Ah, the old tried and true formula of “find out what people like most about using our product and then worsen it in intrusive, annoying, and nakedly exploitative ways.” Great business acumen,...
Ah, the old tried and true formula of “find out what people like most about using our product and then worsen it in intrusive, annoying, and nakedly exploitative ways.” Great business acumen, YouTube execs. Truly this is a winning move, benefitting both your user base and the long-term health of the company. </sarcasm>
But seriously, am I imagining things or did all the world’s corporate leadership decide in concert to make decisions using only the shortest-term goals possible? Maybe I’m just paying more attention now and things have always been that way. But it feels like even the giant companies are constantly flying by the seats of their pants, enshittifying and self-sabotaging without the fleetingest thought about building brand loyalty or making great things that people want. It just comes across as… desperate.
This is a product of how C-level executives are compensated and how rich people money works in the modern world. Most of their compensation comes in the form of company stock, not salary. Making...
Exemplary
But seriously, am I imagining things or did all the world’s corporate leadership decide in concert to make decisions using only the shortest-term goals possible?
This is a product of how C-level executives are compensated and how rich people money works in the modern world.
Most of their compensation comes in the form of company stock, not salary. Making the stock price go up as much as possible today makes them richer faster.
"Golden parachute" clauses are ubiquitous, so no matter how badly they fuck up they won't really get punished, just move on to an early retirement with enough money in their pocket to buy a megayacht.
Myopic strategies that prioritize short-term gains are heavily rewarded by stockholders, who only see value in beating the market average and not just keeping up with it. As soon as the strategy backfires, they dump their holdings and put that money into the next company promising unsustainable exponential growth.
To compound things, rich people don't spend money the way we do. Instead of selling a bunch of stock to fund their next big purchase, they borrow against their stocks to fund their lifestyle. As long as their stock portfolio continues to grow at a rate greater than the interest on their loans, they can keep this cycle going indefinitely and live perpetually in debt without consequence. Of course, this is highly dependent on stock prices going up while interest rates stay low, which is why they tend to get so uppity whenever the Federal Reserve isn't setting interest rates as close to zero as possible.
TLDR: Rich people don't face consequences when their shitty behavior ruins the companies they run, and they are highly incentivized to prioritize rapid growth today over sustainable growth tomorrow.
I don’t know who’s working on fixing this, maybe nobody since the system kinda works for the purpose it’s set for. Maybe there is something to be found in a system that would lock the value of...
I don’t know who’s working on fixing this, maybe nobody since the system kinda works for the purpose it’s set for.
Maybe there is something to be found in a system that would lock the value of stock comp to a specific amount until x years in the future, in order to encourage longer term thinking…
Well Kamala Harris' plan was to tax unrealized capital gains for individuals worth more than $100m. That would have had serious implications for everything I said above, and might be why the...
Well Kamala Harris' plan was to tax unrealized capital gains for individuals worth more than $100m. That would have had serious implications for everything I said above, and might be why the billionaire class decided to go all in on that orange colostomy bag conservatives think is presidential material.
Perhaps we set capital gains taxes to a progressive 0/30/60/99%, based on total value owned of all stocks. Increasing the quantity of stock owned will be actively worse for selling off. The only...
Perhaps we set capital gains taxes to a progressive 0/30/60/99%, based on total value owned of all stocks.
Increasing the quantity of stock owned will be actively worse for selling off. The only tangible way to profit off stocks long term is through perpetual dividends of a stable company that produces reliable products (or gouges a monopoly but that is a problem which requires additional solutions).
This will pretty much eliminate taking unprofitable companies public. I am OK with this.
If they wanna run their businesses in thr ground for short term profit, it's on them, but They should be taxed for their compensation no matter what, even if it's in a stock They can't expect to...
If they wanna run their businesses in thr ground for short term profit, it's on them, but
They should be taxed for their compensation no matter what, even if it's in a stock
They can't expect to get "handouts" and deals if their interests aren't in the long term interest of the people funding them.
Those two factors alone might naturally fix the issue. We just need reps who care about their people and not donors.
Edits: typed this thought vomit at 4am on a min brightness phone with a splitting headache. Just cleaning it up. My personal theory is that the internet and moors law really broke the way business...
Exemplary
Edits: typed this thought vomit at 4am on a min brightness phone with a splitting headache. Just cleaning it up.
My personal theory is that the internet and moors law really broke the way business people specifically think about trade and commerce. There's probably smarter people than me who have a identified exactly what these issues are and I'd love to be pointed towards their work because I'm just making wild associations here.
But a quick tl,dr:
In 2010 cocacola had a market cap of $130B and in 2021 it was $230B.
In that same time Facebook went from 0 to a starting market cap of $60B in 2012 to $1058B in 2021 and projecting $2000B in the near future.
To unpack how I see these numbers: the perpetual growth model worked for so long because that growth was expensive. When I was young, there were only a handful of truly global companies and most of those had to give up a lot of control for that international reach. It would be a considerable time, capital and knowledge investment before any gains could be seen in a new markets and there were countless strategies to achieve that. You needed to invest smartly as a business and shareholder and even then, there was no guarantee of a return, let alone a timeline to that return.
IP and service companies sort of threw that all out the window. It's literally the reason the US has a massive trade deficit but has such wealth. It's because the US is practically the world leading provider in internet and technology services. The cost for Coca Cola to operate globally is massive mix of logistics, manufacturing, management, regulations, HR, marketing and everything else that goes with it. And it's still affordable to everyone.
The main cost for Facebook/Netflix/Twitter/Uber to operate globally is server bandwidth. The hardware/smartphone companies footed all the hardware and logistics costs and they optimized it by centralizing manufacturing in East Asia. ISPs/Governments foot the bill for networking.
At the same time tech companies off-shored any "low skill" work to South Asia. Support, testing, moderation and the like. Made it a case of people at home being too entitled/lazy/stubborn to work at competitive rates when it was simply cost-of-living dictating a living wage. And as the skills of those people increased with the cash injection of these tech companies, the proliferation of the low cost hardware and lower barrier to high quality education over the internet, it became economical to take more and more high paying tech services work to Asia as well.
And most of these companies base themselves in the US where they could literally drive the population beyond the edge of insanity and still be rewarded. Because nothing on the internet is "real" and the money is flowing.
So you have a whole class of companies that can leverage the internet and cloud services to infinitely scale while globally minimizing costs to a ridiculous degree and having no incentive to spend a cent more than needed.
In an open stock market, how does anyone compete with the growth potential of a tech company. Even while leveraging all the automation of optimizations that come with tech, its still magnitudes more expensive to exist in the real world. And you've got long standing traditional companies adopting the strategies of these tech companies thinking there's profound insight in "move fast and break things" when it was really luck and low costs.
And regardless of that, you saw the figures in the tl,dr. And by the logic of capitalism, line must go up and people keep throwing money at these companies or any hint of a startup that might compete at that level. And there's the added logic of increased investment means increased quality and higher chances of success. So it becomes an infinite hype engine, with higher expectations for the mythical "low-risk high-yield " returns. (Tangent: One of my other lines of thinking is that businesses have how durability because spend so much effort to minimize risk and control every variable that they behave as if they are in a risk free environment. The problem with maximum efficiency at razor thin margins is there is no tolerance for literally any downtime. Amazon can't even stomach the cost of a bathroom break 1 minute longer than expected. It's not that they can't stomach the cost, they just cant let a projection slip because the shareholders have high expectations for certain level of return and that level is only increasing.)
But the real question is how? Because these companies have effectively saturated their markets. A type of global reach that would once take over a century is available within a financial quarter. And the glacial speed of effective regulation means that these companies have the time and means to act with absolute impunity. So what innovative strategies are left to make line go up. The human race can not keep up with a tech companies hunger for growth. I'm convinced that's why tech bros and so pro-birth, because they need anything to drive up that new user numbers.
But seriously, when money was cheap, the tech companies had their fingers in every pie. Hardware, more services, acquisitions, weird experiments. But it's a catch 22 because doesn't matter if they succeed or fail, there will forever be the need for explosive growth. And they can do is fall back on the proven practices. Because this is an industry that didn't exist like this even a decade ago. So we need some true business insights to figure out how to do this. And we introduce the MBA playbook. An (in my opinion) scam of business science compiled by people that have no experience or understanding of the power that technology at this scale has beyond a few arbitrary KPI's. And so we are left with the same few strategies across every industry and business. More ads. Less features. Slash costs. Fewer benefits. Automation. Reduce revenue share. Force out lower earning creators. Dark patterns and exploitation. Prolonged psychological warfare and torture of users. Gambling. Make everything the current best thing. Take control of the government. Enshitify, Enshitify. Enshityfy.
(Another tangent that's actually on topic: The ad increase seems like a particularly insidious trap for websites, google in particular. The issue is that even the highest paying advertiser has a budget. Inducing demand with more spaced has a limit and at some point that just results in an oversupply of ad space. That drives the price-per-ad-impression down, making it accessible to low quality advertisers. Increasing the exposure of low quality ads drives down the tolerance that users has to ads and also drives down the overall price of the ad space because higher paying advertisers do not want the negative associations to very "suggestive" ads and a revolting user base that is making a concerted effort to avoid the advertising. So you're going to see lower than expected revenue as a company and they try to correct it by forcing people to watch more ads. Seriously Googles addiction and reliance on advertising is practically cancerous at this point. In one ecosystem there's YT ads competing with search ads and map ads and merchant ads and email ads and sponsored content and SEO (which is just advertising through formatting) and manipulated search results and its just a mess. We are really not designed to think in terms of virtual spaces and infinite supplies.)
So now we're at the point of pure existential crisis on all fronts. The lines have to go down. Traditional companies have enshitified themselves to the point of plane parts falling out the sky. Tech/IP companies are just trying to remove humans from the workflow entirely. The only path to growth seems to be the dismantling of the government and selling it off for scrap. They are literally considering modular nuclear power plants to offset the energy costs. And then what...
I think it's more that our national corporate system is set up such that quarterly profits are paramount, above all else. I also think that most people put up with the ads. Even my wife does. She...
flying by the seats of their pants,
I think it's more that our national corporate system is set up such that quarterly profits are paramount, above all else.
I also think that most people put up with the ads. Even my wife does. She can't be bothered to install an ad blocker. It drives me bananas, but I think she's representative of most people.
Like most corporations, it's all about the stockholders. If the CEO doesn't give them an increased profit from the previous year then their job is at stake. Making the same profit is not enough....
Like most corporations, it's all about the stockholders. If the CEO doesn't give them an increased profit from the previous year then their job is at stake. Making the same profit is not enough. The Stockholders don't care about anything else, so the the CEO resorts to any short term money grab to show an increasing profit.
Edit: This is an old problem, been around for decades. Only recently are we really feeling the affects.
Meta/Facebook's P/E ratio of 24.67 is definitely a bit high, which would suggest it's potentially overvalued... but so are most major tech companies' stocks because investors also take into...
Meta/Facebook's P/E ratio of 24.67 is definitely a bit high, which would suggest it's potentially overvalued... but so are most major tech companies' stocks because investors also take into consideration their future growth potential, not just current profitability. E.g. AMZN has a 33.45 P/E ratio. But I suspect you also might be vastly underestimating how much revenue Facebook's advertising actually brings in too.
According to a recent report, Facebook’s ad revenues are expected to hit $123.73 billion in 2025—a 1.6% increase from 2024. Despite the annual increase, this year’s forecast represents a slight deceleration from the previous year. In 2024, Facebook’s ad revenues rose by 2.4%, to $121.8 billion.
A big reason for most of the extra egregious short term profit seeking we’re seeing lately is the result of suddenly higher interest rates. Companies need to show higher profits to entice...
A big reason for most of the extra egregious short term profit seeking we’re seeing lately is the result of suddenly higher interest rates.
Companies need to show higher profits to entice investors away from the easy guaranteed return of 4-5% government bonds. When interest rates were effectively 0 companies didn’t have to show as high returns to attract investors because they were happy to get pretty much any return.
Yep. The term "enshittification" popped up right after ZIRP ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy The end of ZIRP caused a lot of related shocks to the industry, such as...
The end of ZIRP caused a lot of related shocks to the industry, such as chilling the job market and kicking off a wave of free or cheap services finding ways to wring more money out.
Unfortuantely enshittification is a strategy that works. YouTube's closest competitior is TikTok, who operate exclusively in the short-form video content space, and are on the cusp of being banned...
Unfortuantely enshittification is a strategy that works.
YouTube's closest competitior is TikTok, who operate exclusively in the short-form video content space, and are on the cusp of being banned in the United States (depending on how much Trump is willing to drag his feet on a buyout deal that won't happen.) Other attempts at competing with YouTube directly have either gone bust (i.e. Vid.me), fallen into obscurity (i.e. Dailymotion) or turned into alt-right echo chambers (i.e. Rumble, BitChute.)
Google's closest competitor (Bing) has less than 4% of the total search engine market share followed by Yandex with less than 3%. This is despite Google utterly breaking their image search functionality and polluting results with inaccurate AI slop.
Of course, if you don't want to deal with all of that there's always an ad and sponsor blocker. Google making the product worse to drive people to the paid option is unsurprising and unpleasant.
Of course, if you don't want to deal with all of that there's always an ad and sponsor blocker. Google making the product worse to drive people to the paid option is unsurprising and unpleasant.
Definitely seems like a great time to swap over to ublock origin if you haven't already. Depending on what you spend your time on youtube doing, nebula is also an option.
Definitely seems like a great time to swap over to ublock origin if you haven't already. Depending on what you spend your time on youtube doing, nebula is also an option.
As long as they: keep the ads out of the video stream directly and don't authenticate that the ads were viewed There is little that they can do. They proposed WEI a while back to tattle on browser...
As long as they:
keep the ads out of the video stream directly
and
don't authenticate that the ads were viewed
There is little that they can do. They proposed WEI a while back to tattle on browser extensions but that got shelved.
They could pause the video feed until they get a token from the ad provider that proved the user interacted with the ad (or watched it for X time or whatever) but that is obtrusive to the user so they have chosen not to.
They could inject ads directly into the feed (and they did a test of this) which would make it almost unlockable. Twitch does this. People must have had enough backlash against this because they seem to have stopped doing it.
They could also just require a google account to view and ban you from viewing if they suspect that you aren't watching ads (and they threatened this) but that is an empty threat. They seem to need the ability for unauthenticated users to view as part of their business model.
As long as making ads unblockable hurts them more than letting people block ads, the front ends and ublock will keep working.
I read a few different articles about this: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/brandcast-2025 <- Actual YouTube source https://mashable.com/article/youtube-peak-points-ads...
Sponsorblock basically does that already, but it is crowdsourced, so it doesn't work perfectly. I can't imagine it'd be that much of a leap to create a version of sponsorblock that reads the video...
Sponsorblock basically does that already, but it is crowdsourced, so it doesn't work perfectly. I can't imagine it'd be that much of a leap to create a version of sponsorblock that reads the video transcript and automatically skips sponsored segments (as long as they use the correct terms I guess)
Putting aside the turmoil content creators who get paid through youtube would go through: there is something hilarious about taking Youtube's egregious keyword censorship and turning it against...
Putting aside the turmoil content creators who get paid through youtube would go through: there is something hilarious about taking Youtube's egregious keyword censorship and turning it against them by hyperactively cutting out any mention of a brand name. The chaos that could ensue with creators dodging both filters would be entertaining.
"This video about the suicide epidemic is sponsored by honey" could turn into "The video you're watching about people sending themselves to the afterlife is financially assisted by the sweet stuff bees make." If the future is bleak, I guess let it be a farce?
The problem isn't the AI. It's the people who are using it. This probably sounds pedantic, but I think it's important. Think about Thomas Edison and his role in the popularization and...
The problem isn't the AI. It's the people who are using it.
This probably sounds pedantic, but I think it's important. Think about Thomas Edison and his role in the popularization and commercialization of electricity. Imagine if, in response to all of the bad shit Edison did, there had been a big wave of backlash against the use of electricity. Thomas Edison was a bad person! That guy actually deserved to get canceled.
And electricity actually is super dangerous! That shit will kill you in a heartbeat if you're not careful with it! And electricity causes all kinds of harms; think of all the destruction electrical fires have caused, not to mention the environmental impact power stations have.
And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, despite the bad character of the key actors and the widespread destruction electricity caused, anyone who says electricity was a mistake and we should go back to candles and gas lamps would be utterly deranged. Even though electricity is dangerous and easy to misuse, even though popularizing electricity rewarded Edison for his shitty behavior and contributed to harm, if you find yourself stranded in 1890, do you start printing anti-electricity pamphlets? No, you start figuring out how to wire up underprivileged communities so they can earn money and educate themselves after the sun goes down. You start finding ways to use this transformative technology to make the world better, regardless of the shitty people who invented it.
This article is inarguably an example of using AI to make things worse. It's not the first time this has happened and it certainly won't be the last, because the business models of the tech companies and to some extent the larger economy in general are not well-aligned with human flourishing. That's the problem that needs to be fixed.
The reason AI keeps being used to make things worse is because that's the goal of the people using it and it keeps bringing them success. There's no reason it couldn't also be used to help, but that's going to be more difficult because people act like the technology itself is inherently evil, and the minute you start talking about neural networks they look at you like you're a necromancer.
This same dynamic is going to come up with every other technology that gets invented going forward. We saw it with electric vehicles: people called EVs problematic because of tire particulates and lithium sourcing. Every new invention has to overcome not only technical and business challenges but also people's cynicism.
I feel like people have just given up on the idea that anything can get better. And with fascism on the rise, I get it. But if you want to stop things from getting worse, you need to use every tool you can get your hands on. AI is so powerful, and it has so much untapped potential for good, and I feel like a big reason that potential is untapped is because people treat the technology itself as evil instead of correctly blaming the people who are doing bad things with it.
Sure. I don't disagree with what you are saying. But I said it was used to do something worse, not that it did something worse on it's own. It's not doomerism to notice a problem. AI is moving too...
Sure. I don't disagree with what you are saying. But I said it was used to do something worse, not that it did something worse on it's own. It's not doomerism to notice a problem.
AI is moving too fast and most people don't understand it well enough to control it properly. It's way more dangerous than electricity or gunpowder. It's more on the level of atomic power. And some of the people who do realize how dangerous it is are gleefully using it for evil. Not just for advertising on youtube, but for spreading disinformation in order to elect Trump and other republicans are try to pass laws to remove any regulation of it.
AI should be controlled like guns (weapons) should be controlled. Any EVERYBODY believes in some kind of gun control. Even the NRA doesn't allow guns at their conventions and the most strident 2nd Amendment person (probably) doesn't want people walking around with rocket launchers.
9 out of 10 things about AI in the news are negative.
It's nice that it can be used to discover new medicines or help read xrays. But mostly it's stealing art and spreading disinformation and replacing workers.
I agree that AI could be dangerous! People disagree about whether we should worry most about totalitarian misuse vs. existential risk; I would like to guard against both scenarios. I think...
I agree that AI could be dangerous! People disagree about whether we should worry most about totalitarian misuse vs. existential risk; I would like to guard against both scenarios. I think Republicans trying to forbid all state-level regulation of AI is crazy. AI should be regulated like any other promising but potentially dangerous technology.
I'm also not against constructive criticism. People complaining about sourcing lithium for EVs may have contributed to the non-lithum batteries that manufacturers are currently exploring. I agree that not all criticism is doomerism. Mostly I'm pushing back against non-constructive criticism, of which there is a lot. I interpreted your comment in that light; I think I may have misinterpreted your tone/intent, so I apologize.
9 out of 10 things about AI in the news are negative.
I agree, that seems about right. I want that ratio to be more balanced, not by cracking down on news coverage, but by getting people to do more good stuff with it.
It's a good argument for not paying for ad-free YouTube; it just incentivizes further enshittification of the platform. I really think YouTube needs to update their business model away from sticks...
It's a good argument for not paying for ad-free YouTube; it just incentivizes further enshittification of the platform.
I really think YouTube needs to update their business model away from sticks and toward carrots: Development should focus on good features that people pay to opt into, not bad features that people pay to opt out of.
If they don't, alternatives like TikTok will continue to eat away at market share, and adblockers will further proliferate — as not only are they free, but they are more convenient (less troublesome to get started and you don't have to keep signing in to use them) and they often come with additional features, especially customization, that YouTube does not offer at any price.
Tech companies that stop innovating are eventually eclipsed.
I've recently caved in and downloaded TikTok. It's astounding how much better the user experience is. It has a ton of ads, but they're easy to spot and can easily be skipped over. YouTube, on the...
I've recently caved in and downloaded TikTok. It's astounding how much better the user experience is. It has a ton of ads, but they're easy to spot and can easily be skipped over. YouTube, on the other hand, forces you to watch like they saw 10,000 Merits and said "Yes, this is the utopia we wanted to bring about". YouTube Shorts, their answer to vertical videos, doesn't allow you to seek within the video so if you look away for a split second you have to wait for the video to end and loop back to that point in time.
When I saw the title of this post, my first reaction was "Wait, they aren't doing that already?" The ads have been getting shittier and shittier at an accelerated rate. It used to be that if you reported an offensive ad, it would skip the ad. Now you'll be forced to watch the rest of it. Ad breaks are now commonly 60 seconds long, the skippable ads have been put into the center of the ad queue to force your attention to it if you want to use it, and I've regularly had times when the ad breaks happened with only one minute of the actual content I wanted to watch.
When YouTube fails, the world will probably be a slightly better place. Google is just another shitty ad company that can burn for all I care.
YouTube is already addictive enough, TikTok would probably destroy any shred of attention span I have left. Maybe it's better to just stop watching so much online content
YouTube is already addictive enough, TikTok would probably destroy any shred of attention span I have left. Maybe it's better to just stop watching so much online content
I’m avoiding giving them anything more than I have to but the thing stopping it from being addictive to me is that everything on it is kind of dumb. As much as I enjoyed the wholesomeness of the...
I’m avoiding giving them anything more than I have to but the thing stopping it from being addictive to me is that everything on it is kind of dumb. As much as I enjoyed the wholesomeness of the whole “Gingers are black now” meme it does get tiring after a while.
Even if it's stupid, it worms its way into your brain anyway. That's probably why it's called brainrot haha. I definitely have an addictive personality so I want to avoid getting addicted to any...
Even if it's stupid, it worms its way into your brain anyway. That's probably why it's called brainrot haha. I definitely have an addictive personality so I want to avoid getting addicted to any more forms of scrolling if I can help it
Weird. I can't remember ever having that issue on YouTube but I know that I don't care enough and haven't put in the effort to figure out why it happens on Instagram reels.
Weird. I can't remember ever having that issue on YouTube but I know that I don't care enough and haven't put in the effort to figure out why it happens on Instagram reels.
Grayjay for Android Grayjay for desktop (including Linux and Mac) It's a program to watch not only Youtube (also Odysee and Nebula - those I use; and others that I don't use), it is meant to...
It's a program to watch not only Youtube (also Odysee and Nebula - those I use; and others that I don't use), it is meant to follow creators and not be fed by algorithms. It is ad-free (play only the video to you, forfeits ads). I got to know about it from Louis Rossmann which many of you probably know (Right to repair advocate, Macbook fixer, bullshit hater, formerly based in New York but due to all the bullshit moved to another state and I forgot to which one).
You can sync your desktop and mobile clients so that you have the same subscriptions on both - Grayjay stores your subscriptions locally on your device.
There is probably more to that but I use it as is, not really diving deep into it. Maybe it can skip sponsor reads, maybe it can store your subscriptions in "the cloud", you can make Polycentric account and discuss under videos using (yet another) "social" network... I just use it to watch uninterrupted videos. Oh, and one more thing - it can probably import your existing Youtube subscriptions.
Now, before you say that I consume content without paying for it - I do. But I'm willing to buy merch from those that have it and that are able to get it to me for reasonable price. I've heard mayn times that one T-shirt or coffee mug gets creators more money than me watching all their videos up to date. If you go Grayjay and feel guilty, maybe think about supporting them in other way (Patreon, merch, donate money) - this is up to everyone of us.
And me not paying for the infrastructure (datacenters, connection throughput) by watching ads? I've got no problem with that. If Google didn't start this ad war, I would gladly pay with my time. Ads are unbearable though, so I went this way. If it was up to me, I would let Youtube die. There is Odysee for example, which is another video platform but much less bullshit. For creators that have some content (not just AI generated stuff or some kids doing kid stuff) there is also Nebula where I don't have any problems paying for subscription (because, you guessed it, no ads and good videos). And there are likely million other such services I don't know about. So once again - in my eyes, Youtube can fall. It became EA or Ubisoft of the video serving platforms - outgrew too much and now became bully.
EDIT: Added some services I use with Grayjay in the first sentence.
EDIT2: Grayjay probably doesn't support resume - from my experience it doesn't save where you left the video, so you have to either watch it again (if you start it later) or take memo of the time yourself. This may be just an overlook on my side and maybe it supports it, I'm just sharing my experience from my own usage.
This seems awesome. My current desktop YouTube setup is UBlock Origin + Sponsorblock + an extension called "You're fired". The last one lets me hide content based on keywords and it's been a...
This seems awesome.
My current desktop YouTube setup is UBlock Origin + Sponsorblock + an extension called "You're fired".
The last one lets me hide content based on keywords and it's been a blessing, because the YT algorithm won't stop showing me content I don't want to see, no matter how kindly I ask. I watch lots of technical instruction videos and every now and then a new channel will pop up that offers unhelpful clickbait content designed to look like the thing I'm looking for. I don't think YouTube would be usable for me at all if there wasn't a way to permanently hide those as soon as I see one.
By a quick glance, Grayjay doesn't seem to have this feature. Other than that it looks great!
Grayjay is completely about you. It doesn't have algorithm, you have to look for the videos and creators yourself. I really like it as it seems to be centered on user, not shareholders. Maybe have...
Grayjay is completely about you. It doesn't have algorithm, you have to look for the videos and creators yourself. I really like it as it seems to be centered on user, not shareholders.
Maybe have a look at Loius' videos on Grayjay here, part 2 and about desktop. You can probably find those videos on Youtube as well if you don't like Odysee experience (which can be rough).
I understand the appeal of having no algorithm. However, I feel Youtube 's algorithm is sometimes helpful for discovering more content. It would be great to have an open source version that is...
I understand the appeal of having no algorithm. However, I feel Youtube 's algorithm is sometimes helpful for discovering more content. It would be great to have an open source version that is focused on being helpful rater than maximizing engagement.
Yes, having no algorithm has drawbacks. I'm quite old and have kinda perfected my pickings, so I just simply added creators I watched and here I am - the same Youtube but without ads and also...
Yes, having no algorithm has drawbacks. I'm quite old and have kinda perfected my pickings, so I just simply added creators I watched and here I am - the same Youtube but without ads and also without "recommended for you (actually not)".
It would be great if we could have algorithm that we can shape a bit to our liking - like "No more of this kind" and things like that.
Effectively the same effect for content discovery would be robust search tools with granular control over results, but I understand Google is not in that bussiness. That said an actually open...
Effectively the same effect for content discovery would be robust search tools with granular control over results, but I understand Google is not in that bussiness.
That said an actually open source algorithm with transparent tweaks possible would be good too.
I find Firefox with uBlock Origin works best for watching on desktop, and yt-dlp is best on desktop for downloading for future watching. It's an arms race between youtube and adblockers, and often...
I find Firefox with uBlock Origin works best for watching on desktop, and yt-dlp is best on desktop for downloading for future watching.
It's an arms race between youtube and adblockers, and often times even uBlock will pop up adblocker notifications on youtube, but after a couple hours the filter lists have refreshed and it works again. Likewise for yt-dlp you can usually download a new version within a day that's updated against youtube's latest ad-blocker-blocker. With *pipe apps I find that takes a lot longer, including NewPipe, PipePipe, Youtube Revanced, etc, and they often stay broken for days if not weeks.
Is there anything compelling about FreeTube for desktop that would make me want to switch?
Well, I just like that FreeTube is self contained, and doesn't pollute my browser cookies, LocalStorage, etc. It's an Electron app, so I guess it's a dedicated "web browser" for YouTube.
Well, I just like that FreeTube is self contained, and doesn't pollute my browser cookies, LocalStorage, etc. It's an Electron app, so I guess it's a dedicated "web browser" for YouTube.
That's fair. I normally use Firefox Multi-Account Containers for sites I want isolated from the rest of my browsing history. This lets you create a colour-coded private tab for any specific...
That's fair. I normally use Firefox Multi-Account Containers for sites I want isolated from the rest of my browsing history. This lets you create a colour-coded private tab for any specific website.
You can put any website into its own container and it won't pollute your cookies and storage for other sites.
I use FreeTube and generally love it. Or at least the idea of it. It’s awesome to have a privacy-respecting, extremely customizable frontend that bypasses YT’s native ads and also has SponsorBlock...
I use FreeTube and generally love it. Or at least the idea of it. It’s awesome to have a privacy-respecting, extremely customizable frontend that bypasses YT’s native ads and also has SponsorBlock built-in. But it’s just so FRAGILE. FreeTube users are on the front lines of YT’s battle against circumvention. I mean, I guess that should be obvious. But it’s a terrible user experience. It’ll work beautifully one day, and the next be unusable and riddled with cryptic errors. It can take days or weeks for new breakages to be addressed by the small dev team, and when they do ship mitigations the software update process is manual and cumbersome.
It’s still (marginally) worth the hassle for me personally, but this prevents me from recommending it to anyone else. I know that’s not FreeTube’s fault but it’s just the reality of the situation.
Odd. I don't experience many problems at all. The main issue is just the leapfrog game of these apps circumventing YT, and YT countering. Otherwise, it does what I need it to do, without much...
Odd. I don't experience many problems at all. The main issue is just the leapfrog game of these apps circumventing YT, and YT countering. Otherwise, it does what I need it to do, without much instability or other problems.
This is what we use, and it's fantastic. They're really on top of fixing new issues, and they put in optional skips for intros, "off-topic," and sponsored plugs, which are all crowd-sourced (idk...
This is what we use, and it's fantastic. They're really on top of fixing new issues, and they put in optional skips for intros, "off-topic," and sponsored plugs, which are all crowd-sourced (idk if that's the case for FreeTube as well). Regular YouTube is excruciating now.
I agree. I can't believe this program is free and gets so many updates. I bought a cheap Stream Onn TV box from Walmart and sent a donation to SmartTube's author (he's Ukrainian!) and it's still...
I agree. I can't believe this program is free and gets so many updates. I bought a cheap Stream Onn TV box from Walmart and sent a donation to SmartTube's author (he's Ukrainian!) and it's still the best deal in entertainment.
Ooooh, uh, maybe rethink that streaming box... I know some folks who have been digging in to those things, and they are terrifying from a privacy/security/surveillance perspective. Like, all of...
Ooooh, uh, maybe rethink that streaming box... I know some folks who have been digging in to those things, and they are terrifying from a privacy/security/surveillance perspective. Like, all of them. They are all phoning home, poking around your network, changing things.... Just doing a ton of seriously sketchy stuff. Be careful, friend!
Edit: apparently Onn is Google, so it's probably fine? Sorry for the false alarm!
Huh. Do you know if there's a more secure OS I could install on the Stream Onn? My only alternative to the streaming box is the OS built into my TV, which is probably not better. I have tried...
Huh. Do you know if there's a more secure OS I could install on the Stream Onn? My only alternative to the streaming box is the OS built into my TV, which is probably not better.
I have tried plugging an old laptop into the TV and using that as a media machine. That didn't work with my remote, unfortunately.
I don't think there's a good work around for the box right now... It'll either brick or reconnect without your knowing, sometimes via other devices on your network. (I've written this response...
I don't think there's a good work around for the box right now... It'll either brick or reconnect without your knowing, sometimes via other devices on your network.
(I've written this response several times now, and I keep deleting because it sounds kinda insane...? I'm not an expert on this stuff, but many people I know who are were floored by some of what was being found/done on these ubiquitous little boxes. Honestly better to just go with 'the devil we know' like a Chromecast or Firestick (if that's still a thing).)
Thanks for the info! With a name like Onn Stream/ Stream Onn I didn't realize it was Google (and thus probably as fine as can be expected). I added an edit to my original comment.
Thanks for the info! With a name like Onn Stream/ Stream Onn I didn't realize it was Google (and thus probably as fine as can be expected). I added an edit to my original comment.
Are there concerns about Onn specifically? They're heavily rumored if not confirmed to be Walmart's own brand, so I assume they can't do anything more nefarious than what a Fire stick does.
Are there concerns about Onn specifically? They're heavily rumored if not confirmed to be Walmart's own brand, so I assume they can't do anything more nefarious than what a Fire stick does.
Because it runs Android TV, the Onn itself has lots of recommendations in the launcher. They're kind of annoying, but they don't move and they don't make noise, so I just page past them. If...
Because it runs Android TV, the Onn itself has lots of recommendations in the launcher. They're kind of annoying, but they don't move and they don't make noise, so I just page past them. If there's a way to switch to a simpler launcher, I would love that.
Edit: Found an article that suggests it's possible to replace the launcher. I'll have to look into it.
I am also going to try Projectivy. I've installed it and it's looking good so far. Just being able to go straight to SmartTube without scrolling past ads is already a big upgrade. Thanks for the...
I am also going to try Projectivy. I've installed it and it's looking good so far. Just being able to go straight to SmartTube without scrolling past ads is already a big upgrade. Thanks for the recommendation.
God damn, has it kicked in already? I listen to heavy music and I use reaction channels to find music regularly. Today I had an ad right before the breakdown every. single. video. and it...
God damn, has it kicked in already?
I listen to heavy music and I use reaction channels to find music regularly.
Today I had an ad right before the breakdown every. single. video. and it absolutely KILLS the hype and vibe.
I know this is to push for subscriptions, and I could maybe forgive them if they were planning on using the subscription money to become less reliant on advertiser funds so they could bring back explicit content. But I know that’s not the case, YouTube is going to continue to sterilize their content and milk out every last cent.
I’ve gotten lazy with ad-blocking (iOS here), but I’mma have to do it now. I have the “unwatched” app that blocks all yt ads but most of the time I still just used the native app. No more.
I know it’s not a perfect solution, but this is the final push for me to set up a pi-hole too.
It's the same story that is happening on(probably) all mainstream software platforms. The power imbalance between them and the users is high enough they they simply do not have to care all that...
It's the same story that is happening on(probably) all mainstream software platforms. The power imbalance between them and the users is high enough they they simply do not have to care all that much. They can introduce any kind of worsening experience and the absolute worst that can happen is a bit of a controversy that makes them walk it back and reintroduce in different form months to years later.
Partly it is systemic but partly it is that the average user simply will not, no matter what reevaluate the effect that the service has on their life and have the willpower to just abandon it if the impact is substantially negative. The platforms do it because they can, that is a simple rule of the economic system we have.
This article is scant on details about what “AI” is actually doing to suss out where the peak points are. The suggestion is that it’s analyzing video transcripts but wouldn’t a simple heat map of...
This article is scant on details about what “AI” is actually doing to suss out where the peak points are. The suggestion is that it’s analyzing video transcripts but wouldn’t a simple heat map of the most watched timestamps in the video be simpler (and more effective)? I guess you could call that “AI” too, that term doesn’t really mean anything.
Heck, even the old Wadsworth constant is a pretty reliable way to assume where the good stuff is.
But if they are analyzing video transcripts, I wonder if content creators could throw them off the trail by embedding inaudible ultrasound red herrings in non-peak moments? This would ruin transcripts and subtitles, but might be an interesting experiment to try.
This has been really annoying to fight with on the creator side, too. I record super longform video and have always placed the ad slots to be every 30 minutes, because that's what I'm comfortable...
This has been really annoying to fight with on the creator side, too. I record super longform video and have always placed the ad slots to be every 30 minutes, because that's what I'm comfortable with.
Initially YT sent an email out saying that they were optimising ad placements in old videos, and if you didn't click the link in that email by a certain date then all old videos would be updated to this system. I did click the link, so avoided this.
And now in new videos, there's a small checkbox saying that you allow YT to add its own ad slots which is always automatically checked - even if you add your own ad slots. I have to disable that every time now. More recently they added little tags to the ad slots telling you how likely they are to work, and for manual ones it pretty much exclusively says they're bad and you'd earn more if you use auto ones.
I suspect at some point they're going to just enforce it. For now though it seems like they're going with the approach of trying to make it annoying to turn off.
Something nostalgic about watching movies on TV, knowing an ad segment is about to start right before a big reveal. Doesn't mean I want to ever experience that again however.
Something nostalgic about watching movies on TV, knowing an ad segment is about to start right before a big reveal.
Doesn't mean I want to ever experience that again however.
Despite their best efforts, frontends still working alright. Getting one will make this problem go away, if anyone is interested in that. Or as said above, a regular adblocker will work too.
Despite their best efforts, frontends still working alright. Getting one will make this problem go away, if anyone is interested in that. Or as said above, a regular adblocker will work too.
I mean, if you decide to get a closed system like an apple, that's the trade you make. There are solutions, but if you want the freedom to install what you want, you can't get an Apple product.
I mean, if you decide to get a closed system like an apple, that's the trade you make. There are solutions, but if you want the freedom to install what you want, you can't get an Apple product.
Well it layered out your choices and sometimes the truth sucks. I only watch YouTube on my Samsung tv and pay for it. I just hate ads so much that I’d rather pay for it to go away.
Well it layered out your choices and sometimes the truth sucks. I only watch YouTube on my Samsung tv and pay for it. I just hate ads so much that I’d rather pay for it to go away.
Ah, the old tried and true formula of “find out what people like most about using our product and then worsen it in intrusive, annoying, and nakedly exploitative ways.” Great business acumen, YouTube execs. Truly this is a winning move, benefitting both your user base and the long-term health of the company. </sarcasm>
But seriously, am I imagining things or did all the world’s corporate leadership decide in concert to make decisions using only the shortest-term goals possible? Maybe I’m just paying more attention now and things have always been that way. But it feels like even the giant companies are constantly flying by the seats of their pants, enshittifying and self-sabotaging without the fleetingest thought about building brand loyalty or making great things that people want. It just comes across as… desperate.
This is a product of how C-level executives are compensated and how rich people money works in the modern world.
To compound things, rich people don't spend money the way we do. Instead of selling a bunch of stock to fund their next big purchase, they borrow against their stocks to fund their lifestyle. As long as their stock portfolio continues to grow at a rate greater than the interest on their loans, they can keep this cycle going indefinitely and live perpetually in debt without consequence. Of course, this is highly dependent on stock prices going up while interest rates stay low, which is why they tend to get so uppity whenever the Federal Reserve isn't setting interest rates as close to zero as possible.
TLDR: Rich people don't face consequences when their shitty behavior ruins the companies they run, and they are highly incentivized to prioritize rapid growth today over sustainable growth tomorrow.
I don’t know who’s working on fixing this, maybe nobody since the system kinda works for the purpose it’s set for.
Maybe there is something to be found in a system that would lock the value of stock comp to a specific amount until x years in the future, in order to encourage longer term thinking…
Well Kamala Harris' plan was to tax unrealized capital gains for individuals worth more than $100m. That would have had serious implications for everything I said above, and might be why the billionaire class decided to go all in on that orange colostomy bag conservatives think is presidential material.
Perhaps we set capital gains taxes to a progressive 0/30/60/99%, based on total value owned of all stocks.
Increasing the quantity of stock owned will be actively worse for selling off. The only tangible way to profit off stocks long term is through perpetual dividends of a stable company that produces reliable products (or gouges a monopoly but that is a problem which requires additional solutions).
This will pretty much eliminate taking unprofitable companies public. I am OK with this.
Negative tax on dividends with a high capital gains tax could be an interesting thought experiment …
Franking credits.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation
If they wanna run their businesses in thr ground for short term profit, it's on them, but
Those two factors alone might naturally fix the issue. We just need reps who care about their people and not donors.
Edits: typed this thought vomit at 4am on a min brightness phone with a splitting headache. Just cleaning it up.
My personal theory is that the internet and moors law really broke the way business people specifically think about trade and commerce. There's probably smarter people than me who have a identified exactly what these issues are and I'd love to be pointed towards their work because I'm just making wild associations here.
But a quick tl,dr:
In 2010 cocacola had a market cap of $130B and in 2021 it was $230B.
In that same time Facebook went from 0 to a starting market cap of $60B in 2012 to $1058B in 2021 and projecting $2000B in the near future.
To unpack how I see these numbers: the perpetual growth model worked for so long because that growth was expensive. When I was young, there were only a handful of truly global companies and most of those had to give up a lot of control for that international reach. It would be a considerable time, capital and knowledge investment before any gains could be seen in a new markets and there were countless strategies to achieve that. You needed to invest smartly as a business and shareholder and even then, there was no guarantee of a return, let alone a timeline to that return.
IP and service companies sort of threw that all out the window. It's literally the reason the US has a massive trade deficit but has such wealth. It's because the US is practically the world leading provider in internet and technology services. The cost for Coca Cola to operate globally is massive mix of logistics, manufacturing, management, regulations, HR, marketing and everything else that goes with it. And it's still affordable to everyone.
The main cost for Facebook/Netflix/Twitter/Uber to operate globally is server bandwidth. The hardware/smartphone companies footed all the hardware and logistics costs and they optimized it by centralizing manufacturing in East Asia. ISPs/Governments foot the bill for networking.
At the same time tech companies off-shored any "low skill" work to South Asia. Support, testing, moderation and the like. Made it a case of people at home being too entitled/lazy/stubborn to work at competitive rates when it was simply cost-of-living dictating a living wage. And as the skills of those people increased with the cash injection of these tech companies, the proliferation of the low cost hardware and lower barrier to high quality education over the internet, it became economical to take more and more high paying tech services work to Asia as well.
And most of these companies base themselves in the US where they could literally drive the population beyond the edge of insanity and still be rewarded. Because nothing on the internet is "real" and the money is flowing.
So you have a whole class of companies that can leverage the internet and cloud services to infinitely scale while globally minimizing costs to a ridiculous degree and having no incentive to spend a cent more than needed.
In an open stock market, how does anyone compete with the growth potential of a tech company. Even while leveraging all the automation of optimizations that come with tech, its still magnitudes more expensive to exist in the real world. And you've got long standing traditional companies adopting the strategies of these tech companies thinking there's profound insight in "move fast and break things" when it was really luck and low costs.
And regardless of that, you saw the figures in the tl,dr. And by the logic of capitalism, line must go up and people keep throwing money at these companies or any hint of a startup that might compete at that level. And there's the added logic of increased investment means increased quality and higher chances of success. So it becomes an infinite hype engine, with higher expectations for the mythical "low-risk high-yield " returns. (Tangent: One of my other lines of thinking is that businesses have how durability because spend so much effort to minimize risk and control every variable that they behave as if they are in a risk free environment. The problem with maximum efficiency at razor thin margins is there is no tolerance for literally any downtime. Amazon can't even stomach the cost of a bathroom break 1 minute longer than expected. It's not that they can't stomach the cost, they just cant let a projection slip because the shareholders have high expectations for certain level of return and that level is only increasing.)
But the real question is how? Because these companies have effectively saturated their markets. A type of global reach that would once take over a century is available within a financial quarter. And the glacial speed of effective regulation means that these companies have the time and means to act with absolute impunity. So what innovative strategies are left to make line go up. The human race can not keep up with a tech companies hunger for growth. I'm convinced that's why tech bros and so pro-birth, because they need anything to drive up that new user numbers.
But seriously, when money was cheap, the tech companies had their fingers in every pie. Hardware, more services, acquisitions, weird experiments. But it's a catch 22 because doesn't matter if they succeed or fail, there will forever be the need for explosive growth. And they can do is fall back on the proven practices. Because this is an industry that didn't exist like this even a decade ago. So we need some true business insights to figure out how to do this. And we introduce the MBA playbook. An (in my opinion) scam of business science compiled by people that have no experience or understanding of the power that technology at this scale has beyond a few arbitrary KPI's. And so we are left with the same few strategies across every industry and business. More ads. Less features. Slash costs. Fewer benefits. Automation. Reduce revenue share. Force out lower earning creators. Dark patterns and exploitation. Prolonged psychological warfare and torture of users. Gambling. Make everything the current best thing. Take control of the government. Enshitify, Enshitify. Enshityfy.
(Another tangent that's actually on topic: The ad increase seems like a particularly insidious trap for websites, google in particular. The issue is that even the highest paying advertiser has a budget. Inducing demand with more spaced has a limit and at some point that just results in an oversupply of ad space. That drives the price-per-ad-impression down, making it accessible to low quality advertisers. Increasing the exposure of low quality ads drives down the tolerance that users has to ads and also drives down the overall price of the ad space because higher paying advertisers do not want the negative associations to very "suggestive" ads and a revolting user base that is making a concerted effort to avoid the advertising. So you're going to see lower than expected revenue as a company and they try to correct it by forcing people to watch more ads. Seriously Googles addiction and reliance on advertising is practically cancerous at this point. In one ecosystem there's YT ads competing with search ads and map ads and merchant ads and email ads and sponsored content and SEO (which is just advertising through formatting) and manipulated search results and its just a mess. We are really not designed to think in terms of virtual spaces and infinite supplies.)
So now we're at the point of pure existential crisis on all fronts. The lines have to go down. Traditional companies have enshitified themselves to the point of plane parts falling out the sky. Tech/IP companies are just trying to remove humans from the workflow entirely. The only path to growth seems to be the dismantling of the government and selling it off for scrap. They are literally considering modular nuclear power plants to offset the energy costs. And then what...
I think it's more that our national corporate system is set up such that quarterly profits are paramount, above all else.
I also think that most people put up with the ads. Even my wife does. She can't be bothered to install an ad blocker. It drives me bananas, but I think she's representative of most people.
Like most corporations, it's all about the stockholders. If the CEO doesn't give them an increased profit from the previous year then their job is at stake. Making the same profit is not enough. The Stockholders don't care about anything else, so the the CEO resorts to any short term money grab to show an increasing profit.
Edit: This is an old problem, been around for decades. Only recently are we really feeling the affects.
Meta/Facebook's P/E ratio of 24.67 is definitely a bit high, which would suggest it's potentially overvalued... but so are most major tech companies' stocks because investors also take into consideration their future growth potential, not just current profitability. E.g. AMZN has a 33.45 P/E ratio. But I suspect you also might be vastly underestimating how much revenue Facebook's advertising actually brings in too.
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/facebook-ad-revenue
That's just over half of Alphabet/Google's ad revenue, which already has a $2T market cap and 19.23 P/E ratio.
A big reason for most of the extra egregious short term profit seeking we’re seeing lately is the result of suddenly higher interest rates.
Companies need to show higher profits to entice investors away from the easy guaranteed return of 4-5% government bonds. When interest rates were effectively 0 companies didn’t have to show as high returns to attract investors because they were happy to get pretty much any return.
Yep. The term "enshittification" popped up right after ZIRP ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy
The end of ZIRP caused a lot of related shocks to the industry, such as chilling the job market and kicking off a wave of free or cheap services finding ways to wring more money out.
Unfortuantely enshittification is a strategy that works.
YouTube's closest competitior is TikTok, who operate exclusively in the short-form video content space, and are on the cusp of being banned in the United States (depending on how much Trump is willing to drag his feet on a buyout deal that won't happen.) Other attempts at competing with YouTube directly have either gone bust (i.e. Vid.me), fallen into obscurity (i.e. Dailymotion) or turned into alt-right echo chambers (i.e. Rumble, BitChute.)
Google's closest competitor (Bing) has less than 4% of the total search engine market share followed by Yandex with less than 3%. This is despite Google utterly breaking their image search functionality and polluting results with inaccurate AI slop.
Of course, if you don't want to deal with all of that there's always an ad and sponsor blocker. Google making the product worse to drive people to the paid option is unsurprising and unpleasant.
Definitely seems like a great time to swap over to ublock origin if you haven't already. Depending on what you spend your time on youtube doing, nebula is also an option.
I wonder how long they will work,though. With more effort im sure Google could make it really hard for ad blockers.
As long as they:
and
There is little that they can do. They proposed WEI a while back to tattle on browser extensions but that got shelved.
They could pause the video feed until they get a token from the ad provider that proved the user interacted with the ad (or watched it for X time or whatever) but that is obtrusive to the user so they have chosen not to.
They could inject ads directly into the feed (and they did a test of this) which would make it almost unlockable. Twitch does this. People must have had enough backlash against this because they seem to have stopped doing it.
They could also just require a google account to view and ban you from viewing if they suspect that you aren't watching ads (and they threatened this) but that is an empty threat. They seem to need the ability for unauthenticated users to view as part of their business model.
As long as making ads unblockable hurts them more than letting people block ads, the front ends and ublock will keep working.
Twitch still does some of the things you mentioned; it's very difficult to get rid of ads there and people still use it unfortunately.
I read a few different articles about this:
But I ultimately decided to post the Android Authority article because it most-reflects my own feelings.
How shocking that AI would be used to make something worse. I'm sure it's the last time that will happen.
I'm hoping someone makes an AI to remove ads, even deeply embedded ones. >:)
Sponsorblock basically does that already, but it is crowdsourced, so it doesn't work perfectly. I can't imagine it'd be that much of a leap to create a version of sponsorblock that reads the video transcript and automatically skips sponsored segments (as long as they use the correct terms I guess)
Putting aside the turmoil content creators who get paid through youtube would go through: there is something hilarious about taking Youtube's egregious keyword censorship and turning it against them by hyperactively cutting out any mention of a brand name. The chaos that could ensue with creators dodging both filters would be entertaining.
"This video about the suicide epidemic is sponsored by honey" could turn into "The video you're watching about people sending themselves to the afterlife is financially assisted by the sweet stuff bees make." If the future is bleak, I guess let it be a farce?
The problem isn't the AI. It's the people who are using it.
This probably sounds pedantic, but I think it's important. Think about Thomas Edison and his role in the popularization and commercialization of electricity. Imagine if, in response to all of the bad shit Edison did, there had been a big wave of backlash against the use of electricity. Thomas Edison was a bad person! That guy actually deserved to get canceled.
And electricity actually is super dangerous! That shit will kill you in a heartbeat if you're not careful with it! And electricity causes all kinds of harms; think of all the destruction electrical fires have caused, not to mention the environmental impact power stations have.
And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, despite the bad character of the key actors and the widespread destruction electricity caused, anyone who says electricity was a mistake and we should go back to candles and gas lamps would be utterly deranged. Even though electricity is dangerous and easy to misuse, even though popularizing electricity rewarded Edison for his shitty behavior and contributed to harm, if you find yourself stranded in 1890, do you start printing anti-electricity pamphlets? No, you start figuring out how to wire up underprivileged communities so they can earn money and educate themselves after the sun goes down. You start finding ways to use this transformative technology to make the world better, regardless of the shitty people who invented it.
This article is inarguably an example of using AI to make things worse. It's not the first time this has happened and it certainly won't be the last, because the business models of the tech companies and to some extent the larger economy in general are not well-aligned with human flourishing. That's the problem that needs to be fixed.
The reason AI keeps being used to make things worse is because that's the goal of the people using it and it keeps bringing them success. There's no reason it couldn't also be used to help, but that's going to be more difficult because people act like the technology itself is inherently evil, and the minute you start talking about neural networks they look at you like you're a necromancer.
This same dynamic is going to come up with every other technology that gets invented going forward. We saw it with electric vehicles: people called EVs problematic because of tire particulates and lithium sourcing. Every new invention has to overcome not only technical and business challenges but also people's cynicism.
I feel like people have just given up on the idea that anything can get better. And with fascism on the rise, I get it. But if you want to stop things from getting worse, you need to use every tool you can get your hands on. AI is so powerful, and it has so much untapped potential for good, and I feel like a big reason that potential is untapped is because people treat the technology itself as evil instead of correctly blaming the people who are doing bad things with it.
Sure. I don't disagree with what you are saying. But I said it was used to do something worse, not that it did something worse on it's own. It's not doomerism to notice a problem.
AI is moving too fast and most people don't understand it well enough to control it properly. It's way more dangerous than electricity or gunpowder. It's more on the level of atomic power. And some of the people who do realize how dangerous it is are gleefully using it for evil. Not just for advertising on youtube, but for spreading disinformation in order to elect Trump and other republicans are try to pass laws to remove any regulation of it.
AI should be controlled like guns (weapons) should be controlled. Any EVERYBODY believes in some kind of gun control. Even the NRA doesn't allow guns at their conventions and the most strident 2nd Amendment person (probably) doesn't want people walking around with rocket launchers.
9 out of 10 things about AI in the news are negative.
It's nice that it can be used to discover new medicines or help read xrays. But mostly it's stealing art and spreading disinformation and replacing workers.
I agree that AI could be dangerous! People disagree about whether we should worry most about totalitarian misuse vs. existential risk; I would like to guard against both scenarios. I think Republicans trying to forbid all state-level regulation of AI is crazy. AI should be regulated like any other promising but potentially dangerous technology.
I'm also not against constructive criticism. People complaining about sourcing lithium for EVs may have contributed to the non-lithum batteries that manufacturers are currently exploring. I agree that not all criticism is doomerism. Mostly I'm pushing back against non-constructive criticism, of which there is a lot. I interpreted your comment in that light; I think I may have misinterpreted your tone/intent, so I apologize.
I agree, that seems about right. I want that ratio to be more balanced, not by cracking down on news coverage, but by getting people to do more good stuff with it.
It's a good argument for not paying for ad-free YouTube; it just incentivizes further enshittification of the platform.
I really think YouTube needs to update their business model away from sticks and toward carrots: Development should focus on good features that people pay to opt into, not bad features that people pay to opt out of.
If they don't, alternatives like TikTok will continue to eat away at market share, and adblockers will further proliferate — as not only are they free, but they are more convenient (less troublesome to get started and you don't have to keep signing in to use them) and they often come with additional features, especially customization, that YouTube does not offer at any price.
Tech companies that stop innovating are eventually eclipsed.
I've recently caved in and downloaded TikTok. It's astounding how much better the user experience is. It has a ton of ads, but they're easy to spot and can easily be skipped over. YouTube, on the other hand, forces you to watch like they saw 10,000 Merits and said "Yes, this is the utopia we wanted to bring about". YouTube Shorts, their answer to vertical videos, doesn't allow you to seek within the video so if you look away for a split second you have to wait for the video to end and loop back to that point in time.
When I saw the title of this post, my first reaction was "Wait, they aren't doing that already?" The ads have been getting shittier and shittier at an accelerated rate. It used to be that if you reported an offensive ad, it would skip the ad. Now you'll be forced to watch the rest of it. Ad breaks are now commonly 60 seconds long, the skippable ads have been put into the center of the ad queue to force your attention to it if you want to use it, and I've regularly had times when the ad breaks happened with only one minute of the actual content I wanted to watch.
When YouTube fails, the world will probably be a slightly better place. Google is just another shitty ad company that can burn for all I care.
YouTube is already addictive enough, TikTok would probably destroy any shred of attention span I have left. Maybe it's better to just stop watching so much online content
I’m avoiding giving them anything more than I have to but the thing stopping it from being addictive to me is that everything on it is kind of dumb. As much as I enjoyed the wholesomeness of the whole “Gingers are black now” meme it does get tiring after a while.
Even if it's stupid, it worms its way into your brain anyway. That's probably why it's called brainrot haha. I definitely have an addictive personality so I want to avoid getting addicted to any more forms of scrolling if I can help it
How are you accessing them? They 100% do allow seeking.
I just checked and the first short I tried on my phone did indeed let me seek, which surprised me. The second one did not.
Weird. I can't remember ever having that issue on YouTube but I know that I don't care enough and haven't put in the effort to figure out why it happens on Instagram reels.
Grayjay for Android
Grayjay for desktop (including Linux and Mac)
It's a program to watch not only Youtube (also Odysee and Nebula - those I use; and others that I don't use), it is meant to follow creators and not be fed by algorithms. It is ad-free (play only the video to you, forfeits ads). I got to know about it from Louis Rossmann which many of you probably know (Right to repair advocate, Macbook fixer, bullshit hater, formerly based in New York but due to all the bullshit moved to another state and I forgot to which one).
You can sync your desktop and mobile clients so that you have the same subscriptions on both - Grayjay stores your subscriptions locally on your device.
There is probably more to that but I use it as is, not really diving deep into it. Maybe it can skip sponsor reads, maybe it can store your subscriptions in "the cloud", you can make Polycentric account and discuss under videos using (yet another) "social" network... I just use it to watch uninterrupted videos. Oh, and one more thing - it can probably import your existing Youtube subscriptions.
Now, before you say that I consume content without paying for it - I do. But I'm willing to buy merch from those that have it and that are able to get it to me for reasonable price. I've heard mayn times that one T-shirt or coffee mug gets creators more money than me watching all their videos up to date. If you go Grayjay and feel guilty, maybe think about supporting them in other way (Patreon, merch, donate money) - this is up to everyone of us.
And me not paying for the infrastructure (datacenters, connection throughput) by watching ads? I've got no problem with that. If Google didn't start this ad war, I would gladly pay with my time. Ads are unbearable though, so I went this way. If it was up to me, I would let Youtube die. There is Odysee for example, which is another video platform but much less bullshit. For creators that have some content (not just AI generated stuff or some kids doing kid stuff) there is also Nebula where I don't have any problems paying for subscription (because, you guessed it, no ads and good videos). And there are likely million other such services I don't know about. So once again - in my eyes, Youtube can fall. It became EA or Ubisoft of the video serving platforms - outgrew too much and now became bully.
EDIT: Added some services I use with Grayjay in the first sentence.
EDIT2: Grayjay probably doesn't support resume - from my experience it doesn't save where you left the video, so you have to either watch it again (if you start it later) or take memo of the time yourself. This may be just an overlook on my side and maybe it supports it, I'm just sharing my experience from my own usage.
This seems awesome.
My current desktop YouTube setup is UBlock Origin + Sponsorblock + an extension called "You're fired".
The last one lets me hide content based on keywords and it's been a blessing, because the YT algorithm won't stop showing me content I don't want to see, no matter how kindly I ask. I watch lots of technical instruction videos and every now and then a new channel will pop up that offers unhelpful clickbait content designed to look like the thing I'm looking for. I don't think YouTube would be usable for me at all if there wasn't a way to permanently hide those as soon as I see one.
By a quick glance, Grayjay doesn't seem to have this feature. Other than that it looks great!
Grayjay is completely about you. It doesn't have algorithm, you have to look for the videos and creators yourself. I really like it as it seems to be centered on user, not shareholders.
Maybe have a look at Loius' videos on Grayjay here, part 2 and about desktop. You can probably find those videos on Youtube as well if you don't like Odysee experience (which can be rough).
I understand the appeal of having no algorithm. However, I feel Youtube 's algorithm is sometimes helpful for discovering more content. It would be great to have an open source version that is focused on being helpful rater than maximizing engagement.
Yes, having no algorithm has drawbacks. I'm quite old and have kinda perfected my pickings, so I just simply added creators I watched and here I am - the same Youtube but without ads and also without "recommended for you (actually not)".
It would be great if we could have algorithm that we can shape a bit to our liking - like "No more of this kind" and things like that.
Effectively the same effect for content discovery would be robust search tools with granular control over results, but I understand Google is not in that bussiness.
That said an actually open source algorithm with transparent tweaks possible would be good too.
This seems awesome, thanks for the mention! I'm going to look into it next time when I'm updating my systems and practices. :)
Can't say enough good things about NewPipe!
... and FreeTube on desktop.
I find Firefox with uBlock Origin works best for watching on desktop, and yt-dlp is best on desktop for downloading for future watching.
It's an arms race between youtube and adblockers, and often times even uBlock will pop up adblocker notifications on youtube, but after a couple hours the filter lists have refreshed and it works again. Likewise for yt-dlp you can usually download a new version within a day that's updated against youtube's latest ad-blocker-blocker. With *pipe apps I find that takes a lot longer, including NewPipe, PipePipe, Youtube Revanced, etc, and they often stay broken for days if not weeks.
Is there anything compelling about FreeTube for desktop that would make me want to switch?
Well, I just like that FreeTube is self contained, and doesn't pollute my browser cookies, LocalStorage, etc. It's an Electron app, so I guess it's a dedicated "web browser" for YouTube.
That's fair. I normally use Firefox Multi-Account Containers for sites I want isolated from the rest of my browsing history. This lets you create a colour-coded private tab for any specific website.
You can put any website into its own container and it won't pollute your cookies and storage for other sites.
I use Linux-level user accounts for this kind of separation. (Yes, I'm aware it's more resource-intensive.)
I use FreeTube and generally love it. Or at least the idea of it. It’s awesome to have a privacy-respecting, extremely customizable frontend that bypasses YT’s native ads and also has SponsorBlock built-in. But it’s just so FRAGILE. FreeTube users are on the front lines of YT’s battle against circumvention. I mean, I guess that should be obvious. But it’s a terrible user experience. It’ll work beautifully one day, and the next be unusable and riddled with cryptic errors. It can take days or weeks for new breakages to be addressed by the small dev team, and when they do ship mitigations the software update process is manual and cumbersome.
It’s still (marginally) worth the hassle for me personally, but this prevents me from recommending it to anyone else. I know that’s not FreeTube’s fault but it’s just the reality of the situation.
Odd. I don't experience many problems at all. The main issue is just the leapfrog game of these apps circumventing YT, and YT countering. Otherwise, it does what I need it to do, without much instability or other problems.
...and SmartTube on Android TV.
This is what we use, and it's fantastic. They're really on top of fixing new issues, and they put in optional skips for intros, "off-topic," and sponsored plugs, which are all crowd-sourced (idk if that's the case for FreeTube as well). Regular YouTube is excruciating now.
I agree. I can't believe this program is free and gets so many updates. I bought a cheap Stream Onn TV box from Walmart and sent a donation to SmartTube's author (he's Ukrainian!) and it's still the best deal in entertainment.
Ooooh, uh, maybe rethink that streaming box... I know some folks who have been digging in to those things, and they are terrifying from a privacy/security/surveillance perspective. Like, all of them. They are all phoning home, poking around your network, changing things.... Just doing a ton of seriously sketchy stuff. Be careful, friend!
Edit: apparently Onn is Google, so it's probably fine? Sorry for the false alarm!
Huh. Do you know if there's a more secure OS I could install on the Stream Onn? My only alternative to the streaming box is the OS built into my TV, which is probably not better.
I have tried plugging an old laptop into the TV and using that as a media machine. That didn't work with my remote, unfortunately.
I don't think there's a good work around for the box right now... It'll either brick or reconnect without your knowing, sometimes via other devices on your network.
(I've written this response several times now, and I keep deleting because it sounds kinda insane...? I'm not an expert on this stuff, but many people I know who are were floored by some of what was being found/done on these ubiquitous little boxes. Honestly better to just go with 'the devil we know' like a Chromecast or Firestick (if that's still a thing).)
Thanks for the info! With a name like Onn Stream/ Stream Onn I didn't realize it was Google (and thus probably as fine as can be expected). I added an edit to my original comment.
Are there concerns about Onn specifically? They're heavily rumored if not confirmed to be Walmart's own brand, so I assume they can't do anything more nefarious than what a Fire stick does.
Ahh no, I think if it's Google it's as fine as can be expected. My mistake!
Because it runs Android TV, the Onn itself has lots of recommendations in the launcher. They're kind of annoying, but they don't move and they don't make noise, so I just page past them. If there's a way to switch to a simpler launcher, I would love that.
Edit: Found an article that suggests it's possible to replace the launcher. I'll have to look into it.
I am also going to try Projectivy. I've installed it and it's looking good so far. Just being able to go straight to SmartTube without scrolling past ads is already a big upgrade. Thanks for the recommendation.
I can't hear them over my ublock
I’m glad I took the time to install Jellyfin with its YouTube plugin on my home server. Together with yt-dlp, it’s the best “YouTube client” ever.
God damn, has it kicked in already?
I listen to heavy music and I use reaction channels to find music regularly.
Today I had an ad right before the breakdown every. single. video. and it absolutely KILLS the hype and vibe.
I know this is to push for subscriptions, and I could maybe forgive them if they were planning on using the subscription money to become less reliant on advertiser funds so they could bring back explicit content. But I know that’s not the case, YouTube is going to continue to sterilize their content and milk out every last cent.
I’ve gotten lazy with ad-blocking (iOS here), but I’mma have to do it now. I have the “unwatched” app that blocks all yt ads but most of the time I still just used the native app. No more.
I know it’s not a perfect solution, but this is the final push for me to set up a pi-hole too.
I’m so done with this creeping invasiveness.
It's the same story that is happening on(probably) all mainstream software platforms. The power imbalance between them and the users is high enough they they simply do not have to care all that much. They can introduce any kind of worsening experience and the absolute worst that can happen is a bit of a controversy that makes them walk it back and reintroduce in different form months to years later.
Partly it is systemic but partly it is that the average user simply will not, no matter what reevaluate the effect that the service has on their life and have the willpower to just abandon it if the impact is substantially negative. The platforms do it because they can, that is a simple rule of the economic system we have.
This article is scant on details about what “AI” is actually doing to suss out where the peak points are. The suggestion is that it’s analyzing video transcripts but wouldn’t a simple heat map of the most watched timestamps in the video be simpler (and more effective)? I guess you could call that “AI” too, that term doesn’t really mean anything.
Heck, even the old Wadsworth constant is a pretty reliable way to assume where the good stuff is.
But if they are analyzing video transcripts, I wonder if content creators could throw them off the trail by embedding inaudible ultrasound red herrings in non-peak moments? This would ruin transcripts and subtitles, but might be an interesting experiment to try.
Is this an out of season April Fools' joke? Even the example, with the proposal, is incredibly distasteful.
This has been really annoying to fight with on the creator side, too. I record super longform video and have always placed the ad slots to be every 30 minutes, because that's what I'm comfortable with.
Initially YT sent an email out saying that they were optimising ad placements in old videos, and if you didn't click the link in that email by a certain date then all old videos would be updated to this system. I did click the link, so avoided this.
And now in new videos, there's a small checkbox saying that you allow YT to add its own ad slots which is always automatically checked - even if you add your own ad slots. I have to disable that every time now. More recently they added little tags to the ad slots telling you how likely they are to work, and for manual ones it pretty much exclusively says they're bad and you'd earn more if you use auto ones.
I suspect at some point they're going to just enforce it. For now though it seems like they're going with the approach of trying to make it annoying to turn off.
Something nostalgic about watching movies on TV, knowing an ad segment is about to start right before a big reveal.
Doesn't mean I want to ever experience that again however.
Despite their best efforts, frontends still working alright. Getting one will make this problem go away, if anyone is interested in that. Or as said above, a regular adblocker will work too.
If you ever hear of an AppleTV frontend that I can get off of the App Store, let me know.
I mean, if you decide to get a closed system like an apple, that's the trade you make. There are solutions, but if you want the freedom to install what you want, you can't get an Apple product.
That wasn't a particularly helpful response. ☹️
Well it layered out your choices and sometimes the truth sucks. I only watch YouTube on my Samsung tv and pay for it. I just hate ads so much that I’d rather pay for it to go away.
Sorry, I didn't meant to come across like a dick. I'm sorry, I don't know. Apple is a closed ecosystem, there's just less alternatives.