this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
939 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

70080 readers
3367 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This week YouTube hosted Brandcast 2025 in which it revealed how marketers could make better use of the platform to connect with customers.

A few new so-called innovations were announced at the event but one has caught the attention of the internet – Peak Points. This new product makes use of Gemini to detect “the most meaningful, or ‘peak’, moments within YouTube’s popular content to place your brand where audiences are the most engaged”.

Essentially, YouTube will use Gemini and probably the heatmap generated on YouTube videos by people skipping to popular points, to determine where to place advertising. Anybody who has grown up watching terrestrial television where adverts arrive as a way to build suspense will understand how annoying Peak Points could become.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Use Freetube or Invidious, problem solved.

[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 2 points 1 hour ago

Only Freetube is being actively attacked by Google and Invidious is basically dead.

[–] KingOogaBooga@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

firefox and uBlock Origin. I don't see ads. Fuck Google and their AI.

[–] Zealousideal_Fox_900@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Firefox X UBlock Origin X Sponsorblock X Bring Back Youtube Dislike. Thank fuck for those Devs.

[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The removal of YouTube dislike is still fucking infuriating to me. I get it: now I have to watch the video to find out if it's a piece of shit, and that's exactly what they want, but holy fuck what a shitty decision designed to waste my time and maximize their chances to flash an ad in my face.

Absolutely. It sucks so much for me to not be able to see that most people DO disagree with a video, and all I can see is the idiots that did. So frustrating.

[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Imagine ...

THIS IS SP....

Insert unskippable ad here.

ARTA!

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 15 points 1 day ago

Just imagine coming up with shit like this being the only job you can find and not jumping off a building instead.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How to ensure huge swathes of the population will never ever buy your product out of sheer spite

[–] LifeOfChance@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

That number is still SIGNIFICANTLY less than those who won't do anything. Us using ad blockers doesn't even account for a percentage of what they rake in from those without them.

[–] ExistentialKiwi@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I think it's funny that Google thinks putting an ad in when someone is most engaged with a video will be an effective advertising technique. So someone's going to be absorbed in the video, be presented with an ad while engaging with it and be happy that they were interrupted to be served an ad? Sounds like a great formula for pissing off your users.

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

For YouTube, viewers aren't the users, advertisers are.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's the same idiotic MBA reasoning that keeps bringing the popup back in some new form every few years. No, it wasn't the technical implementation of the delivery mechanism we were upset about, you absolute fucking morons.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's always jarring loading a news site without ad blocking. The whole thing just seems cancerous, and that's before you can even start reading the story.

[–] Thrashy@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I recently switched phones and forgot I didn’t have an adblocker installed yet. Clicked on an article and holy shit the modern mobile web is a toxic hellscape without it…

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 23 hours ago

your phones also heats up, and then it gets slow. had to install adblockers to preserve the life of the phone batteries.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] XnxCuX@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago

Eh this needs to go in fuckai

[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Why do you need "AI" for this? That is something that can be done client side on a 30 year old phone without sweat if you already have a list of timestamps and number of engagements for a video?

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was at Google when they announced that only AI-related projects would be able to request increased budget. I don't know if they're still doing that specifically, but I'm sure they are still massively incentivizing teams to slap an "AI Inside" sticker on everything.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 points 23 hours ago

considering thier Pixels are heavily devoting most of its resources to AI solely, while neglecting all the other hardware.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

30 year old phone

I'd like to see you try:

[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

This task is not that complicated. You have a list of timestamps with the seconds and the number of interactions for that second. All you need to do is to find the seconds with the most interactions. On a 1h video this would be only 3600 calculations "if currentValue is greater than maxValue". If you store it as a Plain integer array you would need ~14KB of RAM. For comparison, a 1987 homecomputer with a 68000 CPU would do ~7Million calculations per second and have ~512kB of RAM, depending on the options.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Done, but the dial up is going to take a while for the reply

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 day ago

Wow big congratulations to the corporate ghoul who thought this up. Thanks for making our world a shittier place.

[–] gradual@lemmings.world 10 points 1 day ago

Enough is never enough.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago
[–] kadup@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

A guy I know started selling AI push notifications.

Your app signs up for his service, and he uses what's essentially ChatGPT to find the best time slot to send you custom push notifications. That's just his third party service working with limited data and system access.

Just imagine when Google and Apple start selling that as a service integrated to the OS.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Any product that advertises on YT is one I avoid

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

The actual ads I don't have any strong feelings about, the ones sponsoring creators are the ones I look at sideways.

[–] guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Adguard blocks YouTube ads on my laptop.

Smarttube blocks YT ads on my TV.

Revanced allows me to block YT ads on my phone.

But yeah, keep pushing adverts /s

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 points 23 hours ago

i use adguard, but sometimes adguard will break some websites, so i just disable, and use privacy badger, ublock origin, or decentraleyes.

[–] SomeAwfulBitch@lemm.ee 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I would argue that this will be far more obnoxious than television commercials. YouTube already places ads directly in the midst of sentences or even words. At least television usually cut to commercial after the line was finished.

This will annoy me to the point of dropping YouTube altogether.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 26 points 1 day ago

I see the contest to find the world's biggest cunt continues unabated.

What will they think of next week?

[–] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Why use Gemini and AI when they already have a feature in youtube where they show the "most watched moments"..?

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] roguesignal@lemm.ee 16 points 1 day ago

Enshittification

[–] ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Am I the only one still not seeing ads on YT with Ublock?

[–] r_deckard@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

YT becoming shittier and shittier with ads is why I've changed to downloaders instead. No ads.

Same here. Ublock Origin for the win!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 day ago

Advertisers are invasive like zebra mussels.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Why can't they just place the ad at the beginning of the video, Spotify gives you X free uninterrupted songs to listen to after listening to 1,2 adds. Why can't they just follow that model

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

EwTube underestimates a person's primordial instinct to skip ads

load more comments
view more: next ›