this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023

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Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish (infosec.pub)

submitted 11 months ago by mvilain@infosec.pub to c/technology@lemmy.world

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

all 43 comments

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[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago

But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don't get much from my choices.

Implying that deleting them from your view actually deleted them.

[–] TwoGems@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

All the morons defending a mindless corporation in this thread forgot that Google has far overstepped it's boundaries in general. It got to where it is from harvesting free data from users. And now is initiating a web DRM that will far overstep any boundary seen. If a website decides to adopt it, everyone is screwed.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

[–] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You don't have a choice.

Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.

[–] viralJ@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The new word for "whitelisted" is "allowlisted"?

[–] Happenchance@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes. In the same way that "Master" and "Slave" have been replaced for racist engineering terminology, "Whitelist" and "Blacklist" are replaced with "Allowlist" and "Blocklist".

[–] coffeeaddict@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Do these terms actually come from racist backgrounds, or did they come up as a coincidence?
It just feels weird someone would think of a way to degrade black people then decide to use blacklist for things they don't want, then engineers decide to use master and slave to piss off black people whatever. Is that literally the history behind it?

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Blacklist was specifically used to refer to the refusal of entry as if they were a black person, so yes there is a racist history. Master and Slave is pretty obvious why especially considering everyone uses Parent/Child and Primary/Secondary these days anyway. Like maybe 10% of the change was because of "je-I-mean-sjws being offended" and like 90% just practicality because they're outdated terms that aren't really used.

[–] chakan2@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Lol...omg. lol.

Phew.

I'm sure Americans used blacklist like that at one time or another, but the origins are a list of enemies and had nothing to do with skin color.

Master and Slave is also not something exclusive to black people, they're generic terms that were appropriated.

[–] ahah@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

ublock origin + Firefox still works. try open ublock origin dashboard > Filter lists then click the purge all cachess button

[–] griD@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Maybe also delete your browser cache in case they flagged you with some cookie or stuff. I had to do that, but this stupid modal was rolled out between me watching 2 videos exactly at midnight. So... YMMV

[–] WheatleyInc@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They're begging for a direct competitor.

[–] gatelike@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

yes please

[–] Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Once everyone views the ads, the view per ads value will drop and become worth less, no creator will ever get more money. As if YouTube will miss out and pass down their revenue to the small people, lol.

[–] uis@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This calls for DEFCON enshittification talk

[–] Tvkan@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This calls for Bloonface's rebuttal. (Which is older than the talk, but refers to the same concept by the same person. I'm going to assume most points still apply.)

[–] cjthomp@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Serving 4k video is not free.

If you refuse to pay for Premium and refuse to be served ads, what do you expect to happen? You're a freeloader.

[–] griD@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

You’re a freeloader.

Nah, they still have my data to sell.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Is there a reasom paying them is so bad? I can spit on Reddit because they basically freeloading from user generated content(or stolen content) and strongarm everyone into working for them, but at least Youtube allow their content creator to monetize their content, even though they sometime ban one stuff but not the other(one veritasium video got demonetized due to containing suicide in the story), so paying to remove ads in both youtube and music is kinda a win for me, so i'm not entirely sure why the hostility on this.

[–] widerporst@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Is there a reasom paying them is so bad? It's Google.

I concede that a part of the money goes to the content creators, but I can't reconcile paying Google with my conscience. IMO, they are the greatest danger to the Internet, pushing on all fronts to make it a corporate hellscape.

I rather use Patreon and/or Nebula to support content creators, even if it is more expensive and less convenient.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes I forget people like watch YouTube on purpose. I pretty much exclusively use it for music that's not on Bandcamp, short clips of old shows, and the occasional guide for something that's too visual to be described well in words.

Old man out of the loop, yells at clouds.

[–] A2PKXG@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

It's my go-to player for various podcasts. I don't end up watching, just listening. But it's YouTube nonetheless.

While I don't normally use it for music, the magic of it's recommendation engine has led me into several amazing music niches, wich I wouldn't have found otherwise.

[–] Comfortably_Wet@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.

Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Give me "pretty much everything" for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.

[–] kungfuratte@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

It's an ok price if you use YT Music for streaming music.

[–] Prethoryn@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I either pay to use the app or I get ads that pay for the platform to continue being used but I don't want to see the ads so my ad blocker blocks the ads.

A company is going to continue making revenue. I don't know why anyone is shocked by a company that makes ads changing a site to ask you to view more ads. Genuinely baffled that users waste their time complaining about something a big trillion dollar company owns and actively runs changing their platform to continue making them trillions of dollars then getting on here and going, "take that Google I am fed up."

Meanwhile, I have just been paying for YouTube premium with no ads supporting the content creators I love and moving on with my life.

EDIT: These comments are why Lemmy isn't growing.

[–] bort@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

I generally agree with subscriptions. "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product".

But there are better platforms to support with your money. Youtubes main selling point was that it was free. Now that it is not, it's a good time to look into paid alternatives. For music I am already using bandcamp and spotify. For general documentaries I plan to switch to Nebula/CuriosityStream (I planned this for some time now, but I this may be the nail in the coffin)

[–] 0Xero0@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just got this popup today too, but only in Brave, it doesn't show up in Firefox and LibreWolf at all and I use uBlock Origin for all of them. Looks like it's just a Chromium thing. I mainly use Firefox anyway, I only use Brave as a music player at work because I have too many FF tabs opened in 3 windows already.

[–] iloverocks@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't know what website you are listening to but if you can always use Firefox or one of its forks librewolf is Firefox made more perfect imao

You could also use the native program ex. Spotify etc.

[–] 0Xero0@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just listen to Youtube

[–] iloverocks@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

You could use freetube

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago

If you're on a browser, use invidious - https://api.invidious.io/

If you're on android, use NewPipe - https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

Fuck google with the entire alphabet and their graveyard of ideas

[–] CapitanStrider@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 11 months ago

Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.

[–] Jordan117@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tbh, I block ads when I can but have a hard time getting angry about this. YouTube is both incredibly useful and incredibly expensive to operate -- seriously, what other service lets you upload hours of HD video which anyone in the world can access instantly, indefinitely, for free, and at the same scale YT does? It's a peerless engineering marvel and it would be a tragedy if it were to shut down. If seeing some short skippable ads is what it takes to keep that resource viable, that's honestly pretty fair.

[–] coffinwood@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

Look at all the free image / video services that either never took off or went bust. Especially streaming is quite expensive and isolating only this single aspect of Youtube - cost to operate: what do people expect? Everybody wants few to no ads at all and no subscription either.

As I said, I don't want to even touch any other topic here like Youtube's (perceived) quality or their (spicy) business decisions. If you don't like the product, don't use it. There is no right to free consumption of entertainment videos. Imagine paying for a taxi like you (don't) pay for Youtube.

And if you know better, start your own platform.

[–] Porka_911@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As a premium subscriber for many years, I and my family really get value. I do pay in UAH though.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 week ago

UAH days are numbered.

[–] jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Use alternative yt front ends? YT Vanced, PipePipe, YMusic, and so on...

Firefox with exentions or on PC?

I have not seen any of this on my end, my IP does get blocked though, I just change it.

I wonder how they are rolling it out.

[–] RalphFurley@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks to this comment I discovered F-Droid and downloaded PipePipe

[–] jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org -1 points 11 months ago

You are welcome!

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. Meanwhile in this post there are people begging others to turn off Adblock and sub to YT premium for creators sake lmao

As if handing Google your money helps creators, nobody owes anyone a damn ad view let alone multiple unskipables

[–] jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org -1 points 11 months ago

True.

Many will help the people they like with donations and other ways instead of helping Alphabet (google) and the like.