1y ago

Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish

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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851 comments

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.
- I just pay for YouTube Premium. It gets me YouTube Music, so for slightly more than the cost of Spotify I get music streaming and ad-free YouTube, and the channels I watch on YouTube get more value out of my streaming than if I watched with ads. And far more than if I watched with an adblocker.
  Google Play Music was so much better than YouTube Music, unfortunately, but YouTube Music is still usable.
  I understand that everyone hates ads. I hate ads, too. But video streaming and content creation aren’t free. I want to support the platform and support the creators whose content I enjoy, and I don’t want ads. So YouTube Premium seems like the easy option.
  
  Ads should be separate from content and not interfere with it. Ad blockers likely wouldn't be a thing if this were followed. Also, ad networks are a security issue. Host them on your own servers with relationships with advertisers if you must have them.
  
  The way ads are displayed effects how effective they are which in turn effects how valuable they are. More people turning to adblockers reduces the effectiveness of the ads and devalues the advertising method as a whole, more adblockers being used, lower effectiveness. YouTube then has to resort to putting in effort to combat adblockers which itself costs even more, ads have to become more intrusive to retain their value so YouTube can maintain it's own servers and pay it's content creators and it becomes an endless cycle of "fuck you I want your service for free and you are trampling my rights for trying to profit off me using your product". In return all YouTube asks of you to obtain an ad-free video watching session for a month is $4 ($22/month split among 6 users)
- The tragedy is that the centralized, profit-driven, socially-damaging platform keeps so much value under ransom because the parent company can operate it for so long at a loss.
  I get that the platform is a marvel, it's just disappointing that its purpose is tailored to keep eyes watching more ads rather than contribute to society as a whole.
- I would have more sympathy for Youtube if 1. it wasn't the de-facto standard where essentially all video media gets uploaded to (which Youtube itself has done everything in its power to make happen) and 2. the company that owned it didn't also own the most popular phone OS, most popular search engine, most popular email provider, most popular ad network, most popular maps, most popular online office suite, most popular airline booking, 2nd most popular cloud hosting... The list goes on
  Until a federated solution like peertube gains more traction I have no problem paying content creators directly via patreon, and do everything in my power to not pay Google a dime. Trust me, they can afford it just fine.
- I only looked into blocking ads sometime around like 2014-2016? I was perfectly fine with them for a very long time, they got more and more invasive and poor quality to the point I looked into blocking them. Haven't gone without an ad blocker ever since. No way in hell am I dealing with the current state of YouTube ads which are drastically worse than what pushed me to start blocking them to begin with.
- What angers me is the capital deciding to control everything. Enshittifying ads, pushing narratives, censoring valuable content. If it were a worse service but with better owners, I'd pay more.
  
  Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Luxembourg, and others have it as part of law that Works Councils get 33% of the seats on the board of directors, and employees are elected to take up those roles. In Slovenia, Germany, and Slovakia, it is as high as 50%. That's the kind of ownership we should demand and then some, where average people get to have a say in what's going on at YouTube. Then maybe we'd get more ethical business decisions and choices we'd be more on board with.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_corporate_boards_of_directors
  
  This reminds me of how certain universities in the US allow space for Student Senate representatives so that the student body directly has influence on the outcomes of the university. Great idea really
  
  Wow I didn't know. Thanks!
- The issue is that ads on YouTube used to be fairly innocuous. Now I get batshit conspiracies pushed, non-stop Aussie gambling ads and so on.
  Where I was once happy to sit through some food ads, or some tourism ads to support the platform. I'm not happy being blasted with non-stop, low-quality propoganda.
  Granted the $22 family plan for me and my wife has worked well. We both use youtube music extensively as well. It's the only streaming service I pay for, the only other subscription I have is for a VPN.
- If google cant afford youtube, they could sell it. But they easily can, so Im not losing sleep over the $2 a week they lose from me.
  Or, alternatively, if the ads were reasonable, next to no one would feel any real obligation to block them. But they arent, so why should I be concerned about the sites funding?
  Like, google isnt some poor struggling indie dev who cant make ends meet. Im not exactly overflowing with sympathy for their business decisions. Theyre the reason adblock is required for modern internet use.
  
  Perhaps ads become more unreasonable because so many people block them that those who do watch them are forced to pick up the slack?
  
  No, it's just following the curve, until their metrics show them that people stop watching they reduce the number of ads 10% until next cycle.
  They have been using the frog boiling method, and crossed my limit like two years ago, when they went from a 5 second ad each x videos to two ads for every video.
  
  Nah...the cable company charges you to watch commercials , cell phone providers charge you to sell your data....on and on
  
  When businesses are required to increase profits by 30% every year to not be seen as a failure, they would increase the ads no matter how many of the users watch them.
- YouTube is greedy. They make plenty of money without stuffing in more ads and pulling crap like this. I don’t use an ad blocker, but I’ve considered it (or just dumping YouTube completely) because they have really ramped up the ad interruptions. I’d subscribe if they had a cheap YouTube-only plan. But they don’t. You either have to pay for bundled music or TV and I don’t want or need either.
  Yes, there are business costs, but they don’t produce the content they air, and their payout to those who do produce the content is a relative pittance. Their infrastructure is shared among other Google products, so it’s not like they’re having to pay for all their server racks out of a single budget. And I’m sure Google is trying to figure out how to train AI on all the content that’s posted there. Not to mention all the pirated content posted to YouTube that Google is making money from, without compensating the creators or copyright holders.
  If was running a competing business like Facebook, or Amazon, I would seriously consider ramping up a competing product.
- I share the same sentiment but I can see why someone might want to not support Youtube in any way because they don't want to support Google's stranglehold on the internet. Unfortunately the correct way to address that problem is sensible regulation. Call me skeptical, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
- The problem is that YouTube went from "short skippable ads" to almost all ads. It also is a major invader of privacy.
  
  Reminder that YouTubers control how many ads are on a video and until last year or so you could even host video and have it served to millions with zero ads. Now the minimum is one skippable pre roll but like shit costs money to serve 20 million people an hour log 4k video.
- The amount of ads on YouTube only seems to get more and more invasive over time. And I'd have less of a problem with them if they didn't keep showing me the same ads over and over and over again.
  Even with all that, I would pay (subscription wise, not like I haven't rented/bought movies from them) if I actually knew where the money was going. YouTube is surely expensive to operate, but we don't know how much money it costs to actually run it vs how much money is extracted via executives and shareholders.
  
  If you read around you'll find (perhaps surprisingly to you) that YouTube operates at a loss. So in response to your points:
  You can pay to get the ads removed. They make less money off of you when they can't serve you ads, and I'm sure they're trying to operate at less of a loss.
  Alphabet is a public company, and it must release certain information about YouTube. Anyways, I'm pretty sure they aren't using the money to directly line the shareholder profits. The reality of it is that it's probably just another arm that Alphabet uses as part of its monopolistic tech deathgrip, so it's not gonna be a straightforward computation. Maybe Disney could be used as a metaphor here?
  If you don't wanna pay to support that, I don't exactly blame you. But practically, I don't really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return. Either you eat ads, you pay for a subscription, or you become the product (unfortunately this last point might be true irregardless).
  
  Basically every tech company "operates at a loss" because of overzealous growth and money going to their investors/parent company/shareholders. I've never seen a detailed breakdown of any tech company's financials released publicly, so I doubt there's any way to prove this one way or another.
  They make less money off of you when they can't serve you ads
  Genuinely I'd be interested in seeing a source for this since every metric I've seen from third parties is that ad free purchases gives them waaaaaay more money per user compared to the tiny RPU from ads. But maybe Google being its own ad provider changes that
  But practically, I don't really agree/expect that YouTube should serve you content (or even more so, people with aggressive adblockers) without you giving something in return.
  Never said I was owed anything by them, just that I have no moral or ethical qualms continuing to use adblock on a giant corporation
  
  Where do you read that Youtube is operating at a loss? The last article I can find mentioning that is from something like 10 years ago.
  In the last few years they have split Youtube income out of the overall income and it's not like they aren't making money with it - roughly $7B in the last report I can find.
  Let's not forget that the strategy of operating at a loss is arguably anticompetitive and monopolistic - not every company has the luxury of doing that, making it extremely difficult to compete against them. Seems pretty clear, with the incessant ads, that they've accomplished the first step in that and are rounding the corner to extracting capital from their users now. So they're not exactly a benevolent actor in this either.
- 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?
  
  People despise ads, but then they want content for free.
  You have it perfectly backwards: YouTube wants content for free, and to not have to share any but the most pitiful fractions of ad income with the ACTUAL content creators.
  YouTube does not produce content, others do. YouTube has gone out of its way to dick the vast majority of them, especially the smaller ones, to the point that as such, unless you have a Patreon, a website or store of your own, corporate sponsors, merch, or some other side hustle in addition to making YouTube content, you're literally making content for a fraction of a penny per view, and entirely at your own cost.
  And even then, you're subject to an algorithm over which you have no control and which can just as fickly ban your content to oblivion as it can raise your content to the multi-million views club. By skipping YouTube ads and finding other ways to support the content creators I enjoy, I help give my creators a financial buffer from the unpredictable vagaries of the algorithm and also withhold reward from YouTube as well.
  When YouTube shared ad revenue with content creators in a much more equal fashion, I did not have a problem with their ads. But several years ago -- I want to say six or seven, but it's been going on for at least ten -- YouTube got greedy with the ads AND with becoming incredibly unstable and unreliable for creators in all manner of ways AND decreasing payouts to creators all along the way, at which point it became clear that me watching an ad or not no longer affects the content creators I enjoy at all. And they are the only reason I am on YouTube to begin with.
  (And don't get me started on all the copyright/demonetization scams there are on YouTube now: I have a friend who got a copyright strike for playing a C scale on a piano because some asshole claimed it and YouTube lets them do it: even when a creator gets views, they can get demonetized at a drop of a hat even for obviously ridiculous claims, and then that revenue goes to the person making the copyright claim. Win/win for everyone except the person who actually made the content.)
  Over the years, YouTube has never failed to excel at two things: server space, and fucking its golden geese, the creators of the actual content, without which no one would be making any money there at all. So get back to us when YouTube recognizes the creators of the gold mine they have in the content hosted there, and once again finds a way to respect for the amount of time and effort and cost that goes into creating that content by sharing revenue with content creators in a more equitable manner.
  TL;DR: Why should I watch ANY YouTube ads at all when I can support content creators via Patreon or a creator's website and know that a much more equitable amount of that revenue will go straight to the creator of that content, where it belongs?
  
  YouTube still pays creators pretty high comparatively (55% of ad revenue according to https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-influencers-get-paid-on-instagram-tiktok-youtube). You are simply getting a service (hosted, searchable, collection of the largest collection of web videos in an extremely nice interface) that costs money even outside of the creator's cost. For creators they are allowing that 45% cut of ad revenue to get access to the YouTube audience, paid hosting that simply works, nice creator tools, etc.
  You can state that it's a valueless thing that anyone could replicate, but the evidence is that there aren't many alternatives that do better. Today we do have things like PeerTube (which I think all creators should consider selfhosting with ads/subscriptions and federating the free stuff after a delay) and joining creator owned video services like Nebula (which could be made even better with federation). Unfortunately, with both you run into the discoverability problem, something creators and their audiences are paying to solve when you are hosting on YouTube.
  I'd take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you - why should you pay for internet service when it's the content of the videos you watch not the wires that deliver it that have value? If you hacked around your neighbors WIFI to get some free network access, you could zero-cost get something you might not necessarily want to budget for, and you get quite a nice service out of it. Why shouldn't that be okay when you still Patreon the creators of your videos given your reasoning about YouTube providing no value?
  
  You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate . . .
  I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you . . .
  why should you pay for internet service . . .
  Yeah, except I didn't say that, nor any of the other strawmen you erected to slam down.
  What asinine aggrandizements and distortions. "Why should you pay for internet service" lol. (Reading your response I am momentarily rethinking it, certainly.)
  Get back to me when you can address what I actually wrote, and not what you need me to have written. Thanks.
  
  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?
  They shouldn't. If they can't figure out how to make money with it they should close it down. If they insist on thinking about it as a product and it doesn't make money, it's a product that doesn't make sense and should not exist. If the only way you can make people use your product is by giving it away, what does that tell you about it?
  They could lock down the platform behind paywall but they don't want to do that. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all the free videos being uploaded but they don't like all the free viewers. Unfortunately they go hand in hand.
  
  [...] you aren't willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you're entitled to content?
  You CANNOT pay for your content there, even if you want to.
  Has it never occurred to you that YouTube gets all their content FOR FREE?
  You can only pay to make Google even richer. That's all your money can do there. Nothing else.
  
  Perhaps YouTube gets all their content for free, but it certainly isn't free to transcode video, host it reliably, and distribute it while moderating it (given how bad Twitter is right now I'm sure they have a decent number of measures in place, even if they aren't even "good" at it). And if it was remotely easy, believe me, there would be a lot of competition in this space.
  Yes, I make Alphabet x dollars richer (or really, I make YouTube operate at a slightly lesser cost) every month by paying a subscription. And actually, I'm okay with it. A tiny cut of it goes to content creators and I get a nice piece of tech. And I support the branch of Alphabet that has technology that I think is incredibly useful and beneficial. If there's a content creator that I like especially then I'll support them directly.
  The reality of it is that things cannot be free. Or at least it seems that way, because we have not been able to provide a free video hosting service that doesn't take advantage of its content creators or consumers.
  
  Yes, I make Alphabet x dollars richer
  A tiny cut of it goes to content creators
  No. That was my point. Don't you know their business model? The creators get a tiny share of the paid ads on their video, and they get nothing at all if there are no ads playing on their video. They can never get a share from your payment.
  
  Where are you getting the information that YT doesn't pay out creators for Premium views?
  Google claims they do. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7060016?hl=en#:~:text=How%20YouTube%20Premium%20supports%20creators,monthly%20membership%20fee%20with%20creators.
  A search over Reddit would indicate creators actually make more money from premium views than regular ones, but that's hearsay.
  
  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.
  
  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?
  You’re overthinking things. I click one button once and I never see ads, for years at a time without needing to tweak it at all. This is also completely free to set up and completely legal.
  The fact of the matter is that this technology exists, and they can do nothing to stop it. Despite this, they continue to rely on the ad supported model. Curious, no?
  then why would they want to spend money serving you for free?
  Because if I post a link to a video and as a result someone sees an ad —or better, signs up for premium—then boom, they just made a profit. There is of course a critical threshold of adblockers where this no longer works but we’re not near it yet so they won’t change their revenue model.
  Note: I am not taking a moral high ground here, just pointing out how it works. Yes, you are subsidizing me, thanks for that.
  
  Well, the devil is in the details. People like you, who has actually figured out how to use an adblocker properly for YouTube, and me, who is willing to actually pay for YouTube premium (you're welcome for the subsidy), surely form a small proportion of the actual number of YouTube content consumers.
  Maybe I'm wrong, but my view is that the majority of users just want to watch videos without having ads and they aren't willing to devote time (for adblockers) or money (for subscription services) and are completely ignorant that they are the product regardless. And those users act like they are entitled to content and that leaving YouTube is somehow significant to the big picture.
- No ofence but if thats your pov on the situation (a very valid one btw) you would be better of subscribing to youtube premium. You suport them directly, and dont really get the short end of the stick on mobile like evryone else that isnt paying or isnt a power user. They still colect your data incluiding browsing and watching habits, but you wont get bombarded with terrible ads and get some nice perks as a plus.
- Agreed. I'll fuck around with the workarounds for as long as they work but once YouTube truly manages to make adblocking a complete headache I'll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium. I've been watching tens of thousands of hours of ad-free content on that site for as long as it has existed. I can't, with a straight face, complain about the fact that they would like to make some money from it too.
  
  I'll just switch to a Indian ip-address and buy a cheap premium
  I've thought about doing this, but worry about it fucking up my recommendations, which I'm actually pretty happy with. Do you know if that's an issue?
  
  I don't know, but I doubt it's an issue. Your recommendations are probably mostly based on your watch history and not location.
- I think we attribute different meanings to the word "tragedy". Stuff such as tutorials and documentaries (and, you know, books...) have existed well before YouTube was even conceived and will exist after it disappears, not taking into account that 90% of YouTube is just clickbaity videos with the stupid "surprised face" thumbnail anyway. YouTube is given too much credit for what it is and it is frankly overrated as a source of reliable information.
  The real tragedy is the unhealthy addiction to YouTube of such a huge amount of people seem to have developed.
- Look at all the free image / video services that either never took off or went bust. Especially streaming is quite expensive and isolating only this single aspect of Youtube - cost to operate: what do people expect? Everybody wants few to no ads at all and no subscription either.
  As I said, I don't want to even touch any other topic here like Youtube's (perceived) quality or their (spicy) business decisions. If you don't like the product, don't use it. There is no right to free consumption of entertainment videos. Imagine paying for a taxi like you (don't) pay for Youtube.
  And if you know better, start your own platform.
- My problem is that I paid for YouTube premium, for “an ad free experience” in their words. Then I immediately had an ad for paramount plus embedded under my video.
  So I canceled and they can go fk themselves. I was willing to support them directly, but they straight up lied about what I was buying from them.
- LBRY does.

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