I have mixed feelings about this.

We as the west point to Russia and China frequently, lamenting the closed-off nature of their Internet.

Now we are publicly pushing towards further fragmentation of the Internet.

I find it hard to see major differences between blocking TikTok here and China blocking Facebook over there. I assume, the process here is a little more publicly discussed whereas in Russia or China, things are quietly blocked by government agencies, but I might even be wrong about that.

I respect you for admitting you were wrong. That takes courage.

Also maybe it wasn’t smart leaving that part out of my reply.

Unfortunately it’s hard to tell trolls apart from real people in here.

It somewhat reminds me of the height of covid in online discussions - people turn off their brains and fall back on basic emotions and empty phrases.

This is objectively false.

Habeck says in the video that he has seen a terrifying growth in antisemitism in Germany where members of the Jewish faith are scared to leave the house on their own or publicly display religious symbols due to open hostility. He talks about a responsibility of Germans due to the central role in the holocaust but also how the Islamic world has not distanced itself enough from the atrocities committed by the hamas. He even remarked that one doesn’t have to agree with some of Israel’s politics - even explicitly naming the settlements in the Gaza / West Bank region - but that this should not be any excuse for antisemitism.

I will say again what I said in another comment - The video is an appeal to human decency and respect. Shame on you for willfully and stubbornly ignoring that and derailing the conversation to incite further hate.

If anyone else comes here - go watch the posted video but stay away from this comment section.

I have absolutely no idea how such a level-headed and well-put-together speech appealing at human decency and respect towards each other devolved into such a vile comment section.

I assume most of the commenters either didn’t watch the video or purposefully ignored its content to instead incite more hate.

Thanks for the reminder. I’ve been wanting to try it out.

I’ve seen the same. I wonder if the older you get, the more you value your time.

I remember seeing lots of ad breaks on TV when I was a kid and it didn’t stop me from watching a show. Now if an ad break happens, I am reminded why I don’t own a TV and turn it off.

I am sure other platforms / personal hosting will continue to exist in the future. They simply won’t be relevant in terms of video streaming market share.

The network effect of youtube is massive. They have a huge amount of content creators and audience. That means the audience will stick around for the creators and the creators go for the biggest audience and hence the most views.

Being google, they have data centers all over the globe, provide a fast app / browser access for any OS, can cast to a TV with one click - all these equal convenience which cannot easily be beat by any individual website.

Some huge youtube brands like linus media group are trying with floatplane as their own paid video hosting service, but I’m sure their view numbers are insignificant compared to youtube even though they are the biggest players.

I doubt it, unfortunately.

Like many other online services they’ve saturated the market so the only way to increase profits is to extract more money from individual users.

They are also a quasi-monopoly for a reason - hosting and streaming video is resource-intensive, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for a free alternative that would scale. AFAIK, piped and such are only frontends to youtube which will be killed off by ToS or through technical means.

Maybe there are free video sites that also host their videos, but as I said, since it quickly becomes very expensive, I don’t see anyone being able to do that for free for long.

Unfortunately, if anyone is going to “disrupt” youtube, it is going to come from a silicon valley startup and like youtube they will only burn investor capital for a limited time - until they have saturated the market (or failed). Then they’ll have to monetize as well.

My only hope is something like a torrent approach where everyone who streams also hosts. But since that is technically difficult to perfect, needs a huge user base to succeed while not promising any commercial gain for the initiating party, nobody will throw a ton of money at the problem, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

My prediction is that people will either pay for premium or see ads in the mid- to long-term.

This links has led me to one the sneakiest cookie consent forms I’ve seen in a long while.

No, it stops you from burning a religious symbol in public. Secularity means that state and church are separate, which is a different matter. A lack of secularity would mean you can go on trial for not following the word of some god e.g. for loving someone from the same sex.

These are terrible and should be fought.

Bu this particular law is stopping assholes from being assholes.

Book-burnings also had a severely terrible history in the 3rd reich and are nothing but demonstrations of power, hate and close-mindedness.

Democracy means letting people with other world views exist in peace.

Please consider how you want to be treated by this world and how you can make your own positive impact on humans around you.

I am an atheist myself and will vehemently defend secularism but your comment boils down to hate and demanding others have the exact same beliefs as you do.

This is simply false. In Germany, the swastika may be used in the context of education, art and some other places.

You are simply not allowed to march up and down the street with a swastika flag, which seems very reasonable.