I’m boycotting YouTube primarily because of their recent human right censorship against Palestine. But I’d generally like to reduce YouTube’s dominance in the streaming space, even if it means supporting a few alternative US-based platforms like Nebula, though obviously PeerTube would be ideal.

Edit: The comments here mention that it would be good to tie the email to monetization, so I’ll also be mentioning my support on Patreon in future emails.

Here’s the kind of email I’m sending to my favourite creators. You can usually find their email in their channel bio.

Subject: Please consider alternative video platforms

Hello <First Name/Channel Name>,

I’m writing to ask you to please consider uploading your videos to alternative streaming platforms, in addition to, not instead of, YouTube.

I’ve personally started to move away from YouTube because <INSERT reasons>. Here’s another creator who also recently wrote about their reasons for moving off the platform: https://joshgriffiths.site/youtube-is-awful-im-not-posting-there-anymore/

I’m currently consuming video content on <INSERT alternatives> instead of YouTube.

<INSERT reasons I’m a fan>. I would love to continue watching your content on any other platform, and I’m sure others would appreciate the option to do so as well.

Cheers,
<Name>

  • dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 days ago

    Hell yeah, thanks for fighting the good fight.

    Another pitch that I think has a lot of potential is to ask long-form creators to let paid supporters get videos through a non-Youtube distributor. It encourages people to talk with their dollars and diversifies the creator’s revenue stream, so there are benefits to all parties involved.

    A niche academic history podcaster that I’ve listened to for many years was able to move off of Youtube long-term after branching towards Patreon (+ maybe Nebula?), and seems to be doing well with it. Shameless plug: https://www.shadowsofutopia.com/