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.
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.
Just like a few of the other posts, I honestly don't get it. If they can't sell your data and can't serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free? There's so many people complaining how YouTube has a monopoly and how it's not even that hard to run, but I seriously doubt these people. Transcoding video and distributing it worldwide while having automated moderation is not easy or cheap. If there were serious contenders in the space people would have moved on, and I don't think it's just the network effect that keeps YouTube as a dominant player here.
People despise ads, but then they want content for free. They use adblockers to bypass a primary revenue source for a website, then go all surprised Pikachu face when that website doesn't welcome them. And then they get upset that they don't want to be the product despite not willing to be a source of ad revenue. I'm willing to pay for YouTube premium (and other subscription models to get rid of ads), but a lot of people aren't. And honestly, I really would rather those people simply leave the site. It would lower operating costs for YouTube (I don't expect my subscription fees to go down but maybe their engineers will have more free time to work on features besides adblocker-blocking), and more people on different sites would lead to more competition.
If you aren't willing to eat ads, and you aren't willing to be the product, and you aren't willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you're entitled to content?
I totally agree. I am a Youtube Premium user for this exact reason. No ads means less financial incentive to track me (I remember a statistic where one user was worth 4cents per year, could be wrong about the exact number though). In a perfect world we would habe monetization networks instead of ad networks, on a pay per view or subscription model instead of ads. This would not only make the companies more money, but also reduce the incentive for them to track you (I would even claim that unnecessary tracking would hurt their business).
We can either have a free (as in no costs) or a free (as in liberty) internet, not both
They are still tracking you though. Removing ads is a reason to pay for YouTube premium, but it's not to get less tracking. Less tracking is not the selling point or service offered by YouTube premium.
That’s because they still have a financial incentive to do so: Google doesn’t offer a fully paid version of their service
They're definitely still tracking their premium users, I agree. But my counterpoint is, what business, online or not, doesn't track me? If I go out and buy something at a retail store I'm gonna bet my ass I'm being tracked. If I don't want to be tracked, then I should be making sure information I consider to be sensitive is not being exposed. If there is no reasonable expectation to privacy in the public, then I think it's fit that there's no reasonable expectation to privacy when I'm surfing the internet.
Read the comment I responded to. They said YouTube premium provides them with less incentive to track them. I'm informing them that is not the benefit of paying for YouTube premium. Too many people mistakenly believe paying means they stop being the product.
In a sense I agree with that piekay though. If they can't serve me targeted ads on YouTube they lose that money trying to develop technology to track me in that regard. How much money that is I guess is hard to say, since the tracking on YouTube certainly can carry over to other parts of Alphabet.
I'm not sure how having a paid account is supposed to lead to less tracking when the algorithm meant to push viewers into a viewing loop is made possible by tracking. Accounts with more information make for more useful demographic data.
Not having ads is a benefit of YouTube premium, but less tracking is not a benefit when there is a reason to track even without ads. For better products and surveillance. There is less reasons to not track.