And We're Back... The Mac Observer Show Promo

The Mac Observer Show is coming your way! Hosted by Ken Ray, it’s a different thing than we’ve done before. Not day-to-day news this time. The Mac Observer Show looks at a range of topics with a range of guests. Silicon Valley insiders, experts in various parts of Apple’s business, people knowledgable in other parts of tech… We’re talking AI and foldable iPhones and accessibility and Apple Retail and Apple Vision Pro and so much more. 

The Mac Observer Show – every Friday on YouTube, wherever you get podcasts and of course – MacObserver.com. 

YouTuber Ruben Sim Must Pay Roblox Over 'Cybermob'

The Roblox Corporation sued YouTuber Ruben Sim over leading a “cybermob” on its platform and terrorizing players, many of whom are kids.

The original ban, according to Roblox’s lawyers, was issued after the YouTube creator harassed other players using racist and homophobic slurs, allegedly sexually harassed users, and uploaded photos of Adolph Hitler to Roblox. Sim disputed this characterization in a YouTube video uploaded last week.

YouTube Moves to Hide Dislike Count From User Interface

YouTube announced on Wednesday that it will begin hiding the number of dislikes videos have on its platform.

And earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos.

YouTube is only making it harder to spot crappy videos at a distance. Now you’ll have to click on each video to be sure, or read the comments. More views = more money for Google.

YouTube Rewind Scrapped Permanently

YouTube is to stop making its annual ‘Rewind’ videos. The look-back clip was scrapped in 2020 because…2020, but the move has now been made permanent, TubeFilter reported.

The decision was made on what would be the 10th anniversary of Rewind. YouTube says it is not abandoning the project because of the widespread criticism it has received on more recent efforts, but because its platform has become so massive that it is impossible to encapsulate its vastness and diversity within a minutes-long compilation. Accordingly, YouTube says it will be passing the baton to creators, who have increasingly been producing their own homespun versions of YouTube Rewind in recent years. “Since Rewind started in 2011, we have seen creators from MrBeast [54 million views], elrubiusOMG, and Slayy Point, to so many more, create their own end-of-year videos, uniquely capturing the year from each of their perspectives,” a YouTube spokesperson tells Tubefilter.

AdGuard’s Shortcut Can Help Block YouTube Ads

AdGuard, creator of a popular adblocker of the same name, started getting complaints from users that YouTube ads were slipping through. It turns out Google deployed a new algorithm for showing ads to logged in users (Read more here). AdGuard was able to create a shortcut that can block these new ads while they build similar functionality to block them with the AdGuard app. You don’t need to have the AdGuard app installed to run the shortcut. Download Shortcut

Lawmakers Call YouTube Kids ‘Wasteland of Vapid, Consumerist Content’

The US sub-committee on economic and consumer policy sent a letter [PDF] to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki about its app for kids, saying it’s full of “inappropriate… highly commercial content”.

According to the letter, some videos appeared to be “smuggling in hidden marketing and advertising with product placements by children’s influencers”.

The letter claimed that one research team, which it did not name, found only about 4% of videos had a high educational value. Much of the rest was low quality content such as toy unboxing and videos of people playing video games.