharing it here for others cos I heard it’s a popular phone….

Damn, fixed, I had a brainfart and was installing Arch while browsing Lemmy lol

what other sites are there to use?

YouTube was operating at a loss under Google for years. The only reason it is able to exist is because a massive entity like Google was able to absorb that without folding, and keep providing a free service until it becomes profitable (is it even yet? I'm not sure).

I mean fuck Google, and yes a big enough non-profit (or even government) could do it (probably better), but unfortunately that's not the world we live in right now.

Haha I'm kidding, it's good that you share your solution here.