Nope. Just this week YouTube helped me fix a squeaky dryer for $18. Repair guy wanted $100 to come out, estimated a $300 repair. The amount I saved there has paid for premium for a year and I use it for everything. Fixed my washer, ran 220v for my new stove, countless baking recipes, woodworking tips. It’s not like Netflix where you only get entertainment from it, there is actual good info.

Can I? Yes, I grew up before YouTube and got to see both the growth of the public internet and YouTube. So, I know how to get along without it.
Would I want to? Not really. YouTube is like many things which have come about in human history, it’s got it’s good parts and it’s bad parts. But, on the balance, I think the good outweighs the bad. The important bit is finding that balance where you get more good out of it than bad.

One of the great and terrible things about YouTube is the low barrier to entry. It’s very easy for someone with a passion in a niche area to start posting videos. This means that we can get hundreds of hours of videos showing people removing hornet nests. Or, any other random thing I would have never seen in a world of serial TV. You can also get videos showing you how to do almost anything. Granted, those videos can be outright wrong, dangerous or just really bad. But, you may also be able to discover and start a hobby you would have never known about. YouTube has democratized video sharing in a way which didn’t exist before it. And I suspect that, were YouTube to disappear tomorrow, something would pop up in it’s place to replace it. People want easy video sharing. People want to be able to find copious amounts of weird and strange things. Sure, if you dig too far into the darker corners, you are going to find something you find objectionable. But, that’s always a problem with large groups of people, there’s always a few rotten apples which need removing.

So overall, I’m pretty positive on YouTube. Yup, it has problems and those need to be worked on. However, I’m far happier to have a place where video sharing is highly democratized, which has problems with that ease of sharing being abused; than I would be without it. The free flow of information necessarily means that objectionable things will be able to flow as well. That sucks, but it’s much better than the alternative.

YouTube is my streaming app. They have me by the throat. I could give up every other video app before I gave up YouTube. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. YouTube just has the best content.

At least 60% of my internet time is YouTube. I rely on it for entertainment, news, education, discovering music, technical help, ETC…

Could I live a meaningful life without it? Probably, people have been living meaningful lives before the invention of the computer in general… But I wouldn’t give it up because there is an immense amount of incredible content there that genuinely makes my life better.

If I had to give up YouTube I’d move to Nebula. It’s been growing and is steadily getting better.

Live? Yes. Remain sane? That’s to be determined.

Really though, I watch it for entertainment purposes 95% of the time. If YouTube were to seize to exist, I’d probably find an alternative or stick to streaming services like Twitch.

I don’t use YouTube at all.

As of today no. But I’m going by steps :

• I’ve stop using it without a front-end.
• I look for other source of content from my favorite youtubers (podcast host somewhere else, web site, social media, blog especially for cooks)
• I search for content on other plateform before it (but it is far for being systematic right now

My goal is not to go full private or open-source but just less dependent on YouTube. Onfortunately so many youtubers are solely there.

Anyway, I believe that the day big for-profit intrusive company will stop leading the video hosting business, the format will get noticeably less popular as it is extremely ressource intentive. It will mostly replace by podcast and illustrated articles.

I can. But I wouldn’t.

I spend most of my free time watching YouTube. At times I wish it would go away. Even though they are a lot of valuable videos, there are also far more videos that I’m not interested in. I also don’t view YouTube with ads. I refuse. I’ll up YouTube before I watch ads.

I’ve, unfortunately, gotten in to the habit of having YouTube playing on my second screen when doing anything at my computer. Can’t fall asleep without some history documentary playing.

Bad habit on my short list for eradicating.

lack of content from other competitors

It would be a lot easier to not look things up with YouTube if search engine results weren’t destroyed by quora and Reddit posts

I haven’t personally used YouTube as often as before, since nowadays many creators just try to be clickbaity (and yes, I do use the DeArrow extension). I watch YouTube on the TV with my family, though

I have been living without YouTube for years. That includes alternative front ends too.

Although I must admit, i have a Netflix subscription which I use very actively.