The thing I need that I currently use YouTube for is a place where I can store long, large videos (think around 2 hours). I want to be able to link to these videos, and disallow anyone who doesn’t have the link from seeing them. I have a lot of personal videos at this length and at a much shorter length that I want to be able to keep saved both for myself and to be able to share with various friends and acquaintances. YouTube has filled this need and still does, but I’m looking to move off of it. I’ve looked at some alternatives and few of them worked out for me because they don’t support long/large enough videos.

  • I’ve seen people talking about using YouTube for personal video storage (not home personal, just fuck-you personal). Video on something you don’t want to lose? Download, reupload unlisted/private and keep it forever. It’s effectively free cloud storage through Google?

    I know it’s the opposite of de-googling, but it’s also a pretty effective screw you.

    Then you can just self host Piped and use it as the frontend and give piped links out instead of YT ones.

    Free video storage, granted through Google, but with minimal given to YT due to lack of advertising from said stored videos. And theoretically, with self hosted Piped you’d not have to worry about buffering or stability - it’s just your instance that you’re sharing out. (This is just referring to me personally using piped.kavin.rocks and piped.video and sometimes the pages or videos not loading very quickly. I believe self-hosting it would mitigate that)