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.
Don’t assume ineptitude.
I’ve been in the position of being asked to implement an anti-feature. I made it take as long as possible to drive up the cost and designed it to be trivially bypassable because I’m not motivated to intentionally trash my own project.
I don’t know who you are, or what you write, but thank you.
Subterfuge at work, a fun subject to study.
Some of my favorites from a declassified WWII “simple productivity sabotage” manual:
Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable"and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
When I first saw these I was like goddamn, psyops got to my executive director!
Sounds like how work is done in large corps
Or public administration
Wow, most of these points just sound like a responsible way to handle all the bullshit requests from employees. I’m not saying make it unnessecarily painful for employees to request changes. However, I currently work at a company that did the “just do it” approach for years, got big with it and now our department needs to clean up the bullshit of many years to get the company up to code with whatever regulations we are under and people still think we can continue working just like that.
Generally, too little of something is bad for one reason and too much of something is bad for another reason.
“Don’t order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.”
See also: lean manufacturing
Sounds like how I buy shoes and jackets.
What’s funny about this is all of this pretty much comes naturally when you’re doing something you don’t want to do without a reason to do it.
Do you know if there is a book (extensive article) which covers that in detail?
OSS’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944
There’s a link at the top for the full pdf. And do note, OSS is Office of Special Services, the WWII precursor to the CIA - not Open Source Software lol.
Thanks (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
WWII changed their name to BMV I think.
Destroying them from the inside I see
Not all heroes wear capes, but you are a godsend!
the prejudice, assuming they don’t wear a cape.
I always thought if youtube pushes the anti ad policy too hard they risk alienating the tech people who will end up on another platform which will start growing much faster. What they do is come up with half assed ad blocking. So casual people and people on locked systems like iPhone YouTube app are forced to watch ads.
Anyone not bothered by ads or Lacy enough will make Google money by watching ads. So they’re squeezing as much money without going too far. If they wanted to, they could have ads which would be unblock-able.
Based
Good guy.