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.
I use YouTube for tutorials, education, and entertainment all the time. And YouTube music is how I listen to all my music.
I've been paying for the YouTube premium version for my family since day one.
Recently they took away my grandfathered-in pricing. It really costs me a ton of money.
But I remember that I'm keeping ads off my screens, my parents' screens, and my kids screens... And we all use YouTube music all the time.... So...
Yeah, a lot of money, but honestly, probably the best subscription I have.
I could never go back to ads.
I considered switching from the Spotify family plan to YouTube premium's, but it's like $10 more and that's above my budget.
YT Premium is pretty much a scam imo, what it does can be achieved with free tools.
When you put it like that... That's like saying stores are a scam because you could just take the products for free.
Yeah except y'know YouTube servers cost money and watching through Invidious doesn't actually pay either YouTube or the creators. Like I don't want to shill for a corp but on the other hand mass hosting video for free and letting anyone watch is a business model that can only work at YouTubers scale and nothing can replace YouTube because any service that tries will run out of money in a week. Seriously video hosting is literally the most expensive thing to do on the internet.
So is paying for car repair or a builder when a lot of times you can do it yourself and save money. But it's not that simple. Time and effort are resources too.
In this case, when the whole familiy is involved and also taking into account that YT Premium also accounts for my work laptop and my phone I can easily understand why OP chooses to pay for YT Premium instead of more reasons to be the family helpdesk..