YouTube

A bit unrelated, but I always thought the Air Up ads were impossible to take seriously.

Any product whose ads treat somebody eating a slice of cake as an idiot and that it’s ”their loss” for not buying an overprized water bottle who’ll make you drink ”cake-flavored” water instead is fucking stupid.

The petty part of me is therefore feeling a smidgeon of schadenfreude and vindication at the Air Up being a piece of crap.

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Apr 14th 2024 at 10:15:14 AM

My AO3 profile. Let sleeping cats lie and be cute and calming.

The issue I had with channel names being hidden in searches seems to have been resolved, so I can only assume it was a bug.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I can actually vouch for Dr. Squatch, I got some from my mom last Christmas, I used it and it's good-quality soap.

To that point, here's Scott The Woz looking at the infamous Raid: Shadow Legends.

Spoiler: he's not impressed.

Edited by lbssb on Apr 14th 2024 at 4:41:24 AM

Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks Marathon

Factor is owned by Hello Fresh? Wonder why make a separate brand.

Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.

Probably just to make it easier to differentiate between both services. HelloFresh is specifically about delivering the ingredients to you, and you cook the food, while Factor is about healthier, premade meals that you pop in the microwave.

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.

Ah, and here I thought Factor was the "less scummy" option after hearing HF's allegations. Turns out it's from the same place.

Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.

There are a lot of different meal-prep companies out there, we’ve finally settled on one now we’ve found a company that doesn’t have the food need using near-instantly. That was my biggest issue with Hello Fresh, the inability to move a meal back without it going off.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 14th 2024 at 7:42:52 PM

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Does anyone know any specific channels that look at these dubious sponsors? I've been getting a bit skeptical with all those rosy promotions lately.

Fear it... or not.

Some channels do research them but it’s only for like one video. I’m honestly shocked that there hasn’t been a channel that just covers the various sponsorships of the platform.

Also has anyone heard of the likes of Mind Pulp and Triple Jump?

x4: It's worth clarifying that Factor started as its own company; Hello Fresh acquired the company in 2020. As ITNW1989 pointed out, Factor has its own distinct niche that Hello Fresh probably decided it wasn't worth a complete merger, but still trying to corner that market.

We're used to media companies committing to similar mergers and acquisitions, but food companies are guilty of doing this on an equally large scale.

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X2:

Shane McGillcuddy is one of the "new YouTubers" I had mind in my original comment. Their series "Just Another Paid Promotion" covered the aforementioned Factor, along with notable names like Magic Spoon, Displate, and Stumble Guys.

The rest tend to be scattered across existing YouTubers, to my knowledge. lbssb mentioned Scott's Raid Shadow Legends video, which is extra useful because he doesn't do sponsored content to begin with. There are others like:

• Audiophile and tech channel DankPods reviewed Raycons (twice). He felt the product was quite poor for the asking price, with budget earphones putting their experience to shame for casual listerners.
• Tom Scott talked about the general misleading nature of VPN advertising.
• Scott Schafer and Legal Eagle has both discussed the legal nature of "gag gifts" hiding their true nature like Established Titles.

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Loosely related, but yeah, not all sponsored products are terrible (whether it's quality or ethically). I watch Computer Clan sometimes, he occasionally gets UGREEN as a sponsor. Fittingly, he plugged them while talking about actual scamming charging bricks and wires, and the company is generally well-reviewed even prior to that that.

Sometimes it's just down to doing some cross-referencing on the company, but even that can be a challenge. Kuncan Dastner talks about this in the following 21 minute, discussing whether YouTubers should be responsible for their sponsor being exposed for ill intent, and if they should've done research beforehand. Dastner expresses how it research can sometimes be hard, but some companies uses alternative names to obscure paper trails, but doing due diligence at all is still worthwhile.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Apr 15th 2024 at 11:53:22 AM

So update on the "hidden channel names in searches" problem I've been having.

It's back (or probably just never left), but only seems to affect the top few results of the search. This is starting to feel actively malicious.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Yeah on my end it’s partailly fixed. I wonder why it’s happening?

So, I was wondering, which one of You Tube's paying system is a bit better in the long run: the Super Thanks option or the You Tube memberships?

I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!

Well I just got the bigger thumbnail update and my golly, it don’t look right.

Edited by eirigfi on Apr 15th 2024 at 12:44:45 PM

As far as I know, Google takes a 30% cut of any money you give to a channel on YouTube. It doesn't matter if it takes the form of a membership, super chat, or super thanks.

If you want to give more of your money to a creator, consider Patreon, which (IIRC) takes between 5 and 12 percent, depending on the plan. Some also have direct donation setups, which only costs transaction fees.

Just remember that YouTube doesn't integrate with Patreon so you can't access channel perks without a membership. Some channels solve this by having a de minimis membership, like for $1/month.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 15th 2024 at 5:13:20 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Whelp, the layout rebrand finally hit me today.. don't like it. Had to install an extension to get rid of it, even though it wasn't a surefire fix (I liked when I could just click a tab giving me the videos from one channel I was watching, and that's still gone. Could someone else make an extension to fix that too?)

What the fuck even is this new layout? Who thought this was a good idea?

Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks Marathon

None of us of course but someone at the Youtube headquarters thought it was.

Dear God! Why are the search results so massive?

Help me. I can't get it out of my head.

What new layout?

The Protomen enhanced my life.

I know it looks awful.

Edited by eirigfi on Apr 15th 2024 at 6:37:37 AM

People make fun of Raid: Shadow Legends, but by standard of video games ads it's actually fairly tame. Hero Wars is much, much worse.

I think Brilliant still does sponsored ads, and I've heard it's at least OK for the courses it offers.

You know what would be nice? If you could click 'Not Interested' if you find a video in a search result that you really don't care about.

Yeah. You can do that in recommendations, but not in search results.

Raid: Shadow Legends isn't bad for its advertising so much as because it's, by all accounts, a really boring pay-to-win gacha game that relies on addicting people to its monetization.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 15th 2024 at 11:20:33 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I wonder if Patreon is better sustenance over youtube sponsorship. I notice the creators I follow have them but still have sponsorship.

Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.