• There are also discussions and (small) flame wars ☺️

      Feels like ‘back in the day’ where everything was a bit wonky but people could actually help eachother (and not being nudge nudge nudged all the time to be distracted by something else).

  • The illusion of infinite growth on “free use” ad based business dies when investment funds demand more benefits from former startups now turned into corporations whose only asset of value is the their users’ data. You are the product, so it’s time to squeeze you.

    I think such data is currently overvalued on a overgrown ad-targeting market with too many competitors, and adding more ads only devaluates each ad value further, because users’ consuming capacity also has a limit. So I see a severe correction coming. Another bubble burst, and another crisis inside the crisis that late capitalism itself is.

  •  Phen   ( @Phen@lemmy.eco.br ) 
    link
    fedilink
    45
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That’s one part of how the internet dies, there are others. For example: soon the vast majority of the content on the internet will have been created by bots (AI or not). Or even by malicious folks pushing narratives.

    TLDR: not only the internet is becoming more annoying to use it is also constantly becoming less useful with worse content replacing everything that was ever good

    And the problem with content created by bots is that it is usually made to not look like that was the case. Sometimes that’s not the problem like some random site with information about a video game can have all of its content generated automatically based on data extracted from that game. That is fine.

    But other cases, specially with AI content, can be much worse. There was a recent example where some site with history content had generated some pages using an AI and that AI created a page about Scimitars which included information taken from Dungeons and Dragons, but presented then as historic facts.

    And the main problem here is that the internet feeds on itself. Texts are copied from one site to another by non-AI bots. Some text created by AI in one site gets copied to multiple threads on reddit, hacker news, stack overflow, 4chan and all sorts of places. Places that are scanned by search engines and often picked as preferred search results by users.

    Then Google these days try everything to make a larger profit from you. That includes “stealing” content from inside websites to display on top of the search results page - so that you never click away from the Google site. In order to do that more efficiently, they give preference to sites that allow this behavior over sites with actual better search results. Try googling “country in Africa with the letter K”.

    So in the end all your search results will soon be stuff that was written by AI. And remember: AI doesn’t think. It won’t ever do. AI is just a robot role-playing as human.

    When you see a comedian doing a Stephen Hawking impression, you don’t expect them to publish scientific papers, in fact you don’t pay any attention to what they actually say, because you know it’ll either be rubbish or just a repeat of something that Hawking had said before. AI is the same thing. It’ll never be intelligent, it’ll only get better at imitating humans, by looking at what humans say. And with their content taking over the internet, it’ll soon be imitating itself.

    And the only memory of the golden years of the internet, will maybe be Wikipedia. Have you donated to them yet? Think about how many times you’ve used it and remember it has never shown an ad other than their pleas for donation. Please consider giving them a few bucks when you’ve some to spare.

  • While there are a billion things Google does that annoys me I’m not able to figure out how to create and maintain a video streaming platform without ads or paywall that finances both creation and the providing material.

    I mean, who are the competitors and how do they finance it if not in a similar way?

    • I’d argue Youtube was better when creators weren’t paid and people were just having genuine fun. The internet used to be free and filled with content by people with passion. Much like users and the current state of the fediverse.

      • I can absolutely understand that point of view and even agree to an extent.

        However, as a counterpoint: creative people being able to support themselves with their work means they can focus on their art instead of it just being a side hobby to their money making job

        • Yes, but then you get channels like Linus Tech Tips where it became less about product reviews and just about volume production garbage content and forced contraversial content to keep revenue stream.

            • Anytime it is your primary income there is built in propensity to stray to ensure you income is maintained when viewership might wane. I think the channels where a dude works full time and youtube is the side gig has more chance of maintaining integrity.

              • A channel where a dude works full time and YouTube is a side gig wouldn’t buy a $250k sound chamber to measure how loud the fans are on a crappy prebuilt (GN - the people who made the initial video about LTT). There are significant benefits to being full time dedicated to creating this content, and being paid well in response. Something like this would only be possible following your model if they already made tons of money outside of YT, in which case, they’re already rich so what’s stopping them from going full time doing what they want anyway and uploading those videos?

      •  Hexorg   ( @Hexorg@beehaw.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        English
        71 year ago

        You bring a great point I hadn’t considered before. Only people with passion for something will do it for free while many more people with so that for cash. Though it’s interesting to see that cash doesn’t make passionate people’s content better it just makes more mediocre content.

          • There’s also a class issue at play. If it can only be an unpaid hobby, then only people with the time to dedicate to it (in lieu of a second paying gig) and the disposable income to buy the necessary equipment (financed entirely by their paid job) are able to participate. For example, I work with people who are also working artists. They use the income from selling their art from their hobby to pay for those materials. It’s not enough to live off, so it’s not their primary income, but they wouldn’t be able to participate in their hobby at the level they currently are if they weren’t able to sell their work. Allowing people to profit from their labor makes these spaces more inclusive and diverse.

    • paywall that finances both creation and the providing material.

      Finance creation? It promotes lazy copycat contents. Even respectful (at least before their YouTube career) tech/artisan/DIYers etc are falling for the clickbait, the YouTube’s basic/teen humor… I pass on the tabloid stuff.

      You want to make views. use these keywords:

      • Apple
      • I spent $$$ on …
      • AI

      The thing is that platform is just a TV.
      I guess content creators should also pay for their access on the platform, not just a cut on the revenue. it will enforce good/honest creation .

      • You might criticize the content all you want but it’s another discussion for another time. The question is still it still how to finance a site like YouTube, with the content and amount of viewers it has, without ads or fees.

        Your solution with content owners/creators paying for the housing of their creation is Vimeo.

        Not even close to YouTube

  • Dear Youtube,

    I’ve been using you daily since before you were bought by Google. I have watched undoubted millions of youtube videos over the last 17 years.

    The mother fucking nanosecond you start blocking me from watching your content because I have an ad blocker is the moment I sit here and just rip every each and every single mother fucking video I want to watch to view entirely offline. Given you’ve tried and failed for a decade now to stop us from doing that I trust it’ll solve both our needs, you won’t have me blocking your ads, and I won’t need to ever see em. Savvy? Savvy!

    With a level of spite indescribable,

    Me.

    Edit: For those whining about my entitlement: QQ more idc.

    Edit 2: Ya’ll still commenting and downvoting a week later while I haven’t thought about any of you at all lmao. Rent free!

  • I’m on vacation for the next two weeks. I only really need to log into Google for work. I got proton mail subscription and I’ve been moving all my personal stuff to that slowly. I’m going to finish it off and just cut Google out completely for personal use.

  • Mastodon exploded when Elon took over Twitter. Lemmy exploded when Reddit changed it’s api rules. I think the problem is not that YouTube doesn’t fuck things up, because they often do. Perhaps the alternatives are not good enough for early majority to migrate. We need more early adopters to migrate ASAP. (I’m thinking of PeerTube, but perhaps Odyssee has beter changes at the moment)

      • From what I understand, they’re removing all recommendations from the home page if you have watch history turned off, likely because they can’t give you any decent recommendations without data to recommend from. All you’d see is the search bar.

        Personally, I think this is a great change. Default YT home screen has some of the worst recommendations I’ve ever seen, and if I’m telling them not to track my watch history, I probably don’t want to see whatever content they’re promoting to the average user either.

        • @TehPers @faintedheart,which is a pity that there is no real alternative to YT. Of course there are other similar services, PeerTube, Odisee, etc. but none have anywhere near as much content. The only possibilities to avoid it is to use a front-end, CloudTube, some Invidious fork, Piped or a desktop-client like FreeTube, also possible to search for the videos with Andisearch and view them sandboxed in the search results. But this fails with some videos with extra YT protection.

  • I miss YouTube Vanced, it had better UI and more features than the official app. I pay for premium and I like it and all, but I wish they could’ve adopted some features from Vanced instead of monetizing previously free features such as background play.