UPDATE 2 It seems that starting today, uBlock Origin is working to combat this Youtube Block. Mine started working again! Lets all thank the devs of UBO for fighting this fight!
UPDATE So as new info comes out, I'll be posting it here. It seems as if this Rollout Has Several Parts.
Part 1
You get a popup message over top of your video, blocking the screen:
- This is the first sign. If you see this popup AND are logged into a YouTube account, your account has been selected.
- At this stage you can likely close or block these messages with an adblocker.
Part 2
This message will change, indicating that you have 3 remaining videos to watch without ads.
Will insert photo once one has been found
- At this stage your adblocker will imminently stop working in 3 videos time.
- Personally using Firefox + uBlock Origin and tweaking filters and updates does not even fix it.
Part 3
None of the video loads now, everything looks blank.
- At this stage you must tred new ground to avoid ads. I have posted methods in the comments. If you want to bypass this end page, read down there.
End of Update
YouTube has started rolling out anti-adblock to users inside the United States, which means that they are preparing to roll this out to the entire country. Personally, I have been blocked already. I want to gauge how common this occurrence is.
This is such a better use of their time and dollars versus improving their service to make it more attractive to customers.
If this is the change that really sets them financially straight, then I would say they have a failing business model.
Making their service more attractive to customers is precicesly what they're trying to do.
It's just that an advertising agency's customers are not the folk who watch, read or hear the ads, it's the folk who pay for the ads.
I am not sure if it will work out like this though. The amount of ads they are forcing down peoples throat is isane. Eventually it will make people consume less videos and with that less ads overall.
And thus the enshittification cycle completes
Sure, could be - but keep in mind that they have all the relevant usage data at hand. Any decrease in service popularity among users (or indeed any kind of user behavior) is immediately visible to them. They have the means to know exactly what annoyances the market will bear.
And considering that YouTube still holds a de-facto monopoly on video discoverability within the entire anglophone internet I feel like it's safe to say that the market will likely bear a lot more annoyances :P