Removing recommendation systems entirely, for now, would be a massive improvement, but that won't happen because none of us get input into that decision.
The people who make it have only profit to consider, and the recommendation system gets them more profit.
There is no way YouTube could work without a recommendation system. The volume is so huge you would get lost in the middle of videos of kids posting gameplay sessions for their friends.
You can get good recommendation, but you have to let YouTube track you, if you are the kind with no account and block every tracker, you will get the stuff that is the most generic and gets the most clicks, because that's the default. It is good if you want to do a sociological study, but it is unlikely to match your tastes because the algorithm doesn't know your tastes.
I guess that if you really don't like the YouTube recommendation system, you can add a few rules to your favorite ad blocker, the tag ids are not obfuscated.
> There is no way YouTube could work without a recommendation system.
This doesn't make any sense. The recommendation system that exists right now will only tell you to keep watching more of things you already watch. YouTube already works without a recommendation system. Recommendations by YouTube are the source of... very little that I watch there. You watch things because you already know what you want and search for it, or because you got a recommendation from something other than the YouTube recommendations.
Recommendations are recommendations, whether it comes from YouTube of from outside of YouTube. Separating the host and recommendation engine has pros and cons, that are mostly both sides of the same coin.
You are getting more of what you are interested in, but you get even less diversity. You are less likely to binge watch useless stuff, but it makes it harder to get more content about the topic you are interested in. Less platform independence, but worse integration.
Things become even more complex when you consider monetization. Obviously, YouTube does that for money, but more money for YouTube also means more money for creators. And if you begin to take into account alternative revenue streams (Patreon, sponsors, ...), you get even more tradeoffs. In any case, YouTube needs money, and it is not that profitable (I think it started at a loss).
As for searching, search is recommendation, unless you know the exact title of your video. For example, if you are looking for "how to install a graphics card", YouTube (or Google, or Bing) will make a small selection of the thousands of videos on the subject.
I completely understand your feelings regarding a lack of control and agency. Modern politics now essentially revolve around outrage. No politician wants to vote on something at all controversial, every vote they take is liable to outrage one half of the population or another. Every time they do they halve their voting base until it's an irrelevant tiny minority that agrees on everything. So they have outsourced their job to the supreme court, federal agencies, and the parliamentarian. If you can cause enough outrage you will find that they fold relatively easily.
There's plenty of things governments could be busy doing that aren't controversial, but managing the existing state doesn't have nearly the glamour (or reelection PR) of changing it.
How many of us here on this board specifically work at Google or choose to work at companies that integrate with Google or otherwise use their services.
Please elaborate. Many of us avoid the services of the four entities you mention, completely or almost. Their «servers», or their intrusion (monitoring) more difficult, requires strategies, but there are ways. Where would those four crucial for one's economic survival?
> Here are the names that are on record publicly as using AWS:
> Aon, Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Baidu, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Disney, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, ESPN, Expedia, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix, News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Reddit, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Twitch, Turner Broadcasting,Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga and Zillow.
Just AWS (as of 2020, per the artice). Apple could even be included in that list, according to CNBC. How many more are on Azure or GCP? I would argue you're not completely avoiding their services if you're still a 'customer' of their customer, they're just getting a much smaller cut of your (or the advertiser's) money at the end of the day.
> Where would those four crucial for one's economic survival?
(Sidenote, I'm adding Microsoft. I assume your solution isn't "everyone should move to Azure")
I assume that most of us work in tech which, if it doesn't require actually working on software that is hosted by one of those five (or for them directly), requires looking at projects that are controlled by them. Do you use React or Angular? Maybe backend work in Go or C#? Ever use LinkedIn to network (or FB/IG), or use WhatsApp/MSTeams/Skype/GoogleChat to coordinate telework?
And 3/5 of those control all the major consumer OSes. Sure, maybe you run Linux as your primary device, but you probably have to develop stuff compatible with Windows, iOS or Android. So you need those to at least test.
Here's one article, probably not the best, of people trying to blackhole the major cloud providers and how that destroyed the internet experience.
I mean you can hardly buy a car now without it including shrink wrap terms of service for google or apple software. Or 3rd parties that share data with them.
I do it, daily, for several years now. In fact, I’ve left the industry entirely as a result of what I personally view as a complete lack of ethics on the part of every tech company.
You being defeated isn’t the same as being unable to live without FAANG.
Being pedantic, I know. But this distinction does matter a lot in this context.
From Europe, where we have our own issues and politics is not better; just different. But where anti-trust cases against American companies is taken serious, both EU wide and by smaller local governments. And where many of us can vote for a myriad of parties, some with "taking large US monopolies down" as a primary point. (pirateparty, Volt, that I know of). Parties who make real chance of taking the lead or getting people in parliament.
> a work stop was all of not opening laptops for 35-40% of the country
Strikes are social events, you don't do it alone. There's usually a minority of agitators/organizers that are respected/trusted among workers and that call the shots/organize the fun. So working from home is very much anti-organization and hinders strikes. It isolates workers.
The problem is "mob dynamics". A visible picket line, a blocked street - that creates attention and draws more workers into the strike. On the Internet, these crowd dynamics don't work nearly as effective as they do in the meatspace.
Amazon and Google will notice but your local news station will not. Without press coverage forcing the company to negotiate employees have very little bargaining power.
You seem to be of the opinion the stoppage of e-commerce supply chains would be a quiet little event no one would notice?
I don’t care whose grandpa did what 80 years ago. I don’t owe deference to a figurative identity they want to carry around if it’s also literally abusive to the species as a whole.
There definitely is. However, we must remember that we are enjoying a standard of living unimaginable only a few hundred years ago.
I think the system has some inherent flaws, but it has still served us extremely well.
The people who make it have only profit to consider, and the recommendation system gets them more profit.