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Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 164 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

Remember when every billionaire apologist was telling us how no one would do shit like this when net neutrality was being gutted?

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  • [–] 101 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    This has nothing to do with net neutrality. Google is not an ISP. With or without net neutrality, Google could fuck with YouTube users.

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  • [–] 65 points 2 years ago

    Technically false. Google is an ISP. But they aren't using their position as an ISP to slow down traffic or fast track other traffic in this instance so no it has nothing to do with net neutrality.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Only if we narrow our scope to the commonly thought of types of net neutrality. I think if we had foreseen intentionally treating browsers differently, this type of thing would have 100% been rolled into that original conversation about net neutrality. It's the same idea: artificially modifying a web experience for capitalist gain.

    I personally wish it could be illegal for them to do this, but I do think it would be really hard to enforce such a law.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Illegal to do...what? Not offer high-res videos? To have any delay before streaming videos? To refuse to serve you videos, even if doing so caused them to lose money? How would you enforce that on Google, much less on smaller startups? Would it apply to PeerTube instances?

    Google sucks for doing this. It'll drive people to competitors--hopefully even federated competitors. But laws to 'fix' the problem would be nearly impossible to craft--and would be counterproductive in the long term, because they'd cement the status quo. Let Google suck, so that people switch away from it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Discriminate against browsers.

    And I did write that it would be too hard to enforce. I'm a software developer so I understand that it's more complicated than it sounds.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying, but they aren’t really discriminating against browsers at all. As far as I understand it, they pretty much have an

    if (!adPageElement.isLoaded)
{
    showStupidPopup();
}

    in there somewhere. It doesn’t rely on any nefarious browser implementation-specific extensions; everyone gets that same code and runs it. As for the 5 seconds thing, IIRC some FF configurations were triggering false positives, but I think it was patched. It does seem awfully convenient, and maybe they only patched it because they got caught, but they also must have been morons to think something that obvious wouldn’t be noticed immediately.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Google is literally an ISP. They provide my internet service.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Well, fair. But even in that case, they have every right to degrade your YouTube experience, as owners of YouTube. As ISP (I mean, assuming NN was still a thing) they couldn't selectively degrade traffic, but YouTube has no obligation to you under net neutrality.

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not just YouTube. Now I have to say I'm not a robot when searching from my phone because I dare use a VPN that's not theirs.

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  • [+] -36 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    This is because scammers and criminals often use VPNs. They actually should be doing that.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Do you know the old saying:
    if privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

    Just because people might do stuff with things that isn't intended or even illegal doesn't mean you should be banning said things.
    Otherwise we'd be in a world where we have no kitchen knives, axes, wrenches, food, money, cars, planes, ships, bikes, hands, feet - you know what I mean?

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago*

    I still remember Ajit Pai's dumbass teeth as he smugly insisted that you'll still be able to "'gram' your food" before covering a Chipotle bowl in a mountain of flaming hot Cheetos and an ocean of Sriracha. And that was one of the least irritating moments of that video. That whole fucking video was basically "you can still waste time with your bread, circuses, and creature comforts, you fucking peasants, now shut up and let the corporations do their thing" while ignoring every legitimate criticism of the decision to gut NN.

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