this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Seems like a sure way to lose my engagement. I don't understand what Google thinks they're getting out of this except for flooding you with more ads between video recommendations at the cost of people actually watching anything and using the damn website.
Between removing the dislike counter, a defect search bar that shoves garbage down your throat, recommendations of decreasing quality on my end and shorts (which I hesitantly gave a try but ultimately lost all interest in because it remained mostly low effort content despite my efforts to train my algorithm), this is just another reason why I find myself spending more time enjoying other things lately.
Maybe I am just out of touch, but I smell another bubble bursting when I look at how enshittified all major web services are simultaneously becoming.
That's literally it. The advertising and marketing teams within Google have politically maneuvered themselves into running the show, and the software/product engineering teams that want to maximize the quality of the system they work on (search, youtube) are overridden by insipid metrics that advertising needs more user interaction with ads.
They literally have been commanding that things be made more shitty to optimize their malformed metrics. You absolutely can get more people to click the sponsored search results... if you keep making them less distinct from the actual results. And advertising needs those good click through rates nooooow!
There are email chains documenting this sort of shit going on that have become part of the public record due to various court cases.
Wonderful article about it all here
I think the second part of my sentence you cropped was the more important one to get across. It doesn't matter how indistinguishable ads become from regular content when nobody is even willing to use your billboard for an excuse of a website anymore. Besides, institutions like the EU and even the FTC in the US will step in and break apart those dark patterns when they keep getting out of hand. We already grand Google way too much leeway but there's only so much Silicon Valley giants can get away with before getting slapped with fines and bans. There are already strict rules in the EU about transparency when it comes to advertisements and not even Youtube can ignore them for a very long time.