No, it is your right to choose what code is executed in your browser and which isn’t. There’s a case to be made about accepting the EULA but if you never registered a Google account, then you never accepted any EULA. This is not the case with modded android/iOS apps as in those cases you are violating DMCA 1201.
There is nothing on there that you couldn’t find an equivalent of in text form(web or paper) or in the millions of hours of TV and film available on and off the web(both legal and not so legal) or on other platforms like twitch/nebula/peertube/lbry.
I’m not a fan of either and would advocate everyone not consume large amounts of video content because of how heavy it is from an environmental point of view and move away from corporations from an anticapitalist/freedom point if view.
Let’s not kid ourselves though, as shit as twitch is, it does not come close to having the same grip google has on the internet and our lives.
Peertube is a completely different platform, perhaps you’re mixing it up with YouTube clients like newpipe or invidious?
A question for the tech savy, free alternatives to youtube like newpipe relies on youtube servers to access content, right? I mean, if youtube were to disappear magically we wouldn’t have a palce where to upload and store so many Gb of videos?
Am I missing something (I know I’m probably missing a lot!)? Thanks in advance for the replies!
newpipe is just a client for accessing youtubes servers, yes, so if youtube went away we would need to use vimeo or something else (maybe peertube, open source yt alternative?)
There really needs to be a way to seed peertube videos without leaving the window open. A firefox extension even. They have extensions that do bittorrent, it shouldn’t be hard. Videos could end with a “click here to seed this video” message
Yeah I was really surprised when I started looking into it that there’s no “remote bandwidth runners” option. Although I think Peertube’s devs may be just starting to think about that kind of thing since they just added support for remote transcode runners
Yes, but the point their are trying to make is to gain the adblocking users, not lose them. They need more people to watch the ads, not less people to watch YT.
To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?
Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.
I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.
Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.
There’s no need to look for conspiracies when the truth is simple enough. Current YouTube CEO Neal Mohan was senior vice president of display and video ads at Google. Ads has been his wheelhouse for quite awhile.
Could be but it’s such a bad short term solution that I can’t help but think there’s a little more. Look at the other replies, they have some interesting perspectives on the matter.
They probably believed there were easy things they could do that wouldn’t result in an “arms race” that would net them a larger profit than the effort they put in. Once you promise x% more revenue they won’t let you take that back so they keep pushing.
You know how Firefox is built different from Chrome. You know what Manifest V3 is. You know how Ublock Origin is different from other adblockers, etc.
The fact is, we are the minority. Most people would just keep using Chrome or Chromium-based browsers and won’t know any better. They’ll end up (and already end up) in a trap that’s super easy to escape, they just don’t plan to/don’t know how.
And for us Firefox geniuses they prepare quite a few surprises, like the recently found artificial delay of 5s when your user agent reports you use Firefox on some experimental users. This will drag on, and while we absolutely know what to do to fuck them up, normal users, who are the majority, don’t.
You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.
The fact is, we are the minority.
This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.
Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.
That already qualifies you as tech-savvy, lol. Going so deep as to know what Lemmy is is quite an accomplishment in itself. You don’t have to be an IT specialist, you should just know the most general details on what computer is and how it works instead of “magic box that runs YouTube” with latter being synonymous to “video”.
I reckon when Chrome fully switches to Manifest V3, most users won’t bother looking for alternatives - for them it’ll just be the end of an adblocking era. Then maaaaybe some of them will learn to switch. But very far from everyone.
Frankly, with the prevalence of adblocks everywhere, even on your grandma’s computer, this way YouTube can actually significantly increase the ad revenue.
Adblock = a direct obstacle to the longterm feasibility of Google’s ability to ever reconcile the money drain against their primary product (advertising) and end up in the black
The current state of Youtube’s profitability is a long way off mattering for anything. For all it costs to run, it can be sustained indefinitely without much issue. This will remain the case until Youtube advertising reaches saturation. Given how much stuff like TV ads still cost, we can safely say this is still a long way off, regardless of the potential rise of competing platforms.
The landscape of youtube & adblockers is unlikely to be the same then, and restrictive measures taken now aren’t really representative of what it’ll be like. The actions taken now are for 2 reasons: maintenance of consumer expectation, so that it doesn’t feel like site monetization is changed substantially when the money faucet gets switched on. And market research.
I have no doubt that a primary intent behind recent actions to do with delays or slowdowns was to measure the blowback, using it a yardstick for further actions not yet taken, which will eventually culminate in some action which actually meaningfully changes Youtube’s monetization. But this may not be for many years.
None of us here are really experiencing problems, we have only heard of them and are discussing them. When something new happens, you’ll hear “what else is new? they’ve done [something similar to] this many times before”, with those people ignoring that the historic actions were totally mitigated everytime. And in the process, we the vanguard of the internet keeping Google’s advertising monopoly restrained by engaging with adblockers, become conditioned to yield to advertising and a Google-controlled internet.
Because that’s the only way they can win. Barring serious pro-Google changes to privacy laws around the world, the ultimate means to force advertising simply isn’t available to them. Their best hope is to try and convince us that blocking ads is just too much of a hassle, ideally without ever actually making it so in a way that causes some mass migration away from Youtube. That’s not a hard line to tread
This is likely to be going on indeed. It’s just that the drm failed (for now), so maybe they are trying to get the next best thing? For the short term it surely isn’t but a long term goal in case the drm fails to be implemented again could be a reason for these experimental actions. It isn’t bad to have a plan b I guess.
I’m on Linux and use Firefox with ghostery and AdBlock extensions. I’ve got hit with the “must watch ads to play video” thing on YouTube, but just end up activating a user agent extension and set it to report that I’m “running chrome on windows 10”. Voila. I can magically watch YouTube videos without ads again.
I wish they could compete with apple on quality, but it’s just not there.
They value engineering too much and design too little. It results in not only shittily-designed products, but also shittily-engineered ones too because they over-engineer everything.
They probably should’ve disclosed that beforehand, or as part of the video, but anyone with any experience with AI (ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc) knew the voice was staged to make for a better presentation.
They did. On their Gemini webpage it has the marketing stuff, the marketing video (the one that everyone saw), and linked to blogs about how they performed the tasks in the video. So Google hasn’t admitted anything - they stated it from the start. We could argue that they should have stated it in the video but what marketing material does? Eg. Redbull’s stuff suggests that their product gives us wings.
Nothing matters anymore. Lie on your resume. Don’t shovel the snow. Be absolutely naked. Throw your careers to the wind. Bathe in the pale moonlight amongst the corpses of oligarchs.
They are opposing it so much it is drawing scrutiny on the extremely aggressively antitrust chair Biden appointed, Lina Khan, a person who literally wrote a lauded economics paper about how amazon became a monopoly using anticompetitive practices and illegal tactics.
Get pissed at the government if you like, but at least get your facts straight first.
My article is from 3 days ago. When was your source in Wikipedia from?
EDIT: From your own source
The FTC formally withdrew its challenge to the acquisition on July 20, 2023, though they have announced their intent to refile at a later time.[78] The FTC reopened its case against the merger on September 27, 2023, though was unable to block the merger from occurring.[79]
So they withdrew their challenge in July and stated they would refile. They did refile in September, and are currently appealing a decision to allow the merger by a judge as of Dec 6th.
The FTC has been actively fighting this merger every step of the way and has yet to stop.
It’s not fully “closed,” no matter what Microsoft claims. Its been approved by a lower court judge, and the FTC are currently appealing that judgement.
Fighting the merger in court 3 separate times sure is different than “letting Microsoft buy Activision” though, isn’t it?
The FTC tried & failed. They’ll most likely fail here too. It’s tough for courts to rule against what the FTC sees as unfair competition when even the judges are likely Amazon Prime & Big 3 ecosystem subscribers.
I’m not a lawyer or legal expert but my layman’s understanding is the laws on antitrust are a 100 years old. Most of these companies skirt them “technically”. There is thing about proving consumer harm and some of these, in the short term, are arguable better for consumers. Likewise proving an actual monopoly with old time definitions is hard because in a lot of cases there is technically competition.
Let me end by saying, I think it’s horse she and they are plenty anti competitive practices out there, but the FTC is fighting with a hand tied behind their back with the laws in place.
I can’t imagine any law that would preclude the status quo, as Microsoft doesn’t own a controlling stake in OpenAI anyway. It sounds like the FTC is picking its targets based on market cap only.
Appointing Lina Khan to head the FTC is one of the only good things Biden has done while in office.
However, the FTC has been defanged and neutered by the courts and Congress. To say nothing of the full court press the media, especially mainstream business publications, have engaged in to attack her and limit her influence and reduce her political capital.
So unlike most of Biden’s top level appointments, I actually don’t doubt her intentions, or her goals, but I also don’t hold out much hope as to what she’ll be able to accomplish, though not for any lack of effort on her part.
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