wow just wow while i can’t say i didn’t see this one coming but it always amazes me where greed could lead someone

  • code_is_speech@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Google is an ad company. To them, a web browser is nothing more than a tool for collecting user data and delivering ads.

    When you use a chromium based browser you are allowing google, an ad company, to decide what the future of web browsing should look like. And this is the result.

    Firefox is the ONLY browser which is genuinely competing with google. Do you think ad and tracking blockers are going to get better or worse once they die out, and literally every major browser is running on chromium?

    Use firefox and u-block origin. Enjoy a superior, ad free, browsing experience, and support the future of an open web.

    • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      It’s so encouraging to hear so many pro Firefox opinions lately. Then I remember I’m logged into the pirate instance of a federated platform and anti-corporate sentiment is probably as high as it gets.

      Sadly most younger people haven’t even heard of Firefox.

      • Ragerist@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Most young people are basically tech illiterate. Yeah they are fantastic with new apps and phones. But have zero idea how any of it works under the hood.

        Ask them to transfer a file from a computer to a USB drive, most will not know how. They have no idea how a file system is structured or even that an app has to specifically made for different platforms… e.g. Facebook app on Apple is completely different from Facebook on Android and the two will contain different bugs and different settings.

        We are almost back to default browser = internet

        • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          You’re absolutely right.

          Yeah they are fantastic with new apps and phones.

          I think that’s mostly because most commercial apps have fantastic ui and ux.

      • Seilorks@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Most younger people have heard of it. Using what came with their computer is just easier to them though.

      • alongwaysgone@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Right? After years of feeling like the only pro-firefox person left on the planet, the pro Firefox sentiment lately is a breath of fresh air, to say the least.

      • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        It’s my preferred mobile browser because you can install ublock origin and other privacy extensions which is pretty unique

      • AndrewZabar@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Young people seem to proudly go along with the biggest name, which is really sad. They think there’s merit in that, conforming means acceptance.

        Meanwhile, anytime I encounter a young non-conformist doing something very contrarian, it gives me some hope for the future. Because 99% of society is open-armedly embracing dystopia because the one thing they hate more than anything is the burden of independent thought and self-determinism. To intelligent freethinking individuals, seeing it play out is a waking nightmare.

      • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        It’s my preferred mobile browser because you can install ublock origin and other privacy extensions which is pretty unique

  • Soltros@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    More people should try out Tubesync. It’s a tool you can host yourself that essentially uses yt-dl as a backend and lets you subscribe to channels, and it’ll download videos as they come out. Gets you away from the ads and you can archive content you like forever.

    https://github.com/meeb/tubesync

  • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you’re demanding I watch ads, it’s not “free”. you’re demanding my time and probably attention.

    I really think we need to stop with this idea that “Something is free” because no money is exchanged. Some stuff ARE free, there are repos on git, where you can download software, there are websites that ask for nothing. However Gmail, Youtube, reddit, and the rest are not “Free” just because they aren’t directly asking for money.

      • Contend6248@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        As long as there are CEOs getting payed more than i could earn in my life for one year, i’m good with my free lunch.

        • JesusTheCarpenter@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I feel your sentiment. But it’s more about our impression that everything on the internet should be free.

          There are people that hate subscriptions, paywalls, adds or that their personal data being sold. And yet they want to use all the services such as Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, etc. People want to have their cake and eat it too.

          I am not saying that the number of adds and prices are not getting out of control but it makes sense to me that if I am not paying directly for certain services, I am paying for them with my personal data or an advertiser is paying for me instead.

      • Doesnotexist@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Someone smarter than me once said, “if your using a service, and it seems free, then YOU are the product being bought and sold”

        I don’t think this is always true, but it usually is.

      • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf
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        1 year ago

        There are, but they exist outside the market. Any company is going to want a return on its investment, and many people have even been trained to see themselves as “a business” and so operate transactionally in their personal lives, but many people don’t also. There are many people who do and give away many things with no expectation of return.

    • ivyZorz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This. I’m pretty sure this is a result of the ad engine changes they made to chrome a few months ago. Manifest V2 is what enables uBlock Origin to be so effective iirc and they’re removing it in chrome in favor of Manifest V3.

      Firefox on the other hand still supports V2.

      • KeepItDory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I was curious how people feel about Braves new Browser? I usually stick to Firefox but I’ve given it a try. It however does seem to be chromium based.

        • 🅱🅴🅿🅿🅸@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Yeah its just reskinned chromium like the rest, but it’still nowhere near as bad as chrome, edge and the other telemetry filled ones.

          Support Firefox!

      • RobotToaster@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Firefox on the other hand still supports V2.

        For now, mozilla rely heavily on google for funding.

        They dropped xul extensions to have extension compatibility with chrome a few years ago.

        • rumbleran@suppo.fi
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          1 year ago

          They dropped xul extensions to have extension compatibility with chrome a few years ago.

          I still miss XUL extensions because they could properly modify UI of the browser instead of just being pieces of JavaScript run inside tabs.

        • demonicbullet@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          How does that work exactly?

          Like they are direct competitors no? Wouldn’t Mozilla be motivated to fuck google as hard as possible?

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Like they are direct competitors no?

            No, Google pays Firefox to make it seem like it still has competitors and isn’t a monopoly. However, a key condition of that payment is that the default search engine in Firefox is Google. They change that, they lose most of their funding – not most of their Google funding, most of their revenue (which is nearly all Google).

            Wouldn’t Mozilla be motivated to fuck google as hard as possible?

            If they still existed as an actual company, sure. But, it’s not. It’s a corpse that Google animates with their huge funding to make it seem like they still have competitors. Technically, Google doesn’t own Mozilla, but in a 2012 report, 85% of their funding came from Google. So, they’re never going to do anything that risks that funding.

            • demonicbullet@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Oh, so google has adopted the Microsoft strategy.

              Strange, Id think their monopoly would be considered natural if they just let Firefox collapse and didn’t buy out dying/barely competing companies.

          • dazt6h@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            Back in 2005, they started paying Mozilla to promote the Google search engine via their browser. Chrome still wasn’t a thing back then. The weird thing is that they never stopped those payments even today, they even increased them on almost a yearly basis.

            That was back then… Why would they do it now that it no longer makes financial sense since Mozilla is just 3% of the browser market? No clue

            • Auli@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              So there is competition. Firefox goes away there is no other browser and Google is a monopoly.

  • Auli@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Greed? I mean they are not a charity and ads pay for the service. Don’t get me wrong I use ad block but to call it greed…

      • PinkPanther@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Unlimited growth is not impossible! Consider having all the money in the world when it starts to burn. Must be nice.

      • wim@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        They don’t owe us jack shit. If they want to block users of AdBlock I’m sure it’s within their right to do so, and it’s within yours to look elsewhere.

        It’s frustrating, but like the parent comment said: they’re not running a charity.

  • nickiam2@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    NewPipe for android is still working. Much better than the official app IMO, no ads and it actually shows the videos you subscribed to.

  • trepX@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’d say to you all: get used to bombshells dropping! At some point the investor pyramid scheme will go crashing down. It might be now. All those companies were on borrowed time. Until investors realised that “data” isn’t valuable on its own - it’s what you make of it. There needs to be a product that generates revenue. Spoiler alert, it is hard to come up with a business plan that takes plain usage data and makes the technical challenges worthwhile to squeeze money from it. I can feel it myself as data scientist. The honeymoon’s over, investors want to see ROI.

    I mean this cycle will probably recover in a few years when the markets recover but still - some lessons stick

    • Ragerist@lemmy.world
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      Holy shit! Your post made me realize that we are in Dot-com bubble burst 2.0

      It’s the exact same thing, everyone and their dog, had to have a webpage. Investors finally realized that most websites had no way of generating money, and stuff came crashing down.

      Same thing is happening now!

  • PirateForDaLolz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    I’m not so sure that this is anything to worry about. It’s just another step in the game of cat and mouse. Is it annoying? Of course! But if/when it goes mainstream, ad blockers are just going to push updates that make it possible to block the ad block blocker. uBlock Origin does a really good job at blocking ad block blockers on most sites.

      • tartar@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, using uBO (which is really the only blocker anyone should be using) I never see those popups anyway. And that list apparently causes unintended connections to google servers (warning, there’s some drama in this issue between the ublock dev and the list’s dev, but gorhill comes off more reasonable here.) So really, just turn on most of the filter lists in uBO settings as per your need and you should be good to go.

        • hydra@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I didn’t know anything about the drama. Thanks for the heads up, will investigate.

          • tartar@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            No problem, I should be thanking you actually because I only found about this after seeing your comment and decided to look up the list to check if it works well with uBO

        • PirateForDaLolz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          lol I’ve seen plenty of social media drama, but this is probably the most hilarious drama I’ve ever seen. Imagine getting into a fight on the GitHub issue tracker. 😆

      • PirateForDaLolz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I had no idea that this list existed, and even without it, I don’t see any of these popups with uBlock Origin. I was an AdBlock user for years until about 9 months ago when I made the switch after learning that uBlock Origin was more robust. Apparently the devs of AdBlock have a policy against blocking ad block detection because they consider it to be unfair to website owners.

    • subtext@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is google that we’re talking about, they can pull a Twitter and just fully restrict access unless logged in / subscribed. I don’t think uBlock origin can get around the Twitter / Facebook / Instagram log in to see this content modal.

      • PirateForDaLolz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I do not think it will happen, but even if they do implement what you have described here, it doesn’t matter. Users will be forced to sign in, and then from there, they can block ads as usual.

  • gh0stcassette@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    I haven’t had this happen using ublock origin, but if they do figure out how to block ublock origin, adnausiem (ublock origin fork) might work. It’s a fork of ublock origin that tricks the ad providers into thinking you clicked on every ad, which not only bypasses a lot of adblock detectors, it Actively costs them money by polluting their ad data with garbage.

    • notavote@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      If they really want to prevent us from watching videos without ads, they can. They know of the ad is watched or not, we can have some kind of auto-mute-during-ad but that’s it.

      Question is if they will kill network effect with it.

      I have already drastically reducedy yt watching because of too many sponsors… watching two minutes of sponsored material, plus two ads just to see that I don’t even wanna watch the stupid video is too much.

      Not to mention those laud ads in the middle of relaxing and quiet video… few months ago one ad was starting with screaming, that’s when I said no way.

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    No way I’ll use YouTube with ads. The amount of your lifetime they waste is what I’d consider disrespectful to their users. Even if the ads were bearable, I wouldn’t turn off my ad blocker on any Google site for tracking alone.

    I also don’t see myself subscribing to YouTube Premium, firstly because it’s too expensive (stop including your music streaming service and make it cheaper maybe?), but also because YouTube is just a platform with a lot of not curated content that YouTube had no part in creating.

    Let’s see how the cat and mouse games between YouTube and ad blockers and alternative frontends go. If it’s too much of a hassle, I’ll just stop using YouTube. I don’t miss Twitter, I don’t miss Reddit, and I won’t miss YouTube.

    • alongwaysgone@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Eh, I wound up with a YouTube premium subscription years ago when I subscribed to Google play music, way back when it was YouTube Red. I cannot imagine going without at this point. It became YouTube music at some point, and… Yeah.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Companies are becoming even more greedy recently across the board and at a rapid pace. Some people would want you to believe Youtube wouldn’t generate billions of dollars as income annually for Alphabet for some reason. But the truth is the platform is extremely profitable already. Youtube simply wants even more now because competition has done the same. We’ve seen prices spiraling up and quality dropping in pretty much all sectors of the economy and this trend will continue for the forseeable future.

      In short: Because they can (some are really stretching their boundaries, though)

      • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        and try to speak about this to anyone who doesnt see it you are basically labeled as conspiracy theorist or something and just dismissed.

    • Banzai51@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Like another poster said, investors are pushing for profits. The Sillicon Valley model of throwing money at it until they figure it out is suffering with the downturn in the markets. So with the VC and investor money drying up, sites are pushing to make money to keep the lights on.

        • RhetoricalOrator@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think this is the real thing. If online companies don’t match the extremely ridiculous and luck they had during the pandemic then they are doing “worse” even if they are doing just fine.

          All of them also seem to be focused more on short term gains over long term losses (i.e. meeting quarterly goals by raising rates but driving away otherwise good customers and completely disregarding the benefit of customer loyalty.).

    • hydra@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They were always assholes, but the end of zero interest rates is making American corporations go from boiling the frog to just smoking the frog alive.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Interest rates went up and now they need to make payments on their previously free debt.

    • Draces@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s the natural path of capitalism. Squeeze just enough that you barely want to do anything. That’s literally just price meeting demand. And competition is dead so the demand is high

  • doolittle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Really not worth watching a 10 minute video that has four minutes of YouTube ads and a minute of a sponsor pitch by the creator.

  • Orbitrix@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This seems somewhat intentionally coordinated, so that the squeeze everyone into submission.

    • Bercto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It is coordinated but also driven by purely financial factors that changed over the last year. Interests are rising and suddenly those tech companies can’t just live by growth alone, they have to find ways to be profitable.

      • IPTVSports28@vlemmy.net
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        1 year ago

        Won’t someone think of the poor tech companies?

        (Just making the joke, not at you. You are correct, that is why it’s happening now.)