Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish

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.

Rolder,

Odd, I have uBlock Origin and it’s blocking the ads without any pop ups or angry messages

Ibex0,

Same, the arms race is heating up.

RockyBass,

Same here. UBlock origin has been the gold standard for so long I’m surprised not everyone uses it.

sonovebitch,

I have uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock and I got the pop-up. However I can just close it and the video resumes, with no ads.

tristan,

I get blocked with ublock origin but not with ublock lite

mesamunefire,

They are doing it randomly for now. Not all users are getting the message.

Mio,

If there was no browser workaround i wound use a third party client and possibly selfhost it for family. Hard to get away from Youtube itself. I wonder how many % of the users actually use any adblockinf tool

Sunrosa,

whenever i get the ad thing (im using ublock) i just yt-dlp and then watch that way

dangblingus,

You don’t know how to use ublock origin so you’re abandoning the most useful and entertaining platform on the entire internet?

atetulo,

the most useful and entertaining platform on the entire internet?

Lol, what?

Just say youtube, bro.

Fungah,

I’d argue that YouTube actually makes the Internet less useful overall.

Whereas once upon a time I could find information in text form NKW EVERYTHING IS A FUCKING VIDEO. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? WHO IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND WANT TO FOLLOW ALONG WITH SOMETHING HAVING TO MASH THR LAUSE BUTTON AND REWIND THR VIDEO EVERY FOR[Y FUCJING SECONDS? JUST FUCKING STOP IT. AND IF ITSCOMPULSIVE DO THE RRST OF THE WORLD A FAVOUR AND TAKE A LOJG WALK OFF IF A SHORT PIER.

atetulo,

I think it’s nice to have both, but I get your point.

I’m mostly still able to find text explanations for what I need.

squirrelwithnut, (edited )

Ublock does not prevent this pop-up. Source: me. I started getting the pop-up tonight on Firefox with Ublock running. I was able to close the pop-up and watch the video without ads, but the extension does not hide it completely.

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

You’re right for now, but OP is right that Google has been actively making YouTube worse and worse. Imagine if they used their resources to make YouTube premium better instead of this bs.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

It should be “So long YouTube and thanks for all the fish.” Goddammit!

If you’re going to borrow from Douglas Adams, at least get it right.

ngn,
@ngn@lemy.lol avatar

just use frontends like invidious - for mobile there are tons of apps for these frontends, i recommend newpipe if you dont care about shitty recommendations

PizzaMan,

Eventually they’ll just shut down the APIs that allow that to happen just like reddit did. There will still be workarounds to that, but it will make things harder.

The thing I worry about is if they go so far as to ban people’s google accounts for violating the TOS like this. I’m sure they can find out exactly who is doing it through an IP lookup even if you are using a front-end client.

It’s best to migrate everything off google accounts now before that happens. Google has too much power.

SocialMediaRefugee,

You WILL watch the Grammarly and Liberty Mutual ads. Just like the movie scene in A Clockwork Orange.

rehydrate5503,

This comment is brought to you by RAID Shadow Legends.

Ashelyn,

Something I don’t think anyone is talking about is that, if this is now considered a ToS violation, Google will probably decide at some point to start banning accounts over it. Oh, you use adblock? Now your email, Drive documents, and photos are gone.

kool_newt,

This is great, I’m sure I"m not the only one that now no longer thinks of Google as a safe place for my email and photos. And their search sucks now, there’s not much reason to have Google in my life at all anymore. The era of Google is over (I hope!).

Hovenko,

Maybe at least a portion of people will realize they should not entrust anything personal to an advertisement company and use an actual mail/storage/etc provider instead.

Someology,
@Someology@lemmy.world avatar

Time to make a second Google account just to use for YouTube viewing.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

I see a lot of people saying X and Y are safe. Eventually nothing will be safe. All they have to do is require login to view content. Make login require CC or SMS then enforce a ratio of content played over time.

Price wise, they’re just insane. It’s all B-Rate content for more then the price of any other streaming service.

reverendsteveii,

Eventually nothing will be safe

Then I will leave eventually

skozzii,

They don’t compensate creators that well either. The second a popular alternative comes along everyone will jump ship.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

There’s def an opportunity there, but the barrier to entry is insane.

I had hoped one of the crypto/torrent combos would have caught on, but we apparently can’t do crypto without it becoming a low key pyramid scheme.

thoughts3rased,

I don’t want to pay for YouTube premium because I don’t want YouTube music. I already have Spotify, why should I have a redundant service that I’m actively paying for.

I have no issues with paying for YouTube since at the end of the day video hosting on the scale that YouTube does cannot be profitable by ads alone.

I just wanna pay like £5 a month for just ad free viewing, none of the extra fluff crap like downloads or playing in the background or YouTube music.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Spotify won’t leave their price where it is. Youtube won’t leave their price where it is.

The goal of all the streaming services is to get you in the system, then slowly raise rates. Each one of these services were running fine at $10 a month for a family plan.

There’s no real competition because they each run their own exclusives. Netflix going to $20? i’ll just go to Hulu! of but the next season of Wednesday will come out. but never fear, they’ll all adjust up to 20 now, and they’ll strip away those family plans as well.

None of them are going to stop until the average person can’t afford more than once service.

They’ll drive away their customer base to piracy, then bitch that they need to raise prices to stay afloat.

lud,

How does one quit YouTube?

There is just so much stuff on there and no alternative.

atetulo,

Do something else with your life.

You won’t be able to watch the content you want on other sites until people start uploading there.

WuTang,

i disabled my history, so now youtube doesn’t suggest me anything, I have a blank page. I still have my subs but blank page by default, but the good thing is I do have have to engage and if I don’t know what to look for, I close the page.

ublock still work, btw.

aulin,

ublock still work, btw.

For some, apparently. For me it stopped working about a week ago.

Hovenko,

Ublock is good so far for me too. If they ban it then I guess I will have more free time to spare :D

cetvrti_magi,
@cetvrti_magi@lemmy.world avatar

I started using RSS reader for my YouTube feed and it’s much better than YouTube itself.

enigmara,

Use an alternative front end.

github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube

AverageScroller,

This looks cool, are there any that you’d recommend from the list?

lud,

That’s still YouTube though and they could and probably will shut down those.

Hovenko,

Many channels I watch are on Nebula as well - that one is paid but it’s yearly 15$ or so. You can get it bundled with curiosity stream. Some channels upload to rumble, but I am not familiar with that platform. Then there is odysee… it’s kinda all over the place. There are channels that upload on odysee, but I don’t like the crypto bullshit that is associated with that platform. The other thing not only with odysee but all new smaller platforms - they are a good place for all the scummy outcast that gets filtered on YT. I try not to read comments otherwise I would have to puke.

OminousOrange,
@OminousOrange@lemmy.ca avatar

Also a happy customer of Nebula here. I’ve come across some pretty interesting content on there.

Hovenko,

YEs and some YT creators even add bonus videos.

Jikal,

I finally bit the bullet and switched from Chrome to Firefox last night after they flagged my adblock for YouTube as malware and forcefully disabled it. Fuck that noise.

WhateverWorks,

I just hate google in general, I can’t wait for a day when a rival platform beats Youtube to a pulp.

RealWarrenBuffett,

The problem is - no one can beat them since they monopolized the market and make it almost impossible for any competition to survive.

thoughts3rased,

Not to mention that to host content on the scale that YouTube does is ruinously expensive both in terms of bandwidth and cost. It’s enough to choke out any smaller competitors almost immediately.

vitor_sk0n,

What country are you from? I use Ublock Origin + Malwarebytes on MS Edge and haven’t seen any warning like that

HappyPornDaze,

deleted_by_author

    •
    dangblingus,

    It blocks everything. Maybe you have youtube entirely whitelisted instead of just your favorite youtuber?

    lud,

    Eh, yes it does.

    I haven’t gotten any ads (except ads added by the content creator) on YouTube in ages.

    zwaetschgeraeuber,

    tbf i changed my mind recently as i paid for spotify but had yt vrevanced and st next. but after thinking about it, i switched the family subscription from spotify to youtube premium as it has both youtube and music while 5 out of 350 songs are missing for the same fucking price.

    KuroiKaze,

    YT music has a much bigger and better library than Spotify in my experience especially if you listen to things in non English.

    Guster,

    I mean, it makes sense no? They are a business after all. Why wouldn’t they try to enforce their ads? I personally don’t watch YT that much but why not just pay up if you need ad free experience? The content on YouTube is good because creators get paid well from ads

    Karyoplasma,

    Creators get paid well by their sponsors. They get shit on by Google which is why every video is sponsored. The aggressive ad rolls before and during the video pretty much just benefit google.

    stockRot,

    Google is still hosting the content. That costs them.

    Karyoplasma,

    The one thing I have to concede is that you can use YouTube as a personal video storage system for free. Just upload them and set them to private and they will be kept for you indefinitely. There is nothing for Google to gain from letting users do this.

    MrScottyTay,

    Isn’t it more because so many people watch with ad blockers that they got shit from Google though? (I’m saying this as someone that uses an ad block and sponsor block too)

    Ganbat,

    If you’ve ever seen a YouTuber speak in a weird way, stumble around certain topics, leave out important information that might be controversial or censor something that seems minor, then you should know the answer to your question is no.

    Karyoplasma,

    YouTube creators are being paid by a metric, you cannot really influence: CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). Basically, advertisers bid on how much they are willing to pay to show ads on your channel. For advertisers, it of course doesn’t make sense to invest money on channels that have mediocre reach. Google describes your channel with metrics like your country of residency (poorer countries are getting smaller ad bids), type of content (cute animals doing cute stuff is getting paid less than tech or cosmetic videos), daily views and engagement rating (comments, likes, subscriber growth, percentage of video watched), etc. This puts all the pressure on the content creators: you are either huge and then you are getting paid well or you are not and then Google could pay you the full ad revenue for your channel (they take 45% I believe) and it would still be insignificant. You and me having ad block doesn’t change that.

    MrScottyTay,

    Ad bidding happens realtime though (I briefly worked on software in that sector) if you have ads blocked those calls to ask for bids won’t occur. So having an adblock on reduces the chances of creators getting such ad money

    Karyoplasma, (edited )

    While this is true, the payout itself is laughable for anyone isn’t fully focused on optimizing their videos on monetization. And even those creators are better off with you supporting them directly by either joining their community on YT or donating to the Patreon they got set up. Google gets a cut from you joining their YT-community, but the creator still gets a better payout than they ever would if you only watched the ads. The next logical step for Google is to make linking or mentioning Patreon incompatible with their ToS since the Patreon circumvention is losing them revenue as well.

    Also YT is prominently demonetizing videos for the any reason they see fit (and withhold from the creator) and when that happens, the creator gets nothing, but the viewer still sees ads, even tho they do see less ads. It’s an exploitative system that went downhill over many years. The culprits here are not the evil ad block users, but the greedy shareholders expecting infinite growth.

    Snapz,

    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.

    TheGalacticVoid,

    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.

    jabathekek,
    @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

    I just tried it out, watched three videos (one was 49 minutes) and nothing. I use Firefox with NoScript and U-Block (also Enhancer for Youtube, but I doubt that’s relevant). I wouldn’t have know this was happening if no one posted about it.

    Reddfugee42,

    It’s a slow rollout

    jabathekek,
    @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

    Damn. I suppose I’ll find out. Would suck if this is being incorporated into one of the essential scripts for youtube to function. Oh well.

    cloudless,
    @cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

    Does youtube work with noscript at all?

    jabathekek,
    @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

    Certainly, I just watched 2 music videos and 49 minute talk between Kendrick Lamar and Rick Ruben. Just block the meta google scripts, and only allow ytimg and youtube.

    guacupado,

    Yeah I have blockers on Firefox but it’s letting me watch just fine.

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