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 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.
I’ll admit I make good money. I work in software.
But I’ve been paying that since before I was making good money. Again, this is my music streaming platform. I would be paying $10/month to Spotify if I weren’t paying $14/month to YouTube.
(Actually I looked into my subscription while typing this, and I’m still paying the grandfathered price of $9.99/month for YouTube Premium. Pretty sweet, that.)
FYI, that grandfathered price goes away after December
That's a shame, but the benefits still outweigh the cost in my mind. I hate ads, so what I get out of a YouTube Premium subscription is far more than what I get from Netflix or Max.
(And I realize I can get all of this for free by going around the TOS, but if I have the money I might as well support the service.)