The last time Google pulled out all the stops to fight ad blockers, I had to update uBlock Origin every now and then until the whole thing passed. That’s all.
So I’m not worried. But I am amused that they keep making ads more obnoxious, which pushes more people to use ad blockers. I didn’t even use sponsorblock until a particularly egregious bit of native advertising. They could probably gain ground by just making ads less irritating, but they absolutely will not.
You can also check the modlogs. They can be really revealing.
I quit Spotify when the “New Library Experience” completely fucked the music library side of the app. If you mostly use playlists, it was a lateral change. If you used it to collect some songs here, and album there, and keep them all sorted, it’s like it dumped your entire collection on the floor and expected a thank-you for the new organization system.
My guess, as others have mentioned, is that Spotify tries to squeeze more profits by pushing certain songs, whether because they get paid to promote them, or the royalties are lower. That’s easier to do with their playlists and recommendations, so they pushed people to that side of the app by making everything else dogshit. And now, apparently, the curated side took it too far and is awful, too.
I still use Apple Music, which is one of like two services that actually let you organize your music in a sensible way outside of playlists. That said, after I cut cords with video streaming services and set up my own library, I think I might do the same with music.
And their recommendation engine sucks.
Netflix used to be famously good at suggesting films. Articles were written about it, and there was even a cash reward for anyone who could contribute to its performance. Then it just turned to shit.
And the funny thing is that it would have helped counteract the shrinking library. Sure, there would be fewer films on the platform, so you’d be less likely to find a specific title, but at least you could select a film Netflix recommended based on your past ratings and be fairly confident you’d enjoy it. Now? Absolutely not.
Also, just to see if they have even the tiniest bit of plausible deniability, I checked out Midgard’s shop. There’s overtly white supremacist shit ALL OVER the place.
It’s not like these people accidentally supported a band with reprehensible beliefs behind the scenes. It’s not like a totally normal music shop turned out to be a front for white supremacists. There’s note even any serious argument about “separating art from the artist.” The leak includes what people bought, and you can tell when someone bought overtly white supremacist music. And even if they didn’t, and the band or album name doesn’t give anything away, what’s it doing at the Nazi store? Why isn’t it streaming, or on Bandcamp, or self-distributed? These customers still had to know there’s an obscure Nazis music store, what it’s called and where to find it, confirm that it’s a Nazi store the moment they went there, and still give them money and their address to place a mail order. Oh, some of them aren’t native English speakers? Then that just makes it even more damning that they did all this with a language barrier in place!
Plus, just look at the apologists in this thread. They’re fucking cowards. They can’t just come out with their beliefs, so they’re just asking questions, deflecting from the topic. One is concern trolling for the fundamental humanity of literal Nazis, despite the fact that the main fucking problem with Nazis is that they considered marginalized groups subhuman. Where’s the concern there? Why the focus on the people who oppose Nazis rather than the Nazis themselves? Another one could barely resist giving the game away by saying they’ve been called a Nazi before because of their anti-immigrant positions.
The people defending this shop and its customers aren’t serious people. They’re dishonest, cowardly, and stupid.
That user was cowardly from the jump. It’s why they wouldn’t outright make their point, but “just ask questions.”
Also, can we appreciate how desperate and nonsensical that entire argument was?
Okay, lots of them are Japanese. So… what about the ones that aren’t? Why isn’t that person concerned about the one who absolutely understand what it means?
And secondly… it’s still a huge red flag that Japanese customers were going so far out of their way to buy extremely obscure music from racist bands from an overtly Nazi music seller. If an American specifically imported music from a Japanese shop only racists know or care about, covered in Axis power imagery, that’d still point towards being a huge racist.
That user is seriously turning themselves in knots to defend people who buy Nazi music from the Nazi store.
It might even be simpler than that. Capitalism just doesn’t care past the next quarter. And when ownership is disconnected from labor or even from customer, than it’s just a really rudimentary collective intelligence. The shareholders just want the line to go up, and everyone in the corporate structure is accountable to the shareholders, so they all do their part, big or little, to make that happen. It completely dispenses with personal responsibility, whether for negative externalities, direct harm, or even the future as close as months from now.