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.
If you don’t want to sound like a shill, be careful, because you do here…
YouTube is making a LOT of profit, they want MORE, endlessly MORE. “They are a business after all” is not valid in these conversations unless again… shill. Hopefully you didn’t realize what you sound like here and this news is helpful to you going forward.
Calling someone a shill is not a good response.
I genuinely don’t see the issue with blocking ad blockers if they’re giving a subscription as an option. You literally get to choose to pay with your data and time or with cash. Video hosting isn’t a public service.
Besides, YouTube has been screwed over by advertisers numerous times, and creators had to share some of the burden. If YouTube Premium is what allows YouTube to stay running and improve while also paying creators with more controversial content, I’m all for it.