Submitted ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨bluemoon@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

https://tinkerbetter.tube/videos/watch/adb3102a-f329-44a8-86c7-50c7e52a5bd7

Veronica Explains why she doesn't stream (from Netflix etc) #algorithmic_helplessness_sucks

I’m one of those hipsters who doesn’t use streaming services.

I did, a while ago, but I quit using them because the experience is kind of awful, and I’m happier now for it. I collect physical media and watch it using Jellyfin on my Linux-based home theater PC, and I’m completely satisfied with how it works.

I’m making this video because I am really troubled by algorithmic helplessness, and I feel like corporate-centralized streaming media makes that worse. Maybe this video will encourage someone else to cut the cord and rediscover an appreciation for owning your media and being choosy about what to “watch next”. Or maybe I’m just wasting time. Who knows? I suppose, you know, you’re reading this description, right?

If you read the description, say “algorithmic helplessness sucks” in the comments. That’ll make me feel better.

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Comments

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paper_moon@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The thing I hated about Netflix was the stress of knowing i was being watched with my viewing habits and that affected how they decided to cancel or continue shows.

Imagine being a customer at a restaurant and the chef is in the back watching you eat, saying things like:

“well, if he doesn’t eat the whole thing in less than 10 minutes that means he probably hated it and won’t continue to buy more burgers, so we should just remove it from the menu now and never server that burger again.”

Who the fuck wants to ‘relax’ and watch stuff when i know if I start watching something and stop after episode 1 because I liked it, realize my partner might also like it, and I wait 3 months to watch it together, knowing that might contribute to Netflix canceling a show that I fucking liked in the first place!

SO RELAXING GUYS!

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- Meron35@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Side note, the restaurant analogy is exactly why I hate the seemingly American style of service where the waiter asks how the food is halfway through.
  
  I guess that’s a good analogy for how creepy surveillance capitalism is, it’s like a waiter judging and recording your every move and reaction throughout the entire meal.
  
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  - victorz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    American style of service where the waiter asks how the food is halfway through
    
    So that’s what’s going on! I was wondering why people are doing that everywhere I eat out all of a sudden. Bloody annoying. Me with a mouth full of food having to force out a “yhh shh rlly gwwd tnnk yww”.
    
    Gtfoutahurr
    
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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I mean… that IS how restaurants work. If people don’t order the fish of the day then they buy fewer and fewer fishes until it is no longer a thing.
  
  And similar happens with even buying blu-rays. If nobody bought Master and Commander in 4k then you can be sure that experiment would be over. Instead? That thing sold like toiler paper during COVID and we’ll likely see more “prestige” releases with a huge dose of FOMO.
  
  As for up fronts versus long tails? Guess what is motivating all those revivals “nobody asked for”?
  
  Don’t get me wrong. I vastly prefer to rip blu rays to my NAS and watch via plex. But the idea that you are somehow no longer part of the marketing cycle is just… wrong.
  
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The only way to stop corporate greed is to stop consuming. Easy to say, hard to do, but not impossible. I’ve lived most of my life striving to be as self sufficient as humanly possible, and that has carried me over into self hosting.
    
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  - paper_moon@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m commenting on literally being watched though, so let’s say you get up to go to the bathroom after your first bite the chef marks that as ‘didn’t like his burger’ because you took a bite (watched 1 episode) and didn’t continue to binge eat the burger (binge the whole season by the end of the month), BAM because you had a life event you couldn’t control, you now hate the burger and hate the show.
    
    This is not a fun way to consume anything.
    
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- bluemoon@piefed.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  exactly this. i say PIR - Private Information Retrieval
  
  offline everything, no middlehands
  
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- illusionist@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What’s your take on scrobble services?
  
  I don’t like that one monopoly company gets all the data and abuses the system with it even further.
  
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  - paper_moon@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don’t really use them, so I don’t have much of an opinion, but I agree with your assessment.
    
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The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This video was what convinced me to start up a Jellyfin server last month. It’s fantastic. The peace of mind knowing that I have all my media stored locally, forever, is so satisfying.

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- rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I mean, forever might be too strong of a word.
  
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  - The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well, how about “for as long as I maintain the hardware”?
    
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quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Netlix does livestreams for camgirls now?

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ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m all for this, but acquiring the media outside of streaming services in the first place is difficult, likely by design. There’s no GOG for movies and TV; there’s not even a Steam. My wife is basically permanently subscribed to Peacock because she loves Law and Order: SVU, to the point that she basically has the whole series on loop while she knits. I started looking this time last year into how to self-host all that, but I didn’t even get to the point of finding out what Jellyfin is before I realized that it was impossible to legally acquire all the seasons on Blu Ray or even DVD. They want me to either subscribe to Peacock or buy a “digital copy”, which is just rental streaming by another name. I’m not a skilled enough pirate to know that my ISP isn’t going to mind my activity, and being a skilled pirate isn’t even something I’m interested in being. Plus, my past experiences with piracy is that beggars can’t be choosers, and the bit rate could be awful, or it would have huge watermarks from whatever Canadian channel the pirate recorded from, and that’s not a great experience when it’s supposed to be a gift anyway.

Unlike the video author, I’m not even bothered by algorithmic recommendations for media. I actually like it. The main reason I want to self host my media is because I don’t watch so much of it that a subscription price makes sense very often. If my wife and I are just watching the same couple of things over and over again, why do I need a buffet of content I’m not going to watch at monthly subscription prices?

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- TurdBurgler@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is why the seedbox SaaS market exists. Providing turn key hosted solutions, the only heavily lifting is the configuration which takes some reading to understand.
  
  Check out the Servarr Wiki, Ombi, Syncthing as a starting point for media discovery and curration tooling.
  
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- kilgore_trout@feddit.it ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Steam attempted to distribute movies between 2014 and 2019.
  GOG gave up at the beginning of 2025.
  
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  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, I’m aware. This is a problem that the movie and TV industry don’t appear to be interested in solving. And they seemingly operate as a massive cartel, so one studio isn’t about to break out on its own and innovate with a DRM free movie store.
    
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- bluemoon@piefed.social ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  yeah okay well your watchparties are increasingly going to get worse until you too hit your threshold: such is the business.
  
  the rest of the world uses a VPN like MullvadVPN and qBittorrent to “digitally back up media we’ve already bought”. without ads, in better quality, without telemetry, without serfdom-subscriptions. you may like AI offloading your decisionmaking, but keep doing it and you will be codependent on authority for choosing anything in life. what do you want in a cozy moment away from work? it frustrates me to read people are too anxioys to begin to do otherwise and accept the way things are. that’s a rant in return
  
  have a nice day, i won’t make this into a chain of replies.
  
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  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    My watch parties already basically dried up. The movie industry is crumbling in front of us for not being able to adapt to what their audience actually wants, and I end up just spending my time in other ways, because they’re offering me poor value and too much friction (VPNs and torrents) to get what I want, and that’s what my rant is. They’ll adapt or die. Right now, it’s looking like the movie industry will die. You’re making a lot of assumptions there about offloading my decision making to AI though…
    
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  - HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    People still have watchparties?
    
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- DigDoug@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You have to be really careful trying to buy physical copies nowadays, too, since bootlegs are absolutely everywhere. Especially on Ebay.
  
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  - explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    Image
    
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  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Oh, I forgot the other part of my rant when it comes to acquiring the content. Brick and mortar doesn’t carry Blu Rays anymore. Maybe Walmart does, but I don’t have one near me. Target and Best Buy stopped. I have a functional mall near me, but not one store in it sells movies, and when I asked, they looked at me like I had two heads.
    
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newthrowaway20@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I miss the days of people having their own bespoke collection of their favorite movies and shows. Everything is homogenized now. At least when I pirate, I’m still building my own personal media library. And I never have to worry about the show I like being removed later.

But I’m not gonna lie. The quality drop off in content caused by streaming services I think is a bigger issue

Netflix activity tries to make content that’s not actually good enough to watch without browsing a phone. Second screen content, they call it. And I guarantee someone in a finance role realized they could make way more by doing just enough to keep people, rather than try to actively create amazing content, because it’s soo much cheaper to not pay for good writers, or good set designers or actors when you could just find someone who’s good enough. I think it’s because the money people spend is recurring, linked to the service as a whole, and not linked to the individual work… users have to vote by watching now, and some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen is also some of the least watched.

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- turkalino@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  Everything is homogenized now
  
  I’m interested to know what you mean by this, because if anything, I’ve heard the older generations reminisce about ye olde monoculture when there was only a handful of good shows on a handful of television channels, and everyone would tune in weekly to watch and then talk about the next day around the water cooler. I feel like streaming has led to things being more fragmented, both because you need to be subscribed to the one service that carries the show and because there’s so many more shows being made.
  
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  - ericatty@infosec.pub ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m old enough to remember when this was a thing. TV didn’t have a remote, 3 main channels. That era.
    
    The thing that hasn’t changed is people wanting to talk about their favorite media. What has is the arena. I don’t know irl people watching what I watch. So I end up talking with other fans on Discord or watching youtubers geek out like I am.
    
    The trick is not falling for parasocial relationships with these people gathered around the virtual water cooler.
    
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  - aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I feel like streaming has led to things being more fragmented, both because you need to be subscribed to the one service that carries the show and because there’s so many more shows being made.
    
    I’m not who you were originally replying to, but I think two seemingly contradictory things can be true at once.
    
    Yes, there is definitely more content nowadays, and less people watching the same things at the same time because of all of the variety of services and content and platforms, etc.
    
    But that content tends to still be homogenous. The settings and costumes of the shows might be different, but most content cannot pass, for instance, the bechdel test.
    
    For all of the emphasis on “eradicating woke” in the last few years, there really isn’t a whole lot of actual diversity in most media. I could probably only name a single show that expresses, for instance, communist ideas, and I think it was cancelled in recent years alongside scores of lgbtq characters in shows.
    
    Plotlines are typical, production values are stepped up but there’s a large amount of, for instance, ideological consistency among all media produced nowadays.
    
    If you’re looking for a variety of typical genre shows, yes, you’re spoiled for choice. But when you’re looking for something that breaks the mold even slightly there are really only a handful of things from which to choose.
    
    And that’s leaving out how much derivative media exists. Vince Gilligan in recent interviews even lamented how he was one of only a few people that could get a new show with a new concept even started in the industry. Many shows are set in “universes” that are decades old. A lot of “new” movies are reboots or sequels of old movies.
    
    There’s a thread of choiceless variety that used to apply mainly to things like groceries that has now infected much of media as well. Whole political movements now push to eradicate the little diversity (ideological and character identity based) that exists.
    
    All of this leaves out what happened to music btw, which is becoming so algorithm-driven that it’s hard for those using streaming services to even tell if it was produced by a person.
    
    I’ll just leave this here as well:
    
    www.nplusonemag.com/…/why-is-everything-so-ugly/
    
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I’ve heard the older generations reminisce about ye olde monoculture
    
    We old folks most often reminisce through very dark, rose colored glasses which often leave out important negative features of days past.
    
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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  I miss the days of people having their own bespoke collection of their favorite movies and shows
  
  I don’t miss the shelves to house all of it tho. Now, I have quite a collection of audio from my days of internet radio, that I ripped to flac a long time ago All of it sets on my shelf as a NAS.
  
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Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I love her.

Can’t help it but think of a world with more ppl like her in it.

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- comrade_twisty@feddit.org ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If you like her check out “Bread on Penguins” too. She was suggested to me because I watch Veronica and I really dig the way she does her videos too. She’s the complete opposite of the mainstream YouTubers and just a nice person who really enjoys Linux and making videos.
  
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  - Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    yea both are utterly cool
    
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  - mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Any good links? I would love another subscription!
    
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FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
How would I find new music?

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- frankenswine@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  NPR’s tiny desk
  
  asking your friends and aquantances
  
  listening to dj sets
  
  rutracker
  
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  - MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    I ❤️ Tiny Desk.
    
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  - FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Theses are great suggestions. Thank you.
    
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- whimsy@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  KEXP (a radio station and also online+YouTube) has opened my eyes to so many new artists. And also bandcamp has a very interesting related artists kinda feature
  
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- newthrowaway20@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Used to be we would share mixtapes… I really miss that.
  
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  - VeganBtw@piefed.social ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah I share the sentiment, but I remember finding the songs for mixtapes on… the radio, where I didn’t really have a say on what’s playing. Algorithms can be a force for good sometimes.
    
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    True. I remember the days of mixtapes, and then the advent of cd collections in your car of all the bootleg ‘mix tapes’. However, I still hold that if it weren’t for Shawn Fanning, among others, pushing the envelope, the music scene online would be quite different than it is now. Technology is like that…double edged sword and all that.
    
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- bitwolf@sh.itjust.works ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Aside from similar artists, I scrobble to Listenbrainz, which gives recommendations from similar artists and similar listeners.
  
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  - FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I like this tool too: www.music-map.com
    
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  - myrmidex@belgae.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Indeed! I lean heavily on similar users to me, finding unknown gems frequently!
    
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- half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Not by reading pitchfork or rolling stone. Those are only for people who hate music.
  
  Back in the aughts I would find bands because they were an opener for another band I was seeing.
  
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  - FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I saw Charley Crockett last summer and a guy named Drayton Farley opened for him. I’m not a huge Drayton Farley fan.
    
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- wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Bandcamp? Listenbrainz?
  
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- Darohan@lemmy.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’ve been meeting my music discovery needs with a combination of community radio and bandcamp - plus just talking to friends, though your mileage may vary depending on your friends’ taste.
  
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