Administered by:
@llamasoft_ox@toot.walesIt's the tiny things, like watching (streaming) telly and the bloody adverts always have a higher volume than whatever you're actually watching. Just making the experience a bit less pleasant so that somebody, somewhere has a bit more money.
Enshittification. I've moaned about it before but Doctorow's word describes it perfectly, the way that capitalism inevitably pushes things further and further in a smeg direction so that maximal money can be extracted.
And it's been normalised, accepted as "this is just how the world works" that even as it is happening to the *entire planet* nobody gives that much of a toss, the anomalous billionaires get richer and everyone else, and the world itself, gradually gets enshittified to death.
Who knows if there will actually ever be revolution before it all just ends in the shittest way imaginable.
@llamasoft_ox “We have to learn to live with it” is a recent corker.
@llamasoft_ox A lot of this stuff was built on cheap money funding a grab for market share. The cheap money has dried up so maybe things will change!
@llamasoft_ox Also I NEVER liked or accepted the "it is like this it cannot be changed" it's BULLSHIT ! Because apparently those that say so accept CHANGE INTO WORSE but believe NOTHING CANNOT BE CHANGED BACK INTO BETTER ! .. Those are like those coders that don't want to trash code that doesn't work that well to make better code or return some steps back to code that works better ! The "it's unavoidable" it's bullshit because "we make/made our own unavoidable", it's a pathetic excuse !
@llamasoft_ox This morning I read about a podcast that has run since 2006 being taken off spotify for breaking it's rules. It's crimes appear to be: for using it's own music i.e. not using spotify and not featuring adverts or monetization in any form. It was just there to push new music that might have flown under the radar. No place for that in the modern world.
@llamasoft_ox it gets even more depressing if you actually calculate the ratio of ad content to show content. The number of times we've watched a 20 minute episode of something and actually had to sit for 40+ minutes because there's literally more ad content than episode is unreal. YouTube got so bad that we actually gave in and subscribed, which feels quite sickening. I don't mind subscribing to services, but subscribing solely because you've been bullied into it by the adverts is disgusting.
@dev_ric @llamasoft_ox Just to say in ITALY there are LAWS regulating the amount of ADs/interruptions in movies/etc. and THERE IS A LAW about "changing volume for ads" ! .. At least sometime in Italy they do things right !
@dev_ric even if you pay for YT you still can't escape the bloody sponsors, who manage not only to advertise their wares circumventing YT's system but also force the channel owner to follow a script where they have to lie through their teeth about how they personally definitely play whatever shitty mobile game is being promoted and these are their favourite characters etc... completely destroying any respect you might have had for their integrity, but hey, gotta grab that coin!
@dev_ric (actually you can escape the sponsors, at least on PC, I use sponsorblock for which God be praised).
@llamasoft_ox oh, fortunately I tend to just find the sponsor blurbs more humorous than annoying. When you've been watching a YouTube channel for a couple of months and then suddenly they post a video with some sponsorship blurb... yeah mate, you thought YouTube would miraculously make you wealthy and now you're at the sell-out point 
@llamasoft_ox @dev_ric I think it's owing the fact that maybe "when YT started" it was "for fun", it wasn't a thing you were doing expecting to earn any money and/or turn it "into a job". It was "weird little movies posted by funny people" 
But then .. it turned into ( for some ) "a huge moneymaking industry" .. when you have "influencers" that get millions "is no longer fun and games" 
And so many other things .. "it starts like innocent fun, it turns into a monemaking scheme" 
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox we follow Viva La Dirt League. They actually have tonnes and tonnes of brilliant videos - their Epic NPC Man series is a favourite - particularly the early ones. But they're also the perfect example of going from just having a laugh on YouTube, to selling out. They did a whole crowd funding thing, raised millions, got themselves a studio and a proper film crew, and now their content is just a bit "meh", and they're just constantly trying to raise more capital.
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox they've put in a lot of work to get there, and they do deserve the reward, but their content isn't as good as it used to be because of it
@dev_ric @gilesgoat if you work really hard to put yourself in a place where your work isn't as good as it used to be, is that a thing to be rewarded?
@llamasoft_ox @gilesgoat I mean, I'd kinda have been happier if they'd just made their money and not spent it on a studio etc to be honest. Stash it away and keep filming on a mobile and using cheap props. I guess when you crowdfund though, you have to show that the donations are being spent on something other than a fancy car.
@dev_ric @gilesgoat there's a channel we watch sometimes that started out as this couple going round doing reviews of street food, and it was quite good, but now it seems they've made loads of money and they post videos of them eating in super expensive restaurants half the time, and going on holiday for several months straight.
The result is that it's not as good as when they first started. Even money just touching stuff to any degree tends to make that thing worse.
@llamasoft_ox @gilesgoat I know a Scottish couple who have just started something similar. They get the TooGoodToGo bags and review them. Nothing too serious, they're just having fun watching the stats and learning which videos get good view counts basically. That's what YouTube should be though. Nothing serious.
@dev_ric @llamasoft_ox I follow stuff like CuriousMarc, ClickSpring, LGR, TechMoan, Coffehouse Crime, 3 Blue 1 Brown, Mathologer, Periodic Videos ( the professor ), sometime Numberphile, restoration video, Best Fails, some other "retro" guys I can't rememeber, occasional speedruns and Code Secrets or stuff like that. I am not that much into "comedy" at all apart Best Fails and the like 
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox the only one I recognise in that is numberphile!
@dev_ric @llamasoft_ox THEN IMMEDIATELY you should go and check THE OTHERS ! ESPECIALLY CURIOUSMARC !! I spent "a whole week on Xmas" watching the full restoration of the ASR33 Teletype from start to finish. CuriousMarc is like "the god of geeks" it's like "what a geek with HUGE knowledge and infinite money" would be They do "super clever stuff".
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox there's an iron on my desk I keep meaning to open up and try to fix. Perhaps I should start a YouTube channel
@dev_ric @llamasoft_ox Recently I tried to restore/repair something .. Ox went "you should film it" .. well .. let's just say this .. IT DID NOT GO AS IN THOSE MOVIES .. I am sure there has to be MANY CUTS ( to remove all the swearwords ) and they don't show you what goes wrong !
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox hahaha, to be honest, the more it goes wrong, the more I'd enjoy watching it!
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox in fact you might like this test kitchen channel we used to watch... see if I can find it...
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox oh, this: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtIunYVkv_RwB_yx1SZrZC-ddhxyXanh
She ended up falling out with them and leaving, but basically it's a test kitchen full of people doing their own channels, and hers was about figuring out how to make iconic foods. The best episodes were the ones where she'd fail multiple times and get totally demotivated. It sounds mean, but it just makes excellent tv!
@gilesgoat @llamasoft_ox @dev_ric Fuck influencers. Nobody should be allowed to use that term until they've actually influenced something, and if it ends up being for the worse, there are better words for them.
Streaming services converted me from a pirate who downloaded everything into a subscriber to two streaming services.
The ever increasingly fractured streaming market that requires you to have 12 services if want to watch all of the shows you like now... is converting me back.
Sadly... publisher required front ends for all of their games... even those I bought through steam are having the same effect. I'm sick of the requirement for 20 extra bits of software harvesting my data