- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
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To anyone using Chrome and complaining about Google having too much control: shut the fuck up. You’re part of the problem.
Firefox for the win. Or Librewolf even better.
Or any chromium based browser for that matter.
Paywalled article 🙃
If they start showing me this message, I’ll have no reasonable choice except to disable the ad blockers for YouTube. Sadly I’m embedded in the Google world with a gmail account and I use their photos service. I can’t risk losing access to those.
No doubt they’ll roll this anti ad block technology out to their other sites in the future and the internet will suddenly be a bleak, hideous place.
You can just use Piped. That way, your account data appears nowhere. Just a server querying Googles YouTube API.
for whatever reason, i’ve been having issues using Piped where videos just don’t buffer at all. Anyone else facing this? NewPipe on my phone works perfectly though
I had that problem, not sure what made it go away maybe allowing scripts or disabling ublock origin.
As much as I’m against Google: why are the the bad guys in this specific instance? They are in many other instances, absolutely. But here, they dare to block a service that legitimately costs a ton of money from being used without them making anything in return. That’s not the usual evil corp BS they pull. That’s rather reasonable if you ask me. Let’s not exhaust ourselves in that and focus on the real Bullshit they try to pull like their web manifest ad nightmare!
A lot of people have become entitled to the idea of the “free internet.” In some cases, it’s understandable, like for social media where the platform is doing very little work and nearly all the value is coming from the users. I think especially in Youtube’s case, people are squinting and looking at it like a social media. They wonder why Youtube’s taking such a big cut when they think the content creators are the ones providing the value.
The issue here is that the complexities of video hosting, especially at the speed and quality Youtube provides, requires a ludicrous amount of effort and money. Youtube is providing a platform that is nearly unthinkable, something I consider to rival the entire television broadcasting sphere. The idea that such a colossal undertaking could be achieved without requiring revenue generation is simply naïve, and it’s incredible to think that a free version is even offered at all. Nobody ever really thinks about that though, they just look at it as another platform like Facebook or Reddit, and think a lazy megacorp is stuffing their pockets for nothing.
i agree, its about choice. no one should be complaining about what google is doing [with youtube].
if we dont like it, we should choose a different product.
When a corporation is willing to lose billions of dollars to capture an audience, effectively locking out any competition, and then counters any possible avenue to blocking their monopolistic stance, your first statement shouldn’t be about choice, because there isn’t one.
Yet, by AdBlocking them, you are doing fuck all against their “monopolistic stance”. You are strengthening their monopoly all the same. And to be clear: I don’t want to blame here. Block YouTube ads, I’m doing that too. I’m more irritated by how it’s somehow spun as evil that YouTube dares to want money for a service they provide.
If Google had not shut down competition by outcompeting them, do you think those competitors would be free? If not, your argument is besides the point all together.
One can be the “bad guy” without being outright evil. Their advertising tactics are heinous and exploitative, and their revenue sharing with the people actually making their content is tricky to exploit without utilizing the same shitty practices Google uses.
This is also about a relatively minor amount of users. Yes, most people on the fediverse are probably going to be running ad-blockers… but that’s an incredibly small amount of people. This whole thing is about squeezing a few extra ounces of blood from “their” stone. Not a righteous battle against a foul mass who are scandalously stealing from hard working Google employees.
As I said: I’m not saying that one has a moral obligation to watch the 1000000th stupid raid shadow legends ad. Google would try and exploit us for all we’re worth, so IDGAF about their revenue. It’s just that all those posts along the lines of “Google tries to earn money by me using their service,! The audacity!” Rub me the wrong way. There are plenty of examples here where people try to spin their use of adblockers into some white knight story and claim moral high ground for doing so. That is hypocrisy in my eyes and this hypocrisy is annoying me. Nothing wrong with “yeah Google, I’m going to take your shit just like you help yourself to mine on a regular basis, because fuck you”. Just… Let’s not try to make this some moral thing, alright?
So basically you feel icky? You have a moral problem with people who have moral problems?
Cry me a fucking river. The problem isn’t that Google is some nefarious Snidely Whiplash character, cackling madly as they tie some helpless waif to some train tracks… theyre “just” a business, doing business things. The problem is, at their scale, it removes opportunity and mobility of any kind of competition. Any time they squeeze their rock, it has massive implications not just in the technical landscape, but also in peoples ability to control their own life, as it pertains to the ever-growing digital landscape.
I’m sorry that all you can see is people who want free stuff… but that seems to be your own insecurities eating at you. And reflects your own motivations. Not anyone elses.
We’ll start viewing Peertube as a viable option WHEN?
When it works?
Ya I’ll never stop using ad blockers, the internet is essentially unusable without them. Mine still work on youtube but if the day comes that they don’t I’ll just stop using it. We need some competition here, things have gotten increasingly anticonsumer and the companies have gotten too comfortable doing and charging whatever they want
Download newpipe and never use YouTube again.
Can’t be used on desktop
deleted by creator
Google only has power as we the people give it to them but using their services. Same with Reddit’s power and such. Not the people here as we have unfortunately unplugged, but admittedly, all the decentralized services have significantly less content and variety of content. We need more people to join us, but they seem happy to support the centralized services they hate.
I’m okay with the less amount of content. Frankly, I mindlessly spent hours scrolling through “content” on reddit, and feeling no satisfaction. At least the content here is more relevant.
More people would mean more memes and rage bait. No thanks.
I mean subreddits like Oculus and Virtual Reality and I am sure many other niches are missing on Lemmy or very quiet.
The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube (ignoring all the bad bits they’ve added). PeerTube is nice to have around, but it’s not as fast and doesn’t have all the content as youtube. There’s also Nebula, which is alright. It’s not free and doesn’t have as much content, but it’s usually a higher quality.
The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube
as good
I mean, assuming that’s exactly what people wan, “exactly youtube but cheaper”, then yeah it’s an impossible and thankless task to even try something of that scale. Instead it’s better to think of building youtube alternatives that are focused on one or two parameters that allow organizational optimizations. For example, much of the issue that people complain about is the storage, but a YT-alt that dedicates to eg.: archivism of old TV shows, that scan at best at 480p or 360p, wouldn’t need to spend that much in storage compared to a service that is trying to serve 4K UHD 120fps Subwoofer Surround; that combined with the topical focus suddenly makes it much more scaleable and approachable.
I’m always a bit shocked the worlds governments don’t start offering free email/hosting to their citizens. It’d give them a cheap way to surveil that was “opt-in” (but would probably catch a lot of dumb people) and everyone would have a “verified” email for official stuff too. It seems like a good investment to me.
