You’ve identified an interesting loop which I reckon is deeply uncomfortable for the Progressive type.
Nonetheless, it’s true for most voters in Oakland or SF. Just last month, a judge let a homeless stabber back on the street after he threatened and tried attacking SF’s mayor and his bodyguard. The Progressive reaction was to blame the mayor and the police— and then the newly freed homeless guy immediately broke the law again and had to be re-arrested.
What is shocking about youtube's advertising is just how bad the supposedly "targeted" aspect of it is.
The entire original advantage these tech companies had over traditional entertainment and media companies was their access to data and their ability to use that for targeted advertising. It was supposed to be a win-win, so they claimed. The viewer would get targeted advertising to match their interests and brands would get their ads delivered in a hyper accurate way.
Instead, the ads are just garbage. If anything, most of the ads I see on my tv (the only time I see ads on youtube) are worse than the ads I see in traditional media, like magazines or TV, in the sense that they literally don't feel targeted or curated at all. I watch tons of bike races and highlights on youtube TV and then almost all my ads are for cars, generic laundry detergent, and obvious scam crap products, anything but something bike related! Do you know where I do see far better targeted advertising? Bike magazines and print media!
The entire idea that youtube is good at what they do (to make money) just seems to be a sham in my experience.
The ads are garbage because Google didn’t want the ads to be hyper optimized and hyper targeted to you. It gives people an uncanny valley feeling. Meta takes a different approach and people often accuse Instagram to snoop on their conversations, even if Instagram is not doing that and is merely good at optimizing the ads. And given that both companies are successful at ads, I’d say both approaches are commercially successful.
But the interesting thing is that, statistically what they are serving maximizes their revenue. So they have the best version of what they want to do, and it keeps maximizing their objectives (profit).
The problem is that such objective became somewhat perpendicular to what some people like. It's funny but maybe watching that stupid Ad, somehow makes you do something that in the end makes them profit.
I'd say fully 25% of the ads I see on YouTube are for the Baerskin "tactical" hoodie. I'm pretty sure it's just generic dropshipped Chinese junk but the advertising is relentless. And how the hell is it possible for a hoodie to be "tactical"?
> I watch tons of bike races and highlights on youtube TV and then almost all my ads are for cars, generic laundry detergent, and obvious scam crap products, anything but something bike related
If I had to guess, niche products for niche interests have small ad budgets, but the random detergent ad buyer is happy to bid on anyone's eyeballs. You can't target ad buys that don't exist!
On the other hand, before I bought YT premium I was regularly getting ads for Chevron gas in Spanish (which I don't speak), and would be unsurprised if YT ad enshittification drove premium sales.
> remove video thumbnail” and “remove YouTube shorts” chrome extension is a must install
Which is it? Does YouTube respect your time and attention as a user or does it prey on them? I'm pretty sure it's the latter.
The fact that you can pay to opt out of ads has always seemed like a weird business decision to me. Sabotage your ad viewership by siphoning off users with spending money for things like an ad-free subscription. I suppose it prevents losing users to paid platforms or those who just wouldn't tolerate ads at all, and gives an out for users who would otherwise contribute to the ads vs ad blockers arms race.
Well, it respects my time and I respect my time. Youtube wants me (its idea of me) to have a bright, colorful, exciting experience; I want a dreary and focused one. That's not disrespect, it's just different expectations.
I'd like Youtube to one day enable me to disable the fun colors in-app, but that's not a requirement. At the end of the day, the onus is on me, first, to number my days. (Psalm 90:12)
I'm sympathetic to the idea that most internet websites are addicting and bad for society, but I think the blame-game obscures our own agency, which we pretend not to have, and overemphasizes the platform's power, which isn't as strong as we pretend. We're not victims, they're not Gods.
>> I think the blame-game obscures our own agency, which we pretend not to have, and overemphasizes the platform's power, which isn't as strong as we pretend
Yes we do have agency. Also the platforms employ psychologists and designers and run experiments specifically to engagement hack human brains to increase ad watch time. That's a really tough opponent for individual humans.
The post feigns outreach but the "Facebook and Tiktok are Evil" section blatantly panders to EFF supporters. It frontloads identity-group-affirming language to justify using platforms its supporters dislike at while saying nothing critical about platforms its supporters enjoy (Bluesky / Mastodon). That selective scrutiny suggest the EFF either doesn't care or is ignorant about the hang-ups of non-supporters, e.g., conservative and center-right folks.
I'm neither a supporter nor opponent; I only see the EFF's rhetoric as way for themselves and their supporters to lie about their mutual contempt for their opponents.
It's really weird that the EFF would post something on their own site to speak to their supporters, and that it would employ "identity-group-affirming language".
Just because they issue one post that is targeting their supporters doesn't mean that they don't care or are ignorant about the broader audience. That's ridiculous.
"Infotainment" is the term I've heard to describe Reddit and other talking websites. People are looking to "win" like they do in sports or other recreational activities. It's a kind of fun that disguises itself as learning-- minus, of course, the actual work.
Surprising no one in the article or the comments has referenced The Amazing Digital Circus. It’s use of backrooms, NPCs and the like dovetail well together.
I remember one time some libraries banned non-equity-promoting books and then backtracked and called it "deaccession" https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-lib...
Right wing and left wing people love roleplaying as freedom fighters against the forces of evil.