Only thing is when it came to Google I started wondering who would gain from the break up in this administration. And thought of Musk coming in to control the most popular browser in the world with chrome and phone OS with Android.

So I can’t help but look at this with skepticism. And he’d probably receive Russian and Saudi financial backing to purchase and control whatever is up for grabs like was rumored with Twitter when it came to how he came up with the money

This hasn’t been normal times and rules and laws don’t apply.

I wouldn’t expect much from a grifter who was involved in nfts.

Current system seems like capitalists dream of underpaying employees as much as possible and having the narrative pass the blame to be between customers and workers.

And even better that workers will argue against actually being guaranteed a higher salary in favor of this system on the off chance they might get more. Sort of like gamblers who get off the high of that one big win. Either way, the shift away from having to pay full salaries and benefits is cause for celebration for owners, since they love that it’s more likely they don’t get blamed and instead the customer when the owner has enough money to take home profits and live well instead of struggling like their employees being paid the bare minimum.

It’s pretty much the absolute ideal situation for them. No blame and lower expenses. And most wonderful part of it all is workers being expected to cover the salaries of other workers as opposed to the people at top, so they continue to win in every facet.

People this doesn’t affect are pirates. People who get to enjoy their media without worry are pirates. When pirates are getting the better experience and it’s customers who are getting affected what incentive is there to not pirate other than personal morals. Because it sure isn’t for a better product.

Yeah, hate haggling. Never know if it is actually a good deal, and tracking prices and deals is so unreliable compared other goods with the way those have historic price tracking recorded on sites like camelcamelcamel or keepa. Keeps consumers in the dark with only a broad idea of what isn’t a scam price and making the experience as exhausting as possible to extract money from them.

Their algorithm certainly made videos worse the moment they started priorizing the promotion of longer videos over shorter ones leading to an increase in incredibly long winded videos that waste everyones time.

Freetube I found to be easier since I haven’t needed to do any tinkering since I got it, and plus side has been not needing an account to have a personal subscription feed.

Yeah, I don’t care enough to simp for a company that has enough money to start off with a losing strategy to begin with of burn money to kill competition then is surprised that they can’t easily revert back the strategy that “won” them the market dominance in the market dominance in the first place.

And YouTube is one of many services that exist to try and convince people to make a Google account anyways. Without YouTube that’s one less reason to make an account with other email providers around and less of a reason for Apple users which is growing in dominance.

Pirates aren’t most people. Piracy finds a way among pirates.

Even without ads it’s shit without sponsorblock for me. Not even for the sponsor spots, but the absolutely annoying copy paste of please like, subscribe, hit the notification icon, blah blah blah blah blah.

Preorder bonuses and microtransaction purchases that provide xp boosts and items that make the game easier.

Having rich family versus none provides a safety net that lessens the consequences of risk taking, and sets a baseline of how bad your life can get.

It’s like playing a game with check points versus one that has you start at the beginning if you die. You still have to do all the hard work to reach your goal yourself, but those retro style non check point games are incredibly hard compared to games with check points, saves, or cheating with save states.

I don’t see a problem with warnings though as someone who does side load and use F-droid to install Foss apps.

You even got on the Apple side people thinking side loading on iOS is not something they want, since they think it’s easy to end up with a malware app when there’s plenty of warnings and a function that needs to be enabled on Android.

I don’t see it any differently really than warnings for when installing a program on Windows if it wants admin access at the start. I think Android with the terrible security updates and eol period shorter than iOS devices is hitting a nice balance of warning users of risks of installing unknown apps, but providing the flexibility for people to install whatever they want.

Most users are idiots.

Side loading is potentially dangerous though, so warnings are good. Especially for average person who will attempt side loading not knowing the permissions they are giving to the app. I don’t see a problem with the current set up, since even with it people install sketchy apks.

Could just demonitize those type of videos, which would have an impact on submissions. That goes for lot of platforms that have a monetizing incentive to get views. And so many don’t bother deactivating the accounts either when videos cross the line as if they want to encourage emulation among the population.

I really can’t stand requests for likes, subscribes, notification bell at all. I actually hate it more than ads, and have backed out of many a video that didn’t happen to have the segment flagged at the beginning.

Look I hate YouTube ads too, and ads in general, but let’s say every user of a service is like you.

I understand the message about needing to fund services to exist, but that stance I feel doesn’t always really work too well. Since if other users were like them then it’d also mean there might be a lot of stuff that doesn’t exist anymore which could be a pro like microtransactions ceasing to exist and move to subscription model failing.

And for YouTube might be completely different where depending on their taste maybe click baits turned people away if the person hated them, so those don’t exist. And long winded videos attempting to take advantage of the algorithm failed if they were someone who didn’t like videos that wasted their time, and everyone is like them.

Reddit might still support third party apps if everyone was like them, and lemmy bigger. That’s why if everyone was like them argument is just a weird one, since it turns minority actions into a majority and changes way too many things to focus on one singular thing.

My favorite aspect of sponsorblock is blocking the incredibly repetitive ubiquitous script that every single channel copies of like, subscribe, ring the notification bell.

Thank you me for using Adblock. You are welcome me. Couldn’t have done it without me. I am my hero. Thanks me.

I really like freetube on desktop, since I have liked the move towards less dependency on accounts. And freetube let’s me have a custom feed without needing an account.

And I love the built in sponsorblock and channel blocking feature too.