Tried it out a bit. I Ike the idea of the app being basically an rss read for video platforms. This is great for not having a bunch of apps (twitch app/Xtra for twitch and YT app/Newpipe/skytube/etc. for YT.) A user profile and allowing app comments are nice to have on the app.
However, I’m worried about what Rossmann says in regards to profit and maintenance. The app is moderated/worked-on by (I think paid) professionals and we should pay a license of $9.99 yet the app is also unprofitable and may never turn a profit. So, what’s the point in paying for the app?
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business among other things. So, is some of this being funded by that person and other investors of FUTO or is our money the only thing keeping this afloat? How are these workers getting paid if it’s a one time payment and the money is uncertain? How is the platform going to stay up and pay fair wages? The app is niche and I can’t see too many people paying for a license. I also can’t see too many workers staying unless they are passionate. Something isn’t adding up unless I’m wrong.
There are plenty of projects that take donations/payments that don’t make profit but stay afloat, normally through the team behind it paying the bills. I guess it depends what the running costs actually are, and if it’s for people or e.g. servers.
However, I’m worried about what Rossmann says in regards to profit and maintenance. The app is moderated/worked-on by (I think paid) professionals and we should pay a license of $9.99 yet the app is also unprofitable and may never turn a profit. So, what’s the point in paying for the app?
By paying for the app, you’re merely donating to FUTO. As Rossmann mentioned in his video, it is completely optional to pay.
There’s nothing wrong with any app being unprofitable IMO. Public transport and car infrastructure is unprofitable and we don’t have a problem with those… heck even my personal website is unprofitable, that’s about $200-300 a year being funnelled into something nobody uses or visits.
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business
This is incorrect
Rossmann’s personal repair business is financially independent from his employer, FUTO, who only partially sponsors Rossmann’s R2R advocacy with the assistance of community donations. Rossmann frequently publishes hour long videos on his main channel crawling through the finances, and has spreadsheets online for public viewing where viewers can do an audit themselves
So, is some of this being funded by that person and other investors of FUTO or is our money the only thing keeping this afloat
AFAICT, FUTO is comparable to organisations like NLNET - the same people at sponsor the Lemmy devs. The aim is generally not to fund projects forever, but to eventually open source them after they’ve been developed to the agreed level of functionality. Seeing as this app is mainly a Rossmann initiative there could be an exception here though - such as Rossmann donating his own money towards development.
The app is niche and I can’t see too many people paying for a license
I also can’t see too many workers staying unless they are passionate. Something isn’t adding up unless I’m wrong.
A lot of people who follow Rossmann are passionate about R2R, actually owning what you pay for, and not giving excessive control to monopolies like Google.
Grayjay is more along the lines of this spirit, and as soon as they have their DHT video hosting thing ready I’ll gladly donate some of my storage space towards it 👌
Yep. And a right libertarian. I stopped watching him when he went from repair content to months long complaining about taxes and talking up Florida and Texas as some great place. Honestly, I am 100% convinced that the only reason he even cares about right to repair is for his work. He has shown no signs of caring about anyone else other than himself in any of the dozens of hours of content I watched of his.
I’m so glad I trained under Jessa at iPad Rehab instead of taking his course.
He’s always felt off to me. And it’s not just because I’m into Apple products. I find it hard to articulate. But I see I’m not alone, thanks for sharing.
Yeah I was in the industry when he got big, and it was hard not to love his anger towards Apple, but eventually it became apparent he was just an angry person and Apple was only his current target. Once he had secured his platform, he felt more comfortable to share his absurd views, and I fear he influenced many impressionable people towards the right with his rhetoric. Dude is not who I want representing the repair community.
the only reason he even cares about right to repair is for his work
This is exactly it. I appreciate that he’s a strong advocate for it, and he’s a single issue voter/lobbyist, but he really wouldn’t care about it if it wasn’t his business. As can be seen in how, while he so strongly believes in a right for third parties to maintain hardware, he very clearly doesn’t believe in a right for third parties to maintain software with this app being source-available and not FLOSS.
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business among other things.
Why does everybody seem to know all of this dirt about Louis except me? I’ve seen this “be suspicious of anything Rossman is involved in” comment a few times in the past few days. I’m out of the loop.
So, I really want to be optimistic about this project. I love that it integrates multiple sources, that it lets you use different identities that are not attached to any of these services. I installed it and already paid for it even, because I love initiatives like this.
I think it’s unsustainable. In 5 years, everyone who’d use the app’s already paid for it, which means the devs have no incentive to continue to work, and funding dries up. When that happens, they’ll of course just let the app run until the plugins stop working. Nobody will be able to pick it up and continue development in an open forum because it’s not FLOSS.
My hope is they re-license it under a copyleft license later, but I’m not optimistic about that happening. With how things are now, it does appear to be doomed to enshittification.
Yeah FOSS or FLOSS (your teeth ^^) is the only viable solution we have found that really works. It’s like Democracy IMO, criticize them all you want but that’s the only ones that works over time.
You just described why subscriptions are rampant in the software industry.
We use to have upgrade pricing and paid major revisions for software. But things changed to progressive models. And then things like what you described came along over extended periods of time.
As long as Rossmann has a say in the ordeal I doubt it’ll enshittify. If it they can’t carry it anymore, I think they’ll re-license it.
But in any case, I’m really glad to see effort toward this. Because I may be naive, but I think this will make viewers & potential devs aware that it’s possible to have a great experience consuming video without being tied up in Youtube’s basement, and I predict will inspire more FOSS in the same vein.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that it still carries that over! My Home feed (not subscriptions) has plenty of videos from channels I’m not subscribed to
I’m the same way, I watch (hate to admit) hours of YouTube every day. I do subscribe to a lot of people, but only after I’ve seen several of their videos and enjoyed them. Primarily I refresh the homepage and see if anything peeks my interest. In my personal opinion YouTube has one of the best algorithms, generally showing me a good mix of stuff I’m interested in (with addons and whatnot to hide the bullshit and recommended MSM garbage). Conversely Instagram and Facebook have some of the consistently worst algorithms, but I think Facebook is getting better about it, Instagram however NEVER shows me ANYTHING I could ever possibly care about and usually actively get annoyed by.
Yeah people have mixed opinions about that, but atleast in my case YouTube’s recommendations does a really good job at finding content I’m interested in. It just needs some training for it to do a good job. When there’s something I’m not interested in, I just flag it as “not interested” and then that stuff dissapears and is replaced with something else.
Oh yeah it works great, I just don’t like how the algo feels like it’s trying to trick me into watching as long as possible. I enjoy the things I subscribe to but I don’t need YouTube to take up any more of my time.
It always keeps suggestion the same few things, and things from the channels I’m already subscribed to. Videos I’ve already watched often get in there, and it’s very rare I get suggestions for relevant creators.
I follow way to many creators to have a sensible subscription feed, especially when I only watch some videos from some channels. If there were tiered subscriptions, I’d use them more. But right now I only use subscriptions for my tier 1.
I don’t agree, you need a way to discover new stuff (akin to going to /all). What I do hate is how they don’t give you the option to do anything but that. Or they give the option but it’s incredibly annoying so you don’t use it. Like you can’t trust YouTube to show you the content from the people you’re subscribed to. You can’t trust them to even show their content on the homepage of the channel if you want to be sure you didn’t miss anything interesting you have to go channel by channel clicking in the videos and live tabs for anything the algorithm might deem not worthy
Nice. I definitely have to check it out. I pay for Nebula/Curiosity Stream but am not able to play the Nebula videos with the screen off like I can with ReVanced. Hopefully I can with Grayjay.
It is an interesting project, not sure where it goes. The title is deeply misleading though. The features of ReVanced make YouTube so much better, whereas this project doesn’t seem to be about making YouTube better so much as circumnavigating YouTube for the comment boxes and as your hub to creators. They seem to be doing different things.
You can import YouTube subscriptions by clicking on the Sources tab and then tapping on the YouTube source (says tap to open in small print). You can then sign in and after that you’ll have import subscriptions as well as import playlists buttons.
There are no ad blocking YouTube apps on iOS so I suspect Apple blocks them. The DMA will soon let us in the EU install whatever we like, but fuck Apple.
Publishing on iOS creates a whole plethora of hurdles because everything you install has to first be approved by Apple. This is an Apple problem. The founder of the company has said he doesn’t like developing for iOS for this reason.
grayjay.app
Active