A road analogy only works if it’s their private road which youtube maintains

Their desire to restrict how you interact with their "free" service necessitates eliminating your fundamental ability to tell your computer what to do - not just for "their private road", but in general. This is what the "war on general computation" is about. (I assume you haven't watched the talk linked in my earlier comment? there is also a transcript here...)

To be clear, they have not won this war yet - which is why all of the software linked in the body of this post is still able to exist! But, they are continuing to move in that direction and offerings like YouTube Premium are predicated on their (correct) assumption that, for many people, having agency over their own computers' behavior is already unimaginable.

So, re: your earlier comment:

That feels dystopian in the same way that a car mechanics offering services like brake pad replacements is dystopian, which is to say, a pretty big stretch. My uncle and his buddies would giggle, a la, Hank Hill if anyone suggested taking that stuff to a mechanic. But for 90% of people, that’s the norm.

I'd say this not at all like car mechanics existing and offering brake pad replacement service. Rather, it is akin to it being made intentionally more difficult and/or outright illegal to replace one's own brake pads - and also to have them replaced by any local mechanic who does not pay a recurring fee to the company that manufactured the car.

the war on general-purpose computing isn't akin to car mechanics offering services. if you want a car analogy (😬) it is more like car manufacturers attempting to restrict which roads which cars are allowed to drive on (and selling license keys to enable access to other roads).

post edited 🤦 i actually spent a moment pondering your first comment but didn't realize i'd typoed until someone else in the thread spelled it out

lmao, i was wondering what they were talking about 😭

thanks for spelling it out clearly; i've now edited the post to fix it.

(English is in fact my first language btw, possibly i'm suffering from some hopefully temporary cognitive impairment 😅)

google's offer to accept payment for these "features"^[these aren't really even features: google is offering to disable anti-features which they are choosing to impose on people.] (each and every one of them) is predicated on their assumption that many people are not in control of the software on their own computers.

they haven't completely won the war yet, but the extent to which their assumption is correct is imo pretty dystopian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outdoor_advertising#Regulations billboards are banned in several cities and, surprisingly, in four entire states of the US.

The guy who the cop said that to was actually in handcuffs at the time

unclear if this tweet is/was real, but it doesn't appear to exist now. however via this reddit post (with a less-cropped version of the same screenshot) i found these:

Obviously the criminal here is the person who asked the question and posted a screenshot of the answer.

The so-called lolrus was actually a southern elephant seal named Minazo. He was born in Uruguay, but spent most of his life in Japan where, measuring 4.5 meters long and weighing around two tons, he was said to be the largest seal in the country. Minazo died in October 2005 at the age of 11, and made his meme debut posthumously in June 2006 on YTMND. To this day Wikipedia considers him "one of the most famous southern elephant seals". Merzbow released a two-volume album (1, 2) in his memory.

RIP Minazo

roger... Roger? roger.