Hey YouTube? The endpoint of enshittification is this: I wipe my ass and flush you.

Keep going, YouTube. You're not so important that we can't just leave.

Nebula exists. Curiosity Stream exists. PeerTube exists. Odysee exits. The people I value on YT already have footholds on all four. More will arrive soon enough.

So keep at it.

Keep injecting unskippable ads, flooding the feed with AI slop, letting bots post porn, demonetising and hiding quality content, using DMCA like a digital SLAPP against content creators, and using the algorithm to warp reality.

Your value proposition is ubiquity. That's it. That's all you have. Without popular buy-in, you're dead.

We proles? We have something better than loyalty.

We have spite.

So keep pissing people off - because watching you die on a very stupid hill of your own design will be entertaining AF.

For everyone else, see you on !selfhosted@lemmy.world and !privacy@lemmy.world. Come and learn how you can replace all of these pieces of shit.

And in the meantime - yt-dlp should still work to download what you actually want to keep, and SmartTube is black magic incarnate.

The other day I was doing dishes and couldn't skip the ad, so I let the whole 90second ad run. Guess what followed? Another 90second ad.

Smart TVs are really just somebody else's computer that you paid for to watch ads on.

Youtube: "GOD PEOPLE KEEP SKIPPING ADS, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS LOSS OF REVENUE?!"

Viewers: "Maybe have standards for length and content and moderate the platform to prevent malicious actors?"

Youtube: "I KNOW, I'LL JUST MAKE FORCED ADS LONGER AND MORE OBNOXIOUS!"

Viewers: "JUST MODERATE YOUR FUCKING PLATFORM, YOU HAVE THE MONEY AND RESOURCES TO FUCKING DO IT"

Youtube: "Users are just so selfish and entitled, trying to skip ads.."

Viewers: " Fuck it installs ublock origin

I will sit on my floor with nothing, for hours, before i watch ads.

It’s not just the unskippable ads but also the type of ads as well. I’ve seen some wild ones like ads to make you hard in the bedroom, but it never actually shows the treatment. I’ve seen ads for how to make “homemade” makeup to look younger, the ingredients are baking soda and honey? But I think the wildest one I’ve seen is an ad for a robot puppy but in the ad, you can clearly see it is a real puppy, but they keep saying that it is a robotic AI powered puppy.

Like others, desktop I'm using Firefox with ublock origin. Android phone, Firefox with ublock origin. Android TV, SmartTube. Ad blockers have always outpaced Google in my experience though I use youtube maybe like twice a week and I don't randomly browse reccomendations. Just there for specific stuff

Family member spends all day every day recording and editing videos for youtube. Never finds an audience. Never gets promoted. The service is too busy pushing AI slop. All that video storage for the long tail of content with almost no views must cost a fortune. Meanwhile big quality youtubers seem to not be growing for some time like they have hit a ceiling. I think Youtube has been in decline for some time. Instead of fix it, which would require investment and ideas, I think they pull the usual bad US MBA style management practice and attempt to maximise revenues on the way down until they finally kill it.

My solution is to just close youtube. There's nothing on there I want to see that badly.

Hmm somehow i havent ever gotten those kinds of ads.......... maybe because im using ublock? Must be something else, i am just the chosen one.

Ublock must be blocking them. Huh, oh well.

Me using SmartTube and PipePipe/Tubular:

lol wut?

I accidentally found myself outside my ad blocking bubble the other day and looking at youtube. It immediately pissed me off to have to put up with.

On screen ads, unskippable preroll ads, mid roll ads and multi hour long ads that never end, ads on the sides and underneath the videos, embedded AI to push up their numbers that bloats the webpage.
Then on top of that, double sponsors, hidden sponsors, scams and shitty merch.

I used to think YouTube was the new public broadcast system but honestly that was never this garbage.

Youtube has ads? But seriously, this is hurting the honest user.

Yea I put in the effort and set up my pinchflat quadlet again. Fuck this.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.