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@margot10/19/2023, 5:37 PM

@margot

Pendell @pendell10/19/2023, 2:51 AM

I think it says a lot that we all just expect everything on the internet to be free. YouTube doing all this stuff to try and crack down on adblockers - yeah, we know it won't increase their revenue in any way, but can you really blame them for trying? I think it's probably not unfair to say YouTube is the most expensive website on the planet to run in terms of how much bandwidth they have to serve the entire globe.

Now, yes, Google can probably run YouTube for all eternity and keep it alive via their profits from everything else they do, but I mean, if we did not specifically have Google essentially sinking their infinite money into YouTube just because it's got a captive audience, it would basically Not Exist. The only truly sustainable, economical way to video hosting and streaming really is to paywall it, whether it be paid access for viewers or charging people to upload. So, basically, the Vimeo model.

And then we can talk about how capitalism shouldnt be making these kinds of things effectively impossible unless you're an international multibillion dollar tech firm but that's a whole other conversation. At a certain point the internet just can't be Free anymore. Shit costs money.

Anyways subscribe to Cohost Plus.

#pendell rambling

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy10/19/2023, 3:38 PM

I know there was just discourse about "enshittification" but I think that really is the problem here. If YouTube wants to say "$10/month for all the Yous you can Tube," please, take my 10bux, I'm not that cheap, I used to pay for cable for goodness sake.

But there's no trust that they would sustain that deal for any amount of time. That we'd get more than a few months before oops, actually the 10bux level only covers ad-supported basic content at 720p30 but would you like to learn about our exciting upgrade packages?

Yes Ask Me Later

#enshittification #not specifically about youtube #that's just an example #ranting

@margot10/19/2023, 5:14 PM

i really do think a key thing here is that all of these companies complaining about the cost built the fact that providing the service for free into their models to gain users they could bait and switch later! it’s one thing to provide a product that people want to use, it’s a whole other thing to rely on having tons of money to let you float until you’ve captured the market.

@margot10/19/2023, 5:17 PM

like you can say that they have to because of capitalism, but that’s the whole purpose of enforceable contract laws and buyer agency— it protects the companies from themselves as much as it does the users. if a company actually had to provide a service for a set amount of time, if their customers really COULD go elsewhere if things turned worse, yea it would make these companies infinitely slower and more conservative but it also means that competitors have to have an actual product and plan to be competitors. we don’t have this on the internet, and we can see what that’s getting us. no wonder it feels like a war between the users and the corpos

@margot10/19/2023, 5:37 PM

sorry one last thing: it’s likely this will not change anytime soon bc the US economy is now fully entwined with this stuff and changing any of it too fast would likely destroy it and cause untold pain to the world economy. so that’s fun!

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in reply to @pendell's post:

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 2:55 AM

look at the threads about the poor quality of open source, people's expectations of baseline have been shifted to require the result of millions of investment for single person open source applications. and yeah some can compete, but not at scale.

but like, also, it means a handspun local volunteer org website looks much worse than what people expect from an Organization. so they move to Facebook groups

data and advertising are the way free has always been funded, from the store loyalty cards that give you discounts in exchange for knowing your shopping habits, to advertiser-driven television and news and radio

but every generation that gets a useful education, advertising loses more and more value, and scale goes up.

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 2:57 AM

I'm not sure subscriptions are a solution either, because a lot of subscription money comes from people forgetting it's enabled -- that's why everyone switched to a subscribe model, but it's the best option cohost has

@darryl @darryl10/19/2023, 12:15 PM

I payed a subscription for about eighteen months after I tried to cancel it. I knew it was still running but I didn’t feel like sending the emails etc. required to cancel it (and it was going to a creator so I didn’t begrudge them the “extra” money).

But yeah.

@aune10/19/2023, 10:04 PM

it's so infuriating on the handspun local volunteer org site because for some reason "we" collectively decided that any page refresh meant you should be punished with life in prison apparently, so completely static websites are React-based for ??????? reasons half the time

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 10:17 PM

yeah. YEAH.

@aune10/19/2023, 10:18 PM

BOOTSTRAP WAS GREAT. IT WAS A BASIC LEVEL OF UI NICENESS THAT WORKED. AND THEN PEOPLE STARTED SHITTING ON IT BECAUSE "WAH IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME" AND THEREFORE MOVED TO THE COMPLETELY THE SAME PAGES ON FUCKING FACEBOOK

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 10:33 PM

yes but now you don't need to write default-btn on every code block so it's progress. instead you need to write twice as much. so you look twice as productive.

@aune10/19/2023, 10:37 PM

you're right, why learn css when you could instead learn css properties, then just write them as shorthand on every single element, i too love being paid by the character

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 10:38 PM

it all copies and pastes the same

John Colagioia @jcolag10/19/2023, 9:26 PM

On the other hand, Google basically did this to themselves. They crushed every potential threat to their profits by "generously" making everything free, wiping out the Internet's institutional memory of paying for services that we relied on. And they think that they're so indispensable and/or have built up enough good will that they can cry poverty and pass the hat...

Nire Bryce @NireBryce10/19/2023, 10:17 PM

this has always been the business plan, I think

in reply to @pervocracy's post:

🌷 doodlemancy 🌷@doodlemancy10/19/2023, 4:49 PM

yeah tbh the problem is mostly just that if you give any of these companies an inch, they just continue taking miles until everyone's sick of them. if streaming sites didn't raise their prices every 6 months and cancel everything good, i'd still be paying for them. i would never pay youtube a cent (and will continue spitefully blocking ads forever) because i know from a decade+ of watching them fuck up that the minute they get that cent, they'll turn around and fuck with another marginalized creator. i know netflix will cancel everything i like, i know everyone else will raise their prices and force me down to a tier where i still have to watch their repetitive fuckin ads (and what profit is there in showing me the same ad 2938743 times in a day?!). i want to pay for nice things in theory but in practice, at least with streaming video, there just aren't very many nice things to pay for. :(

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy10/19/2023, 5:09 PM

And there's also the Uber effect to worry about--big sites offering irresistible deals until they've killed the competition, and once there's nowhere else you can host videos and reasonably expect them to get an audience, the good times are over

🌷 doodlemancy 🌷@doodlemancy10/19/2023, 7:04 PM

capitalism is when you can have nice things for a little while sometimes but mostly everything is bad

🥕 Mr. Drugs LXIX @MrDrugs6910/19/2023, 8:07 PM

I don't think the big ones ever going to re -build trust, and I'm not sure they could if they wanted to.

We need them to be replaced with something that makes stronger guarantees. Some day itch.io will get purchased OR it will get into financial trouble, and it too will get compromised, because that's how capitalism goes. Entropy increases. So there's nothing trustworthy enough, at least, nothing that doesn't have external controls keeping it that way.

You know a service that's always been 99.9% reliable since the day it was founded, literally centuries ago? The USPS. Hmm, what is it about that model that worked so well?

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy10/19/2023, 8:30 PM

Yeah, you're right. Even for Cohost, honestly. I trust the Cohost staff not to trash the site for some fractional-pennies-per-click scheme, but if someone came along and offered them tens of millions of dollars to buy the place? I can't ask them to turn down lifetime financial security.

Right now the strategy for users is basically just to enjoy it while it lasts and hope someone else starts up a scrappy little project that stays scrappy for another few years.

But it sure would be nice if there were more services that operated like reliable utilities instead of being allowed and incentivized to do the digital equivalent of bulldozing a playground to build a shopping mall.

🥕 Mr. Drugs LXIX @MrDrugs6910/19/2023, 8:35 PM

100%. They made something neat, I'd be happy if they got something nice for it. But as soon as that happened, I'd be looking for something else, because it's not a utility.

At least society gets some benefit in the form of knowledge about how you COULD build a social media site if you wanted to operate it like a paid-by-taxes utility.