this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Or that’s what we’re led to believe. Someone could say the same for an OS, but we have many open source alternatives. We need an open source alternative to YouTube, and perhaps with some innovation that may be possible. You don’t need storage, for example, if content is just streamed in a p2p manner, even with a time delay so people can watch something whenever
Edit: some context https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2PTV
For the idiots downvoting explain why, or I’ll just believe you’re YouTube shills
Your equating the software development with the running costs.
People have made OS and people have made YouTube alternatives. But that's nothing compared to the quantity of servers, networking infrastructure, storage, power usage, and labor to maintain and update it.
P2p isn't a valid alternative because that's just shifting costs onto your users. Just because a central entity isn't taking on the burden of cost doesn't mean the cost isn't there.
Pictures and text are rather low usage, both in storage and networking but video isn't. Especially when millions are watching videos at the same time.
What you’re saying is valid in a model where the server hosts content and provides it on demand, and that’s not what I was describing.
Here’s the model I had in my head, but I am not sure if anyone has attempted this yet:
1..user uploads a video which borrows resources from p2p network
2..the shared burden is shifted around as nodes become active or inactive
3..content is always available in asynchronous, on demand fashion
I don’t work in distributed and networked systems, so I don’t expect the above model to strictly be based in reality, but it’s not that fanciful based on the wiki article I shared
I guess it’s a fair point that users maybe don’t want to be responsible for the burden. In which case, I guess why complain about ads then 🤷♀️
You are kinda describing "maidsafe"
But maidsafe isn't fully free, you technically pay access by sharing/lending hardware to the network
Cool, so I don’t understand why it has to be fully free. I think people should be comfortable taking control of their technologies otherwise they should be okay with getting what they get from the service providers
I totally agree with you, I'm happy to pay when the service is good. I was only mentioning it wasn't fully free because I know some care about that.
You're right that this is possible. But the speed and quality are going to decline considerably under this model, particularly across distant regions.
Because the average internet user (and many FOSS users, sadly) have gotten into the mindset that they deserve everything for free, the way they want it.
(For those taking offense to the bit about freeloading FOSS users, I refer you to the FOSS dev burnout trend we were discussing a month ago)
Maybe if we would stop expecting these sites to provide wasteful ultra-huge megaHD videos, it wouldn't be a problem. Hell, even with YouTube, maybe if they just served DVD-quality videos they wouldn't need to push tons of ads on us in the first place. Our expectation for this crazy new pointless ultra-sharp quality videos is ridiculous and is part of the problem with content delivery these days.
Fuck you.
Are you mad about something else? It’s okay, use your words
We can barely keep Mastodon / Lemmy instnaces floating that host text, gifs and pictures.
That doesn't include paying the content creators.
Just because you're getting shit for free, doesn't mean that other people will want to do it for you for free.
Fuck you.
lol assuming way too much about me, feel free think what you want 😂
peertube exists. so does owncast
Neither pay their creators as far as I'm aware?
so? find someone to pay you.
Hmm. Maybe youtube?
don't count on it.
But I am. I know I will get paid next month, I can count on it. I couldn't count on it if I was dependent on a few donators.
Not downvoting, but I just think you're way too optimistic. It's like believing we, humans, could stop fighting wars. Sure, theoretically. But the difference between theory and the practical is that in theory there's no difference.
Hmm not being optimistic, just going based on past experience. Look at where you’re posting right now, did anyone think the fediverse could be a possibility when we have twitter, fb or reddit? There’s nothing out of the norm about what I am saying anyways, people do stuff like this for sport or based on ideology. That’s why anyone should support a foss project they use or admire, or pay artists, writers, niche magazines etc
It's just YouTube shills. Content creators who want to make money on the platform, and content viewers who don't want to have to check multiple places for the things they watch.
No one should feel bad for Google though, as they chose YouTube to be open to anyone uploading anything.
You mean "get paid for labour"? How fucking dare they ask money for their time and providing people with information / entertainment / whatever.
you can make money off-platform from your content. you don't need to be paid by youtube.
Idealistic view based on a miniscule amount of very talented/devoted people.
if you can't find someone willing to pay you to make content, maybe your content isn't worth getting paid for.
But youtube pays you even if the content isn't worth getting paid for, so I don't think your reasoning works.
"Go somewhere where there's no viewers and you don't get paid".
Nice advice, I'll pass.
Listen, I don’t think we would lose anything of value if YouTube suddenly stopped paying creators because of either end of the platform or change in business strategy.
People who made valuable videos would still make them and the rest was always just cheap lowest grade entertainment, fun but like no one will notice if it is gone and forget in 2 days it ever existed.
Even Netflix would not be a huge loss let alone YouTube clips. Truth is Netflix tv series are nowhere near artistic and cultural value of movies like Peter Jackson lotr etc.. it’s just another form of cognitive McDonald.
If whole McDonald went bankrupt overnight we would be ‘oh well shame let’s go to McBurger’ and forget it ever existed in few days. If an extremely good and cozy local restaurant closed down we would mourn it for months. I even mourn loss of quality in such restaurants a year after opening which is unfortunately common… it’s so sad to order your favourite state of the art food and realize it is a far cry from the perfection of the original dish. It’s lost, forever possibly. It’s like suddenly someone erased Beethoven from existence.
Just do your thing and forget about them. They are like Neanderthals and destined to go extinct.
We should strive to be the Übermensch. do not mistake this for nazis propaganda. I am talking about the original goat Nietzsche not the Hitler’s gross take and misunderstandings of his philosophy.
Those who educate themselves and keep their mental and physical ability in proper shape will ultimately prevail, while the ignorant will be left to repeat past mistakes in a never-ending cycle.
God is dead and mindless scrolling isn’t an answer. It is just a drug to not let you see the dark truths walled off and hidden in your mind. Until you face them you merely live an illusion. Be brave and take life raw with all it’s pain and while it won’t be pleasurable, it will be real.
I disagree with your opinion.
Well enjoy your shitty lowest yt entertainment then that does nothing to advance you as a person. Only TikTok is lower.
Lemmy isn’t like very higher up but at least it is an independent pirate community. Also I fully expect some interesting people with interesting ideas will and do come up here once in a blue moon besides all the news angry comments and memes.
I am not also saying that yt is ‘bad’ thing to enjoy but that TikTokers and YouTubers are easily replaceable and represent no intristic value besides few niche ones that do it mostly for free or on alternative platforms anyway.
Of course there is also a matter of participation in contemporary ‘culture’ to fit better and not sound like total nerd and for social leverage. Being seen as one of the herd same as others is very, very important in society. Likeability stat needs to be high to thrive. Ability of others to relate to you easily.
So some TikTok, YouTube is unavoidable from pragmatic viewpoint and we can learn to enjoy it if we have to be familiar with it anyway.
It can be a part of balanced diet but cannot make up the majority of your total consumption time or you will deteriorate to some regressive digital monkey. We need to consume higher, more nutritious forms of entertainment from time to time so our brains can stave off dementia.
My grandma used to read a lot but her eyesight worsened and she started to only watch tv. It went pretty fast afterwards. It’s unhygienic to your brain to consume TikTok in big quantities.
The most nutritious and highest form of entertainment is creation. Coding, music, images, handicraft. As nourishing for brain as it is for the soul.
The lowest well probably jerking off pure chemical supply or maybe even lower drugs like meth that wouldn’t be even inherently bad if not the unavoidable addiction. YouTube and TikTok are still somewhere higher but honestly they are also habit and addiction forming which sucks the time out of your life for something that is pure dopamine nourishment and does not enrich you as a person.
Lmao, are you fucking high... Is this a copypasta or are you just a basement-dwelling weirdo?
if alphabet's shareholders heard this, they would take them to court. it can't be true. and if they're willing to pay, someone else will be, too.
You're saying this as a matter of fact. But it's not how it works in real life, otherwise people would have already migrated.
they pay you because they get paid by advertisers. cut them out of the middle and go directly to the companies running ads on your vids.
Yawn. This was not my point, or even what I was trying to to say.
But I wonder how much you'll defend YouTube and Google in 2 years.
Of course it wasn't...
No defending here. Just making fun of all the entitled delusional crybabies here.
peertube uses webtorrents. it's viable. it works. owncast is fully self-hosted. it works. all the people downvoting are repeating a talking point, and have never implemented these projects.
They have a point about server costs and maintenance, which is why I suggested community garden type server farms.
I also didn’t need to call people idiots, but we’re all humans sigh
An OS requires significantly less resources. The only online features you need for an OS is a website to market the OS and host ISO's. Then you need a server to distribute packages to users. Packages which are significantly smaller then HD or 4K videos
a) I downvoted you b) I am a YouTube shill c) Fuck you
that means I get money from them, right? I'm still waiting for my check. YouTube is the best.
Considering I remember some project in the past tried something like that in the past and found that because you can't control when people log off you can't guarantee files will transfer in one piece not to mention how expensive it was having everyone's computer constantly using Internet and computing stuff. For that reason I think the main problem here is that we are trying to centralize video sharing onto one platform. I instead propose we encourage people to make their own platforms. Like if you want to watch idk PewDiePie you go to PewDiePie.com and encourage people to explore the Internet instead of just sitting on one site. I suppose as a step in the right direction I propose that we get people to make online data bases using laptops/desktops that have nothing but xzamp and the videos you wish to upload to the web. Then we all collectively promote a sort of aggregation site that promotes everyones videos that way the aggregation site only has to store a bunch of hyperlinks and handle all the traffic while you the content creator just have to handle the traffic your content generates now the only challenge is making this idea profitable because if content creators can't profit few if any will make content and if the aggregation platform can't break eaven then we are back to square one of no one knowing where to look for content.
Basically old web but with aggregators, I don’t hate it. I think there needs to be a way to alleviate burden from content creators in a way. Tbh, maybe we need community server farms which are jointly supported, like community gardens in a way
Old web was awesome. Audiences were smaller, but content was far more personalized and less corporate. I could see link aggregators and relay networks coming back and people self-hosting more of their own content in the future, but it would have to take a massive shift in consumer behavior to wean themselves off of the teat of Web 2.0 spoon-feeding them their content and making content creating/sharing as frictionless as possible.