[kurito]

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place.

At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

[slvng]

The best engineer I've ever known ended up working for years on optimizing ad space auction time by micro seconds.

[bpavuk]

they either:

a) don't care

b) were desperate enough at the time, then, like that damn videogame, it sucked him in

it's too easy to get carried away by sheer technical complexity of optimization tasks, even if you are optimizing for bad.

[giancarlostoro]

Or were paid handsomely?

[hosteur]

That is really sad.

[speedgoose]

They may have been extremely competent at this, but if they decided to spend years of their relatively short ephemeral life on such a useless project, perhaps they weren’t the best at the time. Perhaps they needed money and were focusing on family life, I don’t know. Who I am to judge? I’m judging though.

[blell]

Why is that useless as opposed to what most of us do for work? I think you guys have a weird sense of how useful the average job is, or how much the average job contributes to society at large. At least this made a lot of money I guess.

[alternatex]

You can create a lot of profit for your employer whilst contributing nothing to society or even be detrimental to it. Money has no bearing on that.

[giancarlostoro]

They can take the skill to any other employer and improve performance for others elsewhere. Think of all the seconds you could get back to do more meaningful things if more websites were fully optimized. It may sound silly but it snowballs into minutes, hours, and days.

[speedgoose]

I think most jobs contribute positively to the society. Not much, for sure, but they contribute.

Is the cleaner regularly removing poop stains from the personal toilet of a big and rich Google shareholder more useful than the qualified Google engineer working hard so a big number is very slightly bigger on one the shareholder’s list of numbers? I think the cleaner has more impact.

[giancarlostoro]

Yeah this is no different from someone optimizing literally any other performance bottlenecks in ANY other web project.

[thebytefairy]

Yea, and the scale of impact on the economy of those micro seconds is probably huge

[malicka]

I would like to add they waated their time on something evil, not useless. Can’t say I blame them too much for cashing that check, though.

[rchaud]

Before tech became the go-to big money job, there was a well-worn stereotype of electrical engineering grads going to Wall Street instead of an EE-centric job.

[snakeboy]

Well, nobody needs Google-level money...

[Buttons840]

It's a testament to the health of our free markets and competition that the winning move here is to spend a lot of time and money making your product worse for the average person.

[Ampersander]

Aren't they going to win in the long run with remote attestation?

[stavros]

> At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

This is where their most brilliant engineers have bested you, because they control the client too.

[bpavuk]

and my answer is Firefox! (maybe also Ladybird and Servo in distant future)

[lostmsu]

Currently Firefox on Android doesn't play YouTube videos in background.

UPD found https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/video-backgro... elsewhere in the thread

[stavros]

I agree with you there. Anything non-Chrome is better than Chrome.

[jy14898]

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

[rockskon]

If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates!

There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.

[HDThoreaun]

Where is youtube complaining? Theyre just trying to stop you from using their service if you dont watch ads

[reddalo]

>If you don't like free services, stop using them

Problem is, there's no real alternative for YouTube. It's a monopoly.

[t0bia_s]

By contributing to something I don't agree with it's called hypocrisy. Just don't use it. That's probably the only thing you can do about if you want change.

[sneak]

That’s not remotely true.

[reddalo]

Okay, so list which websites I can use to watch all kinds of content that I can find on YouTube.

Vimeo? It's basically dead. DailyMotion? It could've been an alternative, but they've recently deleted most old videos. Peertube? Nice idea in theory, but lack of content.

[icepush]

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok all fulfil the 'whatever topic I am interested in this second, there are videos about it' property, though admittedly they do not have near as much meritorious long-form content as YouTube.

[slumberlust]

Damn, I didn't know you could watch your long videos on TikTok. When did this happen?

[lombasihir]

is use yewtu.be from time to time on web, and pipepipex on android.

[reddalo]

Do you realize that those are just wrappers for YouTube, not a real competitor?

[fatherwavelet]

I was going to try to make the monopoly argument but then realized I only think youtube is a monopoly because I don't use tiktok.

It is just an oligopoly like most other sectors.

[subscribed]

TikTok as an alternative to YouTube?

And then I realised people primarily consume shorts.

[estimator7292]

They're removing functionality that you already heave built into your browser in order to force you to pay to get that functionality back.

That's not monetization that's exploitation.

Would you feel the same if your phone suddenly updated so that your camera records in half quality unless you start paying monthly? It's their product, they can monetize it how they like.

[eudamoniac]

The "functionality" is watching infinite free videos they provide. They are providing you with infinite free videos that you never paid for. You are not entitled to access the infinite free videos at all. You are definitely not entitled to access them in arbitrary ways that avoids their monitization scheme.

[jy14898]

It's monetisation. If they put a paywall on the video, your browser has the functionality to play the video but you're forced to pay to use that functionality.

Also wrt phone, it's different because I paid for the phone. But also I'd just use a different camera app?

[patrick451]

I don't think it's fine for large companies to intentionally lose money to drive smaller competitors out of business. In fact, I think this practice should be illegal and that all who participated should be in jail.

[subscribed]

On the front of selling this is called dumping and is in fact illegal, i believe.

[zigzag312]

> including things which were originally free

Oh, I despise this tactic so much. It means the company has known from the start that they can't offer it for free in the long term, but decided to subsidize it in order to gain a dominant position and get rid of competition. This breaks the conditions needed for a free market dynamics to work. In other words, they win market share for reasons other than efficiency, quality, or innovation. That's why some forms of government subsidies are prohibited under certain agreements, for example. Some multinational corporations have annual revenues larger than the GDP of many countries and can easily subsidize negative pricing for years to undercut competitors, consolidate market share, and ultimately gain monopoly power.

Also, the company has hinted false promises to the customer, as it signals that they have developed a business model where they can offer something for free. For example a two-sided marketplace where one side gets something for free to attract users and the other side pays (as it profits form these users). Users can't know something isn't sustainable unless the company explicitly states it in some way (e.g. this is a limited time offer).

So from the user's perspective, this is a bait-and-switch tactic, where the company has used a free offer in order to manipulate the market.

[sidrag22]

> If you don't like free services, stop using them

If they don't like users using their service how they deem improper, ban them? they know what accounts are doing it... There is a reason for this cat and mouse, and its not ending with youtube banning people.

A lot of the current issues i see with it, is that it is treated like the go to service for video hosting...

Just consider image hosting... If i see an image in a thread and click it (much like people will do with youtube urls), and block the ad that was on the hosted site, is there this much uproar about it? That image hosting site might charge 5$ to do what an adblocker already does... If they wanna lock that up? actually lock it up, and remove the "service" portion of the business, otherwise I don't see any legs to stand on here.

Service in my eyes here, is a public service. This is a company posing as a public service, and occasionally deciding it hates how a % of the public is using their service. So they hand them a 10$ a month ticket that they pretend is required, but they will never take action on users who dont pay that ticket.

[tjpnz]

Is this product or hampering the way the web works with video? Go to any other site with a <video> tag and you won't face similar issues.

[deaux]

As soon as the laws on the books get enforced and they get broken up, sure. Until then, absolutely not.

[keepamovin]

Maybe ads-as-business-model is like political ideology - it is not a human universal but must adapt to the place: for instance collectivism over individualism in East Asia, theocratic conservatism over democracy in Afghanistan -- maybe ads as business model is despicable to some regions, but accepted in others? Albania it's apparently illegal for YouTube to serve ads?

[isthatafact]

Without regulations, ads seem to infiltrate into every space--virtual or physical--that is not controlled by the owner or some other gatekeeper.

I would hope most people anywhere would see that as a bad thing, especially given the scams and harms that ads are pushing.

I am not sure the best way to improve things, but anyone should be able to live a normal day of life without being forced to see any advertisement.

[AlienRobot]

Agreed. I was leaving the mall with lots of great goods I had found, but then the guard stopped me and told me I was stealing! Imagine paying that guy a salary just to blackmail me into paying them! This is an outrage.

[shevy-java]

> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it should also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be ashamed for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...

[tjpnz]

No worse than what a lot of their other "brilliant" minds are working on - ads.

[throwaway132448]

Whataboutism is just fascinating. How myopic must your world view be that when you see one bad thing, you immediately try to justify it by pointing out another bad thing?

[latexr]

> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

Maybe we should stop with that tired fallacious rhetoric? Just because you work at a massive company doesn’t make you “brilliant”.

[freedomben]

GP did not say that just because you work at a massive company you are brilliant. Nor did they say just working at Google makes you brilliant.

The irony of your comment of accusing them of using fallacious rhetoric, is that your reply uses one of the most common fallacies of all: strawman fallacy

[latexr]

GP assumed “the most brilliant engineers” are working on these problems. There’s zero reason to believe that is true and the one thing we know about those people is that they work for Google.

Their argument isn’t new, it’s just a rehash of “the most brilliant minds of our generation are working on trying to get you to click on ads”. My criticism was directed at the general argument, which is simply wrong. That comment is based on nothing except those people working at those corporations.

It is not a strawman because I am disagreeing with the conclusion as quoted, the reasoning being immaterial.

[testfrequency]

Apple has entered the chat

[nikanj]

*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads

[anonymous908213]

Google is the richest company literally on the entire planet, you really don't need to go to bat for monopolistic practices.

[BrenBarn]

If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they should never have made YouTube free in the first place.

[reddalo]

They made it free just like any other startup makes a free tier to obtain market share.

[deaux]

I'm sure the US government will be appreciative of a Chinese car manufacturer selling free cars in the US to obtain market share, and there definitely won't be calls of "dumping", no siree.

[lurk2]

YouTube got to where it is by making intentional moves to be the only game in town. They aren’t the most user-hostile platform by any means, but they have been coasting on the network effects of backlogged content for close to a decade now. Even if a competitor could deal with network and storage costs, and somehow manage to attract a network of uploaders, the platform would be 20 years behind, and there’s certain content (e.g. older content) that you simply wouldn’t ever be able to find there in any appreciable quantity.

[learingsci]

Drug dealers invented this business model, they would give heroin to young children for free and then once hooked hike the prices or force them to turn tricks to pay for their habit. It’s effective but not very admirable to say the least.

[stavros]

I've also seen this done for cheese, do you find that equally reprehensible? Or is the argument just rhetorical sleight of hand, where "drug dealers do X, so therefore X must be bad"? Drug dealers also consume food, and you know who else consumes food? You.

[sellmesoap]

Cheese isn't so far off drugs after all: https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2015/study-reveals... plus you have to make baby animals to get the milk for the cheese, so some exploitation is going on. I like cheese and youtube, but maybe they're both bad.

[learingsci]

Cheesemongers have a bit less impact on society than drug dealers or Google. If Google were raking in hundreds of billions giving kids free cheese then charging them full price for parmigiana some might complain and I would not find fault in that. Scale matters.

[saagarjha]

Monetizing a basic OS feature is not a good look.

[sidrag22]

the only time ive tried to use a feature like that, is when im in the car listening to a podcast or something.

juggling the phone to not only skip ads, but also forcing the phone screen to be active, is a hazard.

In my case this loophole being closed, wouldn't make me pay for premium... but it would make a younger version of me certainly more dangerous on the road.

[angoragoats]

Do you ever watch videos on a computer? If so, do you ever switch away to a different tab, or to a different app entirely, and keep the video playing in your browser tab? YouTube artificially prevents that exact same action on tablets and phones unless you pay them.

Multitasking is a basic OS feature, no matter what kind of device you’re using. Gating it behind a paywall is user-hostile behavior at its finest.

[realusername]

Maybe if the Youtube subscription wasn't 10x what they earn from a single user with ads, that would be more believable option.