• This may not work out the way I want it to, but I’m actually a little excited about these tech companies making a bunch of anti-consumer decisions all at once. So many mainstream users will be looking for alternatives, and it’s going to provide a great opportunity for non-profit open source projects. It’s already happening with the fediverse suddenly becoming a viable place for discussion in the last 1.5 years. After Windows Recall was announced, I’ve seen more people talking about switching to Linux than ever before. Part of me can’t wait for unskippable Youtube ads.

    • People often decry accelerationism, but the reality is that the slow-boiled frog is the one that sits and dies. Chipping away at freedoms, consumer protections, product benefits, etc is all less likely to spark backlash than when they drop sharply in a short time.

      That doesn’t mean you should help to make things worse, but it does mean that you may want to reconsider constantly mitigating every bad thing that others are doing, rather than letting them shoot themselves in the foot. When people are being hurt, help them. When people are being inconvenienced, let them get angry.

      • This looks like a very classical and well-known case of executives copying each other.

        That other company is doing layoffs and seems fine? Reports the line going up? Let’s do it, too!

        The guys across the street are already implementing AI? Investors love it? Let do it, too! We may have taken a risk with blockchain, but this one is just sure to work better for us!

        The big name is going for the money, predator-style, and they’re still afloat? Finally, we can cash out, too!

    • After Windows Recall was announced, I’ve seen more people talking about switching to Linux than ever before.

      I’ve been the Linux zealot in my friend group for years, and none of them have switched (they’ve dabbled on old laptops but never daily drove).

      With Recall, a coworker I never would have expected reached out to me because he knows I’m a “Linux guy” and he was switching to Linux over it.

      He’s still daily driving pop_OS a month later.

      • This is an underrepresented viewpoint. We are at the point of “find out,” which so many tech companies thought they could stay just to the other side of the line on. Thing is, you can only move the goalposts so often before they’re in someone’s yard, and they didn’t sign up for this shit.

        It was OneDrive upgrade nagging that made me switch to Linux. Microsoft could have, you know, not done that and kept a user. They also could have not gone regressive with how the taskbar functions. Or any number of other things that were dismissive of users.

        At a certain point, you’re sitting in ever warmer water in the pot, and it occurs that maybe you’re being turned into food. That’s when the Linux pots start looking appealing. This was a completely avoidable problem brought to you by greed.

        Greed! Because we don’t think making a good product is what capitalism is about.

  •  smeg   ( @smeg@feddit.uk ) 
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    443 months ago

    TL;DW: the ads will be in the video stream itself which will mess up timestamps, sponsor block uses timestamps to know when the ads are.

    Seems to me that this will also break every other use case of specific times like direct linking to a timestamp of a video, right?

    • This sucks for so many. People use timestamps for content warnings or to help viewers avoid spoilers. Commenters use timestamps when talking about the content of the video. It’s insane to change this once it’s so ingrained in how people use the website.

        • In the cat and mouse game, the cat can adjust tactics but the mice eventually figure out an alternative route. I’m sure they will find a way with this. Either that or a lot of people will just stop watching YouTube, I’d imagine.

          • A truly shocking number of people don’t use any form of adblock. I doubt that driving off the adblock users will have a significant effect on viewership (and even if it does, why would Google care, it’s not like we’re making them money).

            • There’s also plenty of people that do use adblock today, and would just put up with ads if it stopped working.

              So the actual number of people that would simply stop using YouTube altogether is lower than the number of people that use adblock today.

              And from YouTube’s perspective, those people aren’t contributing revenue anyways, and all they get is a little bit of usage data. Easy trade.

    •  prole   ( @prole@beehaw.org ) 
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      3 months ago

      It will end up being like FreeVee on Prime for anyone who’s ever watched a movie or anything on there. They straight up randomly just inject ads in at random times, often not even during scene breaks. Characters are sometimes mid-sentence… Oh, and we’re back to the volume of the ads being 2x louder than the movie itself because I guess that law Congress passed way back in the day only applied to cable and broadcast TV.

      It makes it nearly unwatchable. So get ready for that experience.

  • I find it funny that this is the first video where I’m consistently getting the “This helps us protect our community” and “Log in to confirm that you are not a bot” errors while using an alternative Frontend.

    I’m sure it’s just a random coincidence, but it is still funny to me.