I stopped using streaming platforms personally and just went back to pirating music. Personally I don’t want to support Spotify because they continue to support far-right ideology with their podcasts, but that’s a completely personal decision.

Since at least a couple of years ago - it requires a bit of jumping through hoops, but it’s 100% worth it to get ad-free YouTube on iPhone!

You can do it in any country as far as I know, it’s not EU-only.

Yeah, of course - you should do what you think is best. I was thinking that if everyone cancels their YT Premium and signs up for a few Patreons, distributed as randomly as possible (which is why I said to go for the smaller creators) then overall creators would get more money, while we’d still be paying less. Everyone wins - except Google, but fuck Google!

There’s probably quite a bit of content still that is playing “World of Warcraft” but it’s more like a “just chatting” kind of stream, if you know what I mean - WoW is a safe, comfy game to have on in the background while talking about other stuff.

Ah, sorry, that’ll teach me to read more carefully. Thanks for pointing it out <3

It’s hard to get exact numbers from WoW because they’re not publicly available. You might be right that WoW is still the biggest, I found some other numbers that disagree. WoW’s twitch numbers seem to be way higher.

I’ll edit my comment

If you use iOS devices for watching YouTube, look into side-loading uYou+, it’s basically an edited YouTube app that removes most of the ads. You can stream from your phone to the apple TV, too, also without ads. You don’t need a jailbroken phone or anything like that.

If your main reason for paying premium is for ad blocking, I’d suggest just cancelling it now and using ad blockers. If you want to support creators, I’d say that it’s better to cancel and subscribe to a few patreons - I’d pick some of the smaller creators you like, to spread some of that support around a bit.

If you use iOS devices for watching YouTube, look into side-loading uYou+, it’s basically an edited YouTube app that removes most of the ads. You can stream from your phone to the apple TV, too, also without ads.

Not sure what the android equivalent is, but someone else will know - hopefully they will share in the comments also.

and Google used to care about not being evil.

Corporations will ALWAYS enshittify a platform they control. It’s simply a matter of time.

Reddit was almost exactly the same, and that did very little to help anyone

It’s really hard to know for sure, because Blizzard don’t release statistics, but according to ActivePlayer.io, Final Fantasy XIV has more active players than World of Warcraft.

But there are other websites which put World of Warcraft in the lead. It’s also worth mentioning that World of Warcraft has much higher twitch statistics than FFXIV.

Reddit was the same, you know. It didn’t matter

It’s obvious to me that we need to have laws to enforce portability of data and interoperability for large platforms.

Take heart, as long as there are people who are willing to stand against tyranny and fascism, there will always be hope. Every one of us, even the strongest of us, sometimes need to take some time off to recover - take all the time you need. Be with your loved ones, hold on to them tightly, and share your love as widely as you can. Spread love among your friends and co-workers as best you can. I know it sounds extremely corny, but love, and fighting for who we love, is how we will win.

We can’t vote our way out of this, but we can build a better future outside of the system and do everything we can to resist the state. That means that we might be left with no choice but to take risks and make sacrifices in the hope that the world we leave behind might start moving in the right direction.

Stay strong and hang in there. I love you, no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you’ve done.

Because the concept of federation is still impenetrable to a layperson