Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
How is sharing the love for your puppers useless? A sweet and touching moment.
YT is spending money on hosting that to reinforce their monopoly. If they have the vast majority of user created videos they are able to block ad blockers with minimal loss of user activities. If they did not host such “useless” content another platform would have a space to get a foothold.
Same reason YouTube started hosting shorts, to fill the space that was started on other platforms and help maintain their video hosting monopoly.
Users voicing their displeasure with forced ads is valuable feedback for the monopoly.
Sharing with whom? No one will watch it. Definitely no one will search for it. If you want to share video with your friends just send them a message. They will see it and it will be deleted after a week. This makes way more sense than hosting it on a platform indefinitely.
Well, this way I got to see it. Thanks to you. Thanks.
Luckily for me YT hosts all the crap
Edit: Billions of years ago stars exploded. So today while waiting in line at the DMV I got to have an “awww” moment when someone I don’t know posted a link, to a video of other people I don’t know enjoying their dog, as an example of useless crap that a computer company hosts on its servers. Stars exploded. And here we are.
Life is wild, man