this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
1713 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

58303 readers
22 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean even if you pay for premium, they don't give you the option to not have shorts shoved down your throat. This is a "feature" that has been added after premium was a thing. It's also not too hard to figure out shorts are an optimized method to harvest more user data on interests.

While I don't disagree with leaving the ad-funded internet behind us, I also don't trust Google to be a pioneer in reducing ads on the Internet— considering they're an ad delivering company above all else at this point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't have premium and I don't see shorts either. I'm not sure if some of my addons is blocking those or I just clicked "not interested" enough many times.

EDIT: Yeah. Enhancer for YouTube blocks them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No one said we should trust a corporation to do anything, much less google. I've ditched chrome and encourage others to do the same every chance I get. But I also think Premium, YT Music, Android and Pixel, Google drive/office suite, are all reasons for google to rely less and less on their ad business.

The challenge they now face, is the unwillingness of customers to pay. Due to google having relied on ads for so long, people are more than used to accessing their services free of charge. Just looking at the ad-block-blocking situation, they demand that they be able to do so. All the while rejecting even the ads.

Ads will never be the long term play. Sooner or later legislation will step in, as people who actually use the internet and it's services like youtube, start getting into government.