this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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I already barely watch YouTube. It's mostly for music videos. Google can fuck itself to death.
I sort of spent a decade uploading and streaming to it, started before it was even bought by Google, so I've really dug myself a pit at this point.
What do you propose Google do instead? Run YouTube at a loss?
First, individually targeted advertisement should be illegal. Instead of trying to figure out who I am and serving me ads based on that, they should only be able to look at server side facts. What is the video? This is how television and radio ads have worked for ages. You have a video about SomePopBand, you advertise concert tickets. You have a video about bikes, you advertise bike stuff. You don't know who I am. Suddenly, the motivation for most of the privacy invading, stalking, nonsense is gutted.
Some people would still block those static ads. If they showed some restraint, I think more people would accept them. But that's a sad joke- no profit driven org is going to show restraint.
Secondly, if they can't ethically run the business at a profit, the business probably doesn't deserve to exist. That or it's a loss leader to get people into the ecosystem.
You do know you can enter into your Google settings and disable all tracking and targeting, right? And you can ask them to delete all information they already hold on you.
Yes. However, it's an assumption they honor those requests and don't try to track you anyway.
Plus Google isn't the only company trying to do individualized targeted advertising.
Agreed you have to trust them. However, I suspect GDPR punishments keep them to their word.
Google is operating at a 24% net profit margin. They don't need to get their shareholders more money...
Do you actually understand how this works? It’s a beautiful statement and oh so noble, but it just flies against how the world really works.
At some point, maybe not today, but at some point, you’re going to be saving up for your retirement. Your money will be invested; either passively or actively. If active, a fund manager (or maybe even yourself) will be spending time, every single day, wondering how to maximise the invested cash. If passive, you’re letting a WHOLE lot of fund managers make the decisions for you (wisdom of the crowd). Either way, Google better fucking perform or the investors will go elsewhere.
And you’ll be an investor too, asking for Google to do better than anyone else or you’ll take your savings elsewhere.
One thing I genuinely don't get: why does a company making this much money need "investors"? (Other than participating in the make-rich-people-richer scheme)
Once you’ve gone public, unless some entity could do an offer to take you private, you have investors (aka owners).
To take Google private would be in the region of 2.5 trillion dollars. Even the Norwegian oil fund would struggle to do that.
Because they own the company
If investors go elsewhere then they're trading for a higher risk and return ratio than a massive company with rich history like Google. Plus, it frequently performs large buybacks and offers, and even offered a dividend recently. There is always going to be something attractive to investors, here.
You can buy Microsoft or Apple, hardly the riskiest stocks
Agreed there is a mix of things Google can do to remain attractive. But at the core, Google has to be a better investment than something else to remain invested into.
Millennials and zoomers are not saving up for retirement, barely able to sustain themselves. They're also expecting ecological collapse to cause global famine or their own nation to go full Reich, assuming they're not killed by hurricanes, wildfire or war.
Agreed, many young people can’t save. That’s why I said “maybe not today, but at some point”. I’m not saying it’s easy for young people, I’m trying to explain why companies seek to increase profitability and that almost every investor is self-centred.
You aren't an investor if you are planning to resell. Day trading and real investment are totally at odds. It's far better (for retirement) to invest in a stable company and get a set return over time for it. We also don't even need to do that for retirement, the fact that we do is fucking insane.
You’re arguing against the world that is. I’m just trying to explain the behaviour, not necessarily condone it.
A pension fund manager may not move in and out of stocks on a daily basis, but at some point they’re going to take a look at how their portfolio is doing and react.
Youtube doesn't pay attention to what ads get approved, or where they get served. Ive heard stories of people getting served two hours full amateur movies as ads, Ive heard of people getting soft core porn served as an ad, to actual scams and crypto pitches. It's like Facebooks new AI enabled algorithm. There is actual danger, considering children and the elderly get sucked in to youtubes black hole?
I watched a couple videos on the Diddy case, and a couple days later my whole feed was filled with the worst conspiracy theories and Christian preachers.
I watch one Youtuber talking about pyramids, YouTube fills my whole suggestions with ancient alien conspiracies.
I watched one cover of a song, I get recommended the same song for weeks.
I watch one reaction video, the whole feed turns into reaction videos within minutes.
It's a fight against the algorhytm and it isn't fun. It's incredible how dumb it is after all these years, and those algprhythms are partly to blame that everyone feels more miserable than they are.
I just turn off recommendations (disable watch history) and use a third party app where I can disable recommendations (Grayjay and NewPipe). I just want my subscriptions and search, that's all.
https://unhook.app/
Also let's you block certain elements
Why Download a 3rd party app if the mobile browser works the same?
But it doesn't... Here are some features I like about Grayjay/NewPipe:
So, what's the difference to Firefox with some add ons then?
That someone else gets my login data and view data to sell?
I don't login. Grayjay/NewPipe doesn't send any data to its servers, so they're not tracking viewed content. I also get subscriptions and playlists (again, w/o Youtube account) in addition to the features I mentioned. Afaik, you can't get any of that with addons.
How do they make money then? Nothing is free, and usually when it sounds too good, it is.
Grayjay sells licenses for the app ($10), which doesn't provide any benefits other than helping support the project.
It's too late now, but only if they didn't put so many ads in the first place, less people would be blocking them. They could also make YouTube premium affordable by removing all the features except "no ads".
Some time ago I would've bought YouTube premium, but it had so many features I didn't want driving up the price that I just didn't. I instead switched to Firefox and ads were gone again. Good job google, drove me off YouTube premium and Google chrome at the same time.
Make a fair payment model. No classic subscription. But pay per watched minute, and when you hit a certain amount of minutes, every additional minute is free.
I mean, yeah. It did so for years.
Yes right. But what does the investor environment look like today? Profit, not users, is what everyone is counting. If Google says “we’re burning cash in all businesses but search, but hey we’re nice”, investors will take their investments to more profitable businesses.
They actually have a pretty huge net profit margin and what basically amounts to a monopoly on advertisement, so even if their ads reached less intended targets it wouldn't hurt their bottom line much.
Didn’t you know? It’s doesn’t matter that they’re still making billions more than they ever made, numbers have to go higher.
This makes me puke.
Let me buy an API token anonymously, similar to how Mullvad works. I'm happy to pay for what I watch, but I don't want to be tracked at all, and I don't trust their internal settings.
Until that's a thing, I'll watch without an account using an ad-blocker. Give me that experience with the apps I use (Grayjay and NewPipe), and I'll pay.
Shut down operations immediately
The internet was a mistake. We had a good run. Lot of fun was had, but it hasn't made anyone's life better. I say we roll things back to the ARPANET days. The internet should exclusively be used for disseminating post-graduate level academic research and DOD projects. Everyone else can read the newspaper on their train ride in their full 3 piece suits to their union job at the business factory.
No, FAANG is killing the internet
We kill them, internet good again
Or else, I laser off the optics from soviet early launch satellites and ... well. .. you know
Yes, because Twitter is SO much better than Facebook. /s
Yes. Google bought YouTube. Alphabet is worth $2 trillion. The social control and data mining is value to Google enough.
They could use their monopolies to force advertisers to pay a fair amount for a decent ad instead of taking pennies to ruin the Internet. I never even considered using an ad blocker back when it was just banner ads. Or maybe they could stop being a full decade behind the times and add donations to YouTubers for a cut. If they add value to premium instead of trying to remove value from the base experience they could even triple dip on these ideas.