Comment on As a long-time user hearing YouTube wants to play ads when I pause a video
tjhart85@kbin.social 4 months ago
Same with Google's ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn't make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.
They're obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they'd be a more trusted company today (and what's that worth monetarily) if they hadn't gone down this race to the bottom.
I tried Stadia. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I played Cyberpunk mainly and didn’t have 90% of the problems that other players had. It was very enjoyable.
I likely wouldn’t sign up for another similar service simply because now I have a library on my Steam Deck (purchased with the Stadia refund) and that’s how I’m used to playing at this point. But it sure was a nice service while it lasted. I thought they were selling it to someone but I guess it didn’t end up happening.
You’re right, and now I’m dreading having to change my email address again after nearly 20 years. This one lasted a lot longer than the Hotmail account.
The thing is, “trust” is hard to put on a balance sheet, and is also hard to make a KPI (Key Performance Indicators are an google innovation to help execs and c-suites feel better about the fact that the don’t do much real work) around, since it’s not really quantifiable in a traditional sense.
My concern is that this race to the bottom is so that they can intentionally become unsustainable due to ad blockers. From there, they may be able to get Congress to ban ad blocking altogether.
I, personally, don't see that happening, but I can easily imagine them making it a TOS violation to use adblock and then killing your account if you continue to do so :-/
Well, I would just keep watching without signing in, then. Losing out on recommendations would be mildly annoying, but I could still access my subscription feed by being signed in on one window and copying video links to another one where I’m not.
Losing access to personalized YT would suck, but losing decades of emails would suck even more. I share your sentiment that I fear what these companies are going to do next in the pursuit of more money they can burn and/or give to shareholders as they continue to tank their reputations.
Twitches@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Instead I’m putting great energy to get away from Google, along with a lot of other people
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
We are an insignificant amount. Most people likely don’t even know how to change the default search engine on their phones.
JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Most people don’t even know what a search engine is by that term. They just know they type things into search boxes and click things that come up. Greater majority of phone users don’t even use the browser, it’s just endless apps
pelerinli@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Sometimes few people raise much voices. Those who bother and search for new engine are early adapters of technology, spends money on new gadgets and such. Those are who ads are after, not my grandmother.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
I would think they’re infinitely more likely to click an add.
Shit I hate ads that much, if I see one for a product I might actually want I’ll still search it manually. It’s ingrained in me to avoid ads on the internet and to shut them out as much as possible irl where imo they’re even more an eyesore.
Twitches@lemm.ee 4 months ago
That’s fair. It’s unfortunate.
Gigasser@lemmy.world 4 months ago
To do that effectively, you’d have to make a popular movement for popular big name YouTubers to move away from YouTube and to some other site. Very hard.