Just move away from the fire zones? It’s like building sand castles among the reefs at low tide.

You have not denied that Rossmann engages in rage baiting. Everything you’ve said dances around that point. You’ve tried to make this a discussion about who is paying for it. THAT DOESN’T MATTER. It’s the subject matter which is toxic. And Louis Rossmann is guilty of it. I’ve watched plenty of his videos and they’re all the same. Endless rage masturbation. It’s garbage content. The modern day equivalent of Jerry Springer.

His activism could cure cancer and end world hunger but that wouldn’t excuse him for it, because others are doing the same activism WITHOUT THE TOXICITY.

You just named them yourself. FUTO. His company.

Without views he has nothing. It doesn’t matter who is paying him, he’s not getting paid if he doesn’t get views. The algorithm brings him views when he gives the algorithm what it wants. What does it want? Engagement. And the path he has taken to generating engagement is outrage, toxicity, and negativity.

He says “my finances don’t depend on YouTube” then why is he still publishing on YouTube? Shut it down! Oh wait, he can’t, because then he’ll stop getting paid by his sponsors.

YouTube has consistently reduced the amount it pays creators per ad view over time. Yet creators are making more videos than ever. Why? Because they make money through 3rd party sponsors. YouTube is a platform. The value it provides to creators is the audience it brings to them through network effects and through the algorithm.

I’ve already addressed Rossmann’s political activism in a previous comment. I appreciate all the work he’s done on it. But he’s by no means the only person fighting for right to repair. There are tons of others doing so as well, such as iFixit, the EFF, and loads of organizations representing farmers all over North America.

My criticism of Rossmann is specifically with the style of content he puts out. Negativity-based reaction videos are his bread and butter. That’s how he makes money. This puts an asterisk on all of the good things he does, just as MKB’s occasional soft takes put an asterisk on the work he does.

This kind of toxic negativity is heavily favoured by the YouTube algorithm and it leads people into mental health spirals. That’s my point. Louis Rossmann makes money by damaging the mental health of vulnerable people in his audience. None of his beneficial activism makes up for this. You can look at other right to repair activists and see that they are working towards their goals without this odious behaviour.

There are thousands of youtubers just like Rossmann. They sit there in front of the camera and react to other videos or news. People watch because they get a thrill out of seeing someone get angry and “pwn” the bad guys. There’s no creativity in it. It’s just emotional dumping. It’s totally toxic.

Louis used to be all about creativity. He used to make repair videos and teach people useful skills. He stopped doing those when he realized the algorithm would give him a bigger audience for these negative takes.

Call him a victim if you like. Algorithmic capture I’ve heard it called. Many many youtubers have gone down that road.

As for MKB. I like his videos because he’s a very good speaker, he puts a lot of thought and creativity into the whole production, and he is actually honest about the drawbacks in products he reviews. Is he perfect though? Clearly not. I would prefer if he didn’t interview Apple mouthpieces to let them deliver well-practiced marketing directly to his audience.

Sometimes I also think MKB gets a bit too starstruck because he can’t quite believe where he is and what he gets to do for a living. If you go back through his videos and sort by increasing date you can see his very first videos. It’s rather stark how far he’s come.

Both guys are in the business of self-promotion. One is based on positivity, the other negativity.

You want to fill your life with negativity? Go ahead. I’ll pass.

I’m a big fan of right to repair and I appreciate all Louis Rossmann has done for the movement. Having said that, I wouldn’t say he’s strictly a pro-consumer guy. He’s a professional gadfly.

I dunno what it is, and I’m not saying the person you’re replying to is doing this, but tons of people seem to throw shade at MKB. Like they think he’s being sneaky or is in any way untrustworthy. All I’ve ever seen the guy do is be honest with his opinions. Yes, he is generally a very tech-positive guy. But he’s not afraid to explain in detail why he thinks a product sucks.

Replaceable parts was the greatest industrial innovation in the history of the world. It’s the single most important reason that millions of people can afford refrigeration, stoves, lightbulbs, TVs, cell phones, cars, and everything else in the modern world. Without replaceable parts these things would only be luxuries for kings and queens.

The problem of engineering departments being “glorified parts replacers” is a social problem: elite overproduction. Society simply does not need millions of engineers (or lawyers or historians or urban planners for that matter)!

Yes and they’re yet another collectible product that exploits the psychology of a subset of people who compulsively collect things. I put them in the same category as gambling and note that there’s a lot of crossover with these things (loot boxes and CCG booster packs being prime examples of a gambling and collectible combo).

I’d be wary of calling him guilty by association. Maybe when he realized who he was really hanging out with he was so horrified and disgusted that he just had to get involved and do something to fight back?

You can sell out on anything, no matter how unpopular it is, if you don’t make enough of them. How many of these things did they actually make?

How often do you use it, if not every day? Once a week? Once a month?

I use my laptop every day so it makes sense that I don’t use the power button even though it’s right there. I also have a raspberry pi set up to run Retropie that I only turn on once or twice a year when I have an old friend in from out of town. In that case I use the power button every single time but I don’t mind that it’s kind of finicky (I have to turn on several other devices with it as well as a power strip to power them all) because I don’t use it that often.

I could see the new Mac Mini being a bit annoying with its bottom side power button if you’re using it every other day. But honestly I would be more annoyed at the boot time taking 30s than the 2s it takes to reach under the case and power it up. If I had one I would probably just get the keyboard with built in power button and finger print reader though. I use the finger print reader on my laptop all the time because it unlocks my password manager.

How often do you use the power button to turn on your computer? These days I might use it once a year, at most!

And now I’m just picturing myself cracking open a can of beer only for bees to start flying out!

I wonder if they’re afraid of Eternal September’ing the service. A lot of people on Lemmy were upset when a bunch of people on Reddit joined. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have millions join in one day. I doubt it would be good for the culture of the community!

Whoever said anything about that? You can make positive changes, just don’t expect them to be permanent. Nothing is permanent. That’s life! Eventually we all die.

It’s a Red Queen’s Race.

Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

They’re actually going after all of them at the same time. They’re just at different stages in each case.