Reading that line I just realized that google lost me as a YouTube viewer in the past two weeks. I used to follow a bunch of ~100k subscriber channels that produced content every couple of weeks on building things and how to build things. I'd generally watch one or two 10-30 minute videos a day.
They've cranked the ads through the roof to the point that I'd see the same 6 second Liberty Mutual bit three times before the video even got through its introduction along with a couple other ads.
I now realize its been days since I even went to the site. So I guess for this n=1 we've found the limit.
Now, if they would only stop with the censorship. When in the history of mankind have the censors ever been the good guys?
I mean.....removing pedo or gore content from Youtube is still censorship. Just the kind that we probably all agree with. The way you view censorship(and censors) mostly depends on whether they remove content you want removed or not, and that line can massively vary even in western societies(for instance I love the fact that in Germany any nazi-related content is actually criminal, but many Americans gasp at the very concept - however the line is there even in America, but it's just placed in at a different point).
It's not called censorship when it is the right and reasonable thing to do. In many cases, it is simply decision making done collectively by society. For example, we don't tend to allow blatantly religious proselytizing in public schools by teachers. Is that censorship? Maybe? Is it controversial? Not really.
Education is actually a good example -- as decisions are constantly made in terms of what is and is not made available to students. It's easy to find decisions that are blatantly wrong -- for example, banning "A Big Mooncake for Little Star," which is a book about a little kid eating a cake. (But there are other choices that are obviously correct, such as banning books in school libraries that are blatantly misleading.
Whether something is considered censorship is often a matter of perspective.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-ant...
I also like having access to YouTube music but like so many things with streaming, you're not certain to get continued access to stuff you like. I've started buying MP3's of songs that I like again so that I don't have to worry that Google will stop carrying the music any more or raise prices on YouTube Premium to a level I don't like.
I have less and less trust for the big companies that provide these services so I'm focusing more on self-hosting and some form of ownership. It's not just MP3's. I'm also making sure that I'm using FOSS for my note taking (Joplin), backups (duplicati) and other such things. Some of this stuff is too valuable to me to risk losing access to.
I’ll probably look through the Patreon pages in a few weeks, see who I still care about, and see if they have alternative video feeds that aren’t so ad littered. Those can remain, the rest I’ll cancel.
Also, why are you not using uBlock origin?
Ended up getting an ad blocker on my iphone and deleting the app. I now have to use youtube.com and settle for 720p, but it's far and away better than the shit ads it served.
Don't get me started on the relevancy of the ads.
I, at least, have never seen that 1080p option on the mobile site.
Popular sort was a great way to find what a new channel was about
There is the Scottish electrical engineer, that although his accent is really thick, its refreshing, but with the adds for cell phones/no and FHP/no.
> Instead you can go to TikTok where you will find mostly amusing and at times informative content.
Tiktok does this very well. I usually end up feeling good after using TikTok. On the other hand Twitter makes me stressed, FB is not much used by my friends age group or only used for memes, and Instagram is now showing me two ads every three stories that is really a pain to use.
TikTok has by far the best recommender system I have ever tried. After an hour of use the system had correctly narrowed down my interests of exoplanets, space exploration, technology, and startups.
However that also means TikTok is the most hypertuned echochamber. I hope people don't get their political views from TikTok.
[0] https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/tiktoks-algorithm-leads-...
“ We defined “prominent far-right figures/prominent far right talking points” posts as those that contain prominent far-right figures such as Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones…”
“ We defined “racist/white supremacist” posts as those which… support white supremacy by using white supremacist talking points such as “white pride” or “white lives matter.””
So do white lives not matter? Seems like whoever wrote this hates themselves and is racist.
Users defecting from FB have a number of options, driven by their in person network, search doesn't. How do new search engines communicate that Google is turning up the (ad/spam) heat and they need to escape the pot? Search results are subjective (that's why Google uses human raters), so what does it take for users, en masse, to start questioning their search results quality and/or excessive number of ads?
To be fair, everything in Monsters, Inc. was made up.
> further evidence to long $GOOG tbh
It seems the most profitable users don't care and typically engage with the ads. Or they used to before apple came in and lowered the quality.
Arguments about ethics/ads aside
Once they do that they become lost to Google forever.
Perhaps the only holdout is mobile. But otherwise ad-tech is poisoning the well for themselves.
I mean, it's nice and noble but the vast majority of people don't follow you and corporations don't care as long as you don't become a social and political landmark. If you go quietly for sure it doesn't matter to their bottom line.
People generally give stuff up for prosaic reasons, instead such as: too many ads, favorite content producers moved to another platform, content they like becomes paid, their social circles don't consider the platform cool anymore, etc.
>.., favorite content producers moved to another platform,..
This was my grip against youtube, it wasn't merely a principled stand. Numerous independent content creators that I had followed and subscribed to on Youtube have been either censored, demonetized or blocked completely in the last couple of years. It doesn't matter to your bottom line until you censor, discourage, or otherwise drive away enough people where it does start to matter, as Facebook found out a few days ago. Perhaps Youtube/Google is such a monopolistic revenue juggernaut that it can continue to censor, demonetize and ban content creators liberally and without any coherent standards and still churn out a profit. We'll see.
And keep in mind that content creators have their own interests ($$$, fame, etc) not all of which align with their viewers' interests.
FB used outrage as a way to increase engagement and it worked for a while, but now FB is increasingly a non-desirable place to hang out. Instead you can go to TikTok where you will find mostly amusing and at times informative content. When Apple added restrictions that cut off oxygen to FB, FB started a PR campaign to paint it as one grave injustice. It seems like that was met with a collective shrug. Who cheers for the bad guy?
All that is to say, it seems like Google has been in this value extraction mode for a while and I don’t see what the long term plan is. They don’t seem to be innovating much, but are instead intent on squeezing as much money as they can from their existing assets. And while that may work in the short term, FB has shown tech giants are not invincible. I’ve seen a lot of talk online lately about how bad the quality of search results have gotten. If a credible competitor emerges, I think a lot of users would gladly switch. If/when that happens, Google better hope they don’t find themselves in FB’s position where they can’t acquire their way out of their rut.