I believe these MAGA accounts were being operated not for a political agenda, but simply as a means for people in developing countries to make money. MAGA content is genuinely easy to spread across social media platforms like X and YouTube, which is why it's so easy to rack up views.
The high number of bugs in Windows patches has little to do with AI. As The Register reported, the root cause is Microsoft's mass layoff of dedicated QA staff and its switch from a waterfall to an agile software development methodology in 2014.
The deleted videos did, in fact, violate YouTube's rules, but it's questionable whether YouTube would have taken them down if they hadn't shown an Israeli soldier carrying out a lynching.
You are not spouting any fringe consipracy theory. Videos commenting on Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza ( see https://genocide.live/locations ) on TikTok played a huge role in publicising the genocide to the world. And it is also the primary reason why the western backers of Israel were so hell bent on acquiring TikTok - an IDF soldier, who is a "proud American Jew" and Zionist, already oversees "hate speech" and "antisemitism" policies on TikTok ( see https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/tiktok-hires-former-idf-reservi... ). And Netanyahu also publicly affirmed that social media was Israel’s new ‘weapon’ after the TikTok acquisition ( see https://www.newarab.com/news/netanyahu-says-social-media-isr... ).
Most of these were probably one-sided propaganda videos. Ironically these are mostly policies against "fake news" that were pushed by a political faction that now complains about censorship.
People that are mad about the death of their revolution, developed an inferiority complex, looked at propaganda on TikTok and are now disliking Jews. You can argue the position to be more sophisticated, but sometimes it is not and it wouldn't be the first time.
And of course there is ample and valid criticism of policies of Israel but I heavily doubt that these videos were informative. Granted, this is entirely based on some assumptions.
I use an ad blocker, so I don't worry about sponsored links for fake products appearing above genuine ones. Also, this isn't just a Google problem; Bing has it too. My issue with Google is that it includes YouTube results in the main search results even though there's a separate Videos tab.
It's completely unreasonable to believe that ABC's decision to cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live! was an independent one, especially given that Trump has publicly criticized Jimmy Kimmel on Truth Social and has a history of threatening people and organizations he dislikes with lawsuits and legal penalties. It's much more likely that ABC canceled him because they feared retaliation from Trump.
The threat against Australia was fascinating.. I guess Trump figured out "tariffs" is a big appendage like the one he never has, but now can swing around, and "you better be nice, or I'm going to do to your country what I did to the numerous amounts of women in my life...".
What’s not unreasonable is for a company look at the overall political climate of the country annd the markets they need and realize that it’s just not in favor for controversial lefty oriented late night content at this moment. The public outrage at the shooting. Watching poll numbers nose dive for the Democratic Party. Seeing some core political positions that your company embraced become anathematic to the general public. Then couple all that with a comedian with a late night show and an axe to grind with the president whose show was underperforming already…even worse than Colbert.
ABC may have feared retaliation from Trump, but I guarantee they fear retaliation from their viewers and advertisers even more. This was a good excuse to get rid of a loose cannon whose useful shelf life was already up and try to gain some goodwill among a large group of people who are ready to write you off.
That does makes sense considering the profile of the average person who still watches broadcast tv these. There is simply no demand for non-garbage content there.
Even without directly visiting the YouTube site, it's impossible to avoid contact with YouTube because its videos are embedded everywhere. In that sense, YouTube's influence is extremely large. I feel that the FTC might have been better off trying to separate YouTube from Google rather than Chrome.
The blog mentioned that the forced activation of Restricted Mode could have reduced video views, and while it's true that Restricted Mode blocks live streams, which could affect those who focus on live content, it basically doesn't block soft porn, violent videos, or political content. So, I don't think it's relevant.
> I feel that the FTC might have been better off trying to separate YouTube from Google rather than Chrome.
On what joy? The biggest mistake that DoJ did was asking to court to divest Android & Chrome. Judge took grave offense at that (read the court's opinion) and there's a school of thought that said it distracted from the whole thing.
Once you start being imprecise, all your arguments fall apart.
I am so fascinated by the different worlds everyone lives in.
I haven’t watched a video hosted on YouTube in years. But I hate amateur video. I never watch anything that I can possibly get through reading.
So in my tiny corner of user space, it’s really as if YouTube doesn’t exist except as an annoying thing Google puts at the top of searches I have to scroll past, reminding me to configure this device to use a different search engine.
It is a choice. But as you are probably aware; not one many makes.
While I do prefer to read as well I do like some of the better videos. Sometimes the information density is not as high as I would like - there are reasonable efforts.
Sure, there is amateur content. But there is a surprising amount of original researched content with a high production value.
A recent example with a scientific approach to cooking with some fun high quality references to Breaking Bad:
External payments are a different kind of bubble with various companies entering the market, but they'll eventually be weeded out. Furthermore, external payments are only effective for games with long-standing services that have a lot of so-called 'whales,' like FGO, Monster Strike, and Genshin. I don't see app-external payments as a silver bullet for Japan's declining gacha games. After all, a higher profit margin is meaningless if the user base is shrinking.
The internet has become a primary battlefield for making money, and we can't go back to the days when it was just a non-commercial hobby that people enjoyed. To make money online, it's crucial to spread content as widely as possible, and the most effective methods for this are clickbait and ragebait. That's why the enshittification of the internet was inevitable.
