what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game?
Same as usual: the mouse loses unless it assembles and unionizes with other mouses and they bring in a guillotine.
tisktisk@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game? I know yt-dlp and invidious have been quite crafty at adapting to these changes, but the scales seem to be tipping.
It feels like Google will dominate the game into submission the same way it did with AOSP and Chrome. I know I’m being dramatic but it’s really starting to feel like we’re being cornered into a hopeless situation
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 hours ago
FE80@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game?
The internet gets turned into packetized cable tv with bonus panopticon features.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
They turn it into an app-only platform just like with many PRC-based apps. Literally, some of those platforms doesn’t even have a web or desktop mode.
I tried using Baidu Maps web to look at my old neighborhood (I was born in mainland China) for nostalgia, and the site repeatedly automatically attempts to download the .apk like every tap I make on the site. Wtf lol. The site probably detected the useragent and keeps nagging me about their app.
I tried browsing a random popular online store to see what it’s like for curiosity (天猫), but it asked for a sign in. Like wut? Even Amazon, Ebay, Bestbuy doesn’t do that. PRC is actually just late stage cyberpunk capitalism.
This is gonna be the future for every big-corp stuff. App only, real ID and phone number verification required. Probably even scan your face.
We need a Meshtastic-based “internet” to actually decouple from big corps have control our infrastructure to have real freedom.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 5 hours ago
Good luck blocking alt OSes on PC if Windows goes the route you’re describing though, unless MS pulls some strings to force Pluton platform-wide on PC and stamp out alt OSes altogether.
Also, good luck blocking decentralized and self-hostable platforms, at least easily.
fodor@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Android is different because there are no alternatives to cellphones except Apple. On the web, there are other ways to share video. So Google can maybe lock YouTube down, but it can’t lock you down.
Many of us use 3rd party browsers a stop-gap measure. We’d like to leave the platform entirely, but we are still interested in some of the content there, so we’re OK with the cat-and-mouse game for now, knowing that if Google goes hardcore blocking mode that we will walk away and be better human beings for it.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Technically you don’t need a smartphone. A tethered mobile device would do. For just cellular calls, there are dumbphones. That Youtube does or doesn’t work doesn’t concern me. They always ask to login on VPN which is always on for me. Thanks, just no.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 7 hours ago
You got Linux phones but those are rough to be nice about it.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
They are glorified toys to be blunt. Cellphones just require too much proprietary tech and licensing. Shits never goanna be viable as anything more than a hobbyist toy.
If you already use your phone as nothing more then a toy then it’s a easy switch. But most people don’t.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Not to mention, carriers can dictate who can get connected. Australia already banned any IMEIs not “approved” by them, not even for emergency calls.
In contrast, all that a computer would need is working wifi, and for now at least, we still control wifi hardware and the ISP can’t dictate what devices you connect. (unless they start forcing their “gateways” Modem/Router devices)
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
I use mine as a toy and as a device for making phone calls
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Jolla with sailfish is the best. commerce.jolla.com/…/jolla-community-phone
reksas@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
i heard there is something called murena
murena.com/products/smartphones/
no idea how these are, but i have previous generation fairphone and it has been decent, even if that one has android. I’ll propably get one at some point since i dont want to use android. the price of fairphones is a bit high, but that is how it is when you dont use slavery to produce them.
sk1nnym1ke@piefed.social 8 hours ago
Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game?
A mandatory account with paid subscription.
CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
The fucking horror!
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
It would be. Its been nice moving away from using a Google account.
CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
What exactly has been “nice” 🤣. For real, please explain to me how your superior IdP works and what features have made it “nice” 🤣.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 10 hours ago
The end game is to take full control. If Google implements Widevine on YT, and especially Widevine L1, that’ll be Google’s Hiroshima bomb for both third-party front-ends and downloaders, and even non-Android, ChromeOS, Apple, or Windows platforms as far as OS goes and non-Chrome or Edge browsers.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
That would be their poison pill. Youtube’s advantage is in it’s ubiquity. Lose that, you lose countless users.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 10 hours ago
They’d sooner replace those users with home-grown AI slop the way they’re moving right now.
Mora@pawb.social 8 hours ago
The perfect business case: AI users watching AI ads before AI videos. No pesky users to deal with👍
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Probably like every other victim of enshittification:
You pay or you don’t consume.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 10 hours ago
Your new monitor likely has DRM features built in that are already being utilized by Netflix and others. Youtube is next on the line
melfie@lemy.lol 4 hours ago
Yeah, I think Netflix has like a few thousand movies and a couple thousand TV shows, and some of us here have similarly sized Jellyfin libraries. On the other hand, YouTube has billions of videos. It seems DRM would be a significantly more difficult and costly problem for YouTube.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
DRM is expensive. Very expensive in fact because it is basically non-trivial encryption.
A website with as much traffic as YouTube cannot afford to DRM every single video stream. There just isn’t enough processing power and electricity available.
Netflix et al. have a tiny fraction of YouTube’s traffic with more income per user due to subscriptions.
Plus YouTube’s storage demands are many orders of magnitude larger. A maximum upper bound for Netflix is 1 PB I’d imagine. Archiveteam alone has selectively downloaded more than 3 PB. YouTube has, I’d imagine, a double digit exabyte amount of data stored + backups.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 4 hours ago
And yet, youtube uses resource intensive compression methods for said exabytes
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 10 hours ago
Whatever the latest version of HDCP is, sure.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 9 hours ago
I was actually thinking of DisplayPort since I haven’t used HDMI for quite some time now, but pretty mich the same thing, except for name - DPCP, but supposedly DP also supports HDCP.
jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
Maybe total DRM enforcement, and clients without widevine only get garbage quality. That’d end yt-dlp for youtube
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Well the problem for google is that Youtube MUST be accessible to almost any internet user in the world - that’s a key reason why it’s so ubiquitous.
The reason this cat and mouse game has lasted as long as it has in the first place is because any method that is currently being quashed has a solution lying in another user agent that youtube can’t kill.
If one day YT sets a “minimum requirements” page on their website to access their content, they’ve immediately ceded market share to the next upstart. Imagine if they broke viewing for all of the countless cheap (and e-waste) phones, tablets, low end IOT devices, “smart TVs”, and so on because they place a requirement that the device cannot meet. Those users will not throw away their hardware - they’ll migrate to the first available alternative way to watch content.
As long as YT caters to the lowest common denominator (Their business model essentially binds them to do so), there will always be a software/hardware environment that these tools can spoof. The moment that stops being the case, people look for other options.
A similar analogy would be how Microsoft handled the windows 11 requirements - the strict requirements locking out years upon years of hardware has resulted in a substantial amount of users finding workarounds for their machines (like windows 10 IOT LTSC), or to even jump to linux entirely. They abandoned the entry level users, so entry level users are abandoning them.
Chozo@fedia.io 10 hours ago
This all incorrectly assumes that there exists any viable competition to switch to. YouTube ran at a net loss for over a decade to get the reach they currently have, only because Google was one of the very few companies who could feasibly afford to do so. And most of the content people access YouTube for is only found on YouTube, so those hypothetical users aren't going to switch to a new platform, they're going to either just flat-out stop watching or will replace their devices.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
Tiktok and intagam are standing by to at least take over short form video.
Tiktok has also experimented with longer videos.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
Users replacing their devices isn’t feasible in many parts of the world, especially outside of the west.
You are correct that a service similar in scale and scope would not appear out of the aether due to the cost, but to say nothing would make a grab for those underserved users would be foolish.
Again - the entry level cost conscious users do constitute a large part of Youtube’s userbase, so even if they are burdensome to support (due to ad blocking rates, required legacy features to upkeep, and so on), they are a core part of the audience that youtube serves. In an economic environment where people cannot afford to abandon their hardware, there is no chance they will opt out of receiving information and entertainment entirely because of their devices being unsupported by google’s sites. They will move to the next service in the chain, either existing or new. To google’s investors, that shrinkage in userbase may be untenable.
MITM0@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
PeerTube or LBRY (The protocol, not Odysee) might help in that. As in decentralized instances focussing on specific content. All connected via hubs/open-protocols.
Basically Decentralized or dustributed networks are key. The next hurdle is populating those platforms with content.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
Staying in windows 10 sure, but I’ve yet to see much evidence people have been switching much to Linux.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 10 hours ago
Not-so-fun fact, this is exactly what ATSC 3 is trying to do for OTA broadcast TV.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
ATSC 3 ?
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 10 hours ago
New broadcast standard which if implemented as intended, will use Widevine DRM to encrypt/decrypt streams, and require a web connection to view previously free OTA broadcasts, also that DRM will limit what you can do with it, as Rossmann puts it early on in his ‘this is why I show these things in my vids’ vid. …gravitywell.xyz/…/61332f1b-9a15-46b6-8a97-c4e378…