Ask Lemmy

I've been using it for a year or two now, and here are my notes on it.

• There are a lot of pretty good creators on there (real engineering, hacksmith, berm peak, and real life lore, for example.) .

• Though Nebula has a lot of good creators, the vast majority of youtubers are not on it, so you will really only be switching for the ones that are.

• It has pretty much every feature (user-facing, anyway) that youtube does except for likes/dislikes, comments, and live streaming.

• It is paid with no free-with-ads option, but it is cheap (currently $36 a year) and provides a comparable experience.

• It handles podcasts well, but there aren't that many good ones (imo) and a lot of them seem discontinued.

• It has really good discoverability, but it does not match content to the user (i.e., no personalized home page).

• It's homepage is made up of various categories like a normal streaming service, including continue watching.

• It is not a pay-creator-directly kind of service. you pay nebula and they give 50% of the subscription fees to creators based on view count. It is more like a streaming service version of youtube, in a good way.

Overall, I really like it. It does a lot of stuff right and I feel that my money was well-spent. I would like for there to be more of the people I watch on it (Dankpods, for example). Nebula's pay scheme seems like a fair deal to me given the type of platform it is.

I'm subscribed to Nebula and like it.

The site isn't meant to be a YouTube replacement. It is more of a collective of YouTube talent wanting to be on a platform that they collectively own together. There is a paywall because that is how they get funding for their activities.

I signed up for it because I want to contribute to people like them more to a finer degree than Patreon subscriptions of individual creators.

I have been using Nebula for years and it has replaced most of my use of YouTube. Whether it is worth it for you or not depends on what you watch. You can see what content is on Nebula without subscribing to get an idea of what is there.

The biggest problem I have with Nebula is that it is advertised as a “creator owned” company, but that is not actually the case. Here is a blogpost that goes into more detail about that. That being said, from what I am aware of, Nebula still pays creators more than YouTube per view. I just wish they were more transparent about their business.

I like it. I watch a ton of channels from YouTube on science or tech or media that are on nebula so it works well for me. It reduces my YouTube usage significantly which I’m happy about. Plus it’s ad free and channels usually cut out the sponsored segments which is huge. The service is not perfect but the apps have improved a lot over time. I’m glad it supports the creators I watch but even without that it’s been good. I just wish Chanel discovery was better but otherwise I’m a fan.

Overall I like Nebula and I definitely like the idea of it. It offers some respite from advertising madness of YouTube. What i would like to see is the ability to create playlists and the ability to create a more personalized feed for myself.

Nebula isn't really an alternative to YT, but it is a complementary service.

May not be the best or easiest way to find content but PeerTube maybe an alternative to YouTube.

https://joinpeertube.org/

As others have said… YouTube (like Discord, GitHub, etc.) has “the numbers”. Everything else is fighting an uphill battle… even if it’s a better alternative.

A lot of YouTubers actually upload their videos to Odyssey as well, which is free. Might be worth checking it out. Although I'm not a huge fan of the company cosplaying Odysee as a decentralized blockchain YouTube alternative when everything is clearly stored on their servers. Cannot really stor videos on a blockchain

I don't know about an alternative per se, as youtube's whole thing is user generated content, which means alternative-wise PeerTube and it's ilk are more fitting, though far lacking in the depth, breadth, and wealth of content found on the former. Nebula is almost the opposite of that, being a more curated catalogue of content in exchange for being a paid service. Note, I myself don't have Nebula yet, but I do use something similar (Dropout.tv) Ultimately I think they're just fundamentally different use cases, and fit more like an alternative to streaming services than youtube including the faults that come with not having a massive multinational company backing them for years, as does PeerTube.

I've had a subscription with them for several years. I'm a big fan. There's nothing particularly sketchy I've seen. If anything, it's the opposite of the typical grifters. They sign on a lot of left voices and trans creators. You won't find conservative grifters on there. Creators have to be invited to join Nebula, and they don't let the trash past the door.

I used to use it but on a technical level it was consistently disappointing. There are a number of creators who have joined then subsequently left Nebula, often on bad terms. I expect that to continue to be the case, so I don't have a lot of faith in its sustainability personally. Pursuing classes and exclusive content seems misguided in the long-term.

https://nebula.tv/privacy

Online activity information, such as information about your use of and actions on the Services, such as the website you visited before browsing to our Services, pages or screens you viewed, how long you spent on a page or screen, navigation paths between pages or screens, information about your activity on a page or screen, access times, and duration of access.

Personal Information Automatically Collected. Nebula, our service providers, and our advertising partners may automatically log information about you, your computer, or mobile device, and your activity over time on our Services and other sites and online services. Personal information that may be automatically collected includes:

Interest-Based Advertising. We may work with third-party advertising companies and social media companies to help us advertise our business and to display ads for our products and services. These companies may use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about you (including the online activity information and device information described above in the section called "Personal Information Automatically Collected") over time across our Services and other websites and services or your interaction with our emails, and use that information to serve ads that they think will interest you.

Advertising Partners. We may also share personal information with third parties who we partner with for advertising campaigns or that collect information about your activity on the Services for the purposes described in the "Interest-Based Advertising" section above.

That's not really what I'm looking for myself -- I'd like a no-log, no-profile YouTube, myself, and that's not their business model -- but that may not be the case for other people, depending upon what they'd want in a YouTube alternative.

It's not a total alternative but I have had nebula for years and it's a great platform.

I try to throw Nebula a month of subscription every so often, since they do feel like a step in the right direction.

But the one that really replaced YouTube, for me, was DropOut.Tv.

And yeah, I guess that means silliness is more important than science videos, for me.

I'm still looking for a non-monopoly service for handyman stuff, if anyone has suggestions.

I originally dropped Nebula due to them allowing the channel "Second Thought" on the service.

While this particular creator may have been good in the beginning, over the years they have devolved into a source of tankie propaganda. The first video I saw from their channel was titled "Alternatives to capitalism", which I had hoped would go through a few alternatives and list out pros, cons, and history. Instead, the video was summed up as "Amerikkka bad and therefore capitalism bad", with 0 mention of any actual alternatives to capitalism as an economic system. Going through more videos showed that this was par for the course.

I was disappointed that Nebula would allow this creator on their platform, as they advertise themselves as a hub of educational video content. Thankfully, Second Thought had a very angry falling out with Nebula over Second Thought's celebration of Hamas's attacks on Israel. To clarify, they were supporting Hamas, not Palestine.

Recently I've started other Youtubers that have joined the platform. Combining that with Second Thought leaving is making me seriously consider signing up again.

Content 10/10

App (android) 6/10 clunky and crashes sometimes

I tried it for a year but I don't watch very much of the type of content on there so I ended up canceling it. It's a decent app. Definitely missing a lot of the QOL of something as long in development as YouTube, but it wasn't bad.

I don't think their goal is to be a YouTube alternative for what its worth. They seem to cater it towards very specific types of videos (mostly educational and news content creators).

Nebula is one I've been interested in too, I always see creators I like advertising that they're on there as well. If anyone knows how it compares to Curiosity Stream or other services I'd be interested to know (hope this isn't too off topic, OP).