As an American I’m here for it and encourage it. These greedy evil fuckers need to be brought down and if we have to burn it all down so be it, so we can rebuild better. What we have now is clearly not functioning for anyone but the 1%.
Amazon - the logistics company - is just a front end for (and leech on) various drop shippers, lately, anyway.
Amazon used to carry quality guarantees, and have meaningful reviews, but lately the wild West crapshoot of the rest of the web is just as good.
(And at least on the rest of the web I have some idea who I’m buying from, and can avoid them after a bad experience. On Amazon, it got to where there was no way I could tell.)
For you guys. Amazon canada will still be infested with them, for instance. Also that’s assuming the dropshippers don’t just reroute their stuff to whoever has the lowest tariffs before delivering it here, like how lindt is moving all it’s delivery back into Europe so that they can go around the US to deliver to places like Canada.
Depends on where you live. Here in Germany we have a few alternatives, like “Otto” and a few others with specialisations like electronics. Some of them have a marketplace just like Amazon and they even offer the same cheap chinese crap that Amazon has to offer. So you could feel right at home.
Yeah they pulled out of QC so if I wasn’t so close to Ontario they’d be completely useless for me in canada too. Not that I haven’t avoided them for big purchases like computer stuff already, gonna have to look what general marketplaces we have otherwise lol
TBF, just leaving YouTube would be better. There’s plenty of information out there which don’t need some glorified video hosting platform (books, blogs, wikis and so oh). I really struggle trying to understand people’s addiction to YT…
Shout-out to Gamers Nexus for making a written site for all their content https://gamersnexus.net/ tho i recognize that’s not very helpful for avoiding American lol
I use YouTube extensively (I mean, 2-5 hours a day) and 7 days a week for years now; I use it for language learning, there is really nothing better than normal people chatting (to the camera or between themselves) about regular daily stuff that I’m also interested in, to improve comprehension, I’d love to find any source as rich as YouTube. Peertube is hopeless, I tried and failed there due to a complete lack of content (though I do check in occasionally, I’d love if some of my subscribed YouTubers would start publishing on that platform… Though I don’t know if there are any monetary incentives for them to do that?).
Can you not just make sure YouTube gets none of your money by using a front end that strips out all ads and sponsored segments? My kids watch YouTube but they’ve never seen an ad.
I pay for YouTube premium. Although I’d prefer to find an EU alternative, I really have no problem paying for a service that I consider worth the price.
A red flag for me, is if I’m paying for a service and they still show me adverts.
Google’s been attacking those lately, mostly to success (Piped and Invidious are effectively dead, ViewTube is also dead, and FreeTube’s a target now).
I’m specifically talking about the video as a medium to share information, and youtube is the worst, as it’s 99% filled with crappy influencer stuff whose only aim is to monetize people’s time.
Sure there’s that. I’m just trying to help you understand the viewpoint of some of the people that are heavy users of YouTube, and why there are currently no good alternatives, as you said “I really struggle trying to understand”.
I’m sure, like me, there are other people with their own alternative valid reasons for using YouTube for enormous amounts of time.
Just because some of the content on a platform is bad or not to our tastes, doesn’t mean it all is, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the users are wrong for using that platform in a way that suits them.
I do disagree with the publishing of content that is hateful or deliberately trying to misinform people, and I think YouTube has a lot of that, I’d obviously prefer it didn’t.
It’s not really the same kind of media at all, depending on what you watch. I guess what I look for in YouTube are interesting perspectives, often on things I haven’t even considered.
Maybe something like blogs could partially replace it, but I’m not aware of any blogging platforms that have tons of interesting perspectives and things to talk about and actually knows what to offer me.
Isn’t blogging kind of dead?
I used to read books when I was younger, but I have serious attention issues with text-only stuff. And it’s straining on eyes.
yes, there are clearly unfair trade practices here. EU has been making money for Google and Amazon, but the US are not using our services.
I hear the best solution to this are tariffs: EU users have to pay to use gmail until enough US users start using EU email providers and we rebalance the services trade!
I believe this is how we can cripple the US.
I just switched my services over and there are some great alternatives, we have just been pre-programmed to use the American default brands.
Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon all easy to replace.
The only challenging one so far is YouTube, content is just lacking elsewhere, but atleast with adblockers YouTube isn’t getting my money.
Depending on what content you watch, Nebula might be a good choice.
As an American I’m here for it and encourage it. These greedy evil fuckers need to be brought down and if we have to burn it all down so be it, so we can rebuild better. What we have now is clearly not functioning for anyone but the 1%.
Any recommendations? It seems a lot of my alternatives are turning heel and I would like more options. Preferably ones not likely to turn heel.
Not a complete list, but
Amazon - the logistics company - is just a front end for (and leech on) various drop shippers, lately, anyway.
Amazon used to carry quality guarantees, and have meaningful reviews, but lately the wild West crapshoot of the rest of the web is just as good.
(And at least on the rest of the web I have some idea who I’m buying from, and can avoid them after a bad experience. On Amazon, it got to where there was no way I could tell.)
Aren’t drop shippers finished with the recent tariffs, especially closing the loophole of de minimis?
For you guys. Amazon canada will still be infested with them, for instance. Also that’s assuming the dropshippers don’t just reroute their stuff to whoever has the lowest tariffs before delivering it here, like how lindt is moving all it’s delivery back into Europe so that they can go around the US to deliver to places like Canada.
Little choice?
Depends on where you live. Here in Germany we have a few alternatives, like “Otto” and a few others with specialisations like electronics. Some of them have a marketplace just like Amazon and they even offer the same cheap chinese crap that Amazon has to offer. So you could feel right at home.
Can use a website like idealo to search multiple stores at once. I just wish they had a filter to block amazon results.
Amazon is barely a thing here in Sweden. It’s niche drop shipped garbage for the most part, very similar to Wish and the like.
They have some non-garbage stuff at the same price you find elsewhere.
They also don’t do logistics here. Utterly useless company.
Yeah they pulled out of QC so if I wasn’t so close to Ontario they’d be completely useless for me in canada too. Not that I haven’t avoided them for big purchases like computer stuff already, gonna have to look what general marketplaces we have otherwise lol
Thank you for this!
I’ve heard good things about lineage OS for android and maybe apple phones but I haven’t got around to using it
Tbh I just duckduckgo the company and product if I find it in Amazon and order directly
All the alternative businesses to Amazon suck. And also probably advertise on Amazon as drop shippers anyway.
Yeah, switched to a different company for kitchen stuff, bought it on their site and everything, felt good about it.
Delivery day comes, guess who delivered the package? Amazon. So that was great.
TBF, just leaving YouTube would be better. There’s plenty of information out there which don’t need some glorified video hosting platform (books, blogs, wikis and so oh). I really struggle trying to understand people’s addiction to YT…
I like long form video content from someone who is passionate about a subject
To each their own, I guess. I prefer written stuff.
Me too. A good written guide is always way more effective. There rare today though :/
Shout-out to Gamers Nexus for making a written site for all their content https://gamersnexus.net/ tho i recognize that’s not very helpful for avoiding American lol
I use YouTube extensively (I mean, 2-5 hours a day) and 7 days a week for years now; I use it for language learning, there is really nothing better than normal people chatting (to the camera or between themselves) about regular daily stuff that I’m also interested in, to improve comprehension, I’d love to find any source as rich as YouTube. Peertube is hopeless, I tried and failed there due to a complete lack of content (though I do check in occasionally, I’d love if some of my subscribed YouTubers would start publishing on that platform… Though I don’t know if there are any monetary incentives for them to do that?).
Can you not just make sure YouTube gets none of your money by using a front end that strips out all ads and sponsored segments? My kids watch YouTube but they’ve never seen an ad.
I pay for YouTube premium. Although I’d prefer to find an EU alternative, I really have no problem paying for a service that I consider worth the price.
A red flag for me, is if I’m paying for a service and they still show me adverts.
Google’s been attacking those lately, mostly to success (Piped and Invidious are effectively dead, ViewTube is also dead, and FreeTube’s a target now).
I’m specifically talking about the video as a medium to share information, and youtube is the worst, as it’s 99% filled with crappy influencer stuff whose only aim is to monetize people’s time.
Sure there’s that. I’m just trying to help you understand the viewpoint of some of the people that are heavy users of YouTube, and why there are currently no good alternatives, as you said “I really struggle trying to understand”.
I’m sure, like me, there are other people with their own alternative valid reasons for using YouTube for enormous amounts of time.
Just because some of the content on a platform is bad or not to our tastes, doesn’t mean it all is, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the users are wrong for using that platform in a way that suits them.
I do disagree with the publishing of content that is hateful or deliberately trying to misinform people, and I think YouTube has a lot of that, I’d obviously prefer it didn’t.
“I really struggle trying to understand the addiction”, was my original statement. The two last words are important.
That’s fair.
It’s not really the same kind of media at all, depending on what you watch. I guess what I look for in YouTube are interesting perspectives, often on things I haven’t even considered. Maybe something like blogs could partially replace it, but I’m not aware of any blogging platforms that have tons of interesting perspectives and things to talk about and actually knows what to offer me. Isn’t blogging kind of dead?
I used to read books when I was younger, but I have serious attention issues with text-only stuff. And it’s straining on eyes.
yes, there are clearly unfair trade practices here. EU has been making money for Google and Amazon, but the US are not using our services. I hear the best solution to this are tariffs: EU users have to pay to use gmail until enough US users start using EU email providers and we rebalance the services trade!