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.

    • TheRealKuniEnglish
      17•9 months ago

      I’ll admit I make good money. I work in software.

      But I’ve been paying that since before I was making good money. Again, this is my music streaming platform. I would be paying $10/month to Spotify if I weren’t paying $14/month to YouTube.

      (Actually I looked into my subscription while typing this, and I’m still paying the grandfathered price of $9.99/month for YouTube Premium. Pretty sweet, that.)

      • XepherEnglish
        13•9 months ago

        FYI, that grandfathered price goes away after December

        • TheRealKuniEnglish
          8•9 months ago

          That’s a shame, but the benefits still outweigh the cost in my mind. I hate ads, so what I get out of a YouTube Premium subscription is far more than what I get from Netflix or Max.

          (And I realize I can get all of this for free by going around the TOS, but if I have the money I might as well support the service.)

    • N-E-NEnglish
      14•9 months ago

      Not really being reasonable. I don’t make much above min wage but buy YT Premium

    • @coffinwood@feddit.deEnglish
      5•9 months ago

      But your “solution” sounds like you don’t contribute at all. Especially none of the content creators gets a dime out of your consumption.

    • @narwhalpersonEnglish
      4•9 months ago

      Vivaldi browser just came out for iOS and has Adblock support. So does Firefox focus. Also, invidious/piped is always an option.

    • oKtosiTeEnglish
      3•9 months ago

      Using AdGuard and Vinegar to use YouTube in Safari, I can’t remember when I last saw an ad. It’s not ideal, but it works well enough.