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PewDiePie Promoting Self-Hosting, Blocking Ads, Shorts and more (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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[–] 389 points 5 months ago (29 children)

Having such a big influencer as Pewds shout out selfhosting, ad blocking and general privacy improvements is a huge win, no matter what your opinion is of him.

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  • [–] 111 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I'm always open to somebody's redemption arc, even if I dislike them. The great thing about people is that we are capable of growth, even if not all of us always grow in the right direction, we always can.

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  • [+] -52 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    What redemption? Where are his fediverse channels at?

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  • [–] 62 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    ...one step at a time, dude. This kind of thinking just serves to make perfect the enemy of good.

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  • [+] -48 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    It takes 2 minutes to create an account on the fediverse, they are not interested in that, they are on youtube for the profits.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    It is true, I think so too. I never really watched any of his content, his racist and toxic comments in the past make it hard to recommend it to anyone, but his two or three tech videos were decent for a normie targeting normies. In total, he is big enough, that I think its a net profit for the cause.

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  • [+] -36 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    And having a youtube video on lemmy frontpage is a huge ad for google and a missed opportunity for an open alternative to become more popular

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  • [+] -36 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    What concerns me is the implicit association people will make between him and FOSS, and anything they believe about one will carry to the other.

    I have to assume there are already people who hear "Linux" and think "ugh, I wouldn't touch that with a 10ft pole because I don't want anything to do with Pewdiepie". Similarly, if he says something dumb next week, and half his audience abandons him, they'll likely have a negative outlook on FOSS going forward.

    Either way, I don't believe FOSS' staying power comes from meteoric rises following a fad, it comes from a natural immunity to enshittification over time. On the scale of a few of decades, FOSS seems like it's struggling against proprietary solutions. But just like the general concept of political democracy, I think on the scale of centuries it will become the clear, time-tested, least-bad option. But I digress.

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  • [+] -47 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    He helped usher in this new enshittification. He was the Trojan horse. First one to reach a million

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  • [–] 50 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    you think he has influence over youtube's business model decisions?

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  • [+] -10 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You think not having total control of an organization means he's free of blame. Would you say that your MAGA uncle doesn't control Trump so isn't responsible for his actions.

    Pewdiepie is literally called an influencer. He warped what many young people belief they can become today and that belief is what ushered in a world of influencers chasing the all mighty dollar. That has given all these corporations fuel to create content and that content is stealing our data, eliminating data scarcity and used to influence politics.

    He's not the cause of it but he was an inflection point and could have went in a different direction to push kids to reject this new paradigm. Instead he was the face of it.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You think not having total control of an organization means he's free of blame

    I don't, that's something you made up about me in your head. I think that YouTube's business execs would always lead it to where we are now.

    He warped what many young people belief they can become today and that belief is what ushered in a world of influencers chasing the all mighty dollar

    He made gameplay videos. I think that's the most benign form of "influencing" there can be. I think there are much more damaging channels that had way more sway in shaping this new generation.

    Again, I'm not saying he's a saint but I do think he's ultimately insignificant when looking at the causes of and reasoning behind youtube's enshittification. And I don't think he would ever go a different direction, just doesn't seem like the type.

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  • [–] -5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    He laid the groundwork for those shitty influencer. He had the attention of young people who looked up to him. The minute they saw he could make millions by becoming the walking embodiment of a Nascar fender he set the attitudes and aspirations of a generation.

    Would YouTube continue without him? Yes of course.

    Could he have pushed back and created helped influence a generation of kids to reject the selling out of themselves to this influencer culture? Absolutely.

    There were a few influencers in those early days that could have changed things or at least maintained the zeitgeist that we had then. Nobody did. That money was too good. Everything after he made that first million would change how the internet worked.

    He was the inflection point. He could have impacted everything going forward. He could have told kids that these companies were stealing their data. That they were soliciting gamers to use as Trojan horses for what would eventually make everything worse.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    To call him the inflection point, as if this wasn't a more complex change emerging over time, is ridiculous. You are clearly speaking from an outside perspective. He has never come close to flashing his wealth or showing a 'lifestyle', anything that has came definitively after his peak. The influencer issue was also far more complex. Instagram was the central breeding ground for those types, and twitter was still conversationally relevant.

    Even if he was the inflection point, what now? You expect someone at the center of things to realize their unique position, and then realize the most morally correct thing (to you) to do about it? Patently ridiculous, hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to larger cultural movements like influencers.

    Calling pewdiepie an influencer shows how little you understand that sphere. You have no idea what you're talking about.

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    What is an influencer?

    Since you said I'm wrong, what is the inflection point that I'm describing?

    Did I say he flashed his wealth?

    I do expect people to be aware of their impact, directly and indirectly, especially on kids. The more people you can potentially impact, the greater the responsibility to be aware.

    Is data collection, exploiting children to sell products, and the consequences of profit-seeking something that we weren't aware of at the time PewDiePie became famous?

    I agree PewDiePie didn't sell things to children. He didn't need to. He was the product. I'm against commercial pressure on the internet, which seems like a radical concept now. PewDiePie didn't need to hawk products to kids i know he did a good job with that. But he was the product. He was the point at which kids saw they could become a gamer and help commercial sites collect people's attention and sell it to advertisers. That model is what broke everything. It turned the internet into cable television 2.0.

    We already had corporate-approved media that was just a way to sell our attention. The internet, for a brief moment, was something for us. It was as close to a gift economy as we could get. It was the difference between a lawn sprayed with glyphosate to kill anything that wasn't good old American Texas bluegrass devoid of originality, beauty, or color but looking neat and a lawn allowed to grow wild, full of weeds but also flowers, plants, and life.

    PewDiePie wouldn't have been the only one to make money, but he was the first to hit that milestone, and everything changed after that.

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