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[–] 239 points 1 year ago (45 children)

I have to hand it to them, they are really good at finding new, innovative ways to make the platform worse.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Deactivated Premium recently. I used their music app when driving – expecting some ads now - nope, it just doesn’t allow running in the background anymore.

    Seems like such a hostile thing - I’d like to think running ads would be a positive net income for them. (Now that I think of it - maybe they don’t have it built out into their music service.)

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Makes me long for the days of google music. It just worked. Streamed stuff and even allowed you to stream your own library that you had stored in drive. I would use that in the car. Then they ditched it for YouTube music, which was a worse experience and lacked the features.

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  • [+] -51 points 1 year ago (39 children)

    If you pay, the platform remains great. I get a discounted YouTube premium membership through my mobile phone company. I think YouTube is great, I never see ads, lots of features.

    Just to offer an alternative view.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do you have a means of removing sponsors on the mobile app though? Revanced has sponsorblock and adblock in the app.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You mean removing sponsor led segments inside a video? Sort of. The jump ahead feature, which I think is a premium feature, allows you to jump in the video based on where everywhere else is jumping in the video. So when a sponsored segment starts and you skip forward 30s (double tap on mobile, ‘k’ on PC) you are offered to jump ahead. You click that and you get to the end of the sponsored segment.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    "If you just give them your wallet right away, the mugging isn't so bad, really. They didn't even kick my teeth in!" 🤓

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  • [+] -25 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    It’s a product. You can buy it or not. If you don’t think it’s worth it, stay away, or stay on the free tier. You’re acting as if you’ve got some kind of right to use a service that’s provided by a commercial entity.

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  • [–] 59 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    and it's a multi-billion dollar corporation, that already makes more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes, that actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay, when they've got a practical monopoly in the "free video sharing platform" market. And you're whiteknighting for them. 🤡

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetimes

    I mean, I feel like you need to expand your comparison a little as the amount that you'll see in your lifetime is such a minute grain of sand on a beech compared to corporate profits. The money they made today, hell, in the last hour... minute... will dwarf the amount that you will likely see.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    actively strives to make the user experience worse for people who don't pay

    And evidently those who do! My parents live in a different country. What are they, not my family? What's the family plan for? (Rhetorical question)

    With Vanced I have so many more options to customize my experience. I can hide shorts I never watch, set a fixed resolution for data and wifi, return the stupid dislike ratio they removed... And if I'm using Vanced anyway to fix all the issues they introduce, why on earth would I additionally pay for their service?

    I want to pay for their shit, especially to support content creators, but I can't support a platform whose singular mission it is to make everything worse for everyone constantly. Feels like every month I have to get a new extension to undo some horrible design decision.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Gabe and his 300 yachts thanks you.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    whiteknighting

    was a weak-ass criticism when it was on 4chan being leveled at anyone who said anything not derogatory about a woman, and it's weak-ass now. Oh no, someone on the internet has an at-least-partially positive opinion of a company, how awful, we'd better stereotype and body-shame them for it.

    If you had your way, the only comments about YouTube - or any other product from a large company - that would be allowed would be negative ones. How the fuck does that make sense?

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago

    By Darwin you see a lot. I was merely stating that I think YouTube premium is worth the price I pay for it.

    Is there no product you are satisfied with? Your life must be pretty bleak.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's a "product" that profits billions off other people's - often stolen - works.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    YouTube steals other people’s work?

    I tend to watch content creators who willingly put their content on YouTube. Am I missing something here…?

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  • You are missing something. Multiple things actually.

    • most content isn't uploaded by the copyright holder (e.g. TV excerpts)
    • demonetized videos will still have ads (at least for people without ad blockers)
    • videos are used for machine learning without credit to authors or financial compensation (especially without consent when it's not the copyright holder uploading them)
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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'll join you in the downvotes. There's many reasons to hate YouTube. Asking them to pay for video content to everyone for free is a bit silly.

    I'm also not saying you shouldn't use alternatives or run an ad-blocker. Those are cool. I just find it funny how someone is saying: "I get some benefit in paying for this service" results in such backlash, lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm willing to sacrifice some of my valuable internet points here and be down voted to low hell.

    I was going to make a comment along those lines.

    They are, at the core, an ad company. Their motivation is to make money, and we are free to pay or not pay for their services.

    The idea that we have a right to a non essential product for free is entitlement. They make a shit load of money, but also pay money to most content creators. Could they provide a service where they essentially just pay for costs? Sure, but no for profit Corp is going to do that, it has to make money somehow. While I'm all for peer tube, I really don't know if it's sustainable.

    I wonder how many of the people who demand free access to services donate to FOSS Development.

    Maybe some form of consumer co-op, where users essentially pay for operating costs, could be an option.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Wow, shilling for YouTube premium and anti-net-neutrality (the "discount through your phone company" part) in one comment.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don’t think that has anything to do with net neutrality

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Not allowing ISPs to pick and choose winners among web services is absolutely what Net Neutrality is about. Bundling or discounting subscriptions isn't technically the same thing as zero-rating, but the end result of making a particular ISP-preferred service cheaper than alternatives is the same.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    I'm OK with your opinion and I appreciate hearing an alternate view to offset the echo chamber effect.

    But for a lot of us, or at least me, its far deeper than just cost and ads.

    It's the fact that steps keep being taken to make the platform worse. They don't want the platform usable unless you pay, and in this case they're even taking a stab at the people who pay...you don't pay enough in their mind.

    If they had balls, they would just make it a closed platform. Pay to access, and restrict that per account IP. But they'd rather gaslight everybody and slowly turn up he heat so the frogs don't jump out of the pot. This way they maximize their profits for longer. Point of all of that is, they don't care about he platform or service at all.

    For me, its not even about that. Their algorithm was so jacked up I was sick of being fed videos I didn't want to see over and over, and videos I've already watched over and over. That's why they added the subscription bell...because you would subscribe to things you wanted to watch and they never showed it to you. It wasn't "you" tube it was "their" tube.

    I bailed on them years ago. I still watch some content on there because there really isn't a viable alternative. I use a scraper that gives me a feed of just what I want and without ads. I watch what I like and move on with my day. I'm back in control of my video viewing.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Weird number of downvotes here -- I thought they were meant for low-effort or non contributive comments, not an "I disagree" button. This person is giving a unique perspective as a subscriber (in this thread, anyway) and should be met with curiosity, I think. It is helpful to know that there are people who enjoy paying for it, so thanks for giving your opinion here.

    I disagree because they have a dominant position for reasons other than having a good product -- they squash competition trying to make the space better while themselves actively making it worse. Subscribing means supporting that style of inhibiting innovation, not to mention the other user-hostile practices they embrace (extend, extinguish). They are an ad company and obligated to make a profit, I get that, but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices. If your product is good, it shouldn't need to be artificially propped up.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices.

    Indeed, no company should be praised or rewarded for emulating the moves that made companies like Walmart and Amazon big.

    This hellscape would be slightly more tolerable if there was ample competition in every space. Companies need to be motivated to make their profit in ways that please the consumer, but also in ways that are increasingly more ethical.

    But truly, as they say, there is no ethical consumption. Modern slavery and third-world exploitation...even literal child slavery are rampant in our supply chains and offshore manufacturing.

    Even Google indirectly uses child slavery. The court threw the case raised against them (and other giants) out last year because these companies simply purchase "unspecified amounts" of cobalt through "global supply chains" - never mind how it came to be on the global supply chain to begin with and how much obscene profit these companies make off these resources.

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  • [–] 60 points 1 year ago (23 children)

    Meanwhile on Steam my "family" consists of 3 adults with different addresses, last names, and credit cards, who have had accounts for decades and never lived at the same place.

    We have full access to each other's library.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Gabe Newell is 62 years old. Gonna enjoy this gravy train while we can...

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Man I hope he lives to a 100 at least, why am I always late to the party, I learn about Limewire and it dies the next year, I get access to my sister's Netflix account and Netflix goes to shit, I'm finally able to afford a gaming laptop and buy Steam games and now I'm too busy and tired from work to play them and Gabe is getting older. I wish I could go back in time and do things differently

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  • [+] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'd tell myself to start investing my money and hit the gym, but I'm unemployed right now and I know once I'm employed again finding the time in this rat race is gonna be difficult but I'm gonna start valuing my time more seriously, I've uninstalled doom scroll apps like Instagram and I'm working on time blocking my tasks, hopefully that pays off

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  • Good for you! I hope you find a good job soon.

    In the meantime, I recommend doing some exercise because that's something you can completely control your progress on. If you don't have a gym membership, body weight workouts are absolutely a thing you should check out.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    My understanding is that gaben has already put an action plan in place for when the company moves on from his leadership.

    From what I've heard of it, the people in line behind Gabe will be upholding the same values.

    We should have at least another ~40 years or more of this before sometimes entitled brat inherits the company and sells it off to a foreign interest.

    With all that being said: long live gaben.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    With all that being said: long live gaben.

    I like Steam, I like that they aren't being dicks and treat users well. That said: billionaires are not your friend.
    There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I didn't say there was.

    I just want this specific billionaire to continue to live because, unlike most billionaires, he's not making my life more difficult.

    He's basically refused to let steam become enshittified. Other billionaires would have long ago succumb to the one that they serve, the almighty dollar, and done whatever they can to extract the most value from their user base. Enshittifying the platform in the process, and actively making my life worse.

    So as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to billionaires, gaben is far from the worst.

    I have a short list of billionaires that kinda fit into the category of: I don't mind that they exist.

    There's a much longer list of billionaires that I'd like to see pushing up the daisies.

    Not that I can, or would, do anything to make that happen. I just, wouldn't hate it if it happened.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    While steam has historically been "good", doesn't mean it'll stay that way...

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago

    Sure, the 2 constants in the universe are Entropy and Enshitification. When Steam turns to shit I'll go back to Piracy just like I did when Netflix went to shit.

    My point is that companies don't have to be shit about account sharing and family plans, and people don't have to accept it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    It's mostly that a feature on it went from "okayish" to "far more consumer-friendly", which was incredibly unexpected of them to do. Everyone figured Steam library sharing would die but instead they roll out Family that has far looser restrictions than the system they'd had for over a decade.

    Can't play the same game at the same time unless both own it, and DLC isn't shared, but my partner being able to play anything I own that I'm not playing is pretty rad of a positive change.

    Meanwhile Nintendo's system got worse instead.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Didn't know steam even had a family option, it's good to know

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I had that error a couple of times, and it inexplicably resolved itself. Try having the person join again (which may require a new invite). I think only 1 out of 4 members of my family were able to join without that initial error message. This was back when Steam had just switched how they handled family sharing, so I assumed it was just an implementation bug of some sort. One of my friends took three attempts before they could join, but it worked ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    Though I will note that steam family sharing no longer works if the person is located in another country for the purposes of Steam billing region (so my Norwegian friend could not join my UK family)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Login on their PC or let them login on yours

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That's the old way of handling it. (And I think it still works.) They have a new implementation that's just the family group admin sending an invite and the recipient accepting.

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  • [–] 114 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Fuck GOOG for normalizing surveillance capitalism
    Fuck YouTube in particular for making it basically impossible to usefully host an Invidious proxy any more and for their algorithmic manipulation

    PeerTube is the Way

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    A big problem with peertube is monetization. There should be some sort of mechanism that'd do that automatically. Otherwise there won't be much content ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that it exists but just don't see it replacing even few % of YouTube as it is.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.

    Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.

    I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago*

    Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare.

    Believe it or not, YouTube Premium is one of them. A Premium view is worth more than an ad-supported view to a creator.

    (Obviously Patreon is better, as they can’t make a living off of only Premium views because it’s a smaller group; the population of ad-supported users is much much larger. But YouTube Premium does benefit the creators more than ad-supported YouTube does.)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    you're gonna have to get ads

    I don't think that necessarily follows.

    Have you heard of self-hosted Patreon-similar Ghost ?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No, and neither has anybody else. Not saying that to be rude or dismissive, but just using their own numbers on the front page to paint a picture. They have ~3,000 paying members as of right now. Patreon has over 10,000,000 paying members, and even then only a tiny, tiny fraction of their creators are actually sustainable.

    Paid subscription services like this are a great idea, in theory; I'd love to get away from ad-supported platforms. But the truth is that they just don't work for all but a few lucky people.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    That's 100% true, but YT also foots the bill that creators would otherwise be responsible for when it comes to just the basics. Free hosting/distribution of high res full-length videos, globally accessible, with a player app that is actively developed and maintained, a recommendation algorithm to put your content in front of viewers' eyes... That, alone, has tremendous value for a creator that they really can't get anywhere else without paying out of pocket. All of those things would have to otherwise be paid for/maintained by the creators. While it's not a direct payment, YT relieves a huge burden for creators.

    It sucks because it keeps creators' success dependent on corporate oligarchs. But at the same time, it's also great because it gives them a fighting chance to get started.

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    The front page is a direct reflection of the content you engage with.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The whole internet has gone to shit

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Firefox + ublock origin still works to block all YouTube ads

    Invidious is a frontend for YouTube that blocks all their trackers and ads

    PeerTube is an alternative community ran platform to replace YouTube in the future

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    ff+ubo+privacy badger (ff on my distro suggested privacy badger, can't remember exact number but when ubo blocks over ~1k privacy badger has like 2 - 4 on it, surprising me a little there are not more trackers) on pc, my phone has no adblocking atm and I know their info on me is wrong because all I do see are gambling ads and I have never gone to a gambling site, I don't even get the scam game ads my gf does on her phone. One day I may try out one of the "delete my dam info" places just to see how much they really have on me

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Just use Firefox Mobile to watch YouTube.

    Ad blocking through uBO and can enable playing with locked screen.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I keep trying to convert my friends to using Firefox mobile for this reason. I generally try not to evangelise too much, but I have so many friends who keep complaining about ads when browsing the internet on mobile, and this would literally solve their problem. One friend complained about ads so frequently that they ended up getting irked at me telling them the problem was solvable. Our unhappy compromise was that I would stop telling them to use Firefox and uBO if they stopped complaining about this so much in front of me.

    I respect their choices, but by God, I'm baffled by them. I get that inertia makes it hard to make switches like this, but when you're spending so much time complaining about how much effort it takes to use the internet on your mobile, why would you not just solve the problem?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I had someone say "Well, yours doesn't do ads" and, in the year of 5 manufacturers pumping out 10 different SKUs a year, we had the same model phone.

    I said "Yours doesn't have to, if you set it up that way."

    The answer? "Well, c'mon, play the video."

    Like, yeah, let's just brush past the... What? Five or six tap solution? And before anyone asks, not a romantic opening. Generally people don't make passes at bridge trolls who evangelize for open source software.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I really wanted to like and use Peertube more, but it's so devoid of any content aside from political podcasts, as far as I can tell. I can't tell if the search function is bad, or I'm using it wrong, or there really is just that little content. Any recommendations for Peertube content?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Invidious sadly doesn't allow for an account and subscriptions, at least not without running your own server which appears... complex.

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