Shill your favorite product and service. MLMs and corporate representatives need not comment.

  • early_riser@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 days ago

    I used to happily pay for YouTube premium. Back in 2008 someone told me he uses YT to listen to music and I was like “You silly man, the youtubes are fore watching not listening.” Some time in the early 2010s I realized he was right. I can’t get through a work day without some nice ambient something or other on in the background. It also used to be a phenominal source of info about any sort of topic you care to name, with videos posted by actual humans who were interested in those topics. It fed my sundry ADHD hyperfixations very well.

    Now I still pay for it, but I’m not sure it’s worth the money anymore between them foisting shorts onto us and the torrent of AI slop. The other day I wanted to watch videos on Australian lungfish and was met with AI voiceover after AI voiceover. It’s made me wonder if I should quit, but where else am I going to find 8 hours of server room ambience or an hour long video of a dog chewing on a bone?

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
    711·
    10 days ago

    Kagi.com - excellent search engine. Yes, it shouldn’t be needed, but in this day and age it clearly is. Excellent slop filter, and it let’s you downrank and uprank certain sites in your search results. And I just found out you can see the most popular sites for each category, so it’s fast and easy to see which sites probably are and aren’t worth having in your results at all. It makes internet search feel like it did 20 years ago.

    Namecheap.com - It’s where I have my domain names. Mostly because they aren’t godaddy.

    EDIT: Forgot to mention hetzner.

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
      101·
      10 days ago

      Yes, it shouldn’t be needed

      My view is that is should be needed. Advertising is a bad business model, I’d much prefer paying for a service I used. I think we should all get more comfortable paying for the sites we use.

      • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
        6·
        10 days ago

        Yeah and when you’re using 200 different services and apps and pay for each and every one of them suddenly you have -$2K in your bank account each month, it’s not sustainable

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
          3·
          10 days ago

          You are paying for these services one way or another. But no one says you have to pay $10 for each service.

      • selfAwareCoder@programming.dev
        2·
        8 days ago

        Agreed, and having heard of them for the first time today, their payment plan seems incredibly reasonable, crediting us for unused monthly plan credits means it’s basically pay as you go with a limit to avoid surprise bills, while avoiding the feeling of overpaying because I’m not using a service enough

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
          2·
          8 days ago

          They only credit for months you do no searches at all, if you do one you pay for the full month, but it’s a nice touch. Personally I can’t think of a situation where I’d do no searches in a month!

          For something as important as search, paying $5 or $10 a month seems entirely reasonable to me. I’ve been a Kagi user ever since their unlimited plan dropped to $10 a month when they reached enough users that they could do that.

    • okr765@lemmy.okr765.comEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      I’d be careful with Kagi: unfortunately, collecting your payment information and attaching it to an account is directly at odds with maintaining privacy on the internet. I used Kagi for a year and did enjoy the search, but ultimately didn’t renew due to privacy concerns.

      They do have privacy pass, which claims to alleviate some of the privacy concerns, but then you lose all the customization functionality (my main use for Kagi) and there appear to be some issues with it (see this thread https://piefed.social/post/1204472).

  • CorvusCornix@piefed.socialEnglish
    58·
    10 days ago

    What I pay for:

    What I “pay” for (through donations, if that counts):

    • The EFF
    • Wikipedia
    • GrapheneOS
    • Asahi Linux
    • Python

    I don’t really subscribe to much, but I’m definitely looking to expand the latter list, so I’ll probably start donating to the maintainers of ad blocker filter lists and seek out more organizations fighting the good fight.

    • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
      17·
      10 days ago

      Oh shit I forgot, Mullvad is such a given that I didn’t even consider it a paid service, it’s more like a utility bill for me, like electricity or broadband access.

      I cannot overstate how legit they are, if there is one company on the planet I trust like my family it’s them. Don’t ask how I know, but I have first hand information the lengths they go to to protect their customers. It’s run by Swedish 80’s OG hackers who have NO need for the money, they’re involved in other projects and have fuck you money, this is an idealist run outfit and they are legit as a MOTHERfuk. Trust that. They are on OUR side, they are TRON as far as I’m concerned, they fight for the user!

      • CorvusCornix@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        9 days ago

        Honestly I’d love if more companies could adopt their payment model. Phreeli looks like a solid cellular provider and I’m sure their double-blind armadillo thing is legit, but if I could just mail them an unmarked envelope with nothing but a numeric account identifier and some cash I’d like it way more. Same with Tuta. But I understand there’s some possibility for logistical concerns there (what happens if the user loses their account identifier? Too many banks still use SMS 2FA, etc. etc.).

        • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          Hahaha yeah I love that. What other VPN provider can boast “cash in an envelope” as a payment option for absolute privacy? I’m telling you these guys take privacy very seriously, I know first hand.

          • CorvusCornix@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            7 days ago

            Well I’m not gonna lie, I envy your firsthand experience, lol. I’ve looked at jobs they have open from time to time, but alas, they generally either don’t fit my experience or are more aimed at candidates from Europe.

      • CorvusCornix@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        I will be for sure! I’ve been trying out the different Fediverse “reddit clones” (for lack of better terminology) to see which one I liked the most (I started with just Lemmy) before I settled on which one I was going to support, but I’m pretty confident Piefed is the winner.

  • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish
    37·
    10 days ago

    Nebula. There are only a handful of creators on there that I watch regularly, but even then, it’s worth it for the price.

    • anon6789@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 days ago

      I really need to give this and/or Curiosity Steam a try. I still get a lot of use out of YouTube Premium (oh, boo yourself 😄) but for documentary type things, it’s so hard to sure through the AI generated stuff anymore.

      • FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafeEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        I initially got both when they had a curiosity steam/nebula annual bundle. I gotta say, some of the curiosity stream stuff is hit or miss for me. Some categories/genres have more/better documentaries than others. Overall it’s nice for when I just want to throw on something interesting while I eat. Nebula, I loved so much that when they stopped doing the bundle with curiosity stream I just got the lifetime nebula subscription so that I can always have it. Getting to download the videos for offline watching is super nice for long flights

        • anon6789@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 days ago

          Thank you for the input!

          It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do since the 2 services were bundled, but whenever I got bored with YouTube or whatever other streaming things I was using, I’d take a break and read a book from my backlog or play a video game and then forget to try them.

          I just want longer content to put on in the background or while I do chores, I just don’t want it to be AI slop.

    • howler@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      I really wish nebula polled the community ornhad some way to offer feedback on including some other streamers. There are a handful of varied channels i would love to watch away from yt.

      • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world
        8·
        10 days ago

        They have a few days trial, and encourage account sharing. So you could give it a crack and split it with a friend. Quite a few shows and podcasts they do are worth the price.

        Besides, they pay the talent far better than anyone else in Los Angeles, if that kind of thing is important for you.

        • moondoggie@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          10 days ago

          Plus, when they raised their subscription price to pay for more shows, anyone who was already a member kept their original subscription price. They even gave folks a month or so to sign up and lock in the lower price. A lot of people love the channel so much they wanted to pay the higher price. It’s my favorite streaming service.

          Oh, and about paying the talent: last year they did a profit share and anyone who earned money from Dropout got a cut. They pay people to come to auditions, so even those people got some of the profit sharing.

          Dropout is the gold standard of streaming services.

          • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            I have been watching so much of their stuff free on yt this week… Would love to somehow split a membership with someone someday to support them.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    22·
    10 days ago

    Does the VPS provider that runs part of my self-hosted infrastructure count? I’ve happily paid one of them for almost 14 years now.

    I honestly think that’s my last online service other than a couple Patreons for music.

  • westingham@sh.itjust.works
    192·
    9 days ago

    YouTube Premium. No ads and the creators I watch get paid more.

    Yes, I’m aware of all the apps out there that give you the Premium perks without actually paying for it. Here’s the thing: the VAST majority of my watching is done on my TV via an Apple TV and I really CBA to go through all the hoops to make any of those apps work with my setup.

    I don’t watch any other streaming services and I don’t watch cable / network TV. I’m okay paying for Premium to get the best experience.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
      91·
      9 days ago

      I pay for that too but I wouldn’t say I’m HAPPY about paying for it. Because I remember when YouTube used to be free and had no ads.

    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
      7·
      8 days ago

      I don’t like it, but YouTube family is by far the most bang for buck for our family in hours watched vs price.

      And not having to watch any shitty ass ads on any YouTube client wherever I log in is amazing.

  • TheMadIrishman@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    14·
    10 days ago

    Privacy.com. I pay 10 bucks a month and never have to expose my debit or credit card numbers, I just use virtual ones. Plus, I get about $10 cash back each month, so really, it pays for itself.

    • seathru@quokk.auEnglish
      31·
      10 days ago

      I used privacy.com for years happily until one day they said they would freeze my account if I didn’t provide a lot of personal info. I let them keep it.

      It used to be free, they made their money from CC surcharges. You have to pay now?

        • Danitos@reddthat.com
          13·
          9 days ago

          Not really, as they include a bunch of AI extras, like $10 USD in LLM tokens usage. I would much prefer a $5 USD option without that, just a search engine.

            • Danitos@reddthat.com
              3·
              9 days ago

              Not exactly. The starter pack is only 300 searches/month and also includes $5 USD LLM tokens credit.

              IMO, the swetspot would be $5 USD unlimited searches and no LLM token credit, or their familiar plans (which sadly I have no one to buy with).