Yup. It definitely feels like over time the human element of the Internet has been replaced by a corporate one. The most blatant example I can think of is youtube. Nowadays it’s so obvious rigged in the favour of already established media and a select few content creators.
Yeah I’m feeling less like a participant, and more like a consumer on the “greater internet” (five big), compared to the early days when corporate presence was minimal, and not remotely slick or subtle. It was like dorky and obvious, and didn’t seem remotely like a threat.
Feeling like a consumer is a great way to put it. It especially feels more and more like it when trying to do even the most mundane tasks. Like if you own a product but need to ask a question on Google about it, first you have to scroll past the links to pages trying to sell you the product you typed in, then you might get some reddit links, 2-3 from a smaller forum, and then more links trying to sell you the product. It will say there’s thousands of results, but it’s just the same 6 links to purchase the product over and over again. So now even basic web searches are mainly for buying stuff.
Search is broken. It’s been getting worse year over year and Google / Bing and all the various offshoots that are JUST GOOGLE AND BING (this isn’t a fucking secret, people. You can slap whatever algo you want over Google / bing and it’s still fucking Google and bing. And a jolly go duck duck fucK yourself to the lot of them).
I miss the day when you could search YouTube for something like “JFK skyclub” and actually get video of the Skyclub at JFK. Today you’ll get 15-minute videos that are 90% a guy talking about his thoughts on JFK, or Skyclub, or airlines, or whatever. If you’re really lucky, some of them may feature a few seconds of actual footage of Skyclub.
It’s not just Skyclub or travel videos. If I search for “repair mr coffee” I want to see a howto, not someone’s SEO-optimized long winded lecture about whatever coffeemakers they’re selling.
So the weird thing is you can still do this but only if YouTube thinks you’re the right audience for it. My grandfather looks up all kinds of old things on YouTube and almost always get exactly what he wants on the first hit. However if I do it it ends up more like your example. Interesting and annoying at the same time
Sounds like it would actually make sense to have a handful of different accounts, each account optimized (through search/watch history or something) for a specific type of content you want to search for.
Otherwise, 3rd-party search engines are often better than YouTubes own search for finding obscure/rare/unpopular/unlisted/demonetized videos.
Yeah, that’s completely untrue… The reason we can’t just create a new youtube is the same reason there aren’t more ISPs. The infrastructure cost is too high.
You can’t just build a site that allows video uploads and playback, throw it on a Pi and release it to the world. You need scalability, and that costs money.
Maybe the end solution is a distributed system, but that’s not something you can easily sell to the average Joe that doesn’t give a shit about the “how” or “why” with Youtube, and simply wants to watch videos.
I’m not saying that Google isn’t the scum of the earth, but there is currently no feasible way to recreate what they’ve made/bought without an absolutely stupid amount of money.
YouTube itself is bound to implode because of the cost of all that infrastructure… sheesh. I recently reduced my YT time to the bare minimum, after being screwed out of premium (light), and found out about Peertube. It’s pretty bare bones, but viral videos can use P2P to offload the main server, which I thought was smart and fair. So, federated YouTube can be done I think. It won’t be easy though, or cheap.
Unfortunately not. The cost would be astronomical. Youtube bled money like a stuck pig for a long time, and their monetization has turned out predictably awful, every time.
Don’t get me wrong, the competition would be great, or at least having the option of something… less Youtube. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of alternatives around, though, and certainly nothing at the same kind of scale.
I get your heart’s in the right place. But good luck finding investors to pay for the massive infrastructure costs to back your YouTube alternative (read competitor) without a plan to extract money from someone. Not even to break even, but to turn a profit.
It would be nice if there was public money to create these alternatives - that was m way you wouldn’t have to worry about profit, just whether your solution is meeting the public need.
I don’t know how much it costs to run or how ads fully function on the service, but we do have Odysee. I have yet to have seen a single ad from my collection in the app outside of creators whose vid that’s also up on yt having a sponsored segment.
Edit:
Just booted up the app for the first time in a while and they have some minor things. Noticed a little bar at the top with a list of channels and scrolled down to find a featured section.
Yup. It definitely feels like over time the human element of the Internet has been replaced by a corporate one. The most blatant example I can think of is youtube. Nowadays it’s so obvious rigged in the favour of already established media and a select few content creators.
Yeah I’m feeling less like a participant, and more like a consumer on the “greater internet” (five big), compared to the early days when corporate presence was minimal, and not remotely slick or subtle. It was like dorky and obvious, and didn’t seem remotely like a threat.
Feeling like a consumer is a great way to put it. It especially feels more and more like it when trying to do even the most mundane tasks. Like if you own a product but need to ask a question on Google about it, first you have to scroll past the links to pages trying to sell you the product you typed in, then you might get some reddit links, 2-3 from a smaller forum, and then more links trying to sell you the product. It will say there’s thousands of results, but it’s just the same 6 links to purchase the product over and over again. So now even basic web searches are mainly for buying stuff.
Search is broken. It’s been getting worse year over year and Google / Bing and all the various offshoots that are JUST GOOGLE AND BING (this isn’t a fucking secret, people. You can slap whatever algo you want over Google / bing and it’s still fucking Google and bing. And a jolly go duck duck fucK yourself to the lot of them).
I pay $10/month for kagi. Its worth it.
Link to kagi? Or are you going to make us Google it?
Kagi.com
I’ve been using SearX for about a week, and so far it’s pretty decent.
Sounds interesting. I’ll check it out. BTW I like how unhinged your comment is - you sound like a fun person who I wish I knew IRL
I can’t tell if you forgot to add a “/s” to the end of your comment or not.
I was being genuine. I appreciate their passion
And then now that Alphabet owns YouTube, the first couple results are always monetized videos… It’s brutal.
Anywhere there is money there are charlatans
I miss the day when you could search YouTube for something like “JFK skyclub” and actually get video of the Skyclub at JFK. Today you’ll get 15-minute videos that are 90% a guy talking about his thoughts on JFK, or Skyclub, or airlines, or whatever. If you’re really lucky, some of them may feature a few seconds of actual footage of Skyclub.
It’s not just Skyclub or travel videos. If I search for “repair mr coffee” I want to see a howto, not someone’s SEO-optimized long winded lecture about whatever coffeemakers they’re selling.
So the weird thing is you can still do this but only if YouTube thinks you’re the right audience for it. My grandfather looks up all kinds of old things on YouTube and almost always get exactly what he wants on the first hit. However if I do it it ends up more like your example. Interesting and annoying at the same time
Sounds like it would actually make sense to have a handful of different accounts, each account optimized (through search/watch history or something) for a specific type of content you want to search for.
Otherwise, 3rd-party search engines are often better than YouTubes own search for finding obscure/rare/unpopular/unlisted/demonetized videos.
“Don’t forget to hit the bell and smash that like and subscribe button!”
Yes but it is also way bigger then it was. The amount of data that YouTube has now is just insane. I wonder when they’ll start culling old videos.
I think they already began removing old, inactive channels some time ago…
deleted by creator
Yeah, that’s completely untrue… The reason we can’t just create a new youtube is the same reason there aren’t more ISPs. The infrastructure cost is too high.
You can’t just build a site that allows video uploads and playback, throw it on a Pi and release it to the world. You need scalability, and that costs money.
Maybe the end solution is a distributed system, but that’s not something you can easily sell to the average Joe that doesn’t give a shit about the “how” or “why” with Youtube, and simply wants to watch videos.
I’m not saying that Google isn’t the scum of the earth, but there is currently no feasible way to recreate what they’ve made/bought without an absolutely stupid amount of money.
I think this already exists and is called PeerTube. In my experience it doesn’t work very well.
YouTube itself is bound to implode because of the cost of all that infrastructure… sheesh. I recently reduced my YT time to the bare minimum, after being screwed out of premium (light), and found out about Peertube. It’s pretty bare bones, but viral videos can use P2P to offload the main server, which I thought was smart and fair. So, federated YouTube can be done I think. It won’t be easy though, or cheap.
deleted by creator
It’s objective fact.
Unfortunately not. The cost would be astronomical. Youtube bled money like a stuck pig for a long time, and their monetization has turned out predictably awful, every time.
Don’t get me wrong, the competition would be great, or at least having the option of something… less Youtube. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of alternatives around, though, and certainly nothing at the same kind of scale.
I get your heart’s in the right place. But good luck finding investors to pay for the massive infrastructure costs to back your YouTube alternative (read competitor) without a plan to extract money from someone. Not even to break even, but to turn a profit.
It would be nice if there was public money to create these alternatives - that was m way you wouldn’t have to worry about profit, just whether your solution is meeting the public need.
That said I’m with you. I try to avoid YouTube whenever I can. Wish more people would do the same
I don’t know how much it costs to run or how ads fully function on the service, but we do have Odysee. I have yet to have seen a single ad from my collection in the app outside of creators whose vid that’s also up on yt having a sponsored segment.
Edit:
Just booted up the app for the first time in a while and they have some minor things. Noticed a little bar at the top with a list of channels and scrolled down to find a featured section.