“We didn’t detect a Webcam on your device. You can only watch videos on devices with a Webcam. Do you want Premium*? Click here for only 29,99 per month.
*With Premium you also only can watch videos on devices with a Webcam”
This is only 2025, a year later they also want a list of the people you love the most so they can kidnap one to demand you buy Premium, which will mean they will get you premium looking ads instead of shitty looking ads.
Yes, you need a microphone, and allow them access to your bank account. If you didn’t smile, vocally approve AND purchased the ad content you will be punished by 12 tripple ads instead of 4 double. Saying anything bad about Google or YouTube and you will get an automatic double priced Premium subscription for 6 months. This effect stacks. It will also not give you less ads. Refusing to watch any video on YouTube anymore will cost you your first born child.
alternatively: Please wait 2 days for the new GoogleCamPro we have shipped to arrive. Please note that without a Google Premium subscription your webcam feed will have ads in it
Someone will find a way to take a looped video of them watching their computer intently and feed it through their webcam. The ad battle will never end.
“There will now be a short questionnaire on the ad you watched to see if you actually listened to it. If you get below 90%, we will show two minutes of ads.”
“Why are you leaving? Fill out this survey and let us know what you didn’t like. Please enter your email. Before you go, 50% of YouTube Plus Ultimate!”
A Russian video hosting Rutube (which was totally dead until the govt decided to detract Russians from using YouTube, which made the platform semi-dead) actually tried to do that, having a quiz after each ad break, asking questions such as “what TV channel has been advertised in this ad?” and repeating the ad video if answered wrong
To be serious, nobody would use that platform even there hadn’t been any ads, because competing with YouTube is not an easy feat.
I should probably be happy that Rutube and VK Video gain popularity as the regional alternatives to the monopolist which gets more aggressive each day… if not that popularity has just been inflated by bought-out bloggers and comics from Putin’s oligarch owned channels like TNT being directed to cease their YouTube presence, just so the government could have their own “YouTube without team Navalny”.
but yeah, being more shitty than YouTube at delivering ads is not an easy feat, too!
for those that don’t know, in vr most apps to avoid motion sickness keeps player in it’s own “space”. Users can look away from virtual screen displaying content or text, just by turning their heads around. But, for example in games, when content is important (ex. story dialogue subtitles) the content is programmed to try to move in front of player’s view at all times, even if it’s obstructing rest of the virtual world
Attention theft is an existing term, though it’s used to describe bad practices by marketers. I suppose it’s bad that the term has had to come into existence, but it is good that it exists as a way to talk about bad practices more easily.
(not) fun fact: In game design there exists analogical term for “making player addicted” called “dark patterns”. Mostly used by live service and mobile games
Some insurance group put up a billboard on the route I use to go to work telling us how we all suffer from insurance fraud.
Each and every time I went past it I would try to imagine how much I would have to hate a person in order to side with the enemy against them. No saint and I never pretended to be one but I still wouldn’t do that.
Funny stuff, but in reality I hope they realize that if all the free users leave, that could get a lot of content creators to branch out, and they could also take the paid users with them.
I pay for premium because I watch YouTube all the time, multiple people in my house watch it on multiple devices, and we even get use out of YouTube music. It’s worth more to me than all other streaming services combined. But I’m there for all the creators and the content they put out, not for anything else unique about the YouTube experience. All they have on their side is install base, infrastructure cost, and inertia. Those are big things to overcome, but if they drive enough people away things could definitely change.
Yup. What YouTube doesn’t understand is that we’ve got ** other stuff to do.** I’ve got books to read, games to play, music to listen to. None of which requires YouTube.
I’ve found myself repatronizing half priced books lately. I’ve gone through five books since mid May.
I was a voracious reader before mobile devices existed.
I’d forgotten just how much more satisfying it is to let yourself go in a good story rather than bicker about minutiae with countless strangers all day every day.
(Sidenote: I’ve been looking up reviews for the books I’ve read and am surprised to find indignation at sexual scenes in novels. Like, if you’ve ever read a John Irving novel in your life, and you’re surprised and offended that the next one has sex in it, you should maybe reconsider your chosen career path)
surprised to find indignation at sexual scenes in novels
To quote Ryan Letourneau, “Gen Z is Puritanpilled.” Seriously, I’ve found post-millennial generations to be extremely prudish. I think part of it has to do with the fact that as the internet evolved and became mainstream (and more profitable by catering to general audiences), the edgy or adult content became more ghetoized and quarantined over time. Used to be you’d go to reddit and there’d be porn on the front page. There’s like a 0% change of finding something NSFW on the front page there now. As such, younger people who grew up with the modern incarnation of the internet have a very different perspective on sexual content than those of us who grew up with a more “wild west” style internet where porn was just something that lived alongside the more mundane content. The side-effect of this is also that content like the John Irving novels you’re talking about are treated as if they’re grotesque for presenting sex as just another part of people’s lives - something that you’re not supposed to be shy about or ashamed of. Which is, uh…concerning, for a number of reasons. Other theories are that the world in which we live has eroded platonic relationships among young people and that they want to only see platonic friendships among characters, as that’s the vicarious experience they most desire.
Unrelated, but seeing “2025,” my first thought was “haha that’s so far in the future”. Jesus, for something that’s six months away, that’s a futuristic ass sounding date
YouTube is too big. I’ve been trying to use Rumble when I can. It has a lot of right wingers that were banned from YT, which sucks, but I hope to see any alternatives to YT thrive and grow.
We have the technology for this today. Enabling gaze tracking is why you cannot find a budget phone without a front facing camera. I suspect our phone’s OS occasionnally do gaze tracking without telling us already.
Someone rolls out this technology, everyone of course, fucking hates it, especially since a lot of people have Youtube videos on for background noise.
Someone else uses this tech for shock value, perhaps a company putting something horrific that people can’t look away from as a misguided way to get the ad in people’s heads.
These incidents lead to either the US, EU or China getting up in arms and banning the tech.
While we are on the subject of using yourube for background noise… why the fuck are they serving me ads for mobile games with an obnoxious narrative? If you know I am just listening, why not just serve a normal radio type ad. I am never going to download a mobile game while using YouTube for music.
Good plan, I wonder how expensive it is to insert an horrible ad, that doesn’t advertise anything, just be the most horrible thing you can watch like war suicides, gore and the grossest porn. I suspect google never imagined their advertising content as an hostile vector. Probably has not even content ID running on it.
I mean if you’re going to force people to watch your ads, literally replaying it if they look away, then some sick cunt with money to burn is going to be like “I can use this to force people to watch my sick shit”.
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