this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
717 points (94.9% liked)
Technology
76198 readers
3163 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They are owned by private equity? It's pretty common these days for the more popular YT channels. Veritasium, Astrum, Fireship, fern., and Hoog are some other examples. Basically, if it's a popular YT channel, it's either owned by PE, in negotiations to be acquired by PE, or pursued by a PE firm in the hopes that they can acquire it. Private equity is accelerating their acquisitions, actually, and they want to control everything that captures the attention of viewers.
Here's a video that talks about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-rRXWhElI
No wonder veritasium has felt "off" for me for a good while as well. A few years ago I deliberately stopped watching that channel, seems there was a deeper reason behind my superficial reasons and gut feelings
The content is higher-quality, more like a TV production. But it's still pretty solid. Good analogies and intuitive explanations.
He basically only makes "why everyone except me is wrong about X" content now, and it's super smug and obnoxious.
They seem to use the "shotgun" future in Youtube for titles and Thumbnails. Having the a bunch of different titles and and thumbnails and eventually sticking with the combo that drives the most engagement.
Do you have actual evidence for Kurzgesagt being among PE-owned channels, or are you just extrapolating? Because the video you linked doesn't mention them, and a quick search didn't turn up anything about that.
I don't see any evidence of that, as well.
Interesting way to say "making shit up"
Didn't want to be too combative from the start lol
There's an incredible amount of money in those offers. Years ago Linus Tech Tips got an offer of 100m, so I get why people take the money.
I mean, I would probably sell the channel myself. That's a lifechanging amount of money. I would buy some land deep in the backcountry, build a little walled village, and invite my family and friends to come live there. Grow our own food, set up some solar panels and wind turbines, buy up plenty of guns and ammo, and see if we couldn't hunker down and live out the ever more likely downfall of the American economy in relative peace.
You had me up to "lots of guns and ammo".
Sport shooting is fun
So basically you would turn yourself in a mini-me version of Zuckenberg, Musk and Bezos. Given this consideration I would reassess my life priorities if I were you
the priority would be the lives of my friends and family. that is a priority that will not change as long as I draw breath, no matter what anyone thinks.
Well, if the societal structure falls there won't be anything left to provide for your friends and family and you'll be left to eat each other in your compound as will the billionaires using their fortunes to build survival bunkers. If that's the way you wanna go, with the leg of your mother as dinner, be my guest. If you, on the other hand, want to have a positive impact on the whole process helping stop this social decline there are much better ways to use your hypothetical money. It's up to you to decide, greed over cooperation or the other way around?
my family and I grow most of our food, and we're part of the local community garden where the small town we live in also grows food that is shared with everyone.
so out of the two of us, I'm pretty sure it'll be you who is starving.
And prayvtell, where do you find your seedlings and your fertilizer? And the tools to be used to work the fields? That's the problem of people like you, you can't see how intertwined it is our life with the rest of the world and you don't know how much it sucks to be living at a subsistence level. But go off with your fantasy, it does cost anything to dream.
Also, I forgot to ask how would you fare in a draught, a hailstorm or a long winter. But these are impossible conditions in your dreamworld I reckon
well we use the stuff we grow for seeds, we don't buy into the capitalist propaganda that you can't replant things because It'S iLlEgAl. and compost is free and easy to make. also, I'm planning on getting chickens for fertilizer as well, once I build the infrastructure for them. they are great for dealing with insect pests too!
my next-door neighbor is a 40-year old dude that took up blacksmithing after he watched one too many YT videos. he made me a knife for last christmas out of a rusty steel cable.
I live in the midwest, we deal with those all the time.
a better world is possible, and it's not a dream. get up off your ass and make it with your friends. don't let legality or naysayers tell you something is impossible, that's capitalist propaganda meant to keep you down.
Yes of course, a utopia is waiting for those who are able to grow a crop using a field inside of an apartment.
Dude, you're projecting a reality which could be applied to a very narrow set of people in modern society and in the western world. Imagining a better future is possible and good, but we need to keep it aligned with the actual realities present at this time. Being a bad crop away from death and surviving in a close anarchist encampment can work in a movie like 38 years later, not in real life
it worked for humanity for thousands of years, you pessimistic doomer. you're going to be a wage slave forever, and die unhappy, because you're obviously too afraid to even consider that life could be at all different to the way it is now. you can't even imagine that solidarity and building mutual aid networks could improve your life. what a sad, depressing, incapable, pitiable thing you are. you've got Stockholm syndrome for the system that's going to murder you.
You talk about,s solidarity afeter having decided that a life-changing sum of money would be used to benefit you and those you deem worthy of yourself. Please pick up a vocabulary and look at the definition of the words you use. Also look at what Bezos and Zuckerberg are doing with their money and how they're building their compounds and you'll find to be closer to them than to an anarchist.
Humanity already went through the conditions you described in your post: it was during the middle ages, when cities were tiny nation states at constant war with eachother to scrap the poor and few resources available, serfdom was pretty common and people were lucky to live past 40 years of age. Not exactly my first choice when it comes to decide how I would like to live my future life.
Lastly I despise the system we live in as much, if not more, than you. But, differently from you, I'm not used to throwing away the baby with the bath water and I prefer to safeguard those advancements wich are truly helpful to humanity such as vaccines, democracy and human rights to cite some of them.
I almost forgot, you still haven't explained how should people living in cities and urban areas survive in this future of yours. Does your crop grow on asphalt and concrete or do you see the problem your "vision" would bring to a huge part of any population?
Keep on dreaming of a 38 years later were you're the protagonist, I'm sure it will help you and everyone else ;)
anarchism is all about mutual association. so yes, anarchist communities would be made of people who agreed to be a community together. this is basic.
what a first-world mindset. many places in the world still operate like this, you're just so comfortable in your way of life you don't even think about them. I would encourage you to break out of that mindset, and show a little interest in the wide world around you.
yes, crops do grow in the cities. many cities are turning to urban farming in order to feed people. singapore is a leader in this, because they have a very large population with very little area for anything, let alone farming food. with not only private citizen-grown farms, but also the worlds first commercial rooftop farming company. and it's not just rooftops, farms are appearing indoors, sometimes taking up entire floors in some skyscrapers. in cities in china, such as chongqing and shenzhen, urban farms and gardens are very common, and shoved into whatever small areas they can be put into. i've seen them in alleys, dead space between buildings, on rooftops, hanging from the ceiling, and even on top of concrete walls in the form of potted crops.
but it's not just asia, places like new york city are also mandating green spaces on top of some skyscrapers as well. those can take the form of parks, or farms, depending on the preferences of the building owners, as long as they are natural plants. furthermore, many residential apartment buildings in places like new york, chicago, and other american cities are seeing rooftop farms appear. in reality, almost everyone can grow some food for themselves, even if all you have is a single small window sill.
you seem to be very ignorant of the world. I would also encourage you to seek out information on green initiatives, and how people in cities are dealing with the problems they face in an urban landscape. there is no doubt that you are speaking on a topic you are woefully unprepared for.
if the best you can do to argue against me is bring up a fictional zombie apocalypse in which everyone was infected and died, then perhaps it is time to admit you already lost the argument. we're talking about reality here and what is happening right now all across the world, not your fantasy horror worlds.
Being considered worthy of living in a space you so kindly have cut out of the external world is not association if you still haven't realised that.
And still I wouldn't want to live like that. Our goal as a specie should be to elevate those living in hellish scenario like the one I described and that you so eagerly wish for all of us. Maybe this hasn't crossed your mind since you must be very young and fairly able bodied, but not everyone is capable of living in conditions where safe drinking water is unavailable and the best health care is relying on the phase of the moon to ingest the medicine cooked up by a wannabe shaman. It's not about being comfortable, it's about making everything better for everybody, for Christ' sake. You want to see millions of people die while you gloat about your helm and your ditch sorrounding it? Go for it, but at least don't call it "solidarity"; call it for what it is: egoism and main character syndrome.
Good luck feeding a city of millions with the fruits of planted pottery. You're gonna need a lot of pottery. Jesus Christ, a proper lot of pottery.
If the best you can do is responding to a snarky remark I left at the end of my comment thinking that it was the main point I was trying to make while imagining cities where millions of people live able to support themselves with only a couple of trees and tomato plants and completely misunderstanding the meaning of the anarchist mindset I'm afraid we're not having an argument at all, we are displaying the level of delusion you are willing to let yourself live in. Just like those asking for a civil war do not absolutely understand what they're asking for so do you with your call for an uncontrolled fall of the system.
that exactly is what mutual association is. I suggest you read the AFAQ, because you very clearly do not know anything about anarchism. the freedom of association requires the freedom to disassociate.
as for the rest of your comment, it takes a real special sort of person to look at examples I gave you of cities literally feeding thousands of people through urban farms and go "nah, I can't conceive of that being true, so it isn't". that's MAGA levels of denial. it doesn't matter your opinion or feelings on the matter. it's a real thing, it's happening now, and it's slowly being scaled upwards. snarky bullshit remarks aren't going to change that.
I will be blocking you now. you're not interested in accepting reality, and so our mutual association is no longer mutual, and I'm taking advantage my freedom to cut closed-minded useless people out of my life. live the rest of your sad little life as a slave to capitalism in whatever depressing, dystopian way seems best to you.
Keep on disassociating from someone who is trying to make you think about the result of your actions, that's exactly how grown up people act and that's gonna make associating so much wider when you'll find yourself alone in your fiery outrage. A perfect example of a pizza cutter kind of anarchist, all edge, no point.
You talk about agricultural projects which feed thousands in cities where MILLIONS of people live. You talk about cooperation but you don't consider those who are unable to cooperate due to age, health conditions or any ithe reason. You talk about changing the system but you offer nonviable alternative other than "break it all down and hope for the best". I'm sorry, I can't be bothered with auch juvenile ideas of revolution, they would only bring death and suffering for too many people to be considered viable. I hope you'll grow up sooner rather than later and realise that we can only hope to improve the situation when we will learn everything about the positives of the current system and how we can keep them while discarding everything else.
As for myself I'll be living in this hellish capitalist system as you will until it won't collapse on itself or until I'll die, it rest to be seen what happens first. But I'll be living in it with the clear objective of improving it without needing to kill hundreds of thousands of people during that process, thank you very much
A hundredth of that is a life-changing amount of money.
What are Astrum, Fireship and Hoog?
Other YouTube channels? I said that.
Yes, and also I was able to extrapolate that much, but I was looking for some idea of what kind of content they provided.
That said, I can look them up; apologies for bothering you on the matter.
oh, sorry, I misunderstood your question. Veritasium and Astrum are science channels, Fireship covers programming. fern. and Hoog do what I guess you could call deep dive videos on all sorts of topics. everything from how the North Korean king travels, to how that giant hotel aquarium broke several years ago. it's pretty random with them.
Thank you for the information.
yeah np. despite their ownership, all these channels are pretty good, just keep in mind they might sometimes have bias.
Astrum makes space stuff videos? I dunno, been a while.
Fireship makes videos about programming. Has series about "(Programming language/Framework) explained in 100 seconds", for example. I think people are complaining that the channel is slipping into AI dudebroery.
Hoog is a history/explainer type channel, I think.
Thanks for the information!