A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
What the actual heck is happening to the internet. It feels like it is being destroyed at a breakneck pace.
also, you now are required to log in to view twitter. I don't care that much, but sometimes people would link to tweets and now I won't be able to view them when they do.
Isn't this just what many people predicted what would happen when everybody would use adblock? Now most people use some kind of blocker and some browsers even ship with a content blocker. Now pages need to make money in another way, so that's either subscriptions, donations. or just force people to watch the ads anyway. I doubt people would want to donate any money to YouTube so then you get this.
It is not nice for users, but without income they would have to shut the site down. The same will happen when Lemmy gets popular, people will really have to donate to instance owners or they will also be forced to get money in another way.
This feels incredibly charitable towards multibillion dollar corporations that are in a race to the bottom for pandemic level revenues by making these changes, but I'm no expert.
Oh, you mean the multibillion dollar corporations? The ones that get more per minute than many business will get in their whole existence, not to mention any of us people? No, adblocking is a drop in the ocean for them, that has always been bullshit, same with piracy. What we're seeing is the result of economical effects outside of all this, namely changes in interest rates, all the VCs and shareholders are now demanding the return of their investments at any cost. That's why ALL of them are squeezing at the same time.
And about Lemmy instances? Absolutely! We cannot depend on the generosity of admins forever, and i'm OK with this.
"The 2030's are going to be a reckoning for how much of the 21st century was built on the back of low interest rates." See Adam Conover's interview with Dan Olson of Folding Ideas.
The corporatization of the world feels like it's coming to a head. You're not allowed to own anything anymore. Everything is a subscription and it's impossible to afford property. You just rent everything putting you on constant edge until you die.
This is the fallout from the technology industry shrinking and coming to terms with itself. See the crash of the Silicon Bank recently as an example. Basically as the positive outlook toward these kind of businesses and pursuits continues to mellow out we'll see these companies look inward to squeeze as much money out of their products as possible.
I'm sure someone would find a way around this, but it's concerning that they're going after Invidious at the same time
The content on YouTube is really not good enough for me to ever disable my adblocker
I agree. I use it mostly for music, but there are many other ways to find music. I've been listening to a lot of internet radio lately. I've occasionally watched howto videos, but for most things I prefer to read instructions for something, with a photo if necessary.
How exactly are they going after Invidious?
if youtube could win against adblockers, they wouldn't need to get manifest v3 to destroy their functions. firefox users stay winning
I will never pay the richest company in the world to watch YouTube. Then I just don't watch and instead contribute to something new that is distributed and federated.
Is there a good federated alternative to YouTube?
Hopefully there will be, although it's going to be a challenge
Lol do it, shoot your own foot I guess.
ah, ok, i will simply not watch youtube videos.
What kinda bugs me about youtube premium is that even if you pay you still get ads via baked in sponsors. I know creators have the right to do what they want with there content but I wish as a user there is an economical opiton to truely block ads.
Currently there are two paid models:
Nebula like services. I kinda wish more platforms like this would popup since atleast when you use them you truely get no ads (no baked in nor platform injected). While they have a lot of creators a lot of creators are missing from the platform (its mostly education/tech focused).
Patreon/Floatplane. Now this is typically the more popular option with creators as it guarantees a reasonably stable cash flow. The problem is as a user if you have to subscribe to multiple patreons for adfree content it can easly get to the cost of a cable bill (assume each creator charges $10 per month if you have 10-20 creators your follow you could be looking at a minimum of $100-$200 a month just to enjoy adfree content).
A kinda caviot is idk how much it costs in time/labor for production of youtube videos for major channels like linus. It could be that services like Nebula/Vessle would never be able to cover production cost hence why a patreon model is used. Even youtube ads if I recall only was able to cover about only one of their employees saleries (a lot but not enough to sustain the company).
I hope this post didn't come of as selfish/greedy.
SponsorBlock does a good job skipping the sponsored ads that the uploaders put in their videos.
Totally. YouTube is barely scraping by these days. Them and all of Google. They’re riding the bus to work. They had to stop eating out. Poor almost richest company in the world. They NEED us to turn off as lockers or else they’ll have to shut the whole thing down
If this is true, it seems like a condolence of what YouTube is doing here. If hosting all those videos costs more than they receive, eventually YouTube will end.
I always imagined that YouTube was quite profitable?
Fuck em. I'll use nebula.
I guess this will be an unpopular opinion, but YouTube is justified in doing this imo. Video hosting isn’t cheap, especially providing 4K & 8K. They’ve gotta be able to support costs somehow, and if you’re not paying for Premium, you should be paying with ads. You’re also preventing the content creators from being compensated for content that you find valuable, useful, and/or entertaining.
I know ads are annoying, and I hate them just as much as you do. But a big reason why we have people who make super niche videos that help you learn how to fix something on your car or those regular videos that you watch every week is because the creators are able to get compensated for their work. Are you really saying that utility and entertainment isn’t worth 30 seconds of ads and it’s better to not support them at all?
Part of the reason we’re in this enshittification era of social media is because of the expectation of social media to be free. We need to learn from our past mistakes. It’s not sustainable.
Yeah, I kind of agree on this. The real question is: is YouTube currently profitable, and they're trying to squeeze even more out of users?
It would be nice if companies could look at a tidy profit and just say "that's enough" and leave it be. Alas, that's not how capitalism operates…
Are you really saying that utility and entertainment isn’t worth 30 seconds of ads and it’s better to not support them at all?
Yes, I am.
I strongly disagree with your last point as well. It's the increased monetization of the internet that has led to enshittification.
May I ask why? That seems unsustainable to expect to be able to get the same amount of entertainment and utility from creators without helping compensate them.
Also, I would argue monetization has had to increase because of people using adblockers and the Silicon Valley mentality of “grow first, make money later.” Now that interest rates are high, social media companies are being forced to make money wherever they can since money isn’t cheap anymore.
If this is purely companies already being profitable and trying to just suck as much money as possible from their user base, then I would agree with you. But Twitter has been rumored for months to be close to having their lights shut off, and Reddit apparently isn’t profitable. Idk about YouTube, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not profitable and/or wouldn’t be able to exist without Google being its parent company today due to their other businesses diversifying their revenue streams.
I don't see YouTube as a money-making endeavor, so I couldn't care less if it is profitable. I'm not at a pay grade nor in a position to concern myself with a content creator's income, and I'd prefer to simply browse non-monetized content for free. The thing I found attractive about YouTube is that anyone can share anything for free. The very first video uploaded to YouTube was a phone-quality short video of one of its creators rambling about some elephants at the zoo. That's the YouTube I liked and enjoyed, and I hate what it's become. I don't find the content that's pushed at me to be interesting at all, at least not interesting enough that I would ever want to monetarily support it or would be willing to watch an ad.
I spent many, many hours as a mod author for Skyrim. Never did it cross my mind to attempt to make a profit. I would much prefer this type of content. I don't really care if someone is able to turn a profit, I don't care if a site goes down because it is unsustainable, nor do I care about consuming content for free if I am able to access it without too much trouble.
I especially don't care if a large evil corporation like Google is able to turn a profit, and I am categorically opposed to the idea of exploiting normal people's time and resources in their attempt at earning a profit.
That makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective.
There are plenty of viewers who don't want/need/care about the resolution. Especially not 8K, probably not even 4K. People who watch on their phone, probably won't even notice if the content doesn't go above 720p.
Anyway, if YT wishes to charge for their service, they should try having more reasonable fees, and making sure fees actually remove all ads from the service, and actually reward creators fairly - they get much less than they should as a proportion of fees paid.
As it stands, it is much better to subscribe to the likes of Nebula or to individual creators through Patreon (if they host their videos there). The bill might end up adding up to something similar or even more than YouTube Premium, but at least you get what you paid for and the money goes to the creators, not to line Google's executive's pockets, which in the end means better content, better platforms and a better viewing experience.
the rise of the ad blocker blocker blockers begins.
Not... So... Fast.... We shall counter with our ad blocker blocker blocker blockers!
I threaten to send the current ceo of google a jpeg of my tiny flacid cock if he doesn’t quit this tomfoolery
Hosting 4k video coasts a lot of money. I don't understand people that think Google need to subsidies it. It need to make money.
They let you pay a very reasonable monthly fee for unlimited music and video stream.