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It'll keep continuing until you get one FPS and no audio without paying for premium.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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It's not available on every video. So if you're primarily using it for background noise, I'm assuming it's mostly like background music, which is less likely to be a video that qualifies for the improved bitrate.
As mentioned, it was introduced a few years ago. It really makes a noticeable improvement to video quality, too. Bit rate is kind of king when it comes to streaming.
For whatever it's worth to you iirc they didn't downgrade the original bitrate, they just introduced better bitrate and locked that behind the subscription.
I don't personally pay for YouTube Premium anymore, but I did for a while. I consider it an incredible value, tbh, but stopped because I wanted to stop supporting Google.
However, I also just don't use YT anymore as a result. I'm curious how you think YT should exist if not by charging for features? Because I'll be honest, of all the enshittification YT has experienced, this one in particular is way, way down on the list for me.
They absolutely did. It's a very obvious difference I noticed when they first released this "feature" and has been bugging the shit out of me ever since it came out.