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

  • early_riser@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 day 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?

  • Mwa@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    91·
    3 days ago

    Steam games/Valve.
    I dont know if this counts/its a hot take.
    It really depends on the game tbh(some regret some dont)
    I appreciate their work on Proton.
    And Steam is the only website I can really buy video games from.

  • westingham@sh.itjust.works
    192·
    4 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.

    • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
      7·
      3 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.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
      91·
      4 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.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    2 days ago

    My email provider (and domains), Bitwarden and Obsidian.

    Less happy:
    Spotify and Spotify Premium (If I could I’d get rid of the YT music part)

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
    702·
    5 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.

    • okr765@lemmy.okr765.comEnglish
      3·
      3 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).

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
      101·
      5 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.

      • selfAwareCoder@programming.dev
        2·
        3 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·
          3 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.

      • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
        6·
        5 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·
          5 days ago

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

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    3 days ago

    Chess.com. Its totally worth it for the game review which is the part of it I’d consider a “service”, but there’s other good stuff in there if you like to play.

  • Lena@gregtech.eu
    6·
    3 days ago
    • Netcup (I switched from hetzner a few months ago because I found a better deal)
    • Infomaniak for domain names
    • Purelymail, a really cheap email host (I don’t want to deal with self-hosting it)
    • Exoscale as an object storage provider, which I use for Lemmy and self-hosted Ente (which I chose over Immich because it supports S3 as a storage option, I don’t have enough storage on my netcup server or my homelab for image backups and I’d rather not deal with the stress of a potential loss of data caused by drive failure or something) for my family
    • Threema (not really a service because it’s a one time purchase, but now that we’re shilling I thought I’d include it), which I also managed to get my family to buy.
  • CorvusCornix@piefed.socialEnglish
    57·
    5 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
      16·
      5 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
        2·
        4 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
          2·
          2 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·
            2 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·
        4 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.

  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    I use YNAB for budgeting. There is a version of a related software you can self-host and you can subscribe to a bank-info-linking service on your own as well, but I don’t want to have to administer something as boring as budgeting.

    The support is also pretty good!

    The one bad thing is price. About $100 a year :<