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.
“You can go ad free with YouTube premium!”
Buys premium
youtube shows ad for paramount plus under my video
Cancels YouTube premium.
So anywho there’s a thing called freetube. Just saying. Idk that it’s a perfect alternative, but it’s at least one step further from googles prying eyes and grubby hands.
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I think you have to be watching a video that it connects to.
So for example I was watching the Game Grumps play Peppa pig (lol I know but it was hilarious) so it put an ad saying “try paramount plus to watch peppa pig” under it.
I’ve seen it on a few other vids that have movies associated, like sonic for example. Seems to be a semi recent thing though
(Is this how I post a pic on Lemmy? lol)
Never seen that before, I’ve had premium for years now
Dang. You actually bought premium instead of installing an adblocker?
So, stop using Chrome ffs, ublock and Firefox have zero issues
Swapped over about 3 months ago, it’s good to be back in the FF ecosystem. Swapped to chrome long ago after FF became super fat on the resources, now it’s the other way around.
FF + pihole is awesome.
I’m starting to lean this way as well.
I’m not a huge open source/privacy/whatever purist, but it just seems that more and more often, I am reading that FF is the go-to again.
It’s been great so far, and the import function from chrome worked perfectly. It’s what I was worried about the most.
I got stopped yesterday with FF+UB. redirect.invidious.io time.
Not anymore, they’re rolling this out in separate swaths. so if you haven’t seen it, it just means you’ll get to wait a little longer.
> >no longer works > FF+UB does work with the instructions you can find on reddit.com/r/ublockorigin < no longer works <
Edit: Freetube works on pc, and F-droid and NewPipe works on Android
If you use certain extensions you still have issues
Only thing I turn on is https everywhere and ublock origin. Causes zero issues
I’m using Firefox and uBlock Origin and the same block message.
You need to use default ublock settings and disable other plug-ins as they are causing the message. Ublock works fine on Firefox
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YouTube: starts putting 2, sometimes even 3 ads that are often unskippable before and in the middle of 10 minute videos
Also YouTube: Why are people using adblockers?
But I delete my history every 1 week instead of every 3 months. So they don’t get much from my choices.
Implying that deleting them from your view actually deleted them.
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Surely they’ll actually comply, not be caught in an audit years down the line and given a friendly “Now now, we talked about this: don’t get caught breaking the law again!” slap on the wrist for failing to delete and instead further monetising that data?
Under GDPR and DMA, there would be real consequences. Like “being broken up or cease to exist” magnitude of consequences. Why would they risk it for the 1% of users who actually care and set their privacy settings accordingly?
Google doesnt care about you or anyones personal data. They care about the amount they collect. If the most privacy-aware users wrestle back some data and have it deleted, so be it. Google couldnt care less. Users are like cattle to them, as long as the general “data harvest rate” looks okay they wont investigate the odd one out.
Forgive me for being cynical about the odds of those consequences actually being enacted. Giving the courts a weapon for getting such companies in line is one thing, getting the judges to actually fire it another.
A law is only ever as good as its enforcement.
If I’m wrong, of course, I’ll be glad to learn that. I’ve just run out of optimism halfway through adolescence.
Check this out:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems
Facebook (and the complicit Irish Data Protection Comission) thought so too, an were rekt.
The case invalidated 2 seperate “safe harbor” agreements between the EU and the USA, making ANY data transfer of EU customers private data to the USA illegal without explicit consent. It was literally pandemonium in the IT sector for a few months, everyone was running stuff in US clouds and panicking.
This is what makes the EU high court (ECJ/EuGh) special: noone can pressure them politically. They couldn’t care less what anyone but EU law says.
And that was “just” GDPR, now they have way more EU laws (DMA, DSA) they can throw at FAANG.
Huh. Neat. Thanks for that!
My man thought he was permanently erasing it from history.
Next you’ll tell me cognito mode isn’t keeping my browsing completely private! /s
If the incognito mode is not keeping your browsing private, imagine the cognitive mode!
How can my workplace admin block Pornhub even when I’m using private mode? He shouldn’t even be allowed to see what I do privately!
I mean, this is mostly borne from a fundamental misunderstanding of what “Private Browsing” mode is and was meant to be.
When you open an incognito tab on Chrome, it literally says “Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.”
It also says
Your activity might still be visible to:
- Websites that you visit
- Your employer or school
- Your Internet service provider
Fuck using Chrome and I’m not defending Google at all here, but they never once claimed Incognito was anything more than it was.
Pretty sure Firefox says that too. Users just don’t read. Like, ever. They’ll get an error message saying “Important!” and click whatever button seems most likely to make it go away before calling support and demanding they “fix the computer”.
doesn’t even matter. what matters is the meta data. if the data from the list say you like science videos with emphasis on electrical engineering, star wars podcasts and mmorpg let’s plays - does that data go away apon history deletion. what about meta-meta data. if the meta data puts you on group X that receive content Y, does that go away apon history deletion. and what kind of integration does that get with the rest of the google knowledge about you…
I doubt turning off history truly does what it says either though. I think it was more about avoiding the shitty algo recc’s that try to turn everyone’s dad and uncle into a far right extremist.
Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.
Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.
Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Give me “pretty much everything” for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.
You don’t have a choice.
Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.
Ublock Origin is so magical at getting around YouTube I almost find it suspicious. Almost.
When they take out uBlock Origin, they take me out as well.
If only peertube had the same culture as Lemmy and Mastodon.
But it feels like, imo, Peertube has fallen to the same pitfalls as other YouTube alternatives. 99% of vids I see on Peertube instances are far-right conspiracy theory videos among other obviously abhorrent content that would otherwise be banned on youtube.
Nebula.tv has lots of excellent videos, a healthy community of creators, a sustainable business model, a lot of good communication between subscribers and management, and I believe is not in financial trouble so far. It’s not free, but it’s affordable.
As a former Nebula subscriber, here’s my hot take: it also has no real community and no chance for exposure to the up-and-comer (IE no way to breakout since it seems invite only?)
I’ve found so many great YouTube channels filled with deep experience and expertise before they “catch on” (and some never “catch on”). The ability to find the small, powerful voice who’s just trying to share knowledge…
I’m not defending YouTube/Alphabet here (as a company they’re no better than any other), I just think Nebula isn’t a great alternative and unless things change, can never be. It’s a walled garden in too many ways (paywall/creator invitations).
In the year I subscribed to Nebula, I mostly watched the same videos on YouTube. If they were technical enough there was valuable discussion attached to the video; on Nebula that’s not the case and not possible. Even if it was possible I can’t imagine people fragmenting their discussion spaces between YouTube and a closed ecosystem like Nebula.
Don’t even get me started with their (Nebula) inability to build a video queue -> wasting time and space on a poorly thought-out implementation of Autoplay was a terrible decision that further pushed me off the platform.
It’s sad, I really wanted to like it. But I voted with my dollars and left.
(am the same person you replied to)
i actually don’t disagree much with your points. i still watch most of the videos posted on both platforms on youtube, not Nebula, tbh.
for me it’s mostly because Nebula haven’t made an official Kodi addon yet, and the unofficial one (by slyguy) often has buffering issues (which i don’t blame on slyguy).
i sometimes “fake watch” good videos again on the nebula website to help that creator boost their revenue share of my subscription. a very clumsy hack.
all that said - i am very glad that the videomakers i follow seem happy with Nebula, and since they say it’s helping them make better videos, i will continue to subscribe.
i don’t know about the ‘invite only’ thing. i have recommended in yt comments to a couple of people i often watch (Joe Blogs is one, i think also Our Own Devices, DiodeGoneWild, perhaps also Denys Davydof and/or Jake Broe) that they should ask about joining, but i assume my messages weren’t seen, in the depths of yt comments. as for if it’s easy for new creators to join, again don’t know for sure but there seem to be some regular Neb uploaders without much/any yt presence.
Thanks for engaging!
I should comment on my poorly phrased use of “invite only” -> I mean that from the creators’ perspective in case I fumbled that one. IE, I can’t just decide to share on Nebula, I have to be invited (seemingly by the creator personally? Ref: https://www.theverge.com/23076663/nebula-youtube-creator-business-future-startup-ceo-dave-wiskus).
Video Just has fundamentally different hosting cost for processing and bandwidth. Amongst the big streaming providers only Netflix makes a profit. Twitch is not profitable, either.
I just want to point out that a corporation not making a profit doesn’t mean they’re not making money. It means they’ve spent the money on something and then in the accounting they can call it an expense instead of profit. But they still made that money and they still have something to show for it.
That’s revenue, not profit.
Revenue only becomes profit if you let it.
Got $1m in revenue that you don’t want to declare as profit? Purchase some assets and now you have $1m expense instead.
Yeah, sure. Doesn’t change the other point
I guess what I’m saying is that although your first point is true, your second point doesn’t actually support it.
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the peertube instance im on seems to be not allowg vids
Newpipe is still working great, I haven’t used an official interface in like 3 years.
Firefox + ublock origin is the way forward.
However, as a teacher, my school IT system default browser is chrome, and adverts on YT videos when you’re trying to teach a lesson can really suck all the momentum and attention from the class.
Chrome allows you to save javascript as a bookmark URL called bookmarklets. I’m not so clued up on java, but I found this code that zips through the adverts super quickly. Someone can probably improve on this;
javascript: var v = document.querySelector(‘video’); var t = 16; v.playbackRate = parseFloat(t)
for future reference, this is javascript, not java. totally different language
Ah thanks, like I said, I don’t really know what I’m talking about! Good to know.
And here’s the improved version!
javascript:void(document.querySelector("video").playbackRate=16)Champ, I knew someone here would be able to improve on it!
Your school’s IT department should be fired for even downloading Chrome, let alone making it the default browser across the network.
I’m not in the US, it’s a local council/regional thing. And most areas here have chromebooks for every student so that’s just become the default, I think. But yes, our IT tends to be a good 10-15 years behind the curve anyway. No money for resources either.
That’s ridiculous.
The browser that’s downloaded by default should be the one that most people want to use and/or have a feature that’s necessary for their job.
Personally, I would just deploy both Chrome and Firefox since there is no real reason not to, except it’s a little bit more work.
Sadly, that is the case for many companies. They do this because they either leverage the Google Chrome enterprise .admx on Windows or because they rely on Google Workspace which has tight integration with the Chrome browser.
That is unfortunately the same in my case, however, I as a SysAdmin had fought tooth and nail to allow users to choose whichever browser they want and because we have a lot of devs/power users our Firefox usage is 25% on Mac and 17% on Windows. The rest I guess are just marketing :)
Firefox actually has GPO templates (since 2018, starting with Firefox 60 and 61): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-group-policy-windows
I believe Firefox didn’t have an MSI installer before, which might have helped Chrome since MSI files are easier to deploy.
Also Chrome is just what most users are familiar with, so just deploying Chrome is not unusual.
ublock, revanced, newpipe and more
They’re begging for a direct competitor.
I hate ads as much as anyone and have been blocking them for almost as long as ad blockers have existed. I still acknowledge the fact that ads are the primary revenue source for a lot of things on the Internet, and I selectively enable them for content I want to pay for.
How do you think Youtube is supposed to survive without ads or subscriptions? When they puts ads on their site, the unsaid agreement is that you exchange your ad views for their service.
Ohhhh how I wish my favorite youtubers would create their own Peertube instances…
They’d have complete control of their own content, and any donations could go directly to them.I know it’s kind of a pipe dream, but let me dream dammit.
