this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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Yes, the technology to do this is here, and they're just waiting for the consumer to be able to put up with it.
They know if they do that people will just disable their cameras or put tape over it like they already do. If they make it so you can't disable the camera without losing functionality then people won't buy the product.
If they try to push it by making a gentleman's agreement with their competitors to make all tvs or phones use camera eye contact during ads well have to have fight back with more ad blockers and such.
I mean the concept is pretty simple, all they have to do is make whatever the content it is not play without the verification.
Now I do have to say, it does come down to what is the system we do want? We can agree we don't want intrusive ads. We can say that the paid for services are too expensive. But at the end of the day when we refuse to pay for the content, and then bypass the ads, we do leave content creation in a rough spot. We've kind of reached a point where we need a new system. Yet all we seem to do is try and find ways to break the existing one.
The problem is that ad revenue brings in more money than subscription models ever can. So they're either super expensive because the company is accustomed to the high profits of ads, OR they inevitably end up slipping ads into the paids versions too.
Youtube has become this venus fly trap where content creators get exploited. They exist on the site solely to draw in viewers to show ads to. YouTube doesn't really care about the content or their creators(they don't care about paying them either since there's endless accounts) their primary function is to sell ads. That's it.
With data harvesting and personalized ads they basically print money for themselves. Now each ad spot will show something different to each person, meaning they are getting paid by multiple(potentially hundreds or thousands) of companies for each available ad location. They don't care if you buy the product because they got paid the second that ad popped up on your screen.
Ad based revenue is creating a huge fucking mess for everyone.
Honestly I disagree... From what I've heard from app developers etc... ads generate far less money than even $1 app sales. Now maybe that's the brokers etc... But there's also a reason why Hulu shut down their purely ad supported tier, and none of the big companies are leaning into that. Only "subscribe and get ads" lower dollar tiers.
I'm no super expert, but I think ads are still very inefficiant ways to make money... the profit per customer is very small even with the most privacy invasive blast you away with everything aspect. I don't claim to be an expert, but it appears to me an ad supported service needs around 100x more users to make the same money as a low cost service. However, in actual userbases it goes closer to 1000x when that offer is on the table.
This is why I just set up a media server at home.
It's mine, you can't pump it full of ads. All the media is mine and those companies can go fuck themselves.
Sail those seas folks
Don't worry your TV will just hijack the HDMI signal to inject its own ads
Not if isn't connected to a network. 😈
Oh I have had a plex and then jellyfin server for almost 15 years. Yarr mateys
Reading your reply made me think ... it's possible that implying such technology might help rising Free & Open Source culture more ... given that FOSS apps are usually ad-free and with no tracking
Honestly the best thing about FOSS is that money isn't driving all the decisions. Most open-source projects are built because the dev just wants to build something cool or useful, or they're trying to solve specific problems. Most individual devs don't really care if their user count goes up every quarter.
Personally I've been maintaining a chrome extension for about 10 years, and it's sat happily with about 7000 users that entire time. I built it because I wanted to use it, and I've declined several offers to buy the extension and monetize it.
What's the extension? Advertise to me dammit, I'm intrigued
It's an extension that makes GitHub pages full width: https://github.com/xthexder/wide-github/
Admittedly the usefulness has gone down a little bit in the last couple years now that GitHub themselves have made code diffs and some other things full width by default.
When I first wrote this I had just gotten a giant 4K display at work and was really annoyed I still had to scroll left and right with the page only covering 1/3 of the screen.
Boss