[HN Gopher] Susan Wojcicki has died
___________________________________________________________________
Susan Wojcicki has died
Author : grandmczeb
Score : 628 points
Date : 2024-08-10 04:58 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| grandmczeb wrote:
| > Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend
| @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as
| core to the history of Google as anyone, and it's hard to imagine
| the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and
| friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I'm one of
| countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss
| her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.
|
| Posted by Sundar Pichai.
| akchin wrote:
| This sucks. I was at Google many years back and I remember her
| to be an awesome product leader. In fact even though I was
| another org, she was helpful and really helped me and our team.
| pas wrote:
| excuse me for this offtopic (?) tangent, but can you please
| expand on what does being a good/amazing product leader mean?
| every kind of context helps, as I have no experience working
| inside these huge super-successful corps. thanks!
| richrichie wrote:
| Feel good adjectives.
| gretch wrote:
| Makes insightful directives on what to put in as the core
| value of a product. When you are making stuff that the
| world really hasn't seen before, it's really hard to know
| what people want, as they often can't tell you directly.
|
| I'm not familiar with Susan's work directly, but for
| example, it's widely accepted that YT has the best revenue
| share and payout for its creators compared to competitors
| like twitch or TikTok.
|
| Someone has to really sit down and figure out how getting
| paid for making internet videos works. It didn't exist
| before.
|
| Also great product leaders give team members principles and
| tools to work with (like metrics), so they don't need to
| micromanage every decision, and the product can still be
| cohesive.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| Wow. Terribly sad series of events for that family. Life is not
| fair.
| yyyfb wrote:
| Next time you're thinking "I wish I was the one who had made a
| billion dollars with my startup idea", remember that only health
| and family matter, and to have fun while you're alive. RIP.
|
| Edit: some people misinterpreted my comment. I'm just one
| anonymous voice on the Internet, but am deeply saddened by the
| passing of Susan Wojcicki, who meant a lot to me as one of the
| many people who crossed paths with her professionally. I wish her
| family strength in a very trying moment. She did not deserve
| this. I've not met another business leader demonstrate everyday
| kindness to the degree that she did.
|
| Her untimely passing is also a reminder to those of us who
| sometimes look up to such successful businesspeople that we
| should all appreciate our luck to be alive and enjoy it to the
| fullest, as I hope that she did as well, and as I'm sure that
| she'd prefer we did. RIP
| Cookingboy wrote:
| As far as net worth figure goes your health is the first
| significant digit, everything else come after.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > first significant digit
|
| Big endian
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| This has nothing to do with business or entrepreneurship. It's
| cancer, it's a bitch. It can take a 10 year old boy, or an
| elite athlete.
| troll_v_bridge wrote:
| You can't really say it does or doesn't. Research shows
| stress can be a contributor though.
|
| https://med.stanford.edu/survivingcancer/cancer-and-
| stress/s....
| roenxi wrote:
| Well, yeah. For the sort of people who have "Title: CEO" on
| their Wikipedia page I suspect we're overdrawing from the
| pool of people where mission implicitly matters a little
| more than taking it easy. One way or the other you're going
| to die, but if your response to that is to relax and try to
| eke out a few years by keeping your stress down then CEOing
| is probably not for you.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| You can change it if you want to. An extra 25 years seems
| worth it to me.
| amelius wrote:
| Being on the wrong side of the wealth-gap can also induce
| stress ...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Main factors are sleep, sunlight, diet and exercise as well
| as stress. You can see her schedule here:
|
| https://press.farm/susan-wojcickis-daily-routine-youtubes-
| ce...
|
| Sleep about 6hr, which isnt ideal. Not much chance to get
| sunlight which significantly reduces cancer incidence. Not
| much relaxing time.
|
| The question becomes, is the work worth it?
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| That's probably not her real schedule. It looks like
| clickbait and was probably invented by the author. (Who
| might be our prolific friend Chat-GPT.)
|
| Besides 10:00pm to 5:30am is 7.5 hours, which is either
| optimal or (arguably) too much.
|
| Lastly, there's no clear evidence tying sleep duration to
| cancer incidence. See, e.g.: https://bmccancer.biomedcent
| ral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| She starts exercising at 530 and goes to bed at 10. Im
| assuming she wakes up 30 mins before, and it takes her an
| hour to get to sleep.
| svnt wrote:
| They weren't arguing the specific times, but the article
| itself reads as if AI generated and not as a real report
| of someone's schedule, by someone who would know that
| person's schedule.
|
| The follow-on conclusion from that is that the times are
| highly suspect.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Yes, i think youre correct. I cant find an original
| source.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| arguably too much sleep? what world are you living in
| that seven and a half hours of sleep is too much?
| cpncrunch wrote:
| 6hr, as per my comment. Its enough for some people, but
| average is 7-8. I go to sleep 45-60 mins after going to
| bed, and i wake 30mins before exercising. Im assuming
| that is fairly typical.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah, that article definitely looks like ChatGPT
| imagination.
| FireBy2024 wrote:
| Funny that watching YouTube was not one of the things she
| did, whereas most people spend hours on YouTube/social
| media.
| melling wrote:
| Where's your scientific report that says sunlight
| significantly reduces lung cancer?
|
| We shouldn't have people making such claims on HN without
| providing references.
|
| She was also home having dinner with her family by
| 6:30pm.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251
| melling wrote:
| This seems key:
|
| " Following sun exposure advice that is very restrictive
| in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be
| harmful to women's health."
|
| Thanks for the link. Now we know with certainty that lack
| of sunlight wasn't a cause.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| I think you have misinterpreted that sentence. It is
| saying that too little sun exposure is harmful to health
| in women. See also this study which found the same for
| men in Norway:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01
| 695...
| melling wrote:
| Yes, we agree. Very restrictive exposure in countries
| with low solar intensity "
|
| Susan lived in Northern California. How's the solar
| intensity where she lived?
|
| " sun exposure advice that is very restrictive in
| countries with low solar intensity might in fact be
| harmful to women's health
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Oslo is about half the UV of SF, so you would need to
| spend half as much time in the sun for the same benefit.
| If you are not outside much during the day, its still a
| risk factor no matter where you live. This would apply to
| most office workers.
| melling wrote:
| " Research on a link between vitamin D and cancer is
| mixed. Some studies have shown a link between low vitamin
| D levels in the body and a higher risk of getting cancer
| or dying from cancer. However, it's not clear if taking
| vitamin D or having certain vitamin D levels might help
| prevent cancer. It's also not clear if vitamin D can help
| control the growth and spread of cancer. More research is
| needed to know what role vitamin D does or does not play
| in helping to prevent or control cancer."
|
| https://amp.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/sun-and-
| uv/sun...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Yes indeed, it is sunlight that has the most evidence.
| Sun also releases nitric oxide in the skin, which reduces
| blood pressure, and high bp is associated with increased
| lung cancer hazard ratio, even for nonsmokers.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12936899/
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-13399-4
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I've tried to google with no success but is it known if
| she smoked or ever did? Or is she part of the unlucky
| cohort (~12.5%) of non-smokers that get lung cancer?
| magic_man wrote:
| But it is more likely when you are old. It is you your immune
| system unable to kill mutations.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I took that to be OPs point in a way. Death comes to us all,
| rich and poor. True wealth is your good health and the
| relationships it lets you foster.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Absolutely this.
| noncoml wrote:
| That's BS.
|
| Yes, both rich and poor die of cancer.
|
| But being rich or even just comfortable gives you a completely
| different experience during the end of life.
|
| You can afford to quit your job and be with your friends and
| family.
|
| You can afford to see that best doctors that will ensure you
| have as comfortable as possible end of life.
|
| Your kids can afford to take a sabbatical to come spend time
| with you.
|
| You can be sure that no matter what your kids will be
| financially secure.
|
| You know that you got the absolute best care that you could.
|
| The list goes on.
|
| Cancer is horrible and everyone who loses someone hurts the
| same. But you absolutely cannot keep saying that being poor and
| rich doesn't make a difference during the progress of this
| awful disease.
|
| Only someone who has never been poor would ever say that.
| jart wrote:
| If you're poor you won't even officially have cancer, because
| no one will diagnose you, since then you'd be entitled to
| services. Someone who's actually been poor would understand
| this.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Lots (if not all?) of hospitals offer free care options for
| patients in poverty. I grew up poor and had a family member
| who was able to be diagnosed, for free, a university clinic
| that offered free care, and then was able to receive free
| care through a program offered at one of top 5 ranked
| cancer systems in the US. Although the premium quality
| wasn't even that big of a deal. The overwhelming majority
| of care can be provided pretty much anywhere. It's not like
| a premium hospital offers super chemo or super radiation.
| The treatment is what it is, and all the money in the world
| isn't going to significantly change your odds of survival
| relative to basic treatment provided at any clinic
| anywhere.
|
| The US healthcare system is broken beyond belief, and I do
| think there is some degree of managerial sociopathy around
| profit (particularly in the pharmaceutical and insurance
| wings), but by and large there still remain options for
| people even if they may be arduous, and I do think that
| hospitals and doctors are still significantly motivated
| just to provide good care.
| armada651 wrote:
| The problem is that, for patients in poverty, the chance
| that cancer will be detected early enough for treatment
| is much, much lower. Cancer is often detected during
| check-ups for vague symptoms that most people can't
| afford to go visit a doctor for. By the time the symptoms
| become alarming or even debilitating it is often already
| too late.
| p3rls wrote:
| Eh, I made 75k on my IRS forms last year and don't have
| health insurance. The poor people I know all have way
| better access to treatment through medicare/medicaid and
| various subsidies, and all use the medical system multiple
| times a year while I look up videos on YouTube (thanks
| susan!) to learn how to perform minor surgeries on myself
|
| When my mother died of cancer (also in her 50s, still
| working as a public teacher in NYC so should have had great
| insurance for this) the hospital went after the estate with
| a million dollar bill. I couldn't even afford a lawyer to
| contest it at the time and ended up not inheriting anything
| except what I could take out of the house.
|
| The only people with good outcomes are the rich who can
| afford it, and the poor who couldn't afford anything yet
| are still being treated because other tax payers are paying
| into this system.
| serf wrote:
| it's not just access to healthcare, it's time,
| convenience, effort, whatever.
|
| an impoverished single-parent 4 member family will not
| have time to exploit whatever medical care options are
| made available to them. this time deficit is one of the
| more common characteristics that impoverished families
| have in common.
|
| in a way it's similar to the healthcare problems that
| startup people see early in the business; 'no time for
| the doctor, I have meetings -- i'll live with the ulcer'
| , just from a different angle.
|
| lack of opportunity for time management.
| yyyfb wrote:
| Two things can be true.
|
| Money does buy comfort and care. Also, it does not make one
| immortal.
|
| We can choose what we take away from events. I could choose
| to feel unlucky that I haven't made as much money as someone
| else, and I would be justified in it, because being rich
| absolutely makes a difference. I just choose to feel lucky to
| be alive instead, and I'm just as justified. You are free to
| choose your own perspective.
| noncoml wrote:
| "remember that only health and family matter"
|
| Those were your exact words. But nice backpedal.
|
| Edit: I don't want to get into an argument but just beware
| that your original post rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
| I respect that's the pain and sorrow of a loss are the same
| but please don't dismiss the power and need of money. It
| makes a world of a difference in the _process_ of dying.
| You don't want to sound like someone living on an ivory
| tower.
| yyyfb wrote:
| Let me put it this way. I don't think you and I are
| fundamentally disagreeing: money matters, to the extent
| that it allows to buy statistically better health
| outcomes and quality time with family. I don't personally
| think it matters more than that.
| vsuperpower2021 wrote:
| In general if you want people to take you seriously, don't
| make statements like "Two things can be true." It reeks of
| reddit condescension where they can't make a simple
| statement without implying the other party is stupid enough
| to think that only one thing can ever be true at once.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I thought his comment was fine
| whereas yours is insufferable.
| vsuperpower2021 wrote:
| It's not worth much!
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, considering that people harped on about one
| specific thing being more true than the other, it
| certainly seems like people think that only one thing
| (being rich) can ever be true at once.
|
| Stupidity is entirely your implication, but people
| _generally_ like to see things in binary. It's far easier
| than acknowledging that most things live on a spectrum.
| chr1 wrote:
| Health is only temporary, and everyone in your family is going
| to die, until someone makes a trillion dollar startup to cure
| aging. So it is fundamentally wrong to put health, family, and
| work as things opposing each other, ultimately they are all
| needed on a way to get all of the galaxy filled with life. And
| as Susan have shown one can both do great work, and have a big
| family with 5 children.
| RobertDeNiro wrote:
| High levels of stress (often related to work) have been shown
| to impact health. So I think it's a fair thing to oppose
| them.
| boringg wrote:
| Isn't that person and stress source dependent. Also working
| until late in life actually improves mental acuity and
| fights off dementia.
|
| So maybe work but not in excessively high stress loads is
| your point?
|
| Though i think your implied underlying assumption that
| because she was a leader in tech and under a high workload
| somehow caused this is unfounded and unnecessary.
| anon7725 wrote:
| There must be a difference between the stress experienced
| by a financially independent CEO and a marginally-
| employed gig worker.
|
| One is the stress of essentially playing a game or
| working on a challenge and the other is existential.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| This sample size of one would seem to disagree. Stress is
| stress, and the outcome can certainly be the same in the
| end. RIP
| badpun wrote:
| Why it's a good idea to fill galaxy with life? Why should we
| care about it? Also, seeing that our current civilization-
| system is already at the brink of catastrophe, we should
| focus on less ambitious goals, such as preserving life on
| Earth.
| boringg wrote:
| Absolutely worth it. We wont fill the galaxy filled with
| life because the galaxy is huge and we are but one tiny
| tiny portion of it. For us to survive and do anything
| impressive takes all of human ingenuity.
|
| Also those two items aren't mutually exclusive. Both can
| and should happen in tandem. Anyone arguing otherwise is
| just a mentally lazy person.
| badpun wrote:
| Whenever you have two goals competing for the same
| resources, you need to prioritize. I'm for preserving
| life on Earth first, and spreading it to other places as
| a distant second.
| melling wrote:
| Cure aging? We could relieve a lot of pain in the world by
| just curing cancer(s), or at least make them treatable like
| HIV.
|
| Jake died yesterday. I don't even think he was 40 years old.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555
|
| Susan was only 56.
|
| Let's at least give everyone a chance at a full life.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah, but magnitude wise it doesn't seem like a huge
| difference of 56 vs 90. 56 to me now looks way early, but I
| assume when I get 70 then I start to think that 90 looks
| way too early. When I was 10 years old, 56 seemed miles
| away though. So there's always going to be this problem.
| Especially since supposedly the older you get the faster
| time seems to go. So the fact that I and we are all going
| to die at some point not too far away is still something
| that is constantly in the back of the mind and frequently
| on the front.
|
| E.g. compared to being able to live more than 1,000 years
| or forever and with body in its prime condition recovery
| etc wise. E.g. having a 25 year old body for 1,000+ years.
| melling wrote:
| Sure, I'm all for living to 1000. Curing cancer(s) likely
| needs to happen first. The war on cancer started in 1971.
|
| We'd likely need trillions of dollars of investment, and
| a lot more people working on it, to increase our
| lifespan/healthspan.
|
| But hey, we can hope together, for what that's worth.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Living in poverty and Being broke is stressful too. Living in
| a shit family as well.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Yes the upside of being rich and stressed is that it's all
| your choice. You could retire at any moment if you wished
| to
| yyyfb wrote:
| It's not about them opposing each other, it's about
| priorities.
| wslh wrote:
| Your message is very powerful, for the good, and I think people
| nowadays are used to extremes instead of the balance when they
| read something like your comment.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Susan didn't start YouTube.
| daveed wrote:
| I'm not a Googler, but would still ask commenters to show some
| respect for the person who died, and save your opinions about
| youtube for another day.
| tomohelix wrote:
| Maybe I am a callous person, but I have never agreed to this
| "don't speak ill of the dead" thing.
|
| People live and die. It is inevitable. To the grieving family,
| I can understand why refraining from insulting the dearly
| departed is necessary. They are grieving and can be irrational.
| No need to make things worse for them.
|
| But between unrelated people? Why can't I discuss the legacy of
| the dead? We are defined by our deeds in life. It is only
| natural that in death, people will talk and opine about what we
| have done. Nothing wrong with it.
| cowsup wrote:
| I feel like there's an unwritten "recently" in there. If you
| were to speak ill of Colonel Sanders, nobody would berate you
| for speaking ill of the dead. But when a CEO like Wojcicki,
| who made changes that were unpopular to the end-users (but
| helped turn YouTube into an actual profitable company) dies,
| it's considered very impolite to use that opportunity to bad-
| mouth decisions she made. When her son died earlier this
| year, that would've been a bad time to speak ill of her, as
| well, even though she herself was still alive.
|
| A better phrase may be "Don't say things that will hurt the
| feelings of those who are grieving," but that doesn't roll
| off the tongue so easily.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > "Don't say things that will hurt the feelings of those
| who are grieving"
|
| I for one would prefer "don't get attached to evil people"
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Few people are comically evil enough that you can look at
| them and say "Ah, yes. You are evil. I will not get
| attached."
| meiraleal wrote:
| Yep. Feathers of the same birds flock together so one is
| just a little bit worse than the other and nobody feels
| ashamed.
| HaZeust wrote:
| You haven't talked to enough people. I probably have that
| inner-thought at least once a month.
| zarzavat wrote:
| She was a public figure. If millions of people around the
| world know your name then when you die, people will have
| things to say. Some will be good, some will be bad.
|
| The custom about "not speaking ill of the dead" makes sense
| in a small IRL community, not for internationally famous
| people.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Socrates never wrote a single thing down and was, somewhat
| ironically, opposed to writing. The reason is that he felt
| that words cannot defend themselves. They can be twisted,
| taken out of context, and misrepresented, with none there to
| defend them, provide that missing context, or what not.
| Fortunately his student Plato disagreed so here we can
| discuss him 2400 years after his death.
|
| With a dead person, I think this logic holds to an even
| higher degree. Personally I'm not really sure whether I agree
| or disagree with it, but it seems pretty reasonable,
| especially if we don't hyperbolically immediately leap to
| absurdly extreme examples like Hitler or whatever.
| sigmar wrote:
| >But between unrelated people? Why can't I discuss the legacy
| of the dead? We are defined by our deeds in life. It is only
| natural that in death, people will talk and opine about what
| we have done. Nothing wrong with it.
|
| unless you have a magical way to make your comment here
| invisible to her family and friends, posting it to the
| internet is not keeping the comment exclusively "between
| unrelated people." Many of those replies to Pichai are vile.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| There's an implied "reasonable chance" in there.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Agreed, I don't get it either. I also wonder how many people
| saying this sort of thing expressed the same sentiment when
| someone they had a strong dislike of passed or had a close
| brush with death.
|
| We've had many such incidents over the recent years and at
| least in my anecdotal observations, people do not
| consistently apply this.
| DannyBee wrote:
| "We are defined by our deeds in life"
|
| We are but most folks here basically know nothing of her
| deeds, or really anything about her. They see one piece of a
| thing she was a face of for some time period, and that they
| also knew mostly nothing about, but appear to love to have
| strong opinions on!
|
| If you want to speak of her deeds then go and learn about
| them. Otherwise, people aren't speaking of anything other
| than some small myopic view of a human being they knew
| nothing about. Folks don't get to say that she is defined by
| the small piece of stuff they saw, just because they want to
| have an opinion on it.
|
| Besides being disrespectful, it's not even interesting, and
| it says more about the people doing it than the person they
| are talking about.
|
| It's like saying you are defined by the small and short
| interactions you had with grocery store cashiers who happen
| to like to post about their experiences with you on the
| internet and nothing else.
| matrix87 wrote:
| > Maybe I am a callous person, but I have never agreed to
| this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing.
|
| If they're rich and powerful who cares... here's John
| Oliver's reaction to Kissinger dying [0]... tl;dr "not soon
| enough"
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HmrJmq7d1c
| sneak wrote:
| When is there a better time to discuss the works of a famous
| person than when they are in the news?
| asah wrote:
| In particular, Susan was a lovely soul and specifically
| deserves all of our respect.
|
| If you want to hate, then hate the game, not the player
| (especially in this case).
| somenameforme wrote:
| This saying never made sense to me as a game is only a game
| if there are players.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The point of the saying is that the player is not
| necessarily in position to change the rules, or at least
| not in the immediate short term. How far one wants to
| accept this as acceptable reasoning is a subjective matter.
| sleeplessworld wrote:
| Or maybe not that subjective when looked at closer. It
| may just as well be a saying that the entitled classes
| use to defend their selfish and less than good behaviour.
| Beacause the classes of the not-entitled buy this as
| somehow having reasonable meaning.
|
| The entitled classes have no reason to change rules that
| are clearly stacked in their favour. But it sounds way
| better to say the rules cannot be changed. But it is hard
| to see why this should be self-evidently true.
| wruza wrote:
| You can offset basically anything with it. It's another
| way to say "it's just a collection of atoms working by
| the laws of nature".
|
| Most of these proverbs are just selling bs.
| matwood wrote:
| A good example is taxes. Many people think the 'rich',
| including the rich, should pay more. Every tax form in the
| US has a spot where you are free to write in a larger
| amount to send, but I wonder how many actually do? Unless
| the game ends collectively, it doesn't make sense to stop
| playing. I will continue to pay as little taxes as possible
| until the game is changed.
| vintermann wrote:
| I'm sure she was, but I did not personally know her and I'm
| pretty sure few others here did as well. It's newsworthy for
| what she was, her role, not really for who she was as a
| person.
|
| I certainly wouldn't mind reading some personal eulogies
| about what a great mentor her was etc., or about how she
| influenced your life with her work even if you didn't know
| her.
|
| But I also don't mind reading critical posts about the role
| she played, I think that's part of the picture for someone
| who's famous as a business leader. If people weren't willing
| to speak freely about the dead, we wouldn't have had the
| Nobel prizes.
| briandear wrote:
| She censored things because of politics. That's not "lovely."
|
| YouTube has videos on the dangers of GMO crops, despite the
| scientific consensus for their safety and utility.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959534/#cit000.
| ..
|
| YouTube has plenty of videos about electromagnetic
| sensitivity about which the WHO says: "EHS has no clear
| diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link
| EHS symptoms to EMF exposure."
|
| https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-
| hea...
|
| And more stupidity: "Eating these foods kills cancer"
|
| https://youtu.be/WGbFnp56csg?si=t54Pcr3uqjrXRx9f
|
| "12 foods that can fight and cure cancer"
|
| https://youtu.be/FdlKCpEzSAE?si=J6rtKs6valWnamBP
|
| Interview with Robert DeNiro 8 years about his concerns about
| vaccines and autism and his doubts about the vaccine
| effectiveness statistics.
|
| https://youtu.be/FJ7iPn39i08?si=mRYD3a3y9HdMPMQ8
|
| Covid censorship was political and not from some altruistic
| "goodness."
|
| And YouTube experienced very significant growth during the
| pandemic. So that "lovely" soul was profiting because of the
| lockdowns. Lockdowns that were possible due to fear and a
| lack of any permissible public debate -- partially thanks to
| YouTube. Would lockdowns have ended sooner if there was more
| debate on the topic allowed? Definitely. What about school
| closures? Absolutely. But videos debating these things
| weren't allowed.
|
| So no, the game and the player in this case are one and the
| same. I'm not going to respect anyone that supported
| lockdowns or supported suppressing scientific debate.
| Curating opinion (and facts) while pretending to not to isn't
| worthy of respect.
|
| And, YouTube still allows those addictive kid videos where
| the narrator says "If you love your parents, like and
| subscribe. If you don't love your parents, don't like and
| subscribe."
| nailer wrote:
| The people in this thread and elsewhere online are generally
| arguing that she was not a lovely soul.
| kubb wrote:
| I'd take it as a time to reflect that no matter how much profit
| you make, people will remember you for what you've
| accomplished. Think about that when you get to your coveted
| position of power in the industry.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Those people won't matter. Your loved ones do and will
| though, and they won't measure you by your accomplishments
| and net worth.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I have no dog in this game - literally no opinion on what kind
| of person she was.
|
| I use YouTube, even though I don't particularly like it, much
| like every other Google product. Not sure how much of what I
| dislike on YouTube is her fault or not,and it doesn't really
| matter anyway. It is not like I hold any hopes of YouTube
| becoming any better now.
|
| But I find this kind of comment curious. Someone noteworthy and
| controversial dies, critical comments are sure to follow.
|
| Happened when people such as Kissinger or Chomsky died. No one
| was saying "show some respect to the person who died, save your
| opinions for another day". It would be fairly ridiculous to say
| so.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Don't kill Chomsky, he is still alive
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Oh lol. I thought he was dead.
|
| The point still stands
| quonn wrote:
| The point doesn't stand, because you made a claim about
| what people supposedly said or didn't say after Chomsky
| passed away. And he didn't even pass.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| A lot of people thought he did die and they did say
| things about him.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| This is pedantry at its finest.
|
| You can remove the name and still have a point left
| there. Just pretend the comment only said Kissinger, it's
| really not that hard.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Honestly if you are 50% wrong about a point you are
| trying to make that doesn't look great.
| meiraleal wrote:
| He is living in Brazil, but unfortunately it seems to be
| his ending days too. Every other week there is a fake
| news about his death.
| meiraleal wrote:
| You know that Google has an intranet, right? The CEO of a
| division that extracts rent from almost every living person
| doesn't deserve more respect than a homeless person in SF
| polotics wrote:
| On a 1-10 scale of nefariousness, I would classify Youtube as
| pretty low, it's a manageable addiction and with a little bit
| of self control the videos you watch will be worthwhile. I am
| a subscriber. Then there is Youtube Kids, and whoever worked
| on that deserves a 9, and good bye.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| I associate her with censorship. Should I respect her for that?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Her son just died of a fentanyl overdose just a few months ago
| too?
|
| Not even a billion $ will protect you from America's problems
| with cancer and fentanyl. We need to fix this. I mean, just look
| at this chart:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...
|
| Is it pesticides like this recent HN thread alludes to?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182121
|
| Idk. But the US is uniquely doing something very wrong.
| mieses wrote:
| the pharmocracy will allow a cure for cancer?
| viraptor wrote:
| We've got a number of working cures and preventions for
| cancers, just not most types and many are not 100% reliable.
| I'm happy to complain about pharma and we've still got a long
| way to go, but this is a bad take. Yes, they've "allowed" it
| for years. (Did you get your HPV vaccine already?)
| asah wrote:
| +1 - cancer prognosis used to be treated as a death
| sentence for most forms of cancer and "stage 4" was almost
| immediately referred to hospice. Amazing progress in our
| lifetimes, and an impressive roadmap ahead.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| As I understand about the HPV vaccine: It only prevents new
| infections. It does not cure existing infections. And you
| need to get it very young to reduce chances of infection
| before vaccine.
| viraptor wrote:
| Correct. That one falls under preventions. But that one
| also protects your partners.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Why not? Isn't it in "their interest" to keep people alive
| longer and longer?
| jojobas wrote:
| A cured customer is a lost customer. Indefinite remission
| while taking a daily dose is plausible, or maybe $2.5M per
| head as Zolgensma.
| ithkuil wrote:
| How many people simply wouldn't be able to afford that
| and thus die?
|
| Wouldn't it be better to have them cured and live longer
| and just spend their money on curing other illnesses
| we're all going to have anyway?
|
| There is something about this cynic explanation that just
| doesn't sound right to me
| namaria wrote:
| Anyone who claims that there's a 'cure for cancer'
| somewhere that some company is sitting on for profit
| betrays their complete lack of understanding of oncology.
| ithkuil wrote:
| And also a complete lack of misunderstanding of profit
| ithkuil wrote:
| EDIT: lack of understanding
| akira2501 wrote:
| If you live long enough you will most likely die from either
| heart disease, #2 killer, or cancer, the #1 killer. Accidental
| self inflicted injury is #3. We're not doing anything wrong.
| Quite the opposite.
|
| Since not even having a billion will allow you to cheat death,
| perhaps we shouldn't allow billionaires to cheat everyone else
| in life.
| abraxas wrote:
| Certain other countries in that chart have longer average
| lifespans than the US, eg. Canada, Germany, Australia etc.
| akira2501 wrote:
| And fewer billionaires too, I bet.
| jedberg wrote:
| Health outcomes in the US are bimodal -- the wealthy have
| the best health care in the world, and the longest
| lifespans. The poor basically have the equivalent of 3rd
| world care.
|
| That makes the average come out to less than other
| countries with universal healthcare.
|
| But it also explains why wealthy people are against
| universal care in the US -- because they believe their
| level of care will go down so that everyone else's can go
| up.
| abraxas wrote:
| Cancer _incidence_ is likely only loosely related to the
| healthcare system. Cancer _outcomes_ probably are but
| incidence is more related to lifestyle choices (active vs
| sedentary, smoking vs non-smoking etc)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Accidental self inflicted injury
|
| What does that mean?
| ks2048 wrote:
| "The leading causes of death for unintentional injury
| include: unintentional poisoning (e.g., drug
| overdoses), unintentional motor vehicle (m.v.) traffic,
| unintentional drowning, and unintentional falls."
|
| From the following page. This is talking about only ages
| 1-44, but probably the "accidental" category means the
| same.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/animated-leading-
| causes.h...
| akira2501 wrote:
| Typically? Falling off a ladder and cracking your head.
| trhway wrote:
| It is a strange chart. It for example shows that Belarus has
| pretty much the same rate all those 30 years. Cancer takes
| bunch of years to develop, and Belarus has had significant
| cancer numbers increase starting 10-20 years after Chernobyl.
| You can look up the articles on doubling rate of say breast
| cancer there which even without Chernobyl like events presents
| like 20% chances - now calculate what doubling of those chances
| means.
|
| When it comes to US that chart looks a lot like the obesity
| rate chart, and obesity is a partial gateway to cancer, though
| they may just correlate too stemming from the same reason.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| The problem with pointing obesity as the culprit is that
| ourworldindata has the same chart for obesity, where almost
| all countries are increasing at the same rate as US. But just
| US has this stark high cancer rate.
| trhway wrote:
| US is a standout in obesity - only Arab countries and
| Native Pacific are close to it where obesity has different
| character than in US. And may be the obesity and cancer has
| the same cause - high processed sugar diet for example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#
| /...
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.24302894
| v...
|
| "The United States (U.S.) is the leading country in ultra-
| processed food (UPF) consumption, accounting for 60% of
| caloric intake, compared to a range of 14 to 44% in Europe.
| "
| reducesuffering wrote:
| It doesn't pass the smell test.
|
| In 1990, US was 18.7% obese with a cancer incidence of
| 1,760, UK and Australia at 780.
|
| Most recent is 2016 showing Australia and UK at 30%
| obesity, yet their cancer incidence is lower than ever at
| 750 and 682, respectively.
|
| Everyone but the US (and Poland) are increasing their
| obesity while their cancer incidence is flat or
| decreasing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-
| adults-defined-a...
| trhway wrote:
| Something fishy with the data there as here
|
| https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/global-cancer-data-by-
| cou....
|
| age standartized rate:
|
| USA - 367 UK - 307 Australia - 462
| yabatopia wrote:
| Very strange chart. The US has more relaxed regulations on
| food additives, pesticides, hormones used in livestock
| farming, and environmental pollution compared to the European
| Union. But that still does not explain the differences with,
| for example, Australia or Asia. Obesity may play a role, but
| obesity has also been on the rise in the EU for a few
| decades.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| I don't think the tox report showed fentanyl.
|
| Looks like Xanax and Cocaine.
|
| https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-news/cause-of-death-reveale...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Ok corrected. I was going off a cursory quote from the
| grandmother.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Can we have another black bar at the top of hackernews? Feel free
| to delete this comment, dang, et. al. She's just obviously had an
| outsized effect on us all whether we realize it or not.
| veltas wrote:
| You have to email to request.
| anonnon wrote:
| I love all of these ironic black bar request posts.
| georgel wrote:
| This is a very sad day. For her to also lose her son in February
| too.
| lchengify wrote:
| Was shocked to hear this news. I worked for Google years ago but
| I was in the NYC office, so we didn't run into the YouTube folks
| much.
|
| Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is
| objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or
| media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside
| Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion,
| more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge
| creator monetization network, a music channel, an education
| platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.
|
| It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy
| to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted
| it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and
| now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is
| challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing
| just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.
|
| Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the
| endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a
| fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.
|
| I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at
| this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it
| critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world
| without it.
|
| RIP.
| georgel wrote:
| Agreed, I have gotten insane amount of value from YouTube.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN
|
| Who? Who has a negative opinion about YouTube? The occasional
| "My kids watch too much of it" != "mixed opinions" about the
| site in general.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| A lot of YouTubers have been very critical of YouTube's
| approach to things and treatment of creators in the past.
|
| Also, just as an example, YouTube demonetises (and therefore
| effectively punishes) you for using words like 'suicide' so
| now we have to say silly things like 'unalive' -- at least
| until Google/the advertisers catch on. These days YouTube is
| more censored than traditional TV.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I think the "unalive" nonsense is idiotic too, especially
| when it increasingly bleeds into elsewhere online (and
| probably offline, too). But that's not the same thing as
| "mixed opinions" in general on HN. That would be more
| accurate of, say, Twitter (where we are nearing two years
| and counting of the imminent collapse of the site any day
| now post-Musk acquisition, as opposed to seemingly every
| news event proving that it is more important than ever).
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I think perhaps what there _are_ 'mixed opinions' on is
| the actual management and day-to-day practice of YouTube
| as a company, rather than the site itself. We're all
| very, very grateful to have such an amazing place to
| learn and be entertained. And, in my opinion, the website
| and apps are very nicely designed and work better than
| anything else.
|
| I do wish the TikTokification would stop, though. But
| that's never going to happen, given how effective it is
| at holding our eyeballs hostage.
| ChrisNorstrom wrote:
| Which is interesting because the news and media and
| movies and music videos can be as "advertiser unfriendly"
| as they want and still get ads to support the corporation
| that produces it. But indie content creators and the
| general public are punished for talking about the same
| topics.
|
| Corporations get freedom of speech, freedom of reach, no
| consequences. The people do not.
|
| To the HN crowd, sorry but I'm not going to hold back.
| Death does not turn you into a saint. Susan is the one
| who turned YouTube into the censored mess it is today,
| pushed for unliked mainstream channels over popular
| organic content creators (changed the algorith to push
| late night talk shows), ruined the algorith to always
| push "authoritarian" channels (CNN, CBS, MSN, NBC, PBS,
| etc), gave creators the option to disable the dislike
| button, permanently banned thousands of channels that
| even mentioned "pedophilia" like Mouthy Buddha's channel
| during the Q-anon nonsense. Creators at the time made 30
| minute long videos analyzing data and proving that the
| recommended mainstream channels being pushed were
| inorganic.
|
| She helped ruin YouTube. I will not apologize. Bye Susan.
| Come back in your next life and help fix it. Downvote
| away. I do not care.
| kortilla wrote:
| How are you still digging in here? There are very clearly
| mixed opinions in these threads about youtube.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _These days YouTube is more censored than traditional
| TV._
|
| This is evident in (e.g.) WW2 documentaries where an old
| 4:3 television broadcast is simply put online, and the
| original footage had perhaps footage of corpses but on
| Youtube it is blurred.
| Aunche wrote:
| YouTube doesn't print money out of thin air. They make
| money by making advertisers happy, and advertisers will
| only buy ads if their customers are happy. This isn't
| anything new either. Creatives have always been beholden to
| censorship boards in traditional media too, which are
| typically much stricter. The fact that you so many
| YouTubers make money from criticizing YouTube is evidence
| of how much YouTubers don't understand their own privilege.
| specialist wrote:
| Are their advertisers happy?
| Jensson wrote:
| They continue to pay for ads, so yeah for now. That is
| the kind of "happiness" companies care about.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Which customers are offended by the word 'suicide' and
| would prefer something like 'unalive'?
|
| As with all of this crap, it's about taking offence on
| behalf of those who aren't offended or don't even exist.
|
| > censorship boards in traditional media too, which are
| typically much stricter.
|
| Which ones? In which country would the word 'suicide' be
| censored? There are countless other examples of topics
| that YouTube has decided are beyond discussion -- even
| the left-leaning BBC aren't as censorious.
|
| Yes, they can do what they like on their platform. But by
| the same token, we can complain about it.
| Aunche wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that unalive came from TikTok because
| they wanted to keep their app upbeat.
|
| My point is that average YouTube is going to be less
| censoring overall. The perception may be that there is
| more censorship because there is simply more content on
| it that can be censored and they have more stakeholders
| that they have to appease. BBC released The Modi
| Question, which got censored on YouTube. However, YouTube
| has significantly more Modi criticism than anything on TV
| in India. Likewise, YouTube censors covid related
| conspiracy theories, but you're still going to find more
| of them on YouTube than the BBC.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Your point seemed to be that if advertisers are unhappy,
| then YouTube can't make money. And advertisers are
| unhappy if their customers are unhappy.
|
| This is true; the problem is that the customers _aren't_
| unhappy. No sensible person cares about this kind of
| posturing, virtue-signalling, euphemism treadmill-riding
| for-lack-of-a-better-word 'wokery'. It's pushed by an
| incredibly small vocal minority of people who stand to
| benefit -- mainly because it's now possible not only to
| gain social cache but to have a whole career and make
| lots of money pushing this stuff.
|
| Yes, YouTube _may_ find that advertisers choose to virtue
| signal, 'make a stand' and leave their platform when
| their chosen magic words are not used, but ultimately
| they'll come grovelling back. YouTube shouldn't be so
| soft. Ultimately it's just the endless cycle of
| unsolicited offence-taking.
|
| And, by the way: this is all totally separate from Musk's
| management of X, which purports to be rules-based and
| morally sound but is in reality entirely ad hoc. What
| Elon says goes... until he changes his mind tomorrow. At
| least YouTube has policies, even if they're bonkers.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Demonetisation is not the same as censoring though.
| sunaookami wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
| xanderlewis wrote:
| No -- it's not quite the same. But if you systematically
| demonetise any content you don't like, in the long term
| it _does_ amount to a form of censorship.
|
| It's as if a government said 'we'll tax you 1000% if you
| criticise us on social media'. You'd still get some bozos
| online saying 'it's not censorship; people are free to
| speak' because you're not directly prevented from
| speaking. But you can imagine the effect it would have.
| mihular wrote:
| My complaint is that there isn't a family subscription option
| in my country. Also without Music. It's either personal with
| Music or damn annoying commercials. Another complaint would
| be non transparent and sometimes wrong censorship.
| CPLX wrote:
| The fact that it's a linchpin component of an illegal
| monopoly is one good reason.
| briandear wrote:
| Government-coordinated censorship during Covid. That's my
| negative opinion.
|
| Covid vax concerns were allowed during the last months of the
| Trump administration, but it suddenly became censored after
| Biden was elected.
| pavlov wrote:
| The timeline of the election coincides with the development
| of the vaccines.
|
| Moderna reported positive phase 3 trial results in November
| 2020. FDA's review was completed in December and an
| emergency authorization was granted. The full trial results
| were published in medical journals a few months later,
| around the same time as Biden entered office.
|
| So maybe it had nothing to do with Trump/Biden and simply
| was a reaction by YouTube to the proven efficacy of the new
| vaccines.
| philwelch wrote:
| That's not a coincidence--they deliberately delayed
| reporting the trial results until after the election
| because they were worried that good news would help
| Trump.
| pavlov wrote:
| Haven't heard this conspiracy theory before.
|
| So which is it: 1) The mRNA vaccine was rushed out
| without sufficient clinical trials; 2) The results from
| the clinical trials were delayed to hurt Trump.
|
| You can't have both you know. So far the far-right
| argument has been entirely based on scenario 1, but it's
| certainly interesting to know that scenario 2 also exists
| for some people.
| philwelch wrote:
| Here's reporting from MIT Technology Review, a bastion of
| far-right conspiracy theories: https://www.technologyrevi
| ew.com/2020/10/19/1010646/campaign...
|
| Operation Warp Speed was a signature effort of the Trump
| administration. As a result, the claim that the vaccine
| was being "rushed out without sufficient clinical trials"
| was made by just about all of Trump's critics.
| pavlov wrote:
| Nine months from formulating the vaccine to a successful
| Phase 3 trial is record speed. There's no way the vaccine
| was held up to somehow politically hurt the president.
|
| I'm a Trump critic and I was happy with the priority
| given to Operation Warp Speed. It's the only thing he did
| right during the pandemic. But a lot of the MAGA crowd
| are anti-vaxxers, so he's been trying to distance himself
| from the successful vaccine operation.
| pavlov wrote:
| YouTube's algorithm feeds increasingly radicalizing content
| to young people. It makes celebrities of people like Andrew
| Tate and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.
|
| Any time someone posts a YouTube link to a political
| discussion, it's guaranteed to be the worst nonsense that
| pries on people who "do their own research." (No matter if
| they're left or right on the political spectrum, there's
| endless junk on YouTube for both.)
|
| There's surely good stuff on YouTube, but as a parent I
| honestly wouldn't miss it if it disappeared overnight.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is not an "algorithm" unique to YouTube. See 24/7 news
| channels for a much earlier example. It is simply the
| nature of loosening standards on broadly available media,
| and throughout history, even strict standards have not
| always prevented the "bad" stuff from getting through.
| pavlov wrote:
| News channels don't show random 30-minute programs
| created by viewers themselves. YouTube does.
|
| Fox News and CNN may have low journalistic standards, but
| at least they have some. They also have liability. (Fox
| paid $787 million to a voting equipment manufacturer as
| settlement for lies they published in relation to the
| 2020 election.)
|
| YouTube has neither. Their algorithm will happily promote
| any nonsense that has traction. The lies that cost Fox
| $787 million continue to circulate on YouTube unabated --
| and an untold number of other lies too. Alphabet has no
| reason to prevent this.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The greatest sin of YouTube's current recommendation
| algorithm is its optimization for eyeball time (aka more
| ad capacity).
|
| Any tweaks around the edges will never be able to compete
| with that.
|
| And unfortunately that central tenet incentivizes
| creators to make clickbait content that plays on
| emotions, because that's the most reliable way to deliver
| what YouTube wants.
|
| (YouTube could decide it was optimizing for something
| else, but that would put a big dent in ad revenue)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| How do you fix this without doing something even worse?
| jart wrote:
| > It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate
|
| By banning Indian school children and sucking the oxygen
| out of competing influences like Pewdiepie.
| smcin wrote:
| Who's banning Indian school children?
| kbolino wrote:
| As targeted towards young people, YouTube's algorithm
| serves up a lot more Mr. Beast than Andrew Tate.
| throwaway32654 wrote:
| Considering the recent controversies, YouTube's algorithm
| recommending Mr. Beast to young people is no less of a
| problem.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I like a lot of content hosted on YouTube but that doesn't
| mean I like YouTube, especially under Google.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| YouTube is how I got the education I needed to get into the
| tech industry.
| zht wrote:
| I hope that when I die no one spends so much focus on the
| business aspects of what I built or the valuations
| sramam wrote:
| Doesn't that depend on what context a person knew you at -
| personal or professional?
|
| The personal side typically will center on emotional aspects
| of being human. However what you do with your intellect is
| also a major part of being human. And that part is most often
| expressed only in our professional lives.
|
| Celebrating a job well done and an outsized impact is a good
| thing - and if I may, the most "human" of things to do?
|
| RIP.
| katzinsky wrote:
| HN is essentially a business development forum so it makes
| sense that's what people here would focus on.
| Blot2882 wrote:
| It's also a science forum and a tech forum.
| layer8 wrote:
| Luckily, you will never know, so I wouldn't place much weight
| on it.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is
| objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or
| media to emerge in the past 15 years.
|
| I was always critical of YouTube from the sort of technical
| perspective than just pure UX. The core product and the core UX
| are great and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium
| because I use YouTube so much. All in all, YouTube was and
| still is internet phenomena and they definitely dominate
| internet video, imo one of the best internet product ever
| created.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| YouTube has worked well.
|
| However, I did try their YT Premium, for a while, and was
| _incredibly_ disappointed in their UI.
|
| I assume that the Premium UI was designed for people that use
| their free tier, but is very strange, to folks like me, who
| come from other paid services.
|
| But I am likely not their target audience. I suppose that YT
| Premium does well.
| nnf wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean about the UI, but I pay for
| YouTube Premium exclusively so I don't have to see ads, and
| for that purpose alone, to me it's worth it.
| tahoeskibum wrote:
| Also useful to be able to download videos for offline
| viewing, e.g., on a plane or when internet is spotty.
| yyyfb wrote:
| Also for background playback on mobile
| Physkal wrote:
| Why not just use an ad blocker?
| Novosell wrote:
| Well, YouTube premium will work on every device you can
| sign in to YouTube on. Adblock is available for the most
| part, but isn't easily available everywhere.
| Jensson wrote:
| Why not pay for a product you use instead of being a
| leech? It is perfectly fine if you wanna leech, but
| understand not everyone wanna do that.
| cnasc wrote:
| Not looking at an advertisement is not "being a leech."
|
| I glance away from billboards, I refill my drink during
| commercial breaks, I show up when the movie starts
| instead of when the preview starts. These are normal
| behaviors, not leech behaviors. The ads are not very
| sophisticated, so I don't need sophisticated measures to
| avoid them. On the web, the ads have ratcheted up the
| intensity (tracking, targeting) with technology and in
| response I have augmented my ability to ignore with
| technology. That's fair.
|
| You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and
| normal people, but this is actually a contrast between
| normal people and bootlickers. It is perfectly fine if
| you want to guzzle Kiwi Black, but understand not
| everyone wants to do that.
| samatman wrote:
| Reminder, or new thing for those not already aware: there
| was already a lawsuit about automatically skipping
| commercials, and the broadcaster in that lawsuit lost. ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_
| N...
|
| > _Additionally, Fox alleged that Dish infringed Fox 's
| distribution right through use of PTAT copies and
| AutoHop. However, mentioning that all copying were
| conducted on the user's PTAT without "change hands" and
| that the only thing distributed from Dish to the users
| was the marking data, the Court denied Fox's claim.
| Citing Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios,
| Inc., the Court concluded that the users' copying at home
| for the time shift purpose did not infringe Fox's
| copyright. Then, Dish's secondary liability was also
| denied._
| fragmede wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy. Rationalize not paying for
| content with whatever logical contortions you can come up
| with, leeching content and not paying for it clearly
| isn't going to encourage the creation of additional
| content. Pay for it via Patreon or some other platform if
| you don't want to give money to Google, but the leech
| problem is why so many things suck. Even BitTorrent sites
| hate leeches.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This is an extreme comparison, but there's more action in
| avoiding ads with an adblocker than by passively averting
| your gaze in physical media. It'd be more like if you
| chopped down billboards, installed a jammer into your
| router to deliver phone stats to tv ads, and blaring
| noises before the movie starts.
|
| I don't think it's that extreme, but it's always hard
| making comparisons between physical and digital.
|
| >You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and
| normal people, but this is actually a contrast between
| normal people and bootlickers.
|
| I prefer the framing that doesn't chastise those who are
| simply ignorant or have their own morals. I recognize
| adblock is technically "theft" so I don't want to go on a
| high horse insult the "normal people".
| throwaway32654 wrote:
| You already pay for YouTube with your data.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I, for one, will pay for good things.. but also, it's
| worth it if you watch a lot of YouTube on things like
| AppleTV or Fire Cube. Ad blockers won't work there.
| kbolino wrote:
| I'd rather move towards a web (largely) without ads than
| continue to be the product sold to advertisers rather
| than the consumer served by the platform. The constant
| escalation of the ad blocker-ad server war has also
| contributed greatly to ballooning complexity in all sorts
| of technologies.
|
| I hope YT Premium is a step in that direction, but only
| time will tell.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Well you are both the customer and the product with YT
| Premium. Yeah you don't see ads, but they are still
| tracking everything you watch and using that to deliver
| targeted ads to you on other platforms.
| pokerface_86 wrote:
| don't know any for YT ioS, i used to live with ads on
| mobile but after getting premium, even though i use an ad
| blocker + firefox on desktop, i never canceled it for a
| reason
| pokerface_86 wrote:
| also YT on a tv is difficult to set up an ad blocker for
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 2 factors:
|
| 1. less annoying for non-desktop devices. Especially when
| casting content onto my TV
|
| 2. moral niceties: Premium viewers apparently help give
| more revenue to content creators, and I tend to watch
| smaller channels. It's nice knowing I can
| disproportionately help those kinds of creators out.
|
| Also, apparently Google is in the middle of its latest
| clash with adblocking so even that can get unreliable.
| paxys wrote:
| There is no "Premium UI". Premium is simply regular YouTube
| without ads.
| darby_nine wrote:
| I think maybe the above poster is referencing the music
| product, but that's just a guess.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| No, it was the movie channel. I tried it out, because YT
| Premium had a particular show I wanted to see.
|
| The biggest issue that I had, was that I couldn't find
| shows that _I_ wanted to see. YT kept shoving a bunch of
| stuff into the UI that I wasn 't interested in. All my
| searches were littered with results that were not
| relevant to me. I suspect they were paid.
|
| The Apple App Store has the same problem. It's
| infuriating.
|
| Listen, I apologize for diverting from the real issue,
| that a tech luminary died young. I did not know her, but
| it sounds like she was popular, and did well.
| lokar wrote:
| Do you mean YouTube tv?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sorry. I thought they were the same.
|
| Anyway, yes. YouTube TV.
| talldayo wrote:
| > and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium
|
| Why?
|
| Serious question, too. You can sideload clients that give you
| every single feature of YouTube Premium for free. Unless
| you're expressly lazy, like being taken advantage of or enjoy
| watching advertisements, there's really no excuse. YouTube
| Premium is the "I'm trapped in this place and you people have
| finally gotten me" fee - you can circument it all together by
| just, not using YouTube's software. Newpipe is must-have on
| Android, I'm certain something similar exists for iOS. I run
| SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't get a
| single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the
| installation and usage of Open Source software.
|
| I use YouTube a lot, but between uBlock Origin and
| SponsorBlock (which I set-and-forget like 4 years ago) I
| don't have a single gripe with the experience. I hear people
| contemplate paying YouTube for a worse experience and it
| gives me hives. The content is on a server; _you_ are making
| yourself miserable by acquiescing to a harmful client. Paying
| for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to
| the Walled Garden.
| sulam wrote:
| Why do I pick up trash off the floor that I didn't put
| there? Why do I tip for good service? Why do I bother
| responding to posts like this?
|
| The answer is the same to all these questions: because I'd
| rather not live in a world where everyone is a taker.
| talldayo wrote:
| You're not picking up trash. You're paying for trash and
| encouraging the ad-littering business by even
| acknowledging it exists. If you consider advertising bad
| enough to pay money to get rid of it, why would you pay
| that money to the business putting up ads? Because you
| refuse to leave their client? Because you don't want to
| acknowledge the scary world of choosing something better?
|
| I see a lot of people say this, where they despise
| YouTube and it's advertisement scheme but somehow
| mentally justify it to themselves that Google deserves
| their $10/month. Before any of you ask "What's wrong with
| the world these days!?" again, reflect on what you're
| paying for and how these companies sucker you into buying
| it. The free market can pound sand, Google has you right
| where they want you.
| least wrote:
| > Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world
| of choosing something better?
|
| You could choose something better by consuming media from
| sources that don't engage in the malpractices you're
| complaining about. There's plenty of media available for
| purchase without advertisements or subscriptions
| attached. There's also plenty of media on offer for free
| from the people who created it.
|
| I'm not even anti-piracy, but your rationalization is
| just ridiculous. No, you're not sticking it to the man;
| you're being subsidized by people that are willing to pay
| for content they consume.
|
| I've pirated a ton of content/software in my lifetime and
| I use adblockers. Countless mp3s, video games,
| applications, movies, tv shows, and articles online
| consumed by me without paying for it. Sometimes it was
| impossible for me to pay for it because of regional
| licensing, but a whole lot more of it was simply because
| I didn't want to pay for it or I couldn't afford it.
|
| Now I pay for music and other media streaming services,
| including Youtube Premium. I pay for the games I play and
| I pay for a lot of software that I use. Does that balance
| things out? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm definitely not
| someone that is pretending I'm on some moral crusade
| against advertisements by circumventing them.
| talldayo wrote:
| I'm not pirating media people put on YouTube. When you
| upload content to YouTube, you are generally taking
| unlicensed (or provisionally legal derivative content)
| and sublicensing it to YouTube for distribution and
| monetization. You can argue that I'm pirating _Google 's_
| copy of the content, but I'm not short-changing the
| original uploader by refusing Google's ads. I'm
| exclusively ensuring that Google's business model is less
| profitable.
|
| > you're being subsidized by people that are willing to
| pay for content they consume.
|
| Good! Those people hate YouTube too, otherwise would be
| perfectly satisfied with the default service. If Google
| kills YouTube and forces people to finally create a
| better system of content ownership then humanity will be
| all the better for it. Google doesn't deserve this
| content, they are poor stewards of the service and
| deserve to be deposed for their lazy management of a
| shared resource. If we were talking about ad-free
| Facebook subscriptions HN would be wearing the shoe on
| the other foot, ripping people to shreds for supporting a
| demonstrably destructive business. But YouTube is
| different, because we all have some incentive to prop
| _poor_ Google up.
|
| I feel zero empathy contributing to "the problem" of
| ruining the service. This isn't the tragedy of the
| commons, it's the progression of corporate greed. Keep
| paying for YouTube Premium, tell me with any honesty your
| contributions are making the world better or providing a
| more complete user experience. You can't.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >but I'm not short-changing the original uploader by
| refusing Google's ads.
|
| I'd be surprised if Google didn't take adblocked users
| into account when administering pay, because the pay
| scale isn't some flat "X money's per Y thousand views".
| So yes, you are indirectly short-changing them.
|
| >If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally
| create a better system of content ownership then humanity
| will be all the better for it.
|
| or we get a worse format like Tiktok taking over. The
| most popular reddit alternative during its "protests" was
| Discord. I don't consider that an obective net good for
| the free web.
|
| That's not to say Reddit deserves to stay alive, just a
| consideration that this forced migration will not
| necessarily lead to a desired solution of "new website
| like X but without the bullshit"
| least wrote:
| > I'm not pirating media people put on YouTube. When you
| upload content to YouTube, you are generally taking
| unlicensed (or provisionally legal derivative content)
| and sublicensing it to YouTube for distribution and
| monetization. You can argue that I'm pirating Google's
| copy of the content, but I'm not short-changing the
| original uploader by refusing Google's ads. I'm
| exclusively ensuring that Google's business model is less
| profitable.
|
| If I write a song and put it up on bandcamp for purchase
| and on youtube with the intention to monetize it through
| Youtube's monetization options, how do you arrive at the
| conclusion that you're not pirating my content when
| you're circumventing the medium through which that is
| monetized? Advertisers will pay Youtube for an
| advertisement on their platform -> Youtube places
| advertisements in front of my video -> Revenue from
| advertisements is determined by how many times an
| advertisement is viewed on my video. So circumventing
| advertisement reduces the view count and thus the
| revenue. This is making it both less profitable for
| Youtube and for me.
|
| > Good! Those people hate YouTube too, otherwise would be
| perfectly satisfied with the default service.
|
| The willingness to pay for no advertising is not
| equivalent to hating Youtube. If you hate Youtube, why do
| you use it?
|
| You might say it's because the content is there. Why is
| the content there and not somewhere else? Because Youtube
| incentivizes people to upload their creations to it. If
| it is somewhere else, why not watch it there or pay for
| it there?
|
| > If Google kills YouTube and forces people to finally
| create a better system of content ownership then humanity
| will be all the better for it.
|
| Why would Google killing off Youtube force any change to
| how content ownership works?
|
| > Google doesn't deserve this content, they are poor
| stewards of the service and deserve to be deposed for
| their lazy management of a shared resource.
|
| If they didn't deserve the content, then people wouldn't
| upload their content to Youtube. It is every creator's
| prerogative to choose how they distribute their content
| and there's a reason many do so on Youtube.
|
| I could levy plenty of criticisms against Youtube just as
| many creators on the platform could but there's no
| coercion involved here. People want what Youtube has to
| offer.
|
| > If we were talking about ad-free Facebook subscriptions
| HN would be wearing the shoe on the other foot, ripping
| people to shreds for supporting a demonstrably
| destructive business. But YouTube is different, because
| we all have some incentive to prop poor Google up.
|
| What incentive are you speaking of? If ad-free Facebook
| subscriptions were tied into revenue-sharing with content
| creators on the platform, it'd be as reasonable as
| Youtube Premium.
|
| > I feel zero empathy contributing to "the problem" of
| ruining the service. This isn't the tragedy of the
| commons, it's the progression of corporate greed.
|
| I don't care that you're a selfish person acting in their
| own self interest; I'm no different. I dislike that
| you're trying to portray your behavior as righteous.
|
| > Keep paying for YouTube Premium, tell me with any
| honesty your contributions are making the world better or
| providing a more complete user experience. You can't.
|
| Paying for Youtube Premium supports the upkeep of the
| platform and directly contributes to creators through
| revenue sharing. Both the platform and its creators make
| for a better world. You could absolutely replace the
| platform, but there's undeniable value in one that allows
| basically anyone to share what they have to offer to the
| world and create mechanisms to monetize their content.
| The content speaks for itself. There's countless hours of
| educational and entertaining content. There's content for
| niche subjects and hobbies that would never have appeared
| in traditional media.
| sulam wrote:
| First of all we are talking about YouTube here, not
| Google as a whole. Secondly, my argument is simple and
| basic physics. If everyone behaved like you, YouTube and
| services like it would not exist. Your straw man
| arguments aren't needed for me to justify my decisions.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > You're paying for trash and encouraging the ad-
| littering business by even acknowledging it exists.
|
| This feels like a "you participate in society" argument.
| Yes, it'd be better if all intrusive ads were banned or
| heavily regulated. But that's not reality and I can't
| simply withdraw from the internet in protest.
|
| >If you consider advertising bad enough to pay money to
| get rid of it, why would you pay that money to the
| business putting up ads?
|
| it's a calculus of "energy spent" from fighting vs value
| gained from "giving in". There's fortuntaely more value
| than "remove ads" so that's how I justify it.
|
| >Because you refuse to leave their client?
|
| because I can't leave the client. I've been de-googling
| for the past year or so and I realize the main two things
| I can't leave are
|
| 1. Youtube, because it basically has a monopoly on video
| content.
|
| 2. gmail, mostly because there'd be a huge burden ediing
| almost 20 years of accounts all through the web to leave.
| From random sites I visit once in a blue moon to my banks
| and bills. I'd have gmail haunting me for years even if I
| dropped it today.
|
| If there's one thing that has a reckoning coming, it's
| Youtube.
|
| >Because you don't want to acknowledge the scary world of
| choosing something better?
|
| I do it all the time. There is always friction so I think
| it's a bit dishonest to phrase it as "choosing something
| better". Firefox still has quirks with translation and
| the occasional weird interaction with factors like video
| calls, even after days of researching tweaking settings
| and installing extensions. Picking up PC gaming still has
| tons of configuration issues and hardware considerations
| compared to popping in a disc into a console. There's
| simply a lot of intersting information I miss out on from
| not browsing reddit, things that the other 3 forum social
| media (including HN) just don't catch. It's never
| objectively better.
|
| >reflect on what you're paying for and how these
| companies sucker you into buying it.
|
| I suppose you can criticism any bill with that logic.
| Water is a natural resource, why am I paying for
| plumbing? video games are just code, all code should be
| free, why pay for video games? Why am I paying $100 for
| this art commission when someone in Venezuela would do it
| for a dime (disclaimer: this is probably a very wrong
| conversion)?
|
| Some of these are societal (we're never going to escape
| taxes, some of these should hopefully be so you can
| support other workers instead of exploiting them. It's
| your call either way, but I won't fault someone
| (especially someone decently off) for choosing
| convinience of entertainment over some grand stand
| against "the free market".
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Unless you're expressly lazy
|
| Yes, that's me. I sometimes even pay other people to
| prepare meals and manufacture clothing for me!
| kubectl_h wrote:
| > I run SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't
| get a single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the
| installation and usage of Open Source software.
|
| I have YT Premium and it works perfectly on every device I
| have and I have never had to configure anything nor
| research anything to not see an ad. I only vaguely
| understand some of the phrases or words you are using (have
| no clue what a newpipe is, but kind of understand what
| sideloading) is. I do not care to ever fiddle with my
| devices, there are more important or at least gratifying
| things in this world then futzing around with and tweaking
| devices.
|
| > Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for
| submission to the Walled Garden.
|
| If this is the great battle you have chosen to wage with
| your precious, fleeting time on earth, by all means, go
| with God -- but a lot of people really don't give a damn
| about Walled Gardens.
| talldayo wrote:
| My brother in Christ, you work in the technology sector
| for a living. Don't descend from your ivory tower to
| lecture me about better ways to spend your time. If you
| have time to write this comment or sign up for Premium
| YouTube, you have time to figure out how to better your
| life through technology. You can't convince me that your
| negligence is somehow my problem.
|
| You make money as a salaried worker, or at least I'd
| hope. A fraction of that salary, your _time_ made
| manifest, you willingly donate to a business that makes a
| service you don 't tolerate by-default. Not only are you
| creating a treadmill of time-donation, you're
| ideologically supporting a service you don't like. Then
| you buy into a "premium" mindset to separate yourself
| from the ad-eating masses and give you a false sense of
| patronage. You are enabling a system you despise and then
| defending it from criticism when people attack it online;
| if Google execs could see this they'd be shedding tears
| of joy.
|
| So, here you are. Trapped by either Apple's $99/year
| Idiot Tax or your own unwillingness to flip Android's
| developer mode switch. I guarantee you that the 15
| minutes you dedicate to rectifying this problem would pay
| for itself over the course of a year. But you refuse,
| clinging to your corporate benefactor, insistent that
| paying more money will somehow make the world a better
| place.
|
| There's no reason to call this place "Hacker News" if the
| users are just going to victimize themselves and
| commiserate with corporations. If paying for YouTube was
| inherently righteous then none of you would feel the need
| to pop up and justify it in the first place. But everyone
| knows YouTube isn't a charity.
| shufflerofrocks wrote:
| I use revanced, smarttube, and yt-dlp. but I also have
| premium, because it is an exceptional service.
|
| It's about 2 things
|
| 1. the principle. You get something, you pay for it.
|
| 2. the practicality. Youtube cannot run on fumes. It needs
| to generate funds from somewhere
|
| If everyone decides to not take premium, it only
| incentivises youtube to harvest your data for a profit
| (yes, they're already doing it but that's not the point).
| Premium immediately pays for the product, and provides
| Youtube with the cash to run it's servers and pay it's
| content creators.
|
| Not to mention, premium is pretty darned good, provides
| almost all the features and functionality that are
| available through other clients.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels.
|
| I would say it's more a business that rests on its
| monopolization of the market. As a product there's plenty I
| like about YouTube, but it dominated the market through the use
| of many highly anti-competitive strategies, and has what many
| would consider (and what may well be proven to be) an illegal
| monopoly.
|
| You can't deny its impact, but to give such high praise to the
| management seems rather misguided to me.
| edanm wrote:
| In what way is YouTube an illegal monopoly?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Alphabet has engaged in many anti-competitive business
| practices to promote YouTube's monopoly.
|
| To name a few, Alphabet is currently being sued by the DoJ
| for illegally monopolising digital advertising technology.
| That technology, which directly integrates with youtube
| (and which you or I could not integrate with our own
| competing youtube-like product), is one of the key reasons
| that youtube has become as successful as it is.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-
| googl...
|
| They have also recently lost a lawsuit regarding the
| legality of their search monopoly, which likely also
| contributed to the success of youtube.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-
| us...
|
| The way they leverage the OHA to ensure YouTube is shipped
| with every Android phone is also highly anti-competitive,
| and isn't too different from the IE case against Microsoft.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-
| on...
|
| The same concern exists in the smart TV market.
|
| While it's not illegal (as far as I know), the practice of
| burning through billions of dollars until your competitors
| are gone and you have an unassailable market dominance is
| also certainly anti-competitive, and that really has been
| one of the other key ingredients in youtube's success.
|
| None of these are management practices that I would
| consider worthy of congratulating.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| The irony is that despite all of this monopolization and
| lying to advertisers about the reach of their ads YouTube
| is still not profitable.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Alphabet don't publish YouTube's profit margins, so I
| don't think you know that to be a fact. I'd personally be
| rather surprised if it wasn't profitable though.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I know this is horrible logic here but: Alphabet not
| wanting to publish the margins of what is otherwise their
| top3 best known product says a lot in and of itself.
| Either that it wouldn't be a pretty image (even if it is
| in fact commodifying other profitable sectors), or it'd
| reveal some skeletons (which are being revealed in real
| time, but it slows down the reveal).
| supertrope wrote:
| Leveraging YouTube's market share to hobble Windows Phone.
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-orders-microsoft-to-
| remove...
|
| Carriage dispute with Roku.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/roku-reaches-agreement-
| with-...
| sytelus wrote:
| YouTube is absolutely the business that is resting on laurels,
| just like Google Maps and Gmail. Sometime I wonder if these
| products have any real active development teams at all besides
| ads. YouTube massively screwed with users by forcing poorly
| executed botched migration to YouTube Music. Even outsiders can
| see that this was entirely internal Google politics which
| powerful people like Wojcicki should have been able to avoid
| but she didn't. It just makes me wonder if these billionaire
| leaders of Google products really care anymore about anything.
| There is visibly an utter lack of hunger at the top and these
| people clearly should have been spending more time with family
| leaving these products with more hungry minds. YouTube
| recommendations are crap and it's still amazing that in 2024
| just clicking one video will fill up most of recommendations
| with same thing. It never got around to incentivize creators to
| produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing
| massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins.
| TikTok took full advantage of this but YouTube CEO just kept
| napping at the wheel. Ultimately, the original product mostly
| just kept going but the measure of success is not about
| retaining audience but what it could have been if there was an
| ambitious visionary leader at the helm.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > It never got around to incentivize creators to produce
| concise content and to this day creators keep producing
| massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins.
|
| Why on Earth would you _want_ shorter videos? The _best_
| thing about YouTube is that it 's one of the only places you
| can find quality medium-to-long-form content.
| sytelus wrote:
| Why on earth you want 10X longer video with same
| information content as the shorter video?
| polotics wrote:
| Clearly the add-supported side, that likes to pad and pad
| and show more adds, is working against the premium/fee-
| supported side, that wants to maximise value and
| engagement. Premium subscribers should be able to give
| feedback on a video's density IMHO...
| HPsquared wrote:
| Length is shown in the thumbnail. Too long, no click,
| less views. I also wouldn't be surprised if the
| recommendation algo uses premium status as an input
| rajup wrote:
| Why on earth would you watch a 1.5 hour movie when you
| can watch a 2 min TikTok that explains the entire story?
|
| In a world full of distractions I for one love the more
| slow-paced videos than "shorts" churned out by content
| mills designed to feed the modern day digital ADHD...
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Few years ago "long burn" story telling was hot and we
| are still feeling the effects. Take any show on Netflix
| and it will be 8 45min episodes from which first 3 are
| absolutely garbage filler.
|
| Youtube learned the wrong lesson and started to optimize
| the algorithm for retention and length. It is annoying to
| click for a review of some product that looks like a
| lengthy one with probably tests and what not only to see
| painfully slow unboxing and a wikipedia read of the
| history of the product and company and then sponsor read
| and then they turn on the device for a minute and give
| arbitrary score.
|
| Exact same info could have been communicated in
| 30seconds, but then they wouldn't get sponsor money and
| mid video ad roll
| rajup wrote:
| I beg to disagree. I don't watch movies to "get
| information". I watch movies (and long form YouTube
| videos) to be entertained. Why travel places? You can
| look up photos and videos online and get the same
| "information".
| johnisgood wrote:
| 10 minutes of a shitty movie is too long, but one great
| movie might be not enough and I want a TV series out of
| it!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I find it a small price to pay if a few videos are too
| long (you can usually tell within three minutes anyway),
| to have a platform that generally encourages 30 minute
| videos and even 3 hour videos that do have content.
|
| There's almost no meaningful 3 minute content possible,
| so a platform like TikTok that only works for short
| videos is basically condemned to be meaning-less, to be
| pure entertainment.
| Blot2882 wrote:
| Maybe not what the commenter was saying, but there is a
| difference between great multi-hour essays and pointless
| rants stretching out their length to meet a minimum ad
| requirement. I like watching a lot of multi hour videos,
| but you can tell the difference between one with substance
| and one repeating the same thing over and over so they can
| "clock out."
|
| That's all due to changes by YouTube to reward length and
| frequency, which of course makes sense for maximizing their
| ad revenue. But the result is creators are incentivized to
| pump out 20-minute fluff videos, not well edited/written
| videos.
|
| People on here complain about SEO sites being filled with
| meaningless garbage. That's what YouTube is starting to be.
| The difference is their search bar still works whereas
| Google's will only give you the garbage. Though I still get
| "such and such breaks down their career" even though I've
| never clicked on that.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I agree that there are a lot of inflated videos to hit
| some ad target. But the solution is not to encourage
| people to create short videos, or at the very least, not
| the way TikTok did, making it almost impossible to
| popularize anything longer than 3 minutes.
|
| And despite all the dredge, there is _a lot_ of good
| content on YouTube, at least in certain niches. Video
| essays on media and politics, lots of video-game analysis
| and other fan communities, history content, lots of
| e-sports to name just a handful that I personally enjoy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| YouTube videos were originally limited to 5 or 10 minutes I
| think. And probably 480p or so. You have to remember when
| it started, video on mobile didn't exist and there was
| absolutely no bandwidth for it. So people watching YouTube
| were watching it on their PC, probably with a 1024x768 CRT
| screen, and that's assuming they had something faster than
| dial-up internet.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh, I do remember, I was around in the early days. I
| think (but maybe that came later?) longer form videos did
| exist, but only paying accounts could post them.
| swalsh wrote:
| I think googles peering agreements are possibly the only reason
| YouTube is viable as a free service. Hard to compete against a
| company who basically doesn't have to pay for bandwidth.
| newshackr wrote:
| Google also invests many billions of dollars to build their
| internet network and parts of the public Internet so it is
| hardly free
| bushbaba wrote:
| Eh close to free. This is the Google edge nodes in ISPs.
| But Google isn't the only one with such an arrangement.
| Akamai, Netflix and a few others have same cost structure
| for in isp nodes.
| ghaff wrote:
| To a fairly casual observer like myself, YouTube early on
| looked like mostly a platform for massive video copyright
| infringement--especially before home video became so relatively
| cheap and easy. I don't use it nearly as much as some here but
| it definitely transformed into something much different for the
| most part and managed to make it work as a business (at least
| as part of Google).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years
| before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to
| streaming (2007).
|
| In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections
| became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy
| adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home
| recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog
| video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c) there was no
| "on demand" anything, as most media flowed over centrally-
| programmed cable or broadcast subscriptions, and (d) people
| capturing video on mobile devices was rare (first gen iPhone
| couldn't) but obviously a future growth area.
|
| So early YouTube was literally unlike anything that came
| before -- watch a thing you want, whenever you want.
| treyd wrote:
| The slogan "Broadcast Yourself" was really inspiring at the
| time, because it actually was kinda hard to do that at
| scale in video.
| ghaff wrote:
| And Cisco didn't acquire Flip until 2009.
|
| Really most of the content that YouTube had available _was_
| material recorded off of broadcast /cable which was mostly
| not available otherwise unless you had recorded it or
| gotten it off a torrent.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Wow I just realized how old YouTube is. My video on YouTube
| was uploaded on 2006 and it is still there.
|
| I remember uploading it from my Sony handcam, then editing
| it in Sony Vegas and exporting it to make sure it hits the
| required YT file upload limit.
| qingcharles wrote:
| And it was a video dating site when it started!
| kylec wrote:
| That was also an era where bandwidth to serve content was
| extremely expensive, I still don't know how 2005 YouTube
| was able to find a way to make serving user-uploaded videos
| for free financially viable, but that was a HUGE component
| of their success.
| ghaff wrote:
| Self-hosting video at scale is still pretty expensive
| although using CDN can reduce it.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, the DMCA had just passed, which basically
| eliminated liability for hosting copyrighted video
| content as long as the infringement was laundered through
| a service provider.
|
| I honestly don't think YouTube would exist without that
| particular piece of regulatory capture.
|
| Contrast the video and podcast ecosystems.
|
| Podcasts are arguably much healthier (the publishers
| maintain creative control), and are certainly
| decentralized.
| takinola wrote:
| I think the secret was being acquired by Google. Without
| the deep financial pockets and strategic patience of
| Google, I doubt they would have been able to become what
| they are today.
| Kye wrote:
| How YouTube would pay for itself was one of those top
| topics back in that thin slice of time between when
| YouTube took off and Google bought it.
|
| The Techmeme page from the day of the announcement
| (October 9, 2006) if you want to dig into it:
| https://www.techmeme.com/061009/h2355
| Kye wrote:
| On-demand was a thing before, but it was mediated through
| slow, glitchy cable and satellite boxes. There was also a
| thriving scene of RSS-delivered web TV shows.
| -mlv wrote:
| Even cheap digital cameras back then could record video +
| audio.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Yeah I remember watching Seinfeld and full seasons of
| cartoons on early YouTube. People basically just uploaded
| their whole pirated video collections there
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| To a less casual observer like myself, early YouTube looked
| like a bastion of protection for fair use of copyrighted
| material.
|
| Sadly, the copyright cartel swiftly attacked and all the
| regular people lost their rights. It seems like the lesson
| learned is that the copyright-owning corporations can't be
| trusted to play fairly or meet in the middle on fair use. We
| really need to just abolish copyright laws entirely.
| yzydserd wrote:
| > I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube
| at this point.
|
| More than 20,000 hours over at most 18 years is at least 3
| hours per day on average. That's a lot of watching.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The average person spends 5 hours/day on their phone and it's
| likely most of it is passive watching (YouTube, TikTok, etc).
| So 3 hours/day doesn't sound like too much.
| lasc4r wrote:
| My dad uses it to get fascist/right-wing propaganda for about 4
| hours every night. All nicely monetized for any grifter willing
| to debase themselves for a potential fortune. Truly novel, but
| not well thought through or done with any care at all besides
| profits which is par for the course in silicon valley.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Your idea of fascism must be rather tame, considering
| YouTube's active censorship of anything even slightly right-
| of-center.
| lasc4r wrote:
| It hardly needs to be violently racist or whatever
| conception you have in your mind to be fascist propaganda.
| Rather the opposite if you take a minute to consider what
| makes for effective propaganda.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| The word fascism needs to stop being tossed around so
| carelessly. Words ought to be precise and meaningful.
| vsuperpower2021 wrote:
| Tech companies should spend more time banning people from
| talking about things I would personally prefer they didn't.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| YouTube has very much been resting on its laurels, they were
| innovative 20 years ago when they started. For the past decade
| or so they have mostly just rested on their laurels allowing
| the auto-moderation to rampage and destroy people's
| livelihoods.
|
| They've been way behind on adding standard features that their
| competitors see lots of benefit from. For example, YouTube was
| years late to the 'channel memberships' game despite the
| popularity of Twitch and Patreon. YouTube still lacks many of
| the popular streaming features from Twitch, and only relatively
| recently got around to adding stuff like polls. I can't think
| of any feature in the past decade that was a YouTube innovation
| rather than an innovation from competitors that was copied over
| years later.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've often wondered why YT hasn't released a subscription fee
| or donate type button where they could easily take a small
| nominal processing fee while removing the friction of forcing
| use of 3rd party services. Is liability from that kind of
| money movement too much for them to care with all of the much
| less risky money they are making?
| sulam wrote:
| They have Memberships now and I wouldn't be surprised if
| they don't have a donate button hidden away somewhere.
| trogdor wrote:
| They have both. Subscription fee is channel memberships,
| and donation is the "Thanks" button.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| As others said they have both now. Main issue is the same
| with any other kind of charity: most people won't do it so
| it's a neglible factor without incentive (which makes it
| cease to be a donation in my eyes).
|
| But youtube's main services are free, so that's harder to
| pull off compared to stuff like Patreon. Offering exclusive
| videos probably doesn't outpace the ad revenue from "free"
| videos either (and if we're being frank, you're still bound
| to YT's rules. So you can't offer truly "extra" content
| free from censorship or copyright or whatnot.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| You're allowed to have content with unpublished links or
| not discoverable by search. I guess you could publish
| that content via email to sponsors that could obviously
| be forwarded, but that would be such a small number. I'm
| not familiar with peculiarities of subscription to
| channels as I never browse logged in, but do they not
| allow for videos to be visible only to subscribed users?
| Seems like that would be simple enough to do.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >but do they not allow for videos to be visible only to
| subscribed users?
|
| They do. But as explained, the revenue gained by maybe
| 100 users paying $5/month won't necessarily exceed an
| average video release of 10,000 "free" views. It's a "
| free service", so most subscribers (let alone
| unsubscribed viewers) won't join the membership for a few
| extra videos. It's a similar issue Reddit is trying to do
| right now with paid subreddits.
|
| The idea can work, Nebula as a "competitor" works off
| this model. But I don't think it can be tacked on 20
| years later onto a "free" service.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's still for me much more useable than the competitors.
| There have been quite a lot of features added in the 20 years
| - being able to choosse the viewing quality, variable
| playback speed, rapid transcription for subtitles, live video
| where if you join late you can start from the begining at 2x
| till it catches up. I still interenally curse if I'm made to
| watch video on a non youtube player as there's usually
| something that doesn't work. Youtube is often the only one to
| work ok on slow connections.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Even if the tech was better, the network effect has long
| taken place. Content creators get paid, and a few get paid
| enough to do it full time. They can't just jump to another
| platform and expect to maintain that, and without that the
| fans won't migrate either.
|
| Mixer is one of the best examples of this. MSFT paid
| hundreds of millions for exclusivity for some of the most
| popular streamers and people complimented how it felt much
| smoother than Twitch. But that wasn't enough to get off the
| ground for MS. Youtube is an even bigger behemoth to
| tackle.
| xnx wrote:
| The way YouTube was caught offguard by TikTok is even more
| significant than than the way Google was caught offguard by
| ChatGPT.
| yas_hmaheshwari wrote:
| Well said! Having used almost all video learning platforms
| (Oreilly, skillshare, pluralsight, Coursera etc.), I now
| believe that YouTube is the superset of all platforms.
|
| > Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here,
| is nowhere
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'll preface this with the most important part that cancer
| sucks and I wish it not even on my worst enemies. I hope
| Susan's family can find some peace.
|
| >but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in
| tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't
| buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of
| $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined.
|
| it's very weird because "successful" doesn't mean "makes the
| most profit" here. It's undoubedtly a huge and challenging
| infrastructure to manage, but it apparently took Google over a
| decade to start being profitable. I don't know if that's some
| hollywood accounting or commodification to ads, but in many
| ways I feel like YT outspent the rest of the competition and in
| some ways stifled more efficient ways to deliver video content.
|
| I feel a bit bad because it's clear YT has been turning the
| script for some time, and while Susan took a lot of that blame
| these wheels were turning long before she became CEO (and turn
| long after she stepped down). But that just shows why
| monopolies are bad. I do hope something better for creators
| takes over eventually.
| sgammon wrote:
| I would also vote for the black bar if possible
| 1234554321a wrote:
| I want to vote against this. Thanks.
| sgammon wrote:
| I'm honestly curious, why? I didn't expect to be downvoted.
| postatic wrote:
| We argue about agile processes, front end frameworks, languages,
| microservices, revenues, fundings, options, shares, hustles and
| all and at the end of the day we return back to the earth.
| silisili wrote:
| The thought helps ground me(no pun intended), whether during
| aforementioned battles at work or worrying over something in
| life.
|
| Not really religious, but always liked the short line
|
| 'For dust you are, and to dust you shall return'
| DanielleMolloy wrote:
| RIP. Her son just died early this year, from a drug overdose.
|
| https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/31/marco-t...
| sva_ wrote:
| > Troper's autopsy found high concentrations of cocaine,
| amphetamine, alprazolam (Xanax),
|
| What a strange mix.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The amphetamine is almost assuredly from the cocaine, so that
| just means they were doing coke and Xanax.
|
| Xanax as a party drug is just strange in general.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Maybe it was the end of the night? People take benzos to
| calm down and/or sleep. And I guess some people to just
| feel like zombies
| fsckboy wrote:
| perhaps he took prescription xanax on the regular, and,
| feeling anxiety, popped some
| oyebenny wrote:
| She is internet history.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Crazy how so many young people are just dying of cancer these
| days.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Crazy, right?
| sumedh wrote:
| You are getting aware of it more due to social media.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| That must be it. Nothing of relevance that could point in any
| other direction happened over the last 4 years. Sure.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Oh brother.
| blangk wrote:
| It does seem somewhat relevant
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| It's a doomer, conspiratorial take without any evidence,
| especially when it's a vailed insinuation.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| All evidence starts as anecdotal observation. Even the
| world's most groundbreaking papers are, at their root, a
| collection of anecdotal observations others look into.
|
| Secondly, absence of evidence, is not evidence of
| absence. Just because there's no evidence for something
| being harmful, doesn't mean there's any evidence proving
| the something isn't harmful.
|
| So look, I'm not an antivaxxer, but I say, "prove it."
| Instead of saying "there's no evidence it's causing
| cancer," write papers proving that it can't be. I have no
| problem with the burden of proof being on for-profit
| billion-dollar companies repeatedly convicted of
| wrongdoing.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| You just spent an entire paragraph pointing out a logical
| fallacy and then immediately follow up by trying to have
| someone prove a negative? Come on.
|
| And the burden of proof generally is on the person making
| a claim. If someone says or implies that a vaccine causes
| cancer, then it's on _them_ to prove that, not on the
| vaccine maker to magically prove a negative.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > If someone says or implies that a vaccine causes
| cancer, then it's on them to prove that, not on the
| vaccine maker to magically prove a negative.
|
| This does not make any sense, because the vaccine maker
| is also making a claim:
|
| "This drug is safe, effective, does not cause cancer or
| other harm in either the short term or the long term, and
| is in every way trustworthy."
|
| In which case, the burden is on them to prove it, just
| like any claim from any company about any product. Even
| more so when they have convictions and a $2.3 billion
| fine historically for _lying_. It's also realistic, I
| believe, to say that when you are in a rush against
| competition combined with the world being in a panic,
| that is a perfect atmosphere for lies and omission.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| You can't prove a negative. It's _impossible_ to prove
| that something is 100% safe in all possible cases forever
| and always and will never cause cancer or interact with
| another drug or cause some unknown rare side effect. It's
| impossible to predict every single interaction and edge
| case. We all know this, it's basic logic, so I don't know
| why I have to repeat it.
|
| Furthermore, their claim is not and has never been "This
| drug is safe, effective, does not cause cancer or other
| harm in either the short term or the long term, and is in
| every way trustworthy." as an absolute. They explicitly
| release numbers such as effectiveness, efficacy, etc
| which show _how safe_ , _how effective_ , etc a
| drug/vaccine is.
|
| Just because you ignore those numbers and choose to
| believe your own absolute interpretation of what they say
| doesn't somehow mean that is what was said.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Egh... no. They wanted the FDA to put it under NDA for 75
| years. Which a judge said was bull.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-
| importanc...
|
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-
| business/why-a-...
|
| I don't have to be anti-vax at all (and I've got the full
| regular schedule) to say that's acting suspicious and
| like you have something to hide.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Egh... no. They wanted the FDA to put it under NDA for
| 75 years. Which a judge said was bull.
|
| Cool, how does that any way shape or form relate to this
| discussion? Did they make the claim that they are 100%
| safe and will never cause interactions ever? If so, show
| me the exact quote where they said that. There are many
| reasons to ask for an NDA, and lying is only one of them.
| Hanlon's razor and all that.
|
| Are the numbers incorrect? That is what _actually_
| matters, in the end.
|
| > I don't have to be anti-vax at all (and I've got the
| full regular schedule) to say that's acting suspicious
| and like you have something to hide.
|
| Just because something _looks_ suspicious doesn't mean
| that it is. You are _choosing to believe_ that it is, and
| that is influencing your response.
|
| You still haven't shown any sort of study or proof that
| vaccines (or even this vaccine specifically) cause
| cancer, by the way. If you're so sure they do, I'm sure
| there's something to back that up. After all, Moderna has
| provided the data to back their own claims up already.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| A. I didn't say they did cause cancer. I don't believe
| they do. I am sympathetic to those who want more
| investigation.
|
| B. Hanlon's razor is flawed, as well-executed malice is
| indistinguishable from stupidity.
|
| C. Contrarywise, you are choosing to believe that it is
| not suspicious behavior; when being suspicious of a
| company with decades of fines and convictions is arguably
| quite reasonable.
|
| D. There are many reasons for your wife to not be talking
| to you, have a dating profile, and have legal letters in
| the mail. Divorce planning is just one of them.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Nowhere does it say "NDA" in the articles you posted.
| That year number is derived from the number of pages the
| FDA can produce a month with current staffing levels, as
| funded by the federal government. If you wan the FDA to
| become more efficient, maybe we should lobby the federal
| government to provide more funding so it can act quicker.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| As though Pfizer didn't have quite a few of the documents
| already and could have released them themselves...
|
| And as though $7.2 billion a year isn't enough to get the
| job done.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| No, there is a rise in colon cancer among people in their 20s
| and 30s, and scientists are saying it's probably ultra
| processed foods
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Overall, the incidence of cancer in the US among people
| under the age of 50 rose from 95.6 per 100,000 to 103.8
| from 2000 to 2021.[ Colon cancer is one of the biggest
| drivers, but there are also a few others like kidney and
| thyroid that have seen big increases. Some of this, like
| thyroid cancer, might just be due to better detection of
| smaller, less serious cases. Fortunately, there are also
| some positive trends, like much lower rates of lung cancer
| (due to less smoking and cleaner air, presumably) and a
| decline in melanoma (skin) cancer after an increase in the
| early-to-mid 2000s (related to the rise and fall of tanning
| salons, I assume).
|
| https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-
| network/explorer/applicat...
| rchaud wrote:
| She was the same age as Steve Jobs when he passed.
| robertoandred wrote:
| 56 isn't young.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Rest in peace Susan
| mrkramer wrote:
| Such a devastating news from the human therefore emotional
| perspective; just 6 months after her freshman son overdosed, now
| she is gone too. I hope they will be reunited in the afterlife.
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| S
| pshirshov wrote:
| You may ask me where my tinfoil hat is, but something strange
| seems to be happening. My neighbour who never smoked suddenly
| discovered he has terminal lung cancer. Radon tests in his house
| were negative. The cases of early lung cancer in healthy non-
| smoking individuals seem to be on rise in Ireland over last 5-6
| years according to the official statistics. In the news I'm
| reading about massive amount of cases of persistent cough which
| "takes weeks to resolve".
| sampo wrote:
| > In the news I'm reading about massive amount of cases of
| persistent cough which "takes weeks to resolve".
|
| There is one more covid wave going on, so that could be a
| reason for many people coughing.
| wslh wrote:
| More familiar information about her and her successful family
| [1]. The book is available here [2] (the Kindle version is more
| expensive than the physical book editions though).
|
| Interesting to mention about the Polgar sisters again [3].
|
| Z''L.
|
| [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-godmother-of-silicon-
| va...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Successful-People-
| Lessons/d...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
| pmarreck wrote:
| RIP. I hear that not everyone liked some of her decisions.
|
| Personally, I wish I had any control at all over YouTube Shorts.
| paxys wrote:
| People of course associate her with YouTube, but Susan Wojcicki
| has had an overall fascinating career.
|
| Page and Brin started Google in her garage. She was employee #16
| at the company. She was behind the Google logo, Google Doodles,
| Image Search, AdSense, then all of advertising, and ultimately
| YouTube.
|
| Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her
| role. RIP.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah it's interesting to see the press and others really
| pushing on the YouTube thing when it is AdSense that made
| Google what it was and is still today. An advertising revenue
| money machine. And it was in many ways her baby.
| igetspam wrote:
| I personally wouldn't be where I am without her. Google wasn't
| my first job but it was the first one that mattered and I was
| there pretty early (2004). The founding team set Google up for
| success. The tech was obviously key but you can still ruin good
| tech by running a bad business. She earned her success,
| multiple times and I have a deep appreciation for what she did
| and what she was part of. It's a sad day, for sure.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| I always wonder how many people could have replicated similar
| successes if put in similar positions and i always feel like it
| is a lot. Like i can't imagine you taking someone from the same
| time period as newton or einstein and replacing them and seeing
| similar success but in a rich environment surrounded with
| bright people like early google, i feel like just being early
| to google is enough to guarantee that you'll have some good
| ideas. Using advertising to make money has always existed that
| is what tv channels and magazines did for a long time before
| the internet, i'm sure google would have been just as
| successful without google doodles or put another way - google's
| success allowed it to be whacky and not vice versa.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Susan not only built up YouTube but also the community around
| her. She will be missed but not forgotten
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I admired Susan in the early days, long before Youtube. She did a
| remarkable job earning respect and leadership roles in a company
| that mostly only valued engineers. Also she was kind and humane
| in a way that was not entirely common at the company.
| Balgair wrote:
| She was someone who left a huge mark on my life. Though not in
| the forefront, but in the backend, so to speak.
|
| Fuck cancer.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I always assumed that ultra wealthy people can utilize preventive
| medicine to the max and catch stuff like cancer as soon as it
| appears - but i guess not?
| elintknower wrote:
| Kind of hilarious how this hasn't resulted in an HN "black line"
| since she championed the death of free-speech and set back
| youtube as an innovative platform by at least half a decade.
|
| Susan should NOT be heralded as an innovator nor a champion of
| progressive ideas.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41208582
| whyenot wrote:
| I went to school with her starting in elementary school on the
| Stanford campus through high school at Gunn.
|
| My mom was one of her teachers and just told me "this is so sad,
| she was such a beautiful kid. She went on to do amazing things."
|
| Yes, she did.
| danjl wrote:
| Susan lived four houses away from me on Tolman Dr.and I
| remember walking to Nixon elementary school carrying our
| instruments for music on Thursdays. Such a rough final year and
| such a wonderful life. RIP
| omot wrote:
| are we not going to put a black bar on HN for her?
| crowcroft wrote:
| I might be drawing too much from one specific example (although
| there aren't many examples to draw from in this case) but it
| smacks of ...something, that the passing of a female leader in
| the tech industry seems to draw a lot more ire than others, and
| also doesn't meet the standards for a black bar at the time of
| this comment (unless I missed it).
|
| Perhaps not as much of a 'technical' contributor to tech world,
| but one of the largest companies in the world started in her
| garage, she was an early employee and served in senior leadership
| for decades.
| aerodog wrote:
| Susan Wojcicki, who killed free speech on Youtube while
| sponsoring the "Free Expression Awards" that she granted to
| herself in 2021. What
| bundie wrote:
| Can you go for 10 minutes without bringing up some stupid
| culture war stuff? Are you really that weird?
| 00_hum wrote:
| it looks like she resigned as soon as she got cancer. crazy that
| it ended in such a similar way to so many ordinary people
| interludead wrote:
| Susan's impact on the world and on those who knew her is
| undeniable. May she rest in peace.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-10 23:01 UTC)