cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18477295
YouTube is now testing out a welcome feature, a sleep timer, but it only works on mobile and desktop, and only for Premium subscribers.
It’s not technical news, It’s newsworthy because of the context.
Kind of like when people in the Soviet Union were allowed to grow vegetables in their own tiny plot of land for personal consumption: it was important because the Soviet Union denied people private ownership, but simply because everybody in the USSR was on the verge of dying of starvation any minute, the Soviets carved out a teeny tiny exception to the rule.
Everybody in the free world was completely nonplussed by the ability to grow your own veggies. But it made the news because it was the Soviet Union.
In this case, the stifling Google mothership implemented a teeny tiny something trivial on their platform, and it’s newsworthy because Google is the Soviet Union of the internet in more ways than one.
Of course, people with any sense of freedom and sanity consume Youtube videos with FreeTube, Grayjay, NewPipe, LibreTube, Piped, Invidious or whatever else and look at this thinking “So…?” But it’s newsworthy because it comes out of Google.
