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Susan Wojcicki has died

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Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#401

Post by fragmede »

cnasc wrote: post #288
Jensson wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 tec…

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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#403

Post by gretch »

pas wrote: post #195
akchin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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!

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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#404

Post by shufflerofrocks »

talldayo wrote: post #334
mrkramer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ph…

> 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…

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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#405

Post by Kye »

ethbr1 wrote: post #237
ghaff wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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)…

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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#407

Post by sva_ »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #222
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't being funny, that is a strange mix to OD on

By and large overdose is a result of irrational thinking, or misguided attempts to apply logic. So it doesn’t make sense to make judgements about or apply ration to the drugs someone ODs on. Also, it doesn’t seem so weird for someone to try and mix uppers and downers. And those are all commonly abused drugs. For those reasons, I can only assume this comment was a poor attempt at sarcasm and/or humor.

Be assured, it wasn't meant as humor or sarcasm.

Just being baffled at the combination: I could understand that someone takes a downer like Xanax to end a stimulant session and get rest. But when they're at an end of a stimulant session, how would they OD at that point? Xanax only really causes trouble in combination with other depressants such as alcohol or other benzos.

So I'm presuming they probably indeed had a panic disorder, (probably triggered by the amphetamine) and used the Xanax to calm down, and kept dosing themselves up. Cause of death, I'd reason was probably a cardiac event caused by the stimulants, in particular cocaine.

I said it's odd because that's a weird way to OD in my opinion, having dealt with a number of cases.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#408

Post by xanderlewis »

Aunche wrote: post #224
xanderlewis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 unde…

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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#409

Post by least »

talldayo wrote: post #378
sulam wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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, whe…

> 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.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#410

Post by qingcharles »

lawgimenez wrote: post #260
ethbr1 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

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.

And it was a video dating site when it started!
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