And how does YouTube know what people might want to watch? By tracking what they watch and adjusting their algorithms appropriately.

My point is that that is not the reason, but one step on the way. And it is a way to influence people even to the point of enforcing things.

Perhaps you’re not part of the quiet majority.

Correct.

YouTube’s number one goal is to show ads, and their service does that by getting people to watch more videos.

Which is a singular goal with a reachable epitome of video making that is essentially enforcing a rally between content creators to find this epitome.

How does this create unique content? This is merely tolerating the existence of such content, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of profits or rock any boats with “youtube drama”. How does this competition create unique stuff?

It is not tuned for what people want to watch, but to what youtube thinks you want to watch. Also what they think they can get away with suggesting you. My experience is that I do not like what the autoplay function plays next, for example.

There are indeed “backroom bosses” deciding what arbitrary hoops someone has to jump through, youtube is no lawless place. There are enforced rules as to language and video material. This has little to do with the suggestions, but not nothing.

It does a selection that give youtube the most money. That indeed filters out unpopular things (making it also way harder to gain popularity if relying solely on youtube; a widely accepted alternative would be a deal with a popular youtuber), but also controversial stuff like criticism. Also child porn so its not entirely bad (also it is very necessary), just way too powerful and obtuse to be trusted in the hands of someone wanting to make money.

Also, I like your choice in channels. Those I don’t watch from that list are those I don’t yet know. Thank you for the list!

So, you are trying to defend a mechanism you actively try to work against?

YouTube does indeed force things. It’s called the search algorithm and it effectively selects the people who get the money. Comply or get payed accordingly less. If you think otherwise why do you think YouTube has any say over how to “segment their offerings”?

Competition here is done for money, which is abstracted into viewer count metrics as provided by YouTube. The clickbait, call for subscription and the ads are what has been created as the result of competition.

Competition made the sales pitch for every video better, also lifted the standard on production quality in video and audio. But it drowns out most unique ideas.

This isn’t only the need to compete for viewers, this is the need to comply to YouTube’s search algorithm. It enforces similar content just like SEO is enforced for Google Search. There sometimes will be new stuff, but all as a means to keep being relevant, not because the stuff is interesting. That means that most new stuff will be entertainment, or “infotainment”, which is fine in itself, but drowns out anything else. If you don’t see the danger in that, the US government does in their strive to sabotage TikTok (not saying it’s undeserved).

Production value is indeed up, which is a good thing, but not enough. This is presentation over the actual stuff. However variety is way down in the more successful youtubers. The variety comes from people who mostly don’t give a shit about the performance of their videos; or from people trying to be successful while tending to a niche. The latter however will still implement most stuff from the top youtubers. If something seems successful it will be implemented by the more successful youtubers, but they mostly won’t experiment as it costs money and normally negatively impacts viewer counts. YouTube’s search algorithm has driven people to comply to presentation, nothing more.

Clickbait, asking for subscription, adding ads and more are all symptoms of this compliance to the platform. Do you sub to a channel that has never done any of those?

Sharing stuff one has interest in is good. Making use of SEO or “the algorithm” is a cashgrab. You can do so but I won’t support you.

The need to compete in popularity is something that kills good things efficiently and regularly.

“Non GMO”

Do you take Advantage off babysitters?

You can bring it back!

Or just use a mechanical (200$+) keyboard!

Huh, didn’t realise Windows is on a level to be compared to TempleOS. And losing. Thanks for that.

I just saw discussions like this

So no, there are more parts to your phone. You forgot the whole part you, the user, solely interact with.

Everyone asking for/demanding this IS the enemy.

“You have a face only a mother can love, but two dads.”

I want to say “Haha, Idiot trusting Microsoft”.

But honestly I want the same stuff he wants. Including modems in mobile phones. Including EVERYTHING I own.

I don’t want to point fingers/cast shade or anything. Hell, I myself resist change where I can.

It costs incredible amounts of energy and time to change, and that change might even be counter productive to some or most of the things you do.

Gratulations on starting Linux, I hope it does everything you need it to do. Even if you should end up using it only for a short amount of time, I hope the experience enriches you.

Warning, no technical stuff, only creed:

I don’t hate Windows in and off itself. For me it represents my first contact with a computer and influences my choice of UI to this day.

I hate what it stands for, which for me is something I call “gated computing”; a restriction of access to computational power and abilities. It turns a machine with near limitless potential, like watching cat videos, sharing how to best build bridges or calculating the bygone cycles of the moon, to a machine that maliciously distracts people while giving a selected few the power of watching over them with ever changing objectives as to why they watch them.

Windows, like few others, eased people into thinking that that was the right way to use a computer all along.

That is why I hate it.

Most people believe they will start seeing problems where there were none before. They need to invest time into research about their use-cases, which is a cost even before switching.

The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that’s what they’ll stick with.

The pain of using Windows still can and will be higher without the majority of people switching to anything.

“Finally I see some gears turning. We’re making progress here people!”

I’m sorry, I don’t think I can see the point you are making. Are you saying that one can get around the 3-5 people by using flatpaks, ro home directories and other mitigations?