🔗 YouTube quietly made some of its web embeds worse, including ours - The Verge

News publishers can choose between the standard YouTube embedded player or a version designed specifically for them, which gives greater control over the ads experience, but removes YouTube branding and links back to YouTube. This version provides publishers greater control over the ads running on their videos, but YouTube doesn’t have visibility into which ads are served.

Am I the only person that things this makes perfect sense to both YouTube and the publisher?

Don’t worry, this isn’t the usual post about AI and it stealing everyone’s content. That’s true, of course, but this post is a bit different — although still AI-adjacent.

As is customary around this time of year, I start to think about my goals for the following year and, more importantly, the tools I am going to use to get to them. I usually start with digital things because my analogue choices are far easier and much more enjoyable. The first thing on my list is typically my note-taking and writing app.

After going around the houses more than a few times, it all boils down to two really — iA Writer and Ulysses. I always end up sticking with the tried and true on Ulysses, but there are a few features that I really like on iA Writer. The developers really think about what their app needs to do, but also how its usage affects the web as a whole. The best reflection of their shared thinking is arguably one of the best features I have seen for a long time, Authorship.

Born of a desire to see version control like changes, Authorship saves the state of your document, and then anything you pasted in is shown as dimmed. Keeping tabs on what you actually wrote and what has been appropriated is beneficial when researching topics and ensures you reference all of your work correctly. However, it goes much deeper than this when viewed in a world full of Ai.

It also remembers what ChatGPT wrote for you, and now with the launch of writing tools on Apple devices, what Apple Intelligence changed during a proofread. Why this doesn’t exist at an OS level I am not sure, but this has proved invaluable for me already, and means, of course, I am experimenting again — at least to see how good (or not) Apple Intelligence is.

I love the fact that the iA Writer developers have thought to develop a feature that should exist everywhere. I often wanted to see changes editors made to my writing before publishing but couldn’t be bothered to compare it in depth. That is how you become a better writer. Perhaps this information should be transferable to the webpage on publish?

I’m happy for readers to see what I wrote and what the super-intelligent spell check updated for me. I might launch it as a comedy B-side. With this said, I do feel that there’s some responsibility for those that post to the internet and particularly bloggers to ensure what they are posting is their own work. Removing all the arguments that LLMs stole all of our work, it still rests on our shoulders to ensure the web we all know and love remains genuine.

I would love to find a way we could ensure that the people we follow, and possibly even support, have full authorship. It might be words, or photos or increasingly video that AI muscles into, and I would rather not live in a world where we are not sure if you created what you post or not. We place a lot of trust in the things we consume online and with entertainment being provided increasingly by sole creators it would be nice to know it was all their own work.

On a recent Vergecast, Nilay and David were chatting about the very real idea that the current state of streaming services is just cable TV all over again. Of course, they are correct, but they also kept coming back to the idea that the only services that make a serious amount of money are those that convince people to make the content for free. The best example of this is YouTube, and I just don’t see it that way.

I understand some people do. My son used to watch a huge amount of gaming content and toy reviews when he was younger. People I follow online seem to really value YouTube Premium to remove ads from one of their most used services. Yet I balk at the £12.99⁠ per month cost because I don’t see any value outside of finding information on how to do things.

Don’t get me wrong, when a new phone comes out, or there’s an interesting camera I want to take a look at, YouTube is where I head to find video reviews. However, I think most of that is because web searching is so broken that it’s the only place I can reliably find what I am looking for. To me YouTube is transactional. I want to watch a few reviews of a new gadget, and that’s the place to find them all in one place. Outside of that, YouTube is a resource on the same level as Wikipedia.

I visit it often when something breaks in the house. The vacuum has yet another toy stuck in it, and I need to know how to take it apart. Or my heater is leaking, and I need to know if I can undo this screw or not. I can’t imagine YouTube being the place I go to watch something in the evening instead of Netflix — but clearly lots of people do.

Many years ago I tried, but I spent even more time trying to find something to watch than I would do in the Netflix never-ending carousel. Do people really sift through all the garbage to find something worth watching? What is there that’s worth my time? Certainly not Mr Beast or Fortnite streamers.

The best feeling in my online life is when I have inspiration for a post and I open a fresh sheet in Ulysses. Just then, right before I start typing my garbled English onto the sheet and ruin the whole thing, that is an electric feeling that anything could happen.

Maybe I write a really great post, everyone loves it and I get loads of comments and replies. Writers I love begin posting link posts to it, and this fantastic post is referenced all over the web. Massive publications invite me to write op-ed’s for them and send me big cheques in the post.

Or maybe no one reads it. It gets buried in the constant stream of other blog posts being written. Drowned out by all the noise from influencers and stupid vertical videos of people dancing about. Perhaps it contains a stupid typo and I offend someone, meaning I lose my job and become homeless. My wife leaves me due to the embarrassment of writing ‘form’ instead of ‘from’, and now my kids hate me.

Perhaps I won’t bother. It was a stupid idea in the first place anyway.

After more than 40 years (yes, I am old) I am well aware of needing massive barriers in the way of my bad habits. I have very little self-control when it comes to dopamine boosting things, and my phone is the worst.

I realise how pathetic that is. Over the years, I’ve given advice which is regurgitated from that which I receive (often unrequested) multiple times. To simply stop. Much like an addict l, because that is what I am of sorts, I’ve tried too hard too quickly and slowly returned to ‘normal’.

This is a personality weakness that unfortunately I just can’t overcome. Hence, why I need to babysit myself and treat myself like an idiot. A title that I well deserve because I can’t put the shinny thing with bright flashing colours down and live in the world.

So in steps Screen Time. Yes, that truly pathetic attempt and virtue signalling that Apple introduced with iOS12 six years ago. It’s slow, it uses unnecessary battery life at times, and it’s easy to get around. Let me tell you though — it works.

Typically, the criticism with Screen Time is that it is too easy to bypass. That instead Apple should have built some kind of phone jail to keep people like me out in times of weakness. Instead, I think it strikes the right balance. By putting a simple screen in between me taping the icon and opening the app ensures I think about if I do want to open the app. Something the popular Opal app charges a fortune for.

It puts just enough friction between me and something that won’t benefit my future self, and still being able to use the app if I need to. I have set downtime for the times I want to switch off and also limits to some apps for each day. Babysitting myself works really well, because my monkey mind just can’t stay away.

In the US suicide rates among men under 30 have risen by 40 percent since 2010 and are four times higher than among young women.

Male suicide accounts for as many deaths as breast cancer.

~ if you need help or just don’t feel yourself, please please please reach out.

Nick Heer in Google’s iOS App Inserts Its Own Links Into Webpages

For Google to believe it has the right to inject itself into third-party websites is pure arrogance, yet it is nothing new for the company.

The only upside is I doubt many people use this app.

Matt Birchler in The “Bluesky feels like early Twitter!” vibe

In my opinion, Mastodon has leveled out to be a great place to talk with nerdy people (aka my core demographic!), Threads has turned into an engagement bait hell that I don’t enjoy browsing much at all right now, and Bluesky still has that “first week of school” energy.

Yep, I think that’s about right 👌

🔗 Comcast, Disney, and IBM Are Among Advertisers Returning to X After Ad Freeze

X’s former top advertisers including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment, have resumed ad spending on the platform this year, albeit at much lower rates than before.

I guess if you want to try and avoid new tariffs on your products you have to appease the incoming presidents lap dog.

Dan Moran in Macworld🔒:

Apple can not only afford to be more judicious about how and where it deploys AI, but it also doesn’t have to be as aggressive about selling it to end users

I think Dan hasn’t been paying close enough attention to their advertising. It’s too much, to the point of ridiculousness. It doesn’t tell a tale of a company that hasn’t made an “existential bet-the-company” placement on AI.