It’s easy to start. Google is required to send you a CSV of your YouTube subscriptions upon request.
If you have an Android phone, once you have said CSV file, you can upload it into the Newpipe Application and voila, watch YouTube without visiting YouTube (or supporting the creators, but that’s an aside to this topic). Sadly I know of no way of doing something similar on iPhone.
On desktop/tablet, you can always use Invidious. This is especially useful when combined with the tool yt-dlp and sponsorblock. If you use an RSS reader, you can “subscribe” to YouTube channels that way, and use redirection extensions to redirect you from YouTube to invidious, after that you can use yt-dlp with a sponsor block flag to download the video directly to your desktop, and watch it in whatever quality you want, with subtitles if you want, and have all mentions of sponsors cut out, and of course, no ads.
Obviously, this is too much work for most, but this is what I do to not visit YouTube while still watching their content, which is simply more plentiful and, IMHO, higher quality than what you find on other platforms (save for possibly Nebula).
Apalacrypto@lemmy.world 1 month ago
For me it’s gmail. I’ve disconnected from everything else, but I have WAY TOO MANY things connected to and through my gmail account.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 month ago
If it’s any comfort I’ve spent about a year getting away from Gmail and I can report it is in fact doable.
Finding another email service and using a domain of my own with it was the easy part. The hard part was painstakingly replacing my address everywhere I was using it with new addresses.
Way more doable than YouTube, which I don’t foresee being replicated any time soon.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
You can also forward emails from your old Gmail to your new email as a bridge to ensure you don’t miss anything.
StaySquared@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I would not forward anything from GMail to another email provider. Google is intrusive. They have no reason to know anything about my new email address. But I’m overreacting and that’s okay.
brenticus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is how I do it. I may never stop actually having that gmail account in use due to the number of accounts tied to it, but I at least can use other services going forward without losing tons of stuff.
StaySquared@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Facts. GMail took me about 4 months or so, just incrementally logging in and checking every service and subscription I have attached to GMail, logging into that account and changing the email address to my new email address. It’s a tedious task but worth it. Google is far too intrusive, imo.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Just start. I made another email a few years ago and just started using it for new accounts, moving others over when I thought of it…
Slowly but surely my Gmail has become a ghost town that receives mostly just spam, and the odd password reset link for accounts I haven’t bothered updating.
Sure it’s not a 100% but it’s a lot, and it’s a little bit less of myself getting to google
Pechente@feddit.de 1 month ago
Its pretty easy to just redirect Gmail‘s messages to a new account. Some providers even allow you to import previous emails. My switch to Protonmail was incredibly smooth.
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
proton.me/easyswitch
84615_on_resu@lemmy.world 1 month ago
During Covid, I did some digital cleaning. It took me around a month (from couple of minutes, up to few hours each day) to clean up my gmail inbox. I had a gmail label where I placed all the emails received from any site where I created an account. I went one by one to each of them and either changed the login (to a non gmail address), or deleted an account (if I wasn’t using it anymore).
Now I use another email provider, and i pay for it. I use gmail for situations/accounts where i suspect that my email address could be spammed. Right now, my whole google space usage is around 50 mb. I stopped using google drive, I don’t use google search, I still use YouTube and pay to have no ads - because I just like YouTube.
It’s possible to disconnect oneself from Google services as much as one wants. Still, I continue to use an android phone (I like iOS, but it’s still too limited in comparison to Android).
rikudou@lemmings.world 1 month ago
I’ve been there, now it’s been over two years where I’m pretty much Gmail free. It’s hard but it’s worth it.