Have you changed you youtube pfp to clippy ?

Those businesses give no flying fucks about signals you're angry; they only care about money. So unless you use the Clippy avatars to mobilise people and to hurt those businesses' revenues, it'll do nothing.

(For YouTube, this means to stop or at least reduce platform usage. After all its revenue comes from ads.)

Where's that mobilisation? cricket noises

Changing your profile picture to Clippy to me seems the same as boomers posting "I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO FACEBOOK".

Just delete your account and stop using it.

I would but I don't have a youtube account

hhh chad

Y know this comment section-and every other i see when this vid comes up- is a perfect illustration of why the left always loses. We would rather criticize everything/anything than DO anything. Who fucking CARES if they care, if the notice, if it matters or affects anything??? Who fucking CARES who/what the mascot is??? The message is something im reasonably sure 99.99 percent of usernames in this particular commie off brand reddit corner of the internet AGREE WITH. Yet. We sit here shouting at each other and arguing over each fucking comment, nuance and semantic instead of doing even the tiniest, most trivial resistance... this more than anything is why the left is so useless and despicable, as a movement. Theyre too busy shooting each other in the feet to notice the race is already over. MORONS.

There's a lesson I learnt from playing team games: If your teammate makes a bad call that you disagree with, you should still follow them 100%. Going all-in on a questionable decision is almost always better than second guessing each other.
I think it applies here, and it's why right wingers and religions are so effective. They don't care if their arguments are flawed or their leader is a rapist, they're jumping into that fight every time.
- Not an online gamer, but I heard a similar sentiment from a boss about 20 years ago. He told me "if you make a mistake one time, I got your back, but we'll speak in private and I'll counsel you. Make the mistake again, I'll let my pen do the talking. Make it a third time, you're off the team."
  It escalates quickly, but his management style helped us learn from the mistakes. Sometimes the second time happened. But everyone was willing to go to war with this guy. I mean, proverbially. This was also a guy who would bring his grill to work and cook for everyone one weekend a month. Companies that say you're family, big red flag. A boss who walks the walk as well as talks the talk? Huge green flag.
I agree with your sentiment, but calling people morons isn't going to win anybody over to your side

I've seen this posted before, so it's definitely been discussed on Lemmy before. Reading the comments back then is much like reading the comments here, Clippy does not really seem fit as a corporation fighting symbol and frankly changing your pfp will most likely have no impact to Youtubes management. Why not simply go for a Reddit blackout kind of protest where everyone switches all their videos to unlisted or blocking monetization on their videos (if that is possible)? That will surely get the attention of Youtube.

The goal is to show each other we are many. He explained it in another video, the clippy movement actually had an impact. This is simply the first step for organising as a group around a shared idea: using a common symbol. It doesn't matter what the symbol is, as long as we recognize each other using it.
Why not simply go for a Reddit blackout
Well the whole reddit thing was just a bunch of volunteer mods. On the other hand, many YouTubers make a career out of the platform. Considering their livelihoods are at stake, and the vast number of YouTubers you would need to get on board to make google actually care? Organizing such a thing would be anything but simple.
- Also the Reddit blackout did nothing. So I'm not why that's your reference point. Charging pfp would achieve exactly the same. Nothing.
  Americans love their nothing burger demonstrations.

I can count the amount of fucks any tech giant gives about Clippy avatars on a snake's hands.

On the other hand, seeing this symbol more and more on other random videos outside that bubble does give a very nice sense of "I am not alone". It does more for users to find eachother than it does damage to big corpos.
But choice of the symbol itself is questionable.. Why use a big tech symbol to protest big tech? -__- And not just any big tech, but super evil 90s monopolistic giant Microsoft
There's a nice cartoon in this thread we're clippy is if he could have, he would have harvest all your data.
- Come on. Changing an avatar picture has never achieved anything. On top of that, changing to a corporate mascot to fight corporate greed….give me a break. There are better actions to take like being on fediverse instead of Reddit or other social media platforms or using libre office. I get the rant but an avatar change doesn’t mean anything.
- Personally, I have more of a "I'm not alone" feeling when I actively leave services that I disagree with and through word of mouth find alternatives where I can talk to people who seem to have the same base values I do. Even if we disagree on other things.
  It's the laziness of this initiative that drives me up a wall. People want change but they don't want to work for or sacrifice anything for it.
- we know we are not alone because here we are.
  i don't need a boost to my ego or hopium, i need solutions. which well, here we are.
It's a good thing that's not what it's about then. It's about showing the size of the community, and knowing that there are other people like you that care, and thus you will be more likely to actually do something.
- Had me in the first half, but I don't see any clippys doing much of anything but ishposting
Thank you. I needed that chuckle 😂❤️

I think Clippy is the wrong icon for this. Microsoft Bob would have been better and it predated Clippy by a few years.! .

It's not as recognizable though.
- actually I recognize this one more. I only know about clippy from retro computing videos, but I remember this dog and that sorcerer clearly when searching stuff (now that I mention it, Windows' search sucks nonetheless)

Pff. This reminds me of the This Is Bob protest against the forced Google+ accounts that were the beginning of youtube enshittification. It didn't do shit. Anyone who wants a profile on youtube nowadays has a Google account. Google+ may have failed but the intent and mission behind it didn't. Google has total control over anyone who wants to use YouTube now.

You can set clippy as your profile pic and feel like you have done something, but it's not gonna change anything.

If people want to actually do something, they should abandon these predatory services and go open source or maybe become anti tech as much as possible. It doesn't matter whether or not you signal to the Zuckerburgers on top how you feel if you're just gonna continue to use their products.

The only thing that would scare them would be the numbers plummeting if they saw a mass exodus from their platforms and services and people actively began looking for alternatives. But most people can't be fucked to do that because they are too enmeshed with these services that it is easier to stay. But putting clippy as your profile pic is super easy and costs you nothing so yay. You get to feel like you did something without actually sacrificing anything to make change and the Zuckerburgers will look at you and shrug. "Ah, the peasants are blowing off some steam again".

Sorry for being so negative, but this is honestly so fucking weak. I may have missed something, but when has slacktivism ever changed the minds of these companies?

Google+ may have failed but the intent and mission behind it didn't.
Google+ was Google's attempt to take on Facebook with its own social product. It definitely failed, and the intent and mission failed too. That isn't to say that they have no social data, but they definitely don't have access to the full social graph that Meta does.
It wasn't a complete failure. Before Google+ Google's various products were all siloed. Your data in gmail was in a different silo from you data from search, which was different from your data from Google Reader, etc. As part of the Google+ push, Google put out an EULA that basically said that it could share data from any google product you used with any other google product you used and it was one big unified account now. Thanks to that, they're able to target their ads based on much more data. But, they still wish they'd been able to get a Facebook competitor up and running so they could see more clearly who your friends and family were. There's so much interpersonal data they're missing out on.
when has slacktivism ever changed the minds
Hey, don't you remember how changing your Twitter profile picture to have a green overlay encouraged the Arab Spring to bring lasting democracy all over the Middle East?!? /s
- Lol, did people do that? I only remember the black square for the blm movement, but I have also never really been on Twitter, so most of what I know about trends on that platform is what has been shared on other platforms.
I do really think that one of the things we have to do as collective, is something somewhat impossible but,
We need to pick the things we really care about. Limit ourselves from the everything that we have been offered for so long and find what brings us joy specifically and start following and protecting that and doing it off the Internet, or at least the at large big players.
Find artists in our spaces locally that make the comedy, or comics, or stories, the developers that make their own games and movies that dont outsource their work to others so that it no longer feels like art.
We can still have globalised sharing and our spaces can support that by raising up the best of the best naturally through communication and sharing but not just by being told it's gonna be big or given to us easily.
The only way out feels like we as a collective need to start putting work into cultivating and tending to our fandoms and we cant be as greedy as it will take more work. Im fine with us being an insatiable species craving for more cause its how we don't stop, and i want new artists and new creators and new spaces. But i think we cant be lazy about it anymore. And i think doubly so we cant think we can do all of it.
- Problem is that the majority of people are not going to do any of that because it takes work and people either don't want to let go of comforts, they don't care enough or they don't have the energy to be digital activists after they have finished a day of work.
  It will probably only gain traction if it becomes the cool thing to do among young people and even then, it will most likely be a smaller number of young people who will bother doing all of this.
  The rest will become really good at prompting their way through life because its easier, more comfortable and takes the least effort.

I've been out touching grass, what's all this about?

lazy copy of my comment in another thread:
here, the video which started all: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/change-your-profile-picture-to-clippy.:e
and where he goes a bit more into detail and talks about many of the points seen in this thread: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/you-changed-your-profile-to-clippy-now:6
Clippy is becoming a shared symbol. The idea it represents is that: we are not happy with the way companies lock us out of our own devices. We want to be allowed to do whatever we want with the hardware we bought. We want to be able to repair it. We want privacy when using it... Etc...
- What motivated the choice of Clippy as a symbol? Meme value?

No, simply because I've never commented on youtube, so it'd be pretty useless, if not counterproductive. Giving even more information about my political/tech ethics to Alphabet doesn't seem smart nor useful in my position. Also, I don't even watch youtube videos on their website now. I usually use invidious instances or newpipe.

But I'm not against people doing it, especially if the ultimate goal is spreading awareness and building a community of people with privacy oriented ideas.

I'm on the same boat, except for the part about not using Youtube. Unfortunately I'm caught in that spiral where I watch every clickbait_y video about new programming language, new tech stack ...ect. Are you able to watch every video normally with invidious and newpipe on Desktop (Linux/Windows) ? My experience wasn't going that well, also Youtube is so good because of the bandwidth and you easily switch quality.
- Are you able to watch every video normally with invidious and newpipe on Desktop (Linux/Windows) ?
  In my experience, yes. For desktop usage you can use invidious from browser and freetube [https://freetubeapp.io/] as external client/software (but I've never used Freetube so I can't comment on that). Newpipe is android only and I HIGHLY recommend it if you have Android.
  The problem with invidious instances is that sometimes they get pretty laggy because of server overloads (I guess? honestly idk). You also don't have your account tailored recommendation, but in my experience you can jump around a lot, especially if your main interest are programming videos.
  Another method I use is downloading the videos I'm interested into using JDownloader 2, but that's pretty extreme and I relied on this to combat my "algorithm addiction". Got fed up by it months ago, so I put my favourite channels on a RSS feeds and downloaded only the videos I was truly interested into. Usually downloading videos require way less bandwidth than streaming.
  (edited for spelling errors, eh)
- I'm using FreeTube on desktop. World pretty well. If you lots an update you might have issues before getting the latest version

So going on an ads platform to put the icon of a corporation to claim that this is helping? I’m really having hard times to understand the logic.

No, it won‘t. What this does is helping you take action and fight against it, knowing you are not alone. It really gives you moral support when seeing clippy on other youtube videos making you feel there are many of you who do not tolerate the bullshit.
- So using a Microsoft product to fight against corporate’s greed like Microsoft. Just use libre office or any alternative instead of “changing picture” on ads platforms.
It's purely to make people feel better about themselves
Try to forget about the weird mascot choice. It's just a rallying cry.
I also don't really get why the clippy and he probably could have picked a better avatar for people to use.
The point is (I think) that people who know what it's about will feel the support of all these strangers sharing their view, and people who don't know might look it up and get sensibilized to the cause.
- Come on the video is monetized. Next week that dude will say jump and you jump? Enough with TikToker.

That'll show them! I'm gonna use a corporate mascot to show them I'm against corporations!

looks like shit no thanks

Clippy is such a stupid mascot for this "movement".

how so? I think it's absolutely perfect that what was once emblematic of corporate overreach into our lives would be welcomed as preferable to the current state of affairs. Clippy didn't want to sell your data to bounty hunters, he just wanted to help.
- He absolutely would have sold your data if there were any buyers for it. Microsoft was still a terrible company in the Clippy era, there just were fewer opportunities to be terrible in this particular way at the time.
- Clippy is Microsoft!! So you are using a Microsoft product to fight against Microsoft? Just use libre office or other tool set instead.

This comment section does not understand what Rossmann's trying to do. Obviously google, facebook etc. are not going to fall to the ground with tears in their eyes with this. It's more about building and organizing the community, to make them feel their not alone and something can and should be taken back. This is analogous to how 4chan making Trump their meme candidate helped him out a fair bit.

The real question is of course whether or not anyone is gonna do something past changing their profile pictures.
I give this trend a couple of months. Maximum a year and then a bunch of people will have clippy avatars and everything will go back to normal.
Something like Stop Killing Games was an initiative that only survived because one man dedicated a good portion of his life to get the issue brought before the eyes of actual politicians. Even before the pirate software drama, Ross had been talking about this issue for years and many people agreed, but nobody did anything except for Ross. Maybe the petition would have reached its goal without piratesoftware's initial meddling. Maybe it wouldn't. His subsequent sperging turned failure into success, but the issue is still in process to be reviewed and maybe it will be a win, maybe the lobbyists will shut it down. We don't know yet. But without Ross' stubbornness, nothing would be done.
Imagine if Ross had told gamers to change their profile pic to pacman to show game companies and consumers that "we dont agree with the companies' practices? That would be a total joke.

no. I think Goatse would make more of an impact than Clippy. But something tells me there'd be a problem with that

Don't Google that
PFP idea: a smashed server and a dude ripping it apart. I call it GOAITSE

It is very silly.

The video is monetized, and by having some ppl change their pfp to clippy and then linking to his video - I mean congrats to Mr. Rossmann for the big $$$

I really don’t like him
- I've only seen one other video of his, and I have to agree with you. He — at least in that video I saw — talked like an angry manosphere podcaster and it's not something that I enjoy. It's too bad because I think his message was pretty good. It was about digital cameras requiring apps for it to function and how that's bullshit.
This screams, "SHOOT THE MESSENGER!" If you wait around looking for a perfect, pristine leader of a movement, you'll get less done than a petition.
Crazy thing is he also uploads to Odysee and paid to develop grayjay, I'm not even subscribed to his youtube channel and thanks to him I'm moving as many subs off the platform as possible. Quite a few creators upload all their shit to other platforms.
also if you're watching someone who advocates for adblockers without using one yourself that's on you.
He barely makes money off of these videos (negligible) and encourages all his users to use adblockers.
Given his target audience I'm sure he's at the lower end of the money paid per view. Also he could've taken a sponsorship on anyone of his hundreds of videos but he has not so far, so not really big $$$

Clippy already was a big step in the wrong direction from Microsoft, i'm not gonna celebrate mistakes of the past because they seem benign in comparison to todays mistakes.

What about Tux throwing clippy in the bin? Acknowledgement and shows it doesn't go far enough
Clippy wasnt a bad idea, especially in an era where computers were just becoming mainstream. But just like most microsoft's products, the poor implementation made it useless and annoying...

Maybe just delete your youtube account? I've never even had a youtube account at all and I'm a heavy youtube consumer...

hmm, I'm only starting a discussion to enjoy and farm karma tbh, but you surprised me. In my experience, only normie stuff, political propaganda (chad Trump, Putin or my country's governor) or women in little to no clothing constitute the whole of your recommendation if you don't use an account. Even on new phone, new sim card data.
- Sure, I don't use the youtube algorithm. You could just use any alternative fronted like grayjay (unfortunately made by this guy above) or newpipe. Then you don't fall prey to the algorithm but rather have a feed based on your own subscriptions.
- Let me blow your mind even more: I don't access the YouTube website at all, and therefore I never see their recommendations.
  I use FreeTube.

Have you changed you youtube pfp to clippy ?

I don't work here.

how are there so many low iq comments about other mascot suggestions. rossman is doing something and he got traction. any people eternally caught in argument about details will never get the momentum to do anything. i used to not like clippy just like a lot of people, don't get me wrong, but just focus on the important core idea, and the large exposure that is unique for the current moment and finally gives a glimmer of hope.

The issue is what this even accomplishes.
Traction is indeed important. But people also get exhausted (how many folk were whinging about "first I needed to make my avatar a rainbow and now it needs to be black? Oh, you mean a black box. Whoopsie" back in 2020?). It is why "just do something, it doesn't matter what" is such a stupid fucking mentality because you waste the general good will towards pointless slacktivism and then people stop caring by the time you have an idea of how to utilize them.
Which... is where the Rossman comes in. I have a lot of issues with him as a human being but as an activist he is REALLY effective... for Right to Repair... for repair shops. But he has also made his career on convincing everyday people that he is fighting for them when he is really using them as ammunition for making sure his repair shop (that totally doesn't violate any labor laws...) can stay running because OBVIOUSLY this lobbyist movement to support activity that requires a full hotplate and high powered microscope is something that everyday consumers care about (sort of in the sense of having options, but at this scale the poison pill apple compliance is actually probably just as good, if not better, for consumers)
I haven't been able to even find a good explanation of what this is even supposed to accomplish. But, dime to a dollar, it is Rossman et al demonstrating how quickly he can mobilize The Internet as a negotiating tactic for whatever he and his lobbyist buddies are pushing on right now.
- Im actually fine with "just do something" mentality.
  Cause if every person did to the limit of what they are capable of things would still change.
  For Rossman the limit of what he is capable of might be changing laws via his followers so he can keep his repair shop running. For others it might be legal efforts. For some it could be talking directly to their parents who are the wealthy overlords, and for some it might mean running themselves. And for some its just beinf oart of a chorus that shouts what they believe in.
  It has worked for religion for so long.
  We are a numbers species. We arent as clever as we think and individuals actually rarely get anything singularly done themselves. But we cant stop at whats easy but what is within our reach.
  If everyone "did what they can" to make the world a better place, we just might have a shot at it.

No, I don't wanna be associated with that guy.

I had never heard of him before. What's his deal?
- Overall what he promotes/fights for are good things. But in short what I don't like about him is:
  he believes to be the morals authority
  the standards he is advocating for don't apply to him (for example fighting for open source just to release an app which isn't open source)
- Nothing stands out very far regarding the negatives. I could speculate to a few things, though. He's not a Socialist. When the going got tough for him and his business he uprooted and moved out of NYC to Texas. I can't really think of anything else objectionable. I actually like him, though so I may be biased.
  For the positives, he's helped drive a lot of the Right to Repair legislation in this country as he's reported a lot of discussions he's had with real legislators. He runs a website for mac product repair as a reference that also operates as a non-profit. He runs a daytime business repairing mac products that employs several other people. Generally he posts a lot to keep people up to date increasingly as an electronics-oriented influencer, but he used to post mac repair videos almost exclusively and he talked about having to navigate Apple's influence on regulating the second-hand market. He has also given platform to a number of other mac & electronic repair people.
  To me he seems to talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk when it comes to Right to Repair, but like I said, I might be biased.

No

No I'm American and I just think it's silly and won't change anything.

Why do that when we have a better alternative

What is this?
- Symbol of opensource

but nobody is discussing this initiative

Well, go ahead. Discuss it. I don't know what it is.

We don't discuss companies screwing us here but us screwing companies.

I think the clippy movement is cute so yes I'm wearing the mask, just let me know when we're blowing up parliament.

Why isn't there a V for Vendetta 2? I guess after they broke through the barricades, they changed their pfp and called it a day

I thought we all agreed virtue signaling was dumb?

Yes I agree, doing absolutely nothing and getting fucked in the process is so much easier! /s Nobody expects this to do anything, it's about signaling to others that there are likeminded people who don't tolerate bullshit like "random corp bricks consumers devices" anymore.
- it’s about signaling to others
  close the thread

From the same business geniuses that though that having you pay a fee to be allowed to pick a seat next to your other family members in an airplane was a good idea...

I keep seeing this posted, but what the hell is a pfp?

Pro file picture
- Whatever happened to calling them avatars? First my PMs got turned into DMs, now this. I'm truly becoming old.
Pro-File Picture? I don't know, people abbreviate things in stupid ways.

Okay two things.

I didn't set my pfp to clippy mainly because I'm lazy and don't really comment on Youtube.

People complaining people are only doing this to follow a trend are completely right. BUT! some of those trend chasers might actually stop and think about the message, and might realized we're all being scammed by modern tech/software companies.

I ain't expecting some mass protest or anything, but it's at the very least a small handful more people giving a shit about their relationship with technology. As apposed to most who just throw their information and money at any sign-up page that asks.

I ain’t expecting some mass protest or anything
It's hard to tell really, when even PewDiePie is making videos about DeGoogling and switching to foss and Linux. You know how influential he is among gen z (or gen Alpha, I'm not really sure).

Louis sucks ass as a YouTuber. He likes to hear himself rant. That's literally his only quality.

Liking to hear himself rant is not a quality in my book..
I don't like the way he speaks but he's all (I should say mostly, I don't watch all of his videos) about consumer rights which ...
How can you not like that?
Sure his delivery method is not for everyone but listen through his salt-coated style and you'll find he brings up many important points.
E: corrected autocorrect
- When you're that salty, all the time, it blinds you to any situations that aren't salt filled.
What, saying popular opinions out loud?!
I don’t like him
He rants about some important stuff though.

In reference to the subject on Rossman's screenshot, that is an 8 year old scandal that was, AFAIK, never proven. What was proven, was an 11 year old report on emotional manipulation by then Facebook

This was surfaced in Sarah Wynn-Williams’ book.
The social media company likewise tracked when adolescent girls deleted selfies, "so it can serve a beauty ad to them at that moment," according to Wynn-Williams. Other examples of Facebook's ad lechery are said to include the targeting of young mothers based on their emotional state, as well as emotional indexes mapped to racial groups, like a "Hispanic and African American Feeling Fantastic Over-index."
Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads
When it comes to things like: Facebook/Meta or Israel, every bad rumor tends to turn out to be true.

clippy profile picture

So that I will get ads for office products?

You guys are getting ads on the web ?!

I'm from the USA and I have no idea what you're talking about. What's the context here, what is adopting a corporate marketing image as my profile picture supposed to accomplish?

well, you gotta watch his video in the image if you're interested.

Anyone remember blackout for gaza? It was performative then for a much more important cause with much more public support.

Louis should know better, and that makes me wonder about his intentions. I've supported him in the past but this just has me confused.

Edit: I'm not entirely sure this is malicious, but I think he knows that this goes against his own advice on how to start change, and is too stubborn to admit it.

Je suis charlie

Yep, not just there. I don't know if it's going to change anything fundamental but I agree with the sentiment and if nothing else, it's a statement of solidarity with other people who might feel like everybody around them is giving in to the slopshittification.

I don't know what being American or otherwise has to do with it btw.

I only watch the guy for one thing: His cats! :-)

I didn't because I don't use my YouTube account anymore, I only logged in with PipePipe so that I can watch age restricted videos.

No. Deleted my WhatsApp account though.

✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

This is the first time I'm hearing about it. Why should I do it?

in my understanding: to create a feeling of an angry coordinated crowd ready for the real action.