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.
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.
You can see how hard they optimized by watching a very old video you uploaded yourself.
Exanple of mine:
I uploaded 3 videos some time (2x 9 years and 1x 6 years) ago with about 1min of runtime each.
They do not get clicked much.
Timing it, it took Google about 3 seconds to view it the best available resolution.
Only 3 seconds is insane if one remembers how long a drive needs to just spin up from standby. And that is not even with a cached video.Now I wanna see how long it would take a competitor to achieve the same performance.
I remember some time ago when YT took about 10-15sec to do the same task. They heavily improved their performance. Even for low performance content.
Sad that some are so entitled.
Because this isn’t just about “making anything in return” any more than neo-Nazis are booted from platforms “just for having different opinions.” More people are using adblockers on YouTube because YouTube isn’t simply displaying commercial advertisements, they’re pushing “ads” for scams, malware, and all manner of heinous and/or sketchy content. Even separate of that, the frequency of ads and the presence of minutes-long ads you need to manually skip have made watching content difficult and unpleasant, if not unworkable. Adblocker usage is as much about restoring functionality to the site as anything.
All of these issues have been raised with YouTube, but rather than address the complaints by adjusting how ads are selected and served they’ve decided the only solution is for you to pay them monthly, not just a few bucks but as much as (or more than) the major video streaming services. All of this for content they do not make, at a price point far beyond what they need to be profitable. It’s greed for the sake of greed, pure and simple.
If they are so annoying, don’t watch at all? Go outside, read a book, watch Jellyfin/Plex.
Plenty of activities to substitute YT time.
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.
i choose not to utilize youtube in any capacity. my problem here is solved.
So which free streaming service allowing for profit sharing on ad revenue which has essentially become the only name brand in the industry have you chosen to move to?
Or is your choice that you have to go without something you want because you disagree with the one single service offering it? Oh by the way, that company got that way through anti competitive practices to make sure that only they were able to operate this type of service.
Nobody pays attention to anything beyond the current moment when it comes to shitty corporate behavior like this.
Every large company that isn’t privately owned is going all in on this anticompetitive monopolistic bullshit. A few of the privately owned ones still care about customer good will, even if just for long term profitability. Anything on the stock market doesn’t do anything for the long haul except for undercutting the competition early on before they were close to a monopoly, like youtube did.
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.
Yeah, why don’t the users just pick a better option in this monopoly.
YouTube was originally free, and without video ads. It remained so for some time after Google bought it. They can operate YouTube without video ads at all.
YouTube lived off venture capital, search sponsorships, and content hosting. Venture capital is long dried up. Search sponsorships are just advertisements but clogging your searches. Content hosting isn’t really needed anymore since every large media company has their own streaming platform. Lot has changed since 2006.
What?! Have you checked how big a 4k video is lately? Where do you suppose the money for that should come from?
Who decided to provide 4K video? (Hint: it wasn’t me.)
1080p did nothing wrong
Good thing people didn’t freak out when they tested putting 4k videos behind membership
That’s not the usual evil corp BS they pull.
Yes it is. Why do you think they force you to pay for YT Music when all you want is an ad free experience? I tell you why: people will come to the realization that it is stupid to pay for two music streaming services at the same time, so they will cancel their Spotify subscription. This will make it extremely hard for other services to stay competitive. It’s no longer enough that their app is perhaps slightly better, or that they have the better algorithm, no one will be willing to pay the extra 11 € per month for just that. So eventually, these competing music streaming services will die (maybe with the exception of Apple Music and Amazon Music). Once YouTube has the monopoly on the music streaming market, they can raise the prices again. They are using one monopoly to build a second one. And a third one. And so on, until everything is owned by Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, or Microsoft and no one is able to compete with anything anymore. And the worst part is, that Google doesn’t even deserve any of YouTube’s success. YouTube’s success comes from its creators. All that Google ever did is to provide some servers and some bandwith, which arguably is expensive, but it’s not really an achievement. They didn’t even invent YouTube, they just bought it, made it big, and now abuse it to conquer more and more markets.
Stop using Google’s products and continue using adblockers. Don’t come back at me with excuses. Otherwise, don’t complain.
The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content. I wish it weren’t that way but it is.
So they will continue to dominate until similar vast content can be created elsewhere.
The real problem with any other video service is that YT has a HUGE advantage of WAY more content.
PornHub: uh, hello?
Funny!
Boom chicka wow wow…<breathy female voice>…Hey baby. Let me show you how to torque your nuts deep down inside my motor…Guitar solo…rocket launch video…
It would be interesting if PornHub started paying people for non-porn content. Because of their high traffic I assume they might be able to compete with YT…someday. It would be fun for them to try.
I just don’t see it happening. People have been suggesting they create “VideoHub”/“MediaHub” for years, as they’re the rare company established in free-access video and also able to compete on the basis of having a (presumably) profitable enough service to keep them afloat through any rough patch. Though I’ll certainly agree, it would be incredibly interesting.
I’m sure plumbing tutorial videos would thrive there. Maybe nature documentaries about great tits would work too. If you have a farm, you could also make videos of your ass and pussy. Some people have a huge cock, so filming that would obviously be a good idea.
But
no, butts are over at pornhub
Paywalled article 🙃
This shows me a never ending stream of CAPTCHAs.
Your milage may vary - but in general just force a full refresh and it should clear up
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.
The problem is the network effect. It’s hard to switch from YT if all your favorite channels and creators are there, but it’s also hard for them to switch if all the users are using YT. And because it’s many different people we cannot coordinate a simultaneous transition either.
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.
You just need to curate your feed like anywhere else. Who can really stand the main page of reddit or yt or anything really?
Reddit made it so hard to use on mobile that I only check it on the weekend on my pc.
Yup, I used to do that. But then the admins took over some of my curated subs, e.g. programming subs, when the mods refuse to open them up. So now I don’t go to those anymore.
I mean subreddits like Oculus and Virtual Reality and I am sure many other niches are missing on Lemmy or very quiet.
Oh yeah, that’s a good point.
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.
What about Vimeo?
I’m also curious why people pretend it doesn’t exist when they say “there is no other video uploading platform like youtube”
Vimeo is expensive, I don’t know how it works today, but when I tried it, I had to pay to upload some videos.
ok, I think I had missed this crucial difference in the business model lol
Interesting! I had no idea.
What happened to dailymotion and vimeo?
More the commercial/pro side of things. They cost money.
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.
You’re obviously right. But it’s funny to me; I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler. Instead of YouTube and Google Buzz, we ran RSS clients akin to Outlook and Thunderbird. They torrent and seed media we’re subscribed to while we’re at work or class. It’s saved on a home server. We walk in and simply toss it up on our desktop or TV. (Or maybe a mobile client streams from your home server over the Internet or over your home Wi-Fi if you’re at home )
And if you visited the website instead of YouTube’s recommendations, The creator just adds a few RSS feeds on the backend to pull thumbnails from, of other creators’ sites they enjoy.
Crazy how easy it is to daydream though, when I’m not the one putting the work in.
RSS would have been it. Ask around how many people even get the concept of it.
We have had it all but people chose the dumb version of it.
I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler.
Sadly, money trumps “cool” most of the time.
There was a world before YouTube. It grew from humble beginnings. Granted it didn’t have an incumbent to fight off, but it had all the server issues, bandwidth issues and similar.
The only thing that stops someone else doing it is the user base.
That’s why i wen FF+ Duckduck + ublock and instead of reddit > Lemmy But i have to admit that YouTube is harder to replace then reddit and I’ve tried many alternatives.
We’ll start viewing Peertube as a viable option WHEN?
When it works?
Is there any real free alternative? And I mean free refered to freedom, I know PeerTube exists but finding a good/known instance to upload content knowing that the instance won’t go down is hard.
EDIT: I found maker.tube and hardlimit, the first one looks promising.
Nebula, maybe? Many of my breadtube creators tell me to see their expanded content there.
Adnauseam! Adguard for desktop loaded with anti AdBlock killer! Lifetime license available!
Sorry I have tourette’s syndrome
Adnauseam is great, but it also leaves some ads on pages.
Strict blocking
This works! Firefox + ublock did not.
Firefox + ublock definitely works.
You are right. I updated ublock and now it works.
Not always. Adnauseam makes the anti-adblock bullshit think you’re clicking on ads.
There’s also adguard for desktop which filters ads through a mechanism that’s outside of your browser, which makes it much more difficult for things running inside web pages to fuck with it.
Yeah I just switched back to ff from chrome and YouTube has never sent me their little warning on ff
If it wasn’t for all these articles, I wouldn’t even know that something changed. Firefox + uBlock works the way it used to.
What a manipulation tactic though. Phase in the change at different times for different users.
Maybe one day they’ll have the ability to just roll out the shit internet for plebs and the shitter, but shinny, version for the rich.
What if someone gets left behind in the great ad war? Lol. A lone user who has never seen an ad on the Internet ever.
Opera GX + uBlock + ABP. I stopped seeing this shit a long time ago. (Opera de-googles where necessary, and has its own store. You can still install from other chrome stores, if something is not available in theirs)
Frankly though, Alphabet needs to start being made accountable for their own “de-privacy” behaviour, in the name of their own profits.
And on a side note, is it just me or did 404media just came out of nowhere, and is spamming “news” posts. I’ve read a few of them, and they seem more like opinion pieces, and less factual. They really seem to have little supporting evidence, proper content (the meat, proof, details) and the complete post content is paywalled.
Defederated world, can we please prioritise non-paywalled sites over monetised ones?
404 sprang up from ex-Motherboard writers when Vice Media went bankrupt this year. I think their articles are alright, because paying the bills as a journalist is very hard.
Iirc adblock plus has been known to get bribed to allow certain ads through. I’m struggling to remember the details, but there was some controversy with them a while back. If you have ublock you don’t also need ABP, just update your filters on those sites that ublock “doesn’t work” on
Why uBlock + ABP though? Isn’t uBlock alone enough? And why not Firefox instead of Opera as it’s also based on Chromium?
Yes, uBlock is enough for YT specifically. I run ABP for some sites that uB doesn’t catch. (and for that matter, I also run “Ghostery” as well.
But yes, for this specific posted topic, you are correct I don’t need the other blockers.
As for Firefox, I had been a long time user, but I went through the bullshit phase they created themselves. It was because they dominated and it created a lapse in diligence, on their part. First was the bloat, it is a browser but it got mental in size. Then there was the bloat in usage, what browser needs 50% of your 32GB RAM?? (These have probably been addressed today). But the straw that broke my back was the constant lapsing of certificate renewals that broke everything in firefox including all addons. That was the final straw for me. It was clear they were not interesting in maintenance, and I needed a working browser, not bleeding edge bullshit, and constant roadblocks.
Ram usage as a talking point against ffx while using a chrome engine browser is more internet troll level i could handle after waking up.
Literally the reason I started regularly using Firefox
I’ll be switching back to it.
My solution is (and for quite a long time was) to use NewPipe on mobile and Invidious on pc.
Stop begging them, stop using them.
I can also recommend Libretube or Clipious for Android
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I simply open up YouTube+Ublock in Firefox on my smartphone.
I actually like the personalized video recommendations from being signed in sometimes, but I still don’t like my data being sold. I use both.
Same. Firefox +uBlock on mobile. The YouTube app actually kinda sucks. Never used it
Antitrust laws are not enforced nearly as much as they should be, especially in tech.
