Twitter C/D

i read somewhere that youtube is relying on fingerprinting too so you need to use a browser that has anti-fingerprinting built in like firefox or brave

youtube stopped threatening me tho so i'm still just using chrome/ublock

although relying on chrome has a whiff of 'the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house' haha

im rolling with brave until it feels safe

Both Firefox and Chrome UBlock work on youtube, you just need to keep your browser versions and extension/add-ons updated.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, November 21, 2023 10:48 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like this is prob only true once ublock has been updated to thwart youtubes latest attack, im not trying to get in some sort of war here im just trying to watch videos (about wars)

My YouTube ish is only on the TV, yeah

there was something yesterday about a 5s delay that they (youtube) are just adding to firefox to make it seem less good.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/youtubes-reportedly-taking-longer-to-load-if-youre-not-using-chrome/ar-AA1kfSwZ

google should really not be allowed to have its own browser

that seems like a cool thing to do from an antitrust perspective

yeahp

It honestly blows my mind sometimes when I remember the era of Google being the quick unfussy new kids on the block

their long since dropped "dont be evil" slogan was referring specifically to the sort of dark patterns lock in various manipulations etc which litter their products now

that seems like a cool thing to do from an antitrust perspective

lol they're getting around to it I think.

"On October 19, 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes to reclassify broadband internet access service (BIAS) as a Title II common carrier service and reinstate net neutrality rules."

i don’t have a google account at all and i have declined all cookies which makes my youtube recommendations purely based on whatever video is playing right then, which is pretty rad actually

I had youtube ads for the first time in forever today. I downloaded the development build of ublock origin and they're gone.

rip #sliving no more

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_gYn0ebAAAPG41?format=jpg&name=900x900

The sliving end

The Youtube ads thing is something they've built, or are bulding, into the whole Chromium base so it'll affect everything except... I think FF and Opera?

I weirdly have one very old youtube account from way back when they started, that never seemeed to get bothered by the adblock stuff. I have 2 "profiles" for youtube on my Google account (I dont know quite how it happened). The newer one throws a fit if I have Adblock on, the older one never does.

All this goes out the window if using YT on like a SmartTV of course so blech. I am so heavily used to YT without any ads I ended up signing up for the Premium trial, I dont know if I'll keep it up though, its really expensive!

xps an FCC NPRM usually takes around a year or two to become a real thing, fwiw

Opera is Chromium (and Vivaldi is too). Safari is the other non-Chromium browser.

If you have a VPN you can set it to a country like Moldova that YouTube serves no ads to. On my iPhone I've just up a Shortcut automation that turns on the VPN automatically when I open YouTube and turns it off again when I close it.

I pay $1 a month for Youtube Premium via Argentina (and $5 a month for a Adobe CC Suite via Turkey), it was easier than figuring out how to use a VPN with Apple TV at work.

Do you need Argentinian and Turkish credit cards to do that?

xp

just download youtube revanced for free from github for ad-free youtube. There are other versions floating about that are apparently the work of Russian hackers rammed with malware. I accidentally downloaded one and thankfully there are no paypal/bank details on the tablet I did it on. Annoyingly the hacker version worked perfectly! Revanced sometimes takes 3 or 4 attempts to open it, and is a work in progress but once you get it running it works perfectly.

It's only an issue for me on my smart TV which seems more or less unhackable

Having said that, the distribution of ads is very random. Can watch whole movies ad free. The Fall of Civilisations podcasts which are mostly 2 hours plus have a very few well spaced out ad breaks. Then I'll try watching some old documentary that's been uploaded probably illegal and there'll be ads literally every five minutes - I just give up on those, obv

xxp - no, I just put in an Argentinian address I looked up online for Youtube. Visa stopped working but Mastercard is still fine. With Adobe I had to VPN into Turkey to sign up but used my regular address when paying. Once signup was complete it doesn't seem to care where I log in to the Adobe site or connect through the Adobe download app.

this is what being a real actual pirate in the early 1700s was like

but then you'd have to bury your copy of Adobe on a remote caribbean island

The Fall of Civilisations podcasts which are mostly 2 hours plus have a very few well spaced out ad breaks.

― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 4:19 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

shoutout fall of civilizations

Fwiw YouTube actually pays pretty well by the standards of streaming. This is not like subscribing to Spotify and giving $0.00001 per thousand listens. If you’re just using it to watch pirated tinker tailor soldier spy and music videos then fine. But if you’re watching “creators” and you’re doing workarounds like the above then consider paying?

no.

google should just give them money

I don't want to ruin my imaginary relationship with asmr people by finding out they're doing it for the money

https://64.media.tumblr.com/f8a93e00da64a5d613d6ee62f01a605e/ee01cc6e2192da38-cd/s1280x1920/c827d479d6ebdbccbe7b1329f0d47c2a03f340cf.pnj

google should just give them money

― lag∞n, Wednesday, November 22, 2023 9:23 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it does, but it gives significantly them more money when a subscriber watches than when anyone else does.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/x-advertising-lawsuit-media-matters-musk/

One user, Avi Bueno, called out Twitter CEO Linda Yacarrino, who defended the lawsuit by posting the same claim that “Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content.”

“Linda cannot be genuinely making this claim,” they wrote.

“It took me about 30 seconds to find X placing advertisements for @TheAthletic, @ShopTemu, @ActionNetworkHQ, and @Visit_NJ alongside a search for ‘killjews,'” he said. “This place is broken and advertisers should be worried.”

All these gotchas are for words like “heilhitler” and “killjews” which aren’t even real words

Like, look, I want Twitter to fail as much as the next guy, but we’re going to have to do better than typing like “cheesepizza”

are pizzerias Nazis?

one cheesepizza pleasewith extracheesepizza

All these gotchas are for words like “heilhitler” and “killjews” which aren’t even real words

Those gotchas were only intended to refute the validity of Yacarino's specific numerical claims**, which Avi Bueno intended to show are unverifiable in a system the size of Xitter.

**“Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content.”

twitter does know exactly how many user see what ads on what pages, in response to what searches, and next to what posts. whether what yaccarino says is true or not is another matter, but they do have that information.

those gotchas don't prove the letter of what yaccarino is saying wrong. and they're not saying "you find nazi stuff if you search for nazi stuff", which has always been true. they do support media matters point, i.e. users who viewed obviously racist stuff (either by searching for vile stuff and weird hashtags, or clicking around) got shown some pretty mainstream ads, by advertisers who probably don't want their stuff shown there.

most sites have a systems that prevent ads being shown next to certain topics/words. either twitter has removed this guardrail, or there is so much more of the nazi stuff that a system with a 1% failure rate seems a lot worse because there's a lot more opportunities to fail. in either case, nazi vibes.

Whiney, hashtags work by running words together like that.

last night Jimmy Kimmel did a bit on this stuff during his monologue and he referred to it by it's new name, X. it sounds so goddamn stupid when said out loud like that.

bluesky should rebrand as 'sever'

Whiney, hashtags work by running words together like that.

Elon starting to whine a lot about this one as well:

https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/november-2023/

also their system should be flexible and intelligent enough to read concatenated words

What's that line, a hit dog don't holler?

Duh, hit dog will holler. Adolf Hitdog.