Youtube let the other shoe drop in their end-stage enshittification this week. Last month, they required you to turn on Youtube History to view the feed of youtube videos recommendations. That seems reasonable, so I did it. But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices. It still did a pretty good job of showing me stuff I was interested in watching.
Then on Oct 1, they threw up a “You’re using an Ad Blocker” overlay on videos. I’d use my trusty Overlay Remover plugin to remove the annoying javascript graphic and watch what I wanted. I didn’t have to click the X to dismiss the obnoxious page.
Last week, they started placing a timer with the X so you had to wait 5 seconds for the X to appear so you could dismiss blocking graphic.
Today, there was a new graphic. It allowed you to view three videos before you had to turn off your Ad Blocker. I viewed a video 3 times just to see what happens.
Now all I see is this.
Google has out and out made it a violation of their ToS to have an ad blocker to view Youtube. Or you can pay them $$$.
I ban such sites from my systems by replacing their DNS name in my hosts file routed to 127.0.0.1 which means I can’t view the site. I have quite a few banned sites now.
I either pay to use the app or I get ads that pay for the platform to continue being used but I don’t want to see the ads so my ad blocker blocks the ads.
A company is going to continue making revenue. I don’t know why anyone is shocked by a company that makes ads changing a site to ask you to view more ads. Genuinely baffled that users waste their time complaining about something a big trillion dollar company owns and actively runs changing their platform to continue making them trillions of dollars then getting on here and going, “take that Google I am fed up.”
Meanwhile, I have just been paying for YouTube premium with no ads supporting the content creators I love and moving on with my life.
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To add to your comment, I don’t understand the hate for YouTube. People go on their and post entire how to videos on all sorts of topics. I’ve learned how to code, how to use Linux, how to install flooring, how to 3D model using Fusion360, how some electronics work, how to fix my broken down car, etc. Because of the creators, YouTube has been such a valuable source of information that it’s almost offensive when I hear other people complaining about having to watch ads or pay for premium. There’s no paywall for the info, it’s accessible to anyone with an internet connection. There’s a lot of low quality clickbait on YouTube but if you avoid it, YouTube is amazing. It’s the only streaming service worth paying for.
Edit: YouTube will probably slowly try and squeeze revenue out of its creators and/or users, I’m not ignorant to the fact that the number needs to go up and to the right. Eventually, it’ll be too much. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it’s still there and accessible.
Someone hasn’t been paying attention for the last ten years. I still remember a time when creators didn’t have to tiptoe around topica in a vain attempt to avoid having their revenue ripped away from them.
Point taken. I should have said something along the lines of:
YouTube isn’t innocent in this but I think a lot of that censorship has been brought on by sociopolitical changes in the last ten years. The further extremes on each side have gotten louder and social platforms are being used to spread their ideas. YouTube is caught in the crossfire on that and instead of doing the right thing, they just censor everyone
It won’t be long before they either jack up their prices or squeeze some ads into your paid subscription. Or both. Fuck em I say.
pushing ads into a paid service seems to be the latest trend.
Nop what you’ve been doing is paying a billion dollar company to keep making their, once free product, worse so people can pay to make the bad parts go away.
I generally agree with subscriptions. “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”.
But there are better platforms to support with your money. Youtubes main selling point was that it was free. Now that it is not, it’s a good time to look into paid alternatives. For music I am already using bandcamp and spotify. For general documentaries I plan to switch to Nebula/CuriosityStream (I planned this for some time now, but I this may be the nail in the coffin)