alt Hacker NewsDo you feel good about YouTube spending money on hosting and video producers spending time/money on content that you're paying nothing for? How is that sustainable?
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Frankly? That's Google's (well, Alphabet's, I guess) problem.
They're a multibillion-dollar international monopoly with absolutely staggering amounts of money and power, actively engaging in a wide variety of activities directly aimed at making the lives of every normal person on the planet worse so that they can have more power, more control, and more money. Me blocking ads on YouTube not only costs them effectively nothing, it's also the act of a flea against a polar bear.
If Alphabet showed any signs of actually wanting to create a sustainable alternative to the surveillance economy, I might have some sympathy for them. But not only do they not do this, they are the ones who created it in the first place.
The categorical imperative has been put on life support since 2016 at the latest.
Everything is smash and dash now. And nobody with the means to change it cares about externalities anymore.