This now makes up the bulk of 'content' and is heavily monetized and driven by monetization where the 'content creators' have a more intimate relationship with advertisers and platforms to essentially sell out their audience ie back to the old media model of 'influencers'.

The content is also derivative and repetitive but easier to access and consume. Thanks to the monetization the presentation and production values are higher. There is definitely some decent content produced by this model but it becomes harder and harder to find.

There is a certain desperation to capitalism that infects everything. Sell, sell, sell, make money, forget everything else unless it affects your ability to make money, and it becomes the primary driver.

I just quoted you on twitter as I think that expresses very well how I feel. Underlying capitalism is the thought that if you fail you'll starve.

But (and bringing this back to the original topic) the businesses behind the web have gone even further. It's not sufficient to make money, you must make ALL the money you can ALL of the time. This leads to the behaviour as discussed in the article - no regard for how you are treating your customers/fellow human beings, just get rich, and by winning you justify your shitty actions. This is probably nothing new, robber barons have been around for a long time, but it now seems to be standard practice for all businesses, especially web-based ones who don't directly deal with people.

(I like to sometimes phrase it as "the market optimizes for creating the most useless thing that you can still trick people into buying".)

--

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

In real world, we solve this the usual way - by having a government enforce them.

I've been listening to podcasts since about 2010, and in that time I've witnessed podcasts that used to be ad-free jump on the Blue Apron / Stamps.com / Dollar Shave Club bandwagon. First they started with a little sponsored ad at the end of the show. Then one at the beginning. Then one commercial break. Then multiple commercial breaks. It's the same downward spiral that television went through and it's absolutely painful to watch it happen and be powerless to do anything. Maybe I should have done a better job of supporting those podcasts; I did donate to many of them. But I envision a time in the future where I'll no longer be able to feel good about listening.

I mean, the whole point (and value) of podcasts is to remove the private radio station crap, not to replicate it.

BTW, the German podcast scene is a quite positive example of the directions podcasts can go.

Any podcast player I can imagine anyone would ever use has a convenient way to skip ads, and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast. My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode. It downloads a file and plays that file for me.

Who really cares that much about ads that don't track you or destroy your experience?

I beg to differ.

I see the ability to skip ads immediately, at any time, as a fundamental user right (and websites that try to deny this right should be prosecute by consumer protection). In other words, this is not the distinction between good versus bad quality. It is the distinction between merely acceptable versus totally inacceptable.

With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience.

If you choose to skip the ads, then how should the creators be compensated for the content that you consumed?

"With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience."

You know what else is a huge jump in quality? Actually being able to continue to do the show.

There's way too much "content" these days anyway, and the worst of it is the one that is done to make money (as opposed to labour of love, or having external funding independent of content's performance - like patronage, being considered a "marketing expense", etc.).

Moreover, direct donations [1] are working quite well, at least for the popular podcasts. (But then, only the very popular podcasts make a fortune anyway.)

Here in Germany, SEPA standing orders are quite popular for fans to support their favourites.

Also, buying stuff and sending that to the Podcasters is quite popular for some formats (either specialized stuff like high-quality chocolate from people working in that business, or just buying random stuff from a podcaster's Amazon wishlist.)

[1] Well, legally this is still plain income rather than donations, so you still have to pay taxes. Unless, of course, that income is very small and/or you create a non-profit organization around your podcast.

Yet.

There's an easy-to-imagine scenario where advertisers bribe podcast playing software creators to embed these "features" for a cut of the money.

http://omegataupodcast.net/

Long episodes, such as 2 hours interviewing a physicist at ITER are really well done.

- CRE Technik, Kultur, Gesellschaft https://cre.fm/

- Deutschlandfunk Nova - Eine Stunde History https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/eine-stunde-history

- Methodisch Inkorrekt http://minkorrekt.de/

- Raumzeit https://raumzeit-podcast.de/

- Logbuch Netzpolitik https://logbuch-netzpolitik.de/ (prefer the episodes where they have guests)

Makes it harder to estimate where the information in the video is.

I'm happy when it's only useless. It's often useless and loud.

Mind, mobile YT doesn't have keyboard sip, but mpsyt does.

Binary search works well.

Who the heck came up with the silly idea that this is an event in itself? And above all, why did anyone -- or, worse, seemingly everyone -- fall for it?!?

Stop the darn lunacy now.