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.
Netflix is bringing ads to paying customers. Lets not assume Youtube will be ad free if you pay, because the whole business model is shifting away.
Regards the history thing, YT/google dont actually need that. They have their own register of users and histories. Not sure why they need to tell you to "switch it on" unless you're actually consenting to something else? Third party tracking, perhaps?
A lot of users are switching to sites like LBRY and Odysee, even Rumble. I've been using Odysee to watch stuff lately.
Uh, isn't rumble where nazis post shit? Or at the very least where conservatives have gone because YouTube is ToO wOkE?
TBF Nazis are posting all over the web. Even youtube. If people refuse to use a website because of Nazis then they've won a safehaven for their views.
yeah, but if I'm right here, rumble was essentially created for the express purpose of giving voice to terrible people, so I'd tend to avoid it... but I could be wrong?