this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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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.

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[–] lath@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

uBlock Origin is quite apt in not showing any of that. I am thankful for the creator's attentiveness.

[–] viralJ@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] Happenchance@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (19 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 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (26 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?

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[–] buzz86us@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I've literally never gotten any message like that I've been using a blocker forever.

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[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] lud@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago (11 children)

How does one quit YouTube?

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

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[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ad blockers are an existential threat to Google. They are - at the core - an ad company.

RIP

And nothing was lost...

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] TechAnon@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hear me out: Google makes money by selling ads. People who buy from those ads don't have an adblocker installed. People who are intelligent enough to block ads wouldn't buy from them anyway. If Google allows it to be too easy to block ads then their model collapses. I'm ok with jumping through a couple hoops to continue to block and Google doesn't lose anything while I get to still watch the content I like without wasting anyone's time. It's to Google's benefit to serve videos to only people who will actually buy that crap anyway. If Google or anyone wants to sell to me, they simply have to make a great product. If they do, I'll see it in use for it's intended purpose and buy it. For example, I didn't have to watch any ads to buy a Nintendo Switch years ago...

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I feel like I'm summoning a roko's basilisk here, but here we go:

Google should entice people to watch the ads. They should slip in random "free YouTube premium for a month just for you!" ads or quick time events or whatever that you only get when you don't block ads.

"Thanks for watching the ad! Here's an extra 10GB of storage, or points to our store, or whatever!"

Giving out free whatever premiums to your gigantic ass ecosystem to some tiny ass percent of your users will EASILY increase eyeballs faaaaaar more than this blocking shit.

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[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

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[–] Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 19 points 1 year ago

I got this notification today for the first time. I cleared the catche on my filter lists and it seems to have solved the issue - for now.

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (37 children)

I'll play devil's advocate here... Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I'm not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I'm not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it's only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don't want to see and you don't want to pay for it, then please, don't use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.

Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

hurts the content creators first

Ehhhh I’m not so sure. Adblockers don’t stop on-air reads, for starters. I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I’m also not sure it’s impacting the creators as much as it impacts YouTube’s vacuuming our telemetry data.

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[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

NewPipe on Android works to block that shit just fine. As for Firefox, adblockers still work just fine. Once again, good luck Google lol

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] vitor_sk0n@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

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[–] TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id 16 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Prethoryn@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 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.

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[–] Swarfega@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] uis@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

enshittification

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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