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.
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.
Any big tech company will both take your money and spy on your activities.
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.
Exactly. Everyone complains about ad tech and enshittification until you point them to the conveniently located button that lets them pay for the service…
I mean, even if you pay for the service, they still harvest you, which is double dipping. So…
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.
These companies ran these services for years without any of this crap.
Weird.
I haven’t been paying for it since inception, nor do I watch its ads.
Yet it’s been incredibly profitable for years.
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.