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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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How is this enshitification?
You're using third-party tools to circumvent the thing that the platform is held together by.
And the platform is now circumventing the third-party tool.
Pay for premium if you don't want ads. The servers aren't free.
Or, yknow, use an alternative. But you won't, because Mr. Beast and ASMR ear lickers aren't there.
If your youtube experience has been all about ignoring ad blocking, your experience has still been thoroughly enshitified.
Once upon a time you might get a single ad before the video, and be able to skip it if it went over 5 seconds.
Over time, we have gotten multiple commercial breaks, skip button being per-ad instead of per-break, the delay before skip extending to 30 seconds or no skip being allowed at all. Ads slipped into the stream sounds like ad skipping would be totally gone and I bet there's no "ads capped at a reasonable length" either.
Of course, as this has gone on, the content is increasingly just not worth it. So many titles that I know could be answered in like 10 seconds show a length of 40 minutes or so, and it's generally not "oh just a segue into a more engaging broader topic", it's stupid meandering and padding because long videos are somehow better for the creator. So if I see a youtube title that intrigues me, I google to find the wikipedia article they are probably sourcing instead.
Yes, overtime you'll get more ads, as the server cost increases. But you're not watching 360p content on a 1024*1024 monitor any more.
There are more and more content creators, creating 4K content every day. Server costs goes up.
IF you don't like ads, you have the option to buy premium, to pay the server costs / content creators / staff.
It's not enshitification, since you get more, high-quality (figuratively and literally) entertainment / whatever.
I think people who expect things to be free AND convenient are either children or live in a fantasy world and have no idea how the world works.
Getting around an extension that circumvents YouTube's monetisation is not enshitification.
This is about greed and excessive ads, not a complete unwillingness to admit that platforms need a form of income to run.
When platforms go too far, people pushback. That should be a sign for YT that their advertising strategies are unsustainable and they need to make them less offensive and dusruptive to users.
Not everything done to maximize profit is excusable. People are entitled to draw a line when greed goes too far.
Can you show me how much profit Youtube had in 2023? You seem to know this, because you base your whole argument on it.
$31.5 billion in revenue in 2023. [Source]
This doesn't include subscriptions, which accpunt for around another $10-12 billion.
The company is worth hundreds of billions. So, no, I don't think they're suffering from ad blockers.
Ah yes, the good ol' revenue is just a synonym to profit. Classic.
Ah the ol' I have no real argument here and have no idea why I'm actually whiteknighting for a multibillion dollar corporation so I'll just act skeptical regardless of what's said.
Lol. Okay revenue=profit guy. You've said enough.