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.
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.
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…
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”.
deleted by creator
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!
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 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
SOLUTION:
- just right click on the message and ‘block element’ :D
or paste this to your filters: www.youtube.com##tp-yt-paper-dialog.ytd-popup-container.style-scope www.youtube.com##.opened
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
www.piped.video##tp-yt-paper-dialog.ytd-popup-container.style-scope
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You moron…
“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.
Dang. You actually bought premium instead of installing an adblocker?
I didn’t wanna maintain an ad blocker, especially since I use youtube on a bunch of diff devices. Desktop/laptop/Ps4/Tv/Ipad/Phone like, everywhere. Premium just meant no ads on any of them with no fuss or maintenance.
Also the bonus of downloads/music/background play etc was very nice.
Honestly for someone like me who uses youtube as much as I do, it was 100% worth the money. I just ethically can’t bring myself to pay for it now that they straight up lied and took my money without even trying to be subtle about it.
You don’t have to maintain an adblocker.
All the morons defending a mindless corporation in this thread forgot that Google has far overstepped it’s boundaries in general. It got to where it is from harvesting free data from users. And now is initiating a web DRM that will far overstep any boundary seen. If a website decides to adopt it, everyone is screwed.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Greed, by definition, has no limits.
What happens when they block adblockers? Do you think they’re just going to stop there? Or will they go from 3 ads every 10 minute to 4 ads every 10 minutes?
Greed, by definition, has no limits.
The solution to the problem is to have higher standards. But people with low standards get mad whenever that’s pointed out.
They’re useful idiots for a reason.
It really is quite something seeing people so concerned on behalf Google’s revenue streams, and dedicating such passionate advocacy for them.
How does one quit YouTube?
There is just so much stuff on there and no alternative.
i disabled my history, so now youtube doesn’t suggest me anything, I have a blank page. I still have my subs but blank page by default, but the good thing is I do have have to engage and if I don’t know what to look for, I close the page.
ublock still work, btw.
PC: Install Firefox. Then install these extensions: Sponsorblock for YouTube, Enhancer for YouTube, uBlock Origins with all the filters turned on except the language filters (you can use them if you wish) and Return YouTube Dislike. Keep uBlock Filters updated by checking for filter updates once a day.
Android: There’s Revanced. I use pre-built apks along with Vanced MicroG from RVX Lite in Telegram.
Android TV: Install SmartTubeNext.
Enjoy.
This War of Mine is an intense adventure game that immerses players in traumatic stories with unique storytelling and beyond all conventional means. https://minemodapk.com/games/indian-bike-driving-3d-mod-apk/
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.
I got this notification today for the first time. I cleared the catche on my filter lists and it seems to have solved the issue - for now.
Hear me out: Google makes money by selling ads. People who buy from those ads don’t have an adblocker installed. People who are intelligent enough to block ads wouldn’t buy from them anyway. If Google allows it to be too easy to block ads then their model collapses. I’m ok with jumping through a couple hoops to continue to block and Google doesn’t lose anything while I get to still watch the content I like without wasting anyone’s time. It’s to Google’s benefit to serve videos to only people who will actually buy that crap anyway. If Google or anyone wants to sell to me, they simply have to make a great product. If they do, I’ll see it in use for it’s intended purpose and buy it. For example, I didn’t have to watch any ads to buy a Nintendo Switch years ago…
Here is my take on this.
First, I am with OP on this, but with mild counter points:
- I block ads because they are intrusive, contain scam and viruses
- I don’t want to pay YT because I am already the product, and my trust is long gone about them saying they respect my privacy
- “Hosting is expensive” is what we hear left and right but…
- letting people upload many hours long is not what YT was supposed to be,
- 4K vids and up are huge, so is HDR, do we really need such fat video files/streams? I don’t…
- for those who need 2000inch TV size quality, yeah, they want to charge those.
- I would be OK to pay, but google will rise the price eventually and it feels like changing a contrcat I signed to begin with and I dan’t agree with that. (price raising reason are the previous points above, I am not concerned by those and I don’t see why I should pay that much)
- I am a google pixel user, google already got some of my money anyway, which I am happy with.
In the same vein, I wait Netflix to raise their price again (I bit the bullet twice) but there won’t be a third time.
Same for Spotify.Those services should realize they are not essential, just bare useful, and should be priced as such.
Just my 2cts.
I just got this for the first time today. I was able to dismiss it and go on to watch ad blocked YouTube on Firefox, but I wonder how much longer this will be an option. Nebula and Curiosity Stream are looking really good right now.
I just got this popup today too, but only in Brave, it doesn’t show up in Firefox and LibreWolf at all and I use uBlock Origin for all of them. Looks like it’s just a Chromium thing. I mainly use Firefox anyway, I only use Brave as a music player at work because I have too many FF tabs opened in 3 windows already.
You weren’t on Piped or Invidious already? /hj
