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.

IndefiniteBen,

Hopefully I don’t get this! I only started using an ad blocker on YouTube in the last year or so when the amount of ads became too much.

notatoad,

the battle between ad-blockers and ad-blocker-blockers is eternal. adblockers will adapt.

if i block ads, it’s only fair that google tries to block my blocking of their ads. calling this “enshittification” is silly, they didn’t make their product worse they just are doing a better job of enforcing the rule that’s always been there.

Tangent5280,

I haven’t seen so many shills in one place since the Russian special military operation began.

sibannac,

It does feel like astroturf.

WhipTheLlama,

I hate ads as much as anyone and have been blocking them for almost as long as ad blockers have existed. I still acknowledge the fact that ads are the primary revenue source for a lot of things on the Internet, and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.

How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions? When they puts ads on their site, the unsaid agreement is that you exchange your ad views for their service.

atetulo,

and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.

🤡

Youtube is already profitable, you’re just making them more profit.

How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions?

Youtube is already profitable. This move is an attempt to make more profit. It’s called “maximizing profit.”

Profit, by definition, is what’s leftover after all business expenses have been paid.

mesamunefire,

A lot of creators are already beginning to work based off donations (AKA patron and other sites). Thats one model that could work. Kinda like lemmy.world.

sweeny,

Those YouTubers have the option to disable ads on their channel if that is truly all the revenue they need, you don’t need to make that decision for them

mesamunefire,

I thought creators cant disable ads now?

OrderedChaos,

I don’t have much but my few videos I have no longer have the option to disable ads.

sweeny,

I think they still can but they have less fine control over which ad placements they disable? I’m not totally sure, but that’s what this link seems to imply support.google.com/youtube/answer/6332943?hl=en

bric,

Youtube ads don’t just pay creators though, they also pay for video hosting, discovery, and streaming, which aren’t cheap. A lemmy for video streaming would be great, but there’s a reason it hasn’t really happened yet, you’d need a much larger portion of viewers to pay than what it takes lemmy to run, and you’d need a bigger community of developers to build it, which is why most youtube alternatives are strictly paid products. None of that is criticism of the idea, I think it would be great if we could wrench away some of youtube’s monopoly, but at the same time we need to understand why it’s a challenging concept

davetapley,

A lemmy for video streaming

Ask and you shall receive: joinpeertube.org

There are even companies springing up who will run and host it for you, for a price, of course.

chuckd,

for a price

Coincidentally, the price of advertisements

davetapley,

Well, not necessarily, right? It could be funded any number of ways, but on YT you’re locked in to either watching their ads, or paying their premium.

chuckd,

Those are exactly the number of ways.

wheeldawg,

Yeah I’m trying to figure that out, too. Other than different tiers, what other payment model is there that would make sense?

mesamunefire,

Donations are not ads.

madcaesar,

Is it though? How much revenue does Google get from bombarding me with ads? I despise ads, block them whenever I can and will actively avoid products that interrupt my shows.

Instead they could get 5$ a month from me for no ads.

Yet here we are, they sending ads my way and me fighting them off with every tool possible.

With all the tracking they do, you’d think they’d be able to identify power users like me, I run piholes, blockers, vanced etc, yet they still don’t seem to understand I’m not the target audience they are looking for…

chuckd,

Instead they could get 5$ a month from me for no ads.

They do this already. It’s called YouTube Premium and they’ve determined it’s worth more than $5 a month. My guess is the amount they decide to charge is not an arbitrary number, but one that covers their expenses based on expected engagement.

Unpopular opinion: If people either paid monthly, or they didn’t run pihole, blockers, or vanced, the monthly price of YT Premium would probably be closer to your magical $5 cost. Although, honestly, I doubt you’d pay the $5 either.

nowayhosay,

“the mega globo corps only charge what they have to, to make ends meet. it would be cheaper if every one paid i swear”

chuckd,

I mean, we are where we’re at. So, unless you can prove otherwise…

JamesFire,

My guess is the amount they decide to charge is not an arbitrary number, but one that covers their expenses based on expected engagement.

They charge the amount that gives them the most benefit. That definitely includes profit as a factor. Likely a large one. Companies don’t lower their prices when costs go down. They take in more profit.

chuckd,

100% agree.

thorbot,

Checked that out, typed in Board Game Reviews, only videos are clickbait videos by sleazebag Jon Del Arroz, Noped out so fast

davetapley,

Well yes, this is the problem isn’t it:

  1. Monopoly X sucks
  2. Federated alternatives developed
  3. People complain that there’s not enough content on them
westyvw,

Start charging people who monetized their videos, like any other web host. They can run youtube ads, or pay money. Subsidize the free users.

Rengoku,

Subsidize lmao. Entitled brats do not have the right to say anything.

westyvw,

What are you trying to say? Who is an entitled brat? This comment makes no sense.

Rengoku,

It is clear. Reading comprehension.

westyvw,

Nope not clear at all.

kalkulat,
@kalkulat@lemmy.world avatar

ads are the primary revenue source for a lot of things on the Internet, and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.

How many years have we heard the BS about how they’re gathering all this info so they can do ‘targeted advertising’? HAH. 1. Ads suck. 2. Dear advertisers: you are being conned: it doesn’t work. Do you REALLY think anyone is actually WATCHING those advertisements? WHY?

0xD,

Yeah, ads don’t work. That’s why it’s such a large industry where everyone and their mother throws money at it. Lol - get a grip on reality.

Eccitaze,
@Eccitaze@yiffit.net avatar

Advertising is largely a cargo cult, with the “advertising/marketing is the most important thing” mindset being pushed by people with a vested interest in getting you to spend money on advertising. Actual, real businesses buying actual, real advertisements have said they saw basically no difference in revenue before and after buying the ad.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like there’s no point in advertising–small businesses need it to jumpstart their client base, and medium/large businesses use it to make sure their products maintain mindshare so that a customer is more likely to think “I want a Coke” instead of “I want a soda.” But in terms of directly influencing customer purchasing decisions, the biggest influence is old-fashioned word of mouth and direct customer experience, not advertising.

marx2k,

Your talking about YouTube as though they’re some fledgling startup

0xD,

Are you even the tiniest bit aware of the economics of an on-demand video platform with 4K 60fps capabilities? Lol.

marx2k,

How much net profit did alphabet bring in pay year?

sederx,

How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions?

i dont care really.

WheatleyInc,
@WheatleyInc@lemmy.world avatar

They had a system in place that put more ads on users depending on how many used an ad blocker. When the users got used to it, YouTube realized they could push it on everyone and make more money. They’d survive as a business even if that wasn’t the case anyway, Google owns them.

Professorozone,

Yeah, I feel real bad for them. Google made $13.9B last quarter. Perhaps if the greed wasn’t absolutely bottomless I’d be willing to pay a small fee. But wait, aren’t they selling all my private information? I thought that’s how it works. If you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. No?

Someology,
@Someology@lemmy.world avatar

Recall that YouTube is Google. Since they are scraping massive amounts of data about users from browser and phone apps, I feel like they should be paying me, really. Google profits off of the content we create for them, and then profits off of tracking us both online and offline, and then they have the gall to charge us money for it and show us ever more obnoxious advertisements. They’ve trained their AI products off of every gmail ever written and every Google Voice call every made, every YouTube video ever uploaded, and I absolutely refuse to feel any sympathy for them trying to bleed more money from the public.

guacupado,

The problem isn’t ads, it’s how obnoxious they’ve gotten with ads. Full length ads without even a skip button, ads in the beginning, ads in the middle. Have you tried using Google without blockers or news websites? It’s obnoxious how ads are just fucking everywhere. These companies aren’t hurting for money, they’re still making a massive amount of profit. They just want even more profit next year. Not to mention you even have people here actually using Youtube Premium who are still seeing ads under the videos. Zero sympathy.

Clipboards,
@Clipboards@lemmy.world avatar

I have no idea how i’d replace YouTube in my life - sites like Reddit are one thing, but there is no current viable analogue to YouTube. Premium is pretty cheap for what it is - happy I made the decision to subscribe years ago

atetulo,

You’re just making them more profit.

Clipboards,
@Clipboards@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bd2c2098-3466-4257-a60b-de2d1c295333.png

atetulo,

Yeah, but like, you can just not pay them money and get an adblocker instead.

But you’re just upset I’m calling out people being taken for a ride because you’re one of them.

Clipboards,
@Clipboards@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    atetulo,

    Yes you do.

    TopRamenBinLaden,

    There are alternative frontends for YouTube, like freetube and piped, that focus on privacy and ad free viewing. Just throwing this out there for people who can’t afford premium. Also, from my end, ublock origin still works fine on Windows 11 and Linux for ad free viewing. I still haven’t seen the popup in the OP personally, and I just use regular old non premium youtube.com on firefox with ublock and privacy badger.

    If you can afford or are willing to pay for premium, then that’s not a bad way to go, either. It actually seems reasonably priced for what it is. I just don’t like to give money to google.

    Swarfega,

    I dual boot and in Windows they are blocking me now. In Linux, I am not seeing the message. So it’s not IP based. I run Firefox in both instances.

    TopRamenBinLaden,

    Weird, I was running youtube on Windows 11 Firefox just a minute ago and I didn’t see any ad blocker popups. I still have never once seen anything like this on YouTube. I also dual boot and use Firefox in both, fwiw. I use ublock origin and privacy badger.

    viking,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    I’m not getting anything in Windows either, curious when that happens. Using ublock origins and ghostery in parallel, also with Firefox.

    scarabic,

    Or you can pay them $$$

    I use it between half an hour and two hours every day. And I can afford it. So this is what I do. It’s worth far more than Netflix to me.

    atetulo,

    Congratulations. Your low standards is what helps make youtube more profitable than it already is.

    nathris,

    Don’t forget that a large chunk of that money also goes to the creators. It’s significantly more than they get from showing you an ad.

    scarabic,

    I’ll consider myself an “honorary Patreon supporter” with zero perks LOL

    Yawnder,

    Cancelled my Netflix a while ago and I don’t see myself cancelling YouTube premium anytime soon. One thing that annoys me quite a lot is that THESE PEOPLE don’t understand that by using adblockers they’re making the situation worse for everyone, especially those not using one. Why do you think people bake sponsors into their content? Because they have to. Why do you think the frequency of ads increases? Because if they want the same profits, with less people seeing the ads and their infrastructure cost remaining the same, they must increase the frequency of the ads.

    scarabic,

    Yep, well, I guess we can celebrate this change then, because it won’t affect us, but it will make that free lunch a little harder to get. Though from these comments it doesn’t sound like much harder. I don’t know why YT can’t solve this by fully baking the ad content into the streams. There are even some community driven products out there that amass ad start/end times so that sponsor plugs can be skipped. But YT could make even that toothless with a little randomization.

    Yawnder,

    Their goal never will be to have no people bypassing it. It’s always a balance of “reasonable effort to prevent it” with making it enough of an annoyance to deter everyone from doing it.

    scarabic,

    Yep. An arms race.

    locuester,

    I enjoy watching YouTube with no ads so I bought premium. I actually bought the family one and share it with 4 others. Personally, I find it to be a great deal.

    I also pay for extra storage (even tho I have a nas) because it’s convenient to have.

    I’m a pirate at heart, have a 3k movie library on Plex and use nefarious to queue download, and I’m a long time crypto nut so I understand privacy and sticking it to the man.

    But I also find great quality of life improvements by simply paying fair prices for good content 🤷‍♂️

    It’s a fun hobby to try and dodge ads and steal and stick it to these companies. But really can be time consuming and gets old (it did at least for me when I got old).

    atetulo,

    I’m a pirate at heart

    I enjoy watching YouTube with no ads so I bought premium.

    No you’re not. Even people who don’t pirate have enough sense to install an adblocking instead of… paying a subscription fee. Lol.

    locuester,

    I mean, I wasn’t joking. Yes I am.

    And I have adblock. Used to run a pi hole too but that got annoying.

    I’ve been pirating software since the bbs days, pre-internet. Then music during the Napster era, and movies as soon as it was possible.

    WheatleyInc,
    @WheatleyInc@lemmy.world avatar

    A paid adblocker/ video downloader is worth 20$ a month for 5 people? Every feature in premium has a third party tool alternative you could easily use anyway.

    viking,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    Set a VPN to Turkey and you get it for $3.

    I’m blocking ads regardless, but if you wanted to pay, there are cheaper ways.

    RubberColby,

    Same. I watch YouTube every single day for multiple hours a day. Whether in the background or actively watching. I see the value in paying for a service that I am constantly using. I’m not some YouTube shill. I just personally find it worth the money.

    kalkulat,
    @kalkulat@lemmy.world avatar

    fair prices Who gets to define what ‘fair’ is? Someone who’ll decide every year that ‘fair’ is 50% more than last year. Ask me how much I’ll pay, accept that number, and guarantee it for 5 years. OR go away and leave me alone.

    locuester,

    Woah dude. You decide what’s fair. If $0.33 per day isn’t fair to you, then don’t pay it. I personally find $0.33 fair.

    I_Comment_On_EVERYTHING,

    Seriously, I average 3.5 hours of watch time a day so I am paying roughly 10 cents per hour. That is a phenomenal deal. I can’t think of any other form of entertainment anywhere remotely near that cheap.

    sederx,

    its not though. origin for browser, smarttube next for tv and revanced for phone. its really easy

    momtheregoesthatman,

    I’m in the same boat and state of thought here. I’ve got a monster Plex collection on an unnecessarily large NAS… But; I pay for Spotify, YouTube and Proton. I use them all, I see value and still use a piHole, uBlock and all that stuff like nothing changed. More power to you.

    0x2d,

    bro just use revanced

    locuester,

    As you could have guessed, I also use iPhone. I just like things to work. I’m too old for tinkering with shit constantly. I write software all damn day and when I’m done I just enjoy peaceful relaxing in nature. Not all the tinkering I did as a kid

    cley_faye,

    Some people fail to see that, it’s a matter of how you value the service. I still think the current price is a bit high for a subscription, and I have some issues with how these subscriptions end up being split between youtube and content creators.

    But, should youtube go all out and make ad blockers unusable? Sure, I’ll probably pay. The content on youtube, assuming a fair share to creators, is way more valuable than ten-ish buck a month. I’ll still fight to the end to make ad blocking work though.

    kalkulat,
    @kalkulat@lemmy.world avatar

    I enjoyed watching favorite -old- movies not chopped-up to insert 2 or 3 of 5 minutes of commercials. I quit cable-TV and got my views where I could.

    There was a time when people were asked to choose between TV adverts and Pay-TV with no adverts. Those who went for Pay-TV got a few years of respite. Then, as always happens, they got screwed over. Don’t believe that line for a second. They’ll just bide their time, and next thing you know, you’ll be watching ads-a-plenty again.

    locuester,

    Yeah man - the world changes. The pendulum swings. It’s quite the ride eh!?

    Adalast,

    Script blocking > Ad Blocking. Block all of the tracking scripts, all of the ad-aware stuff, disable redirects and scripts embedded in the ad frames, bypass script-based paywalls, etc. It is a pain in the ass to go to a new site and have to figure out who the 20 domains are that are trying to load scripts, but finding those tracking fuckers and hitting “distrust” is so satisfying. I swear that any ads I do see are so all over the map because nobody knows who the hell I am and I like it that way.

    Smokeydope,
    @Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

    Video sharing websites should be a public service without expecting users to shell out money to watch and upload eachothers content. This was its original spirit way back in the early 2000s. It didn’t start out as a corporate product, it was turned into one by Alphabet. Now from a buisness prespective there needs to be a profit and the server farms that host videos are costly to set up and maintain. Its sort of understandable why google is squeezing as the free investor money is drying up.

    Fortunately there are federated open source alternatives like peertube. But peertube needs to become more intuitive/gui friendly to the average person and youtube needs to ROYALLY fuck up bad enough to make a decent chunk of users look for and try alternatives. Maybe were close at hand to more people flocking towards foss alternatives as corporations squeeze harder and harder.

    mindbleach,

    People fret about costs, as if Youtube hasn’t destroyed all competition by burning money. Fuck their costs. Crying over anti-competitive dumping is a waste of salt.

    Selkie210,

    Is there anyway to block ads if you are watching YouTube on consoles/ps5/xbox?

    Pinecone,

    For general network wide adblocking you can try setting up a pi-hole

    Selkie210,

    Tried that, but the ads are baked in same as the videos so it wouldn’t play the actual videos either

    Ut0p1an_dyst0p1a,

    I use a VPN routed to Albania, they dont seem to show ads there, same with a few other eatern european countries, so its like premium without paying anything lol

    Sprite,

    Ohh, I got that warning on Adblock Plus on Firefox just now as well. Gonna move back to uBlock and hope it works.

    Swarfega,

    It doesn’t

    Karyoplasma,

    Does for me. Had to update filters and purge the cache tho.

    TopRamenBinLaden,

    Ublock most definitely does still work, at least on Firefox. I still have never seen this popup and I watch a lot of YouTube from a non premium account. Some people had to clear their Ublock cache to get it to work again, apparently.

    Swarfega,

    I’m blocked. With uBlock Origin and Ghostery on Firefox. This will be a staged release so won’t be hitting everyone at once. If you’ve ever used Android you see this a lot with Google apps.

    aPirate,

    From what I can tell with Ublock is that they are actively working to bypass it and any new form of blocking that they implement.

    Boiglenoight,

    Is it enshittification, or how the Internet should work for commercial services? Youtube isn’t publicly funded. You either pay for the product or become it in exchange for use.

    deong,

    Exactly. Everyone complains about ad tech and enshittification until you point them to the conveniently located button that lets them pay for the service…

    Misconduct,

    Yeah that’s great and all until you realize that paying for services just allows them take your money and still also do whatever they want with your data lol. If I could give them money for a guarantee that they wouldn’t collect or sell my data on top of that then…maybe. Probably not since I’d never trust Google to keep their word on that they’re so slimy now.

    edenbenzaken,

    Yep, I pay services such as Fastmail and Kagi monthly with no hesitation. Either I pay or I get spied on, what kinda lame ass deal is it if both happen?

    AVengefulAxolotl,

    Microsoft did not like that

    spacecowboy,

    I mean, even if you pay for the service, they still harvest you, which is double dipping. So…

    Boiglenoight,

    You pay for the service to watch the videos. Or you watch the ads that advertisers pay Youtube to show to you. This concern about data harvesting is a side concern that isn’t unique to Youtube. If you sign up for a free membership, mailing list, etc. from any place you shop (say, the grocery store to get their members’ price discounts), you’re allowing yourself to have your data mined and monetized.

    You could watch Youtube without signing in.

    mememuseum,

    These companies ran these services for years without any of this crap.

    mrmanager,
    @mrmanager@lemmy.today avatar

    Any big tech company will both take your money and spy on your activities.

    Boiglenoight,

    Unless they sign a business agreement with you that puts them in legal jeopardy of collecting/sharing/selling your information. This is a standard agreement between companies that use tech products and the companies that provide them.

    atetulo,

    Weird.

    I haven’t been paying for it since inception, nor do I watch its ads.

    Yet it’s been incredibly profitable for years.

    Boiglenoight,

    Until recently, my buddy had been enjoying Netflix for going on 10 years, for free. No cost. Turns out he’s just been using the service while I pay for it. So your situation is not weird, per se.

    h3rm17,

    Sponsorblock. You are welcome.

    TALL421,

    Sponsorblock

    doesn’t block preroll, midroll or postroll adds does it? So this isn’t really solving this problem, even if it is skipping the creators sponsor add.

    h3rm17,

    For me it blocks all the ads. I’ve been literal years without youtube ads between sponsorblock, vanced and revanced

    isotope,

    Leaving my project Tubo in case someone finds it useful. Support for it just got merged on Libredirect

    onlinepersona,

    Since I can’t read clojure: does this proxy or does it download the videos and serve them? I imagine the latter, but is there a limit? For example VPSs have tiny drives (10GB, 20GB, etc.) with a LRU cache it would be possible to use this on those things, but even on bigger hard drives, the videos have to get cleaned up eventually.

    isotope,

    It does neither atm, it simply serves you the streams as-is. The plan, however, is to eventually proxy all requests so that the services aren’t able to see it was you who made the request but only get the proxy’s IP

    onlinepersona,

    Actually serving the streams as is is great for me. If the proxy could a toggle, that might not be bad! Especially for VPSes with low bandwidth.

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