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'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.
Youtube gets free content that it has full rights to use however it likes. Google takes that free content and uses it everywhere on the internet, to make fistfuls of cash. The ads are just bonus garnish.
I really dont care about youtubes bonus garnish, no matter how hard you "totally arent shilling, guys!"
yousay free but none of the operations and technology that support the possibility to even receive and globally distribute that content along with the plethora of features are free, nor free to run.
Oh no, what?? Youtube has to pay to keep the thousands of free hours of content it harvests daily??? Oh gosh, why didnt you say so? God forbid there be upkeep costs for being given content worth literally millions of dollars in entertainment value, production cost, and overall manhours absolutely scott free!
Oh side note, did you know of all the areas of tech, data compression and storage have progressed as one of the fastest? You can fit a terrabyte and more into a card the side of your pinkie, with no loss of quality or information.
Gee wizz, I wonder if the largest company on the internet who makes money not really by running ads but actually by scraping and selling user data knows about that?
Crocodile tears, dude. No one gives a shit about the upkeep costs, google will happily pay the pennies it costs to maintain in exchange for more user data patterns they can sell. The ads are a garnish to buff out the yearly portfolio.
You should educate yourself on the topic. theres really more to it than "how much storage can fit on an sd card." operating at the size and scope of youtubes database and userbase really is a challenge and considering how smoothly youtube runs for the most part isnt "pennies" worth of operating cost
Plus, its already known from their earnings reports that youtubes profit mostly comes from ads
Youtube the subsidiary, yeah. Because youtube the subsidiary does not do any data selling. Alphabet does. Alphabet is also the ones paying for every single step in the youtube process.
Because they make their money selling data. Not ads.
For someone telling others to educate themselves on the topic, you really dont understand how corporate earnings works, huh?
can you provide a source for alphabet paying for youtubes operating costs? i work for a subsidiary of a different rather large it consulting company (80k+ members) and we very much do and have our own budgeting because we are a profit generating subsidiary
odd that alphabet would pay for youtube's operating costs since youtube operates at a multi-billion dollar profit.
and i apologize for presuming youre not educated in the industry. it actually came off worse than i meant. just some of your comments just do not align with my experience in the industry.
Not a source I can cite without risking a friends job, which isnt worth an internet argument.
Alphabet wants youtube making profit, obviously, but they are a data selling business. They didnt buy youtube up because they wanted a cut of their ad market. They shunt data upstream like its their primary job. And from my understanding? Thats exactly how youtube is viewed internally.
So, yeah, Im not really pressed about ad blockers. The company has no funding issues.
so... you were calling me ignorant because of info youve gathered from a friend? lol ...
yeah, lets not waste anymore of our time here. have a good day.
Did I call you ignorant, at all?
Yeah if you need to invent things Ive said, maybe its best you stop here.
Especially since you apparently have no issue citing your personal insider info, but are incensed that I shared my own with you.
lol right...
Oh sorry, were you willing to show me your companies internal pricing and expense reports?
Where I work thats insanely confidential and not even remotely public, and sharing it would get me sued into homelessness. Would get something similar for my buddy, I am sure.
My bad, I didnt realize your were gung ho to pass around internal documents.
lol so much for moving on huh? im not buying your bullshit go sell to someone else
...... you said you were moving on, not me.
You, uh, you okay buddy?