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'll play devil's advocate here... Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I'm not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I'm not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it's only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don't want to see and you don't want to pay for it, then please, don't use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.
Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.
Not really. Youtube is already profitable. They're trying to test if people's standards are low enough for them to make even more profit.
The fact you think this equates to 'owed everything for free' just shows me what a proud rube you are.
Fuck off.
I guess it's true what Mark Twain said. It's easier to fool a man than to convince him he's been fooled.
And it's easier to believe an idiom is true if you believe someone famous said it. I think Wayne Gretzky came up with that one. Maybe it was Micheal Scott.
It actually doesn't matter who said it.
But of course you're going to try and deny it's true because it applies to you, ironically further proving its legitimacy.
Gonna block you now.
I hope you actually do, because I would love to know you'll never be able to throw stupid mis-attributed quotes at me again. God forbid we have any original thoughts anymore.