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.
A NewPipe dream.
For digital sovereignty to really take off, I think these big tech companies would have to go under. Then people would realize why a centralized web is harmful, and it would bring attention to alternatives. That won’t happen though, because big tech is well… big.
dammit, how did i not think of NewPipe dream, lol.
I think if Peertube were to take off like Mastodon, it might at least be enough to put pressure on youtube to change.
hell, Meta saw fediverse gaining attention after Melon Husk took twitter for a nose dive, and threw together a half baked app to at least get their foot in the door. Theyre aware of what people actually want, they’re just trying to figure out a way to make money off of it/you.
Video content takes a lot more storage then text and images too. So it might not seem very practical for creators to host all that themselves when youtube does so free of cost.