I can’t believe I’m saying it but but I’m with Google here. They are sub-cons so negotiation would surely go through their employer who is cognizant. I’m a sub-contractor, I’m not gonna go to the client and ask for a raise, I’m gonna go to my employer. Maybe it’s different in different regions but if I asked the client for a raise in the uk they would probably just laugh at me.
Yeah thinking about it more, you’re definitely right. I’ve only ever been a W-2 employee (United States) so I know nothing about this kind of thing. If they are employees of another company, they should bargain with them instead, and force them (via strike if required) to negotiate a new contract with Google. I’m very pro worker and support striking to get results but you have to make sure you’re targeting the right business to get the results you want.
You missed the plot. They found a loophole and are probably conspiring to halt the Union. One company says they have to wait for the other to negotiate, the other company says they won’t negotiate because they are not their employees. The whole process enters into a permanent delay, workers get fucked by both companies for months. This is a tale as old as unions have existed. It’s one of the reasons why in most sane countries, unrestricted outsourcing is not allowed and outsourcing in general is heavily regulated. It’s one of the most common tools companies use to abuse workers and avoid responsibilities.
And in that time, they’ll set up a new shit call center under new shit management under a new shitty partner/reseller/vendor and just close that first contract down entirely.
You are 100% correct, so it is especially funny seeing that almost 1/4 of the people downvoted you for no good reason. Holy fuck this site has a huge percentage of utterly clueless Lemmings.
Outsourcing in Europe is heavily scrutinised and regulated due to companies kept choosing to depend on third party agencies do they don’t have to do with strikes and unions.
YTM: you have a vague hint of network reception, just wait for me to fail loading what I want to load before I consider letting you play your downloaded music.
I actually love the fact that all of the underground, unknown, not officially published music I’ve liked on YouTube is there with all my other music, including the stuff I’ve uploaded myself.
Put a large collection of albums into your “Library”.
Now try to pull up a list of a single artist’s albums within your Library.
The “Library” management is so remedial that it’s basically a joke. It can’t measure up to iTunes from 20 years ago. It’s completely unusable for a serious music collection.
It may be fine for people that just listen to singles and playlists, but every other music service can do that too, while also offering complete functionality elsewhere.
YouTube Music is a half-baked, half-complete product. It’s inexplicable that it exists when they literally just needed to do nothing but rebrand Google Play Music.
I completely agree, I miss gpm so much. There’s a lot wrong with it, especially if you have a big collection like you said, but another incredibly annoying thing is the radio for songs, bands, and even genres always seem to come back to the same stuff. I don’t find new music on ytm like I did in gpm
The article became increasingly redundant as it continued. The crux seems to be Google isn’t their employer. These workers work for a subcontractor, Cognizant. Cognizant performs services for YouTube Music.
Cognizant is refusing to bargain citing the ongoing relevant litigation* between its employees and Google.
I’m not sure what the legal process is called for union claims.
One idea of subcontractors is to split and delegate societal responsibility to others to appear to be clean. Surely the law is focused on Cognizant here, but the responsibility lies fully on Google, including their ability to intervene.
It’s redundant because there’s basically a circular argument that G and C are using to not respond to the workers. Workers want to C negotiate with G on the terms of their work with G but C says they can’t because they’re just contracting with G. Then G says the workers can’t negotiate with G because they work for C. Both companies point the finger at the other as to why they can’t help and just give nothing back to the workers.
The article is confusing but it sounds like the union wants both C and G at the table, but C and G both agree that C should be the employer and G doesn’t need to join the talks. So C is saying, if you really want G to join, you’ll have to wait until the appeals are finished.
I’m guessing the union doesn’t want to negotiate with C, have C go to G with the terms and G refuse and just causing endless delays in a game of telephone bargaining.
DuckDuckGo is fine for some things, but if you want to do a search with a specific phrase in quotes, it doesn’t recognize it. I hate having to go back to Google for some searches, but sometimes it’s just better. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.
DuckDuckGo’s image search also leaves a lot to be desired.
I tried switching to DDG and then Qwant and sadly they both suck for some searches. For example neither could successfully find anything more specific than the home page on my country’s government websites. Perhaps Bing, but, again, it’s Microsoft?
You don’t need to do the quote thing in DDG. You can literally just search the quote, and maybe the domain it was hosted on. You will find what you’re looking for. DDG even has business profile widgets like google search does. I don’t even miss google search at all.
I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a search phrase that is partially in quotes for an exact match and partially not for an inexact match. Google handles that, DDG does not.
I use duckduckgo but just throw in the google bang if I need specific functionality. Usually DDG is fine for me usually but it’s convenient to be able to switch quickly.
Oh sweet summer child, you’ll be waiting a while. Pull up a chair. Let me tell you a story about how I’ve been waiting years, with an S, for the Android app remake that they keep pushing back.
Well, they aren’t even replying to whether the community-developed rclone backend breaks TOS, so don’t expect much… but yeah, i pay for Proton and they’re good for what they are.
Start your own email server!! Download all of your favorite channels! Sub to your fav youtubers patreons! If you need music, use Spotify until you amass a collection of digital/physical music! Use FireFox! Google does not need to have any grip on our digital lifestyles.
The NLRB ruled that the nature of their work makes them employees of both Cognizant and Google, despite whatever those companies try to classify them as, and that both are required to negotiate with the union. Google is now just flat-out refusing to respect that decision.
I was a “contractor” for JnJ. Which ok, is a different company but it’s the same premise. The reason they contract the work out is so they can avoid giving benefits and cut costs for an essential job. All so when something like this happens they can just pass the buck off to the contracting company saying it’s not their responsibility for the working conditions they set.
There’s apps to sync your stuff when you move to another platform. It won’t be perfectand certain features on certain apps are paywalled, but you should get a fairly acceptable copy of your content after using a service like this.
I used a tool that synced my Spotify playlists to Apple Music. It worked surprisingly well. I signed up the one time, moved everything over, and then made sure to cancel the service.
this hit me hard on multiple levels. There was a lot of live performances and remixes on Grooveshark that just don’t exist anymore.
But, I also lived where they were headquartered. They had started a “Grooveshark university” for local programmers to learn the ropes and it was really cool. I was self-taught but learned a lot from that experience. Such a shame
I actually met employees from the company at a conference years ago and knew people that worked there off and on. It was a pretty toxic environment and the management was basically a frat party. The office had an in-house chef for a while before they had to tighten the purse strings due to the multitude of lawsuits they were getting hit with (most of which I learned came from Sony BMG). Their team of lawyers basically worked around the clock. They also underpaid devs but had an array of talent from every level that allowed people to cut their teeth and work on some cool UI.
I used to have a ton of stuff on Grooveshark and had stuff shared to me (and vice versa) from others. It was a cool UI even if it was a little clunky at times. Great place to find obscure stuff.
You can still upload up to 100,000 tracks, I believe.
Though I’ve not personally tried to do a bulk upload since before it changed from GPM, so I don’t know if there’s still library import tools available to help with that
There are export options for many music subscription services now, as well as apps like TuneMyMusic, Playlisty, etc. which can transfer your library and services between services.
Your mileage may vary coming up in December. The $10 crew in the US will see a 40% increase at or near the end of the year. Grandfathering is going away.
This brings the cost of Google’s video/music service to match Amazon’s video/music service. Are those services of the same quality?
Soundcloud ($10) Is the real competitor to YT-Music in my book. Both benefit from user-generated and user-uploaded content. While there is crossover, I have found more tracks on Soundcloud that aren’t on YT than the other way around.
If by “savvy”, you mean flubbing your location to somewhere in the developing world where that’s the price point, I refuse to do that. I have no issue pretending to be in say, Germany and taking up a 75% off deal. But I won’t put myself somewhere where the regular $10-$15 price point is genuinely out of range of the locals.
If too many people fake their location to these places, the Googles and Steams of the world will stop giving those nations lower prices. I won’t have my own selfishness take something away from thousands of people.
For me, every other music app is missing alot of the songs I want to listen to (Cover songs, and remixes are the big 2) and they are only available on yt music.
Same + foreign artists. Lots of J-Rock artists that are hard to find on Western music services, let alone other countries. Only stuff like K-Pop I can find consistently on Western music services just because of how in demand it is.
Soundcloud might be an alternative worth looking into. For the music I tend to search for, I find I’m more likely to find it on Soundcloud, and it can take years to migrate from SC to YTM.
While YTM and SC were both $10, putting up with the worse platform was a reasonable price for no YT ads. Now that the grandfathering is ending and the price is jumping to $14, for US folks, I’m feeling the pressure to migrate.
they are talking about User Interface, it’s different for YouTube (the one for video) and YouTube Music (the one for music). Premium subscription can be shared between the two services, that’s correct
I don’t use YouTube Music but I love using YouTube for my music. Tons of songs on there that just aren’t on either YouTube music or other services like Spotify.
Yeah. You can search for and add any YouTube video to a playlist for YMusic. I do this all the time with various Indies, remixes, and foreign artists that are hard to find otherwise.
Yeah, I switced to YouTube music when Google Play music went away because that’s where I stored all of my music at. But The category is massive, especially for niche songs and you can choose to watch the video or just listen to the song, Also with a lot of the songs you can look at the lyrics in real time while the music’s playing and that’s kind of nice. Also ad free YT is nice.
6 family members for $15 a month and no YouTube ads. Also that money was basically paid for by Google Rewards. The Web App is good too. I don’t have to deal with CEF/Electron or any install really.
Yeah, sorry that was bumped up recently though I was grandfathered for a long while. But that was the impetus for getting it back when it was just GPM.
It’s 6 actually (1+ 5 other members). My uncle basically paid for half of it.
It’s $22.99 for me now which includes YouTube Premium. Just YouTube Music (for 6) is $16.99. Individual $10.99 and Student $5.49.
also pricing varies heavily by region. Family subscription is $6 and student is $2.50 where I live (Poland). But we also got 70% price cut when LJ introduced regional pricing for Sync ad-free because we are poor in general as an economy
I do because I pay next to nothing for a family membership, I can access YouTube covers and music normally unaccessible in my region (yeah, that happens!) and it works with Android Auto which my father needs (otherwise I would simply use Revanced). Also could never learn Spotify, it’s so counter-intuitive to me
Revanced, yeah. Still sucks when you’re looking for an album and all of the songs are from the official channel except for one that some schlub uploaded which repeats the previous track as an intro, has the levels maxed across all channels and sounds like it was recorded with a USB lapel mic in a paper bag
Ever since Google destroyed Google Music i switched to Spotifly because at the time YouTube music couldn’t tell the difference between memes and music plus alot of my playlist was unavailable
What’s to stop every single corporation from leveraging third party contractor companies just to escape union bargaining? Cognizant seems like a company that basically exists for this reason. Both Amazon and Google play this game and it’s infuriating.
Nothing. It’s one of the alluring aspects of using third-parties. You pay a flat fee, people do work. You avoid all the overhead of HR, benefits, workers compensation and unemployment insurance. If you want someone gone there’s no process, you simply tell the third party that Joe doesn’t need to come back to work, ever, and you’re done.
Amazon and Google are not alone in this practice, nor is it exclusive to Fortune 500 companies.
I work as a contractor dev for fortune 500s. It’s wide spread. Handful of full timers, padded with contractors.
Brain drain is a real problem, but it also means there’s a culture of FTE being willing to jump through corporate hoops and on call hours, because they want to keep the FTE position instead of finding a new job every 1.5 years (in California where there are max contract lengths)
Hopefully people turn out in 2024 and stop us going down the 1930s Germany route… my mother recently moved to Pennsylvania from a deep red state, and was saying that due to Bidens “corruption”, she didnt think she would vote in 2024. Upon further questioning, my hyper conservative fundemantalist Christian uncle had been sending her news.
Hope my arguments convinced her otherwise, she detests Trump & the Republicans. Her vote DOES matter now. Have her set up with a variety of news websites & Firefox/ublock origin etc, and not “Townhall” garbage.
Depending on where in PA, it might be just as red as where she came from. If she’s not near Pittsburgh, or basically bordering NJ, then she’s probably in good ol Pennsyltucky.
That state really should be broken into three states, it’s way too large and it’s already divided geographically.
Nothing (yet). Yup, this model insulates corporations of all kinds from bargaining, costs (like healthcare), liability, and much more. Check out this episode from the Pitchfork Economics podcast …google.com/…/M2JmMzVlNGMtMDk2NC0xMWVlLWFjMGUtYzc…
Nothing, and they do just that. No labor laws apply to contractors and it’s practically the only way some of them can earn a decent wage, so striking is futile - they’ll just switch to other contractors.
Well, now you have contract bargaining with your contracting company, and those companies aren’t immune from their workers becoming disgruntled and unionizing.
I get the technicality of all this, but this could be a watershed moment. Businesses like to contract people out to move liability and cut corners in their obligations to the workers. The bottom line is that its cheaper and easier to fire whatever contractors you don’t like for any reason, and artificially push their salaries/wages down.
Look at Fedex Ground, Amazon drivers, etc. Google is now firmly in the role of the bad guy here, with Sundar Pichai making 220+ million dollars with much of it on the backs of layoffs and ethnically bankrupt business practices. I honestly think the ramifications of this in a positive way for the workers is tantamount to the formation of the UAW itself with their sitting strikes. They sat at the machines and forcibly halted production.
That needs to happen here, and all you scabs, fuck you. You can just piss off.
could they put bring the dislike count back on the demands? and make so video posters can’t delete comments, so we can call bullshit when needed? that would be nice
No they have bigger priorities, like retroactively demonitizing and removing videos that used to be just fine under the new ruse of “making everything more kid friendly” when we all know it’s to make it more advertiser friendly
If only there were an app… suited for kids that google could use… One that would give them the limitations and safety they want from people and not ruin the whole site while still chasing those kid viewers.
There’s been enough creators that have had enough problems with YouTube that maybe something could happen. I’m not putting money on it or anything but it wouldn’t be that crazy.
An empty platform has little value. Hundreds have gotten shut down for this very reason.
Content by and large makes the platform. Not the other way round. Yet the platform soaks up the lions share of the benefit. Leaving most who aren’t whales to see nothing at all. This is the problem google is very complicit with. I’m all for them making enough to sustain the service. I just think they owe far more than they are giving, to the content that made them.
Nebula is great. And is trundling along just fine. It could use some more promotion and love sure. But it’s goals aren’t the same as a behemoth like Google’s. Who’s talents aren’t in creating content, but promoting it.
Creators would exist without the platform. They always have. But the platform definitely does bring value. The problem is that for a while now, greedy corporations have slowly been pushing the balance so that they received most of the benefit of everyone else’s work. It’s an overarching problem of capitalism that we need to deal with. But have been putting off for 50 to 60 years.
Creators would exist without the platform. They always have.
Not sure what you mean with this. Youtube has allowed anyone with a camera and an internet connection to put content out in the world. It was completely different back before youtube existed.
I’ve been on the internet since 94. I know what it was like. YouTube did not create creators. People posted video to the internet long before YouTube was a thing. And long before Google owned it. Because they didn’t create it.
I’m not saying people didn’t share videos beforehand, but youtube created a platform that allowed people to do it more easily, be discovered more easily, and actually make a decent living through it. The internet landscape, especially in respect to influencers or content creators, is entirely different now than it was in the 90’s.
So did Vimeo and dozens of others. YouTube did not get where it is by being better. Or by even being a platform. It got where it is by being bought out by a large corporate entity with near endless sums of money to back it with over the competition.
And a decade or two from now the internet is liable to be as different again from today as today was from them. And many people will be wondering Google who? Because ultimately people will remember the content not the platform.
Yes, but the backing by Google turned it into a viable career path for many creators. Name a single creator who posts to vimeo as their full time job. I’m not saying that youtube’s rise in popularity was necessarily good or ethical, I’m just saying that it is objectively better for creators over the other options.
You’ve basically said the same thing over and over about four or five times now. And been shut down on the facts of it every single time. Aren’t you getting a little tired of that?
Publishing has existed long before Google and alphabet. And it will exist long after they’re gone. Creators don’t really owe them all that much to be honest. And yes Vimeo or other competitors could have just as easily been the ones to do what YouTube did. Because YouTube didn’t do anything. It was the leveraging of Google’s near Monopoly on search and advertisement that allowed them to guide everyone to YouTube once they owned it. Making it viable and profitable for them to share some of those profits no matter how small with the people who post. People made a living making videos long before YouTube.
You’ve basically said the same thing over and over about four or five times now. And been shut down on the facts of it every single time. Aren’t you getting a little tired of that?
Yes, I am getting tired. You consistently argue against the pretty inoffensive and commonly understood arguments I have made with completely irrelevant points. So I’ll say it one more time and see if it can finally sink in. If someone wants to get into making videos, they’ll go to youtube for better or for worse. I’m not arguing about the pros and cons of Google’s influence, I’m saying that the reality is that youtube has enabled a huge amount of people to monetize their video creation and build an audience in a way that other competitors haven’t caught up with. If you’re arguing that the landscape for video creation and publishing on the internet is the same as it was before youtube rose to prevalence, then you’re just dead wrong. Sorry.
Also, you do understand that youtube was more successful than vimeo before google’s acquisition, right? Their success is kind of the whole reason google backed them.
Going with what is happening in the SAG/AFTRA strike, perhaps the big names shouldn’t join the strike because they would come across as entitled, but they are more than welcome to donate towards the strike.
Benn Jordan, perhaps better known as “The Flashbulb” as an EDM artist, has an excellent YouTube channel. This video dives into some details on how we could get artists paid, and stop getting our art jerked around by corporations. For less than we pay to not get free healthcare healthcare, you could have access to all copyright content, ad free, and artists would be better compensated.
Artists, techies, and socialists need to come together. To build a platform focused on sustainability ultimately. Devoid of profit for the sake of profit. And more focused on meeting the needs of their members. No overpriced CEO or board of directors. Or layers of redundant management. Once the service costs are covered. Anything after that could be split somewhat proportionally within strict limits.
A lot of the basic pieces are in place. Torrenting/peer tube for distribution. Modern day royalty free codecs. Realistically the two biggest hurdles are how to monetize responsibly, and bringing people in. It’s something that in one shape or form will always require some small donation of time and resources. And it’s easier to convince someone to join a Ponzi scheme telling them you will make them wealthy. Than it is to get someone to join guaranteeing that you’ll never make them wealthy but you will try to make them secure in their lives.
Add comment