You're not the customer. The customer is the manager who buys the ad campaign from the marketing department.

Is there a reason it can't be both? or that AdBlock is just more sensitive to whatever fuckery Youtube is doing?

[No idea, I use UBlock.]

Well, so far the competition ain't doing so good either. A couple weeks ago I happened to look at a Rumble video in a browser without an adblocker, and seldom have I been so assaulted by such obnoxiously-shit advertising.

Marketing isn't about selling product. It's about selling ad campaigns to managers.

Considering what I've noticed about the proliferation of bot-generated content, that may well be the case. (See my comment above about that)

And lately, even with creators I like, I find myself going, "Same old, same old..." and in the entire long list of daily updates (I have about a thousand subs) I find one or two things I want to watch.

Being stuck on a shit connection, I never watch above 720p and often below. I wonder if that's why I haven't noticed any slowdown... I'm already close to rock bottom.

That's nothing. I was convinced to install an adblocker when I was served a 30 minute unskippable crapomercial before I could watch 5 minutes of fluff.

And I'm being recommended more and more obviously bot-generated content with obvious repetition designed around multiple ads (like, every minute or two for the duration, yet such channels somehow have 12 million subs??) which makes me think that there's a big con game going on that Google isn't privy to, and is probably where most of the revenue-to-creators actually winds up.

And if it did exist, is there some reason AI couldn't incorporate this watermarking into its generated images?

Once upon a time I actually queried the Library of Congress about whether copyright was available on something that was NOT available for distribution.

I was told flat out NO COPYRIGHT.

Hmmmm.

Dealers used to be where you got the best service, and were least likely to be ripped off. They hired all the best mechanics, and it was steady work without the huge investment in tools and facility and inventory.

This changed sometime in the 1980s... some dealerships were (and are) still good, but service stopped being service and became revenue stream. And the better mechanics began migrating to being independent shops.

This seems to have happened throughout the service industries, perhaps as a side effect of acquisitions and consolidation (and concomitant cost-cutting). Frex, was a time the competent plumber worked for the big outfit; now the big outfit is a ripoff and the only good ones are the independents.

Side thought: every industry that depends on sales commissions becomes cancerous, because that's a direct conflict with the customer's interests.

Does the same thing happen in Welltris?

[Never liked Tetris, but I did like Welltris. I'm weird.]

Ah. Well in that case... I could have digitized it a couple years ago, which was when I tripped over a copy at a giveaway price. Thanks.

So... I own a copy of a very rare specialty book (25, maybe 26 copies known to still exist, of the original 300) that has a stated copyright of 1936, but AFAIK was never renewed, and the owner died in 1937 (and has no extant legal heirs).

When can I digitize the durn thing and make it public?

Yet another idiot.

Do you honestly think that your little mental games of "liberal" or "conservative" have the slightest impact on the solution of any real world problems?