this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (13 children)

They mean - maximize irritation? Put ads in the most obnoxious way?

There's a good global task for FOSS alternatives of YouTube and other places where life happens.

A decentralized scraper. Something similar to SETI@home, or that hentai analog for storage. So that based on some metric YT content would be divided between users willing to contribute their machines and accounts to scraping YT (a bit similar to searching DHT, and probably some kind of DHT would be useful), and then they'd download that and re-publish in some p2p alternative.

TBH probably also good for that little of the web that is still possible to represent as static pages and browse via links.

The issue is that alternatives lack content, and the closed nature of proprietary services gives them an advantage - there is content there which doesn't exist outside of them.

And people just reuploading by hand what they themselves consider interesting are a little fraction of the majority that doesn't bother.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

alternatives lack content

Maybe I'm old or smthing, but for the past years content on yt mostly sucks.

Few interesting and original channels and then galaxy of reacts to, recaps and AI garbage slop reading Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Our YouTube experiences are vastly different. Their algorithm frustrates me because it consistently serves up interesting videos I want to watch when I open the app to seek out something specific. My Watch Later playlist has become huge.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

They already did something similar back in the day. I remember watching a music video some ~10 years ago where they placed an ad like five seconds before the end of the song, right at the musical climax, ruining the mood with surgical precision. I was absolutely infuriated and went off to Google wondering if there's a way to block ads. And the rest is history.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

YouTube really likes to just destroy itself huh?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It would be wrong to call it a replacement, but this is a good place to plug [email protected] - there's more quality content on there than many might suspect, especially if you are into FOSS and people tinkering with stuff they are passionate about.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

I am used to listening to streams while walking, but I've been noticing the most annoying ads pop-up when I'm interested in something they are saying. This isn't going to make me pay attention to those ads, it's going to drive me to the plethora of other services I can use. The worst thing about it is that it doesn't even pause and cache the stream, meaning that if I was listening to something interesting, the ad just causes me to miss it. Google just keeps eating its own tail.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I am a YUGE fan of FreeTube, a cross-platform YT client for the desktop. You can subscribe to channels, create, save, import, and export playlists...and no. Ads. Tis the bees knees.

And just a friendly reminder to donate to your favorite FOSS projects.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

OK let's all skip to the middle of sponsor segments so the ads cover the sponsor segment. Win win

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Enough is never enough.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Gemini also being forced on me more and more in Android. Seriously considering a linux phone next.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

LOL. Like every tech story from the US is about enshittification. too funny.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

More enshittification!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Any product that advertises on YT is one I avoid

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Google enshitifying things? Who would have thought? Seriously, it's as if they want to test how far they can go upsetting users. There's got to be some (a lot?) of that, for sure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

You'd think so, but a never ending stream of people continue to sit there glued to their phones through content and adverts alike.

We're probably already at the Demolition Man point of having a station just for adverts.

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