Sometimes you just want to work on something completely stupid for a couple hours. This is absolutely stupid.
Embed this noticeGabe Kangas (gabek@social.gabekangas.com)'s status on Sunday, 28-Dec-2025 22:11:37 JST
Gabe KangasDoes anybody know if there's any precedent of getting some kind of crypto token removed (I don't know what that would even mean, since it's blockchain bullshit) due to trademark infringement? Somebody created an "Owncast" token and has our URL in its description. Luckily, "Owncast" is a registered trademark, but I don't know how crypto bullshit works. I'm aware there might be nothing I can do, but I figured it's a shot so people don't think the Owncast project is trying to do crypto bullshit.
@Blort I wish it were that easy. I have no idea who to send it to or if it's even possible. I know nothing about crypto bullshit and if this kind of thing can be tracked down or not. Or if once it's done, there's no going back because of the bullshit blockchain. I was hoping somebody knew how this stuff worked.
So I was just done with the wasted time, and I was done with it making me feel like it was taking that control away from me. So I blocked it at the PiHole layer.
Here are some things I've discovered in the past three weeks.
- The most obvious is like cutting off anything cold turkey if you realize how much of a habit it is. I'll just open it on my AppleTV and put something random on just to let it play. And I kept opening it even after I blocked it without thinking, only to be greeted to a "you're offline" message.
- There are not an insignificant number of things I would learn about for the first time from a YouTube video being surfaced to me because the algorithm is so tuned into me. I didn't even know my favorite band released a new song until somebody told me directly. Without those CNN clips, or music news or whatever I went blind because I didn't replace it with anything else. I didn't know I had to. I didn't realize I was doing that.
- You don't notice how many web pages are littered with YouTube embeds until you block them all and they show up as errors instead.
- I get sent a ton of YouTube links from people. So for each one, individually, I'll disable my PiHole for a couple of minutes. Long enough to watch that single video because somebody sent it.
I realize what I really want is to be able to only watch a small group of accounts, treating YouTube like a video podcast. When a new video goes live I can download it and watch it. No recommendations, no "other videos by this creator", nothing. Just one video at a time, allowing me to watch 5 videos a week or something that I care about. I'm going to look around to see if there's a system already built around this. Otherwise I might write some small shell scripts with youtube-dl or something. Though I don't know if there's API access to a user's video list.
@brewsterkahle@internetarchive I hate that we've centralized the entire internet behind Cloudflare. And I hate that we HAVE to centralize the entire internet behind Cloudflare.
@aral@KarlHeinzHasliP@svenja I can't speak if you, or anybody else, will find Owncast adequate for their needs with screen reader support or anything else. I can tell you we've made handfuls of updates in the past to improve screen reader support, and will continue to improve accessibility with feedback, contributions, and the needs of people who use the software. I do know people who navigate only with a screen reader have used Owncast in the past, but I can't speak for their experience. I hope you find Owncast useful and will share your experience to help improve the project. Let me know if you have any questions!
Another fantastic @owncast newsletter from @roadriverrail. They do such a great job sharing what's going on in the greater ecosystem. If you haven't subscribed, it's one email every month or two and it's a really worthwhile read. I'm deeply thankful this resource exists for all of us. https://owncast.ghost.io/owncast-newsletter-january-2025/
@zachleat I know it's not popular around here, but I'll bite. I think it's more like if you already use React, you'd use the React component. If you don't, you wouldn't set up an entire React environment for a single component. You'd do something else.