this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023

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Goodbye Youtube and thanks for all the fish (infosec.pub)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

all 40 comments

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As a premium subscriber for many years, I and my family really get value. I do pay in UAH though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

UAH days are numbered.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

You weren't on Piped or Invidious already? /hj

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Wait, what's Youtube History?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Use an alternative front end like https://piped.video

You may want to try various instances (in preferences) as the main one has been under a lot of load

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

uBlock Origin is quite apt in not showing any of that. I am thankful for the creator's attentiveness.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Odd, I have uBlock Origin and it’s blocking the ads without any pop ups or angry messages

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just tried it out, watched three videos (one was 49 minutes) and nothing. I use Firefox with NoScript and U-Block (also Enhancer for Youtube, but I doubt that's relevant). I wouldn't have know this was happening if no one posted about it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's a slow rollout

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Damn. I suppose I'll find out. Would suck if this is being incorporated into one of the essential scripts for youtube to function. Oh well.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You don't have a choice.

Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The new word for "whitelisted" is "allowlisted"?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yes. In the same way that "Master" and "Slave" have been replaced for racist engineering terminology, "Whitelist" and "Blacklist" are replaced with "Allowlist" and "Blocklist".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

it is not racist however. words get their meaning by their context. asking if you can bum a fag gets very different responses in the uk and outside

in this case master 2a/d or 5 and I couldnt find any non people slavery related definition so maybe that should get changed after all

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

If you have ever said "Master Slave" architecture you are a racist and every single Black person in earshot had a panic attack. At least, that's what we're led to believe.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Do these terms actually come from racist backgrounds, or did they come up as a coincidence?
It just feels weird someone would think of a way to degrade black people then decide to use blacklist for things they don't want, then engineers decide to use master and slave to piss off black people whatever. Is that literally the history behind it?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Blacklist was specifically used to refer to the refusal of entry as if they were a black person, so yes there is a racist history. Master and Slave is pretty obvious why especially considering everyone uses Parent/Child and Primary/Secondary these days anyway. Like maybe 10% of the change was because of "je-I-mean-sjws being offended" and like 90% just practicality because they're outdated terms that aren't really used.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Lol...omg. lol.

Phew.

I'm sure Americans used blacklist like that at one time or another, but the origins are a list of enemies and had nothing to do with skin color.

Master and Slave is also not something exclusive to black people, they're generic terms that were appropriated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

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/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'll play devil's advocate here... Ads pay revenue. Revenue pays for the service. The service pays content creators. I'm not saying Youtube is perfect, but adblocking, or using alternate front ends, hurts the content creators first. Youtube Premium gets rid of the ads, pays the content creators more, and gets you a spotify-type music streaming service as well. I'm not trying to shill, but the deal is pretty fair, it's only $3 more than spotify, and you get 0 ads on youtube as a bonus. If you really don't want to see and you don't want to pay for it, then please, don't use the service. Youtube still gets data from you, even if you block ads. You want to hurt them, then do it the right way. Blocking ads hurts the creators more than anyone else.

Edit: Every day I am reminded of how many people believe they are owed everything for free.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

deleted by creator

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tbh, I block ads when I can but have a hard time getting angry about this. YouTube is both incredibly useful and incredibly expensive to operate -- seriously, what other service lets you upload hours of HD video which anyone in the world can access instantly, indefinitely, for free, and at the same scale YT does? It's a peerless engineering marvel and it would be a tragedy if it were to shut down. If seeing some short skippable ads is what it takes to keep that resource viable, that's honestly pretty fair.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just like a few of the other posts, I honestly don't get it. If they can't sell your data and can't serve you ads, then why would they want to spend money serving you for free? There's so many people complaining how YouTube has a monopoly and how it's not even that hard to run, but I seriously doubt these people. Transcoding video and distributing it worldwide while having automated moderation is not easy or cheap. If there were serious contenders in the space people would have moved on, and I don't think it's just the network effect that keeps YouTube as a dominant player here.

People despise ads, but then they want content for free. They use adblockers to bypass a primary revenue source for a website, then go all surprised Pikachu face when that website doesn't welcome them. And then they get upset that they don't want to be the product despite not willing to be a source of ad revenue. I'm willing to pay for YouTube premium (and other subscription models to get rid of ads), but a lot of people aren't. And honestly, I really would rather those people simply leave the site. It would lower operating costs for YouTube (I don't expect my subscription fees to go down but maybe their engineers will have more free time to work on features besides adblocker-blocking), and more people on different sites would lead to more competition.

If you aren't willing to eat ads, and you aren't willing to be the product, and you aren't willing to pay a subscription, then why do you think you're entitled to content?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

People despise ads, but then they want content for free.

You have it perfectly backwards: YouTube wants content for free, and to not have to share any but the most pitiful fractions of ad income with the ACTUAL content creators.

YouTube does not produce content, others do. YouTube has gone out of its way to dick the vast majority of them, especially the smaller ones, to the point that as such, unless you have a Patreon, a website or store of your own, corporate sponsors, merch, or some other side hustle in addition to making YouTube content, you're literally making content for a fraction of a penny per view, and entirely at your own cost.

And even then, you're subject to an algorithm over which you have no control and which can just as fickly ban your content to oblivion as it can raise your content to the multi-million views club. By skipping YouTube ads and finding other ways to support the content creators I enjoy, I help give my creators a financial buffer from the unpredictable vagaries of the algorithm and also withhold reward from YouTube as well.

When YouTube shared ad revenue with content creators in a much more equal fashion, I did not have a problem with their ads. But several years ago -- I want to say six or seven, but it's been going on for at least ten -- YouTube got greedy with the ads AND with becoming incredibly unstable and unreliable for creators in all manner of ways AND decreasing payouts to creators all along the way, at which point it became clear that me watching an ad or not no longer affects the content creators I enjoy at all. And they are the only reason I am on YouTube to begin with.

(And don't get me started on all the copyright/demonetization scams there are on YouTube now: I have a friend who got a copyright strike for playing a C scale on a piano because some asshole claimed it and YouTube lets them do it: even when a creator gets views, they can get demonetized at a drop of a hat even for obviously ridiculous claims, and then that revenue goes to the person making the copyright claim. Win/win for everyone except the person who actually made the content.)

Over the years, YouTube has never failed to excel at two things: server space, and fucking its golden geese, the creators of the actual content, without which no one would be making any money there at all. So get back to us when YouTube recognizes the creators of the gold mine they have in the content hosted there, and once again finds a way to respect for the amount of time and effort and cost that goes into creating that content by sharing revenue with content creators in a more equitable manner.

TL;DR: Why should I watch ANY YouTube ads at all when I can support content creators via Patreon or a creator's website and know that a much more equitable amount of that revenue will go straight to the creator of that content, where it belongs?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

YouTube still pays creators pretty high comparatively (55% of ad revenue according to https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-influencers-get-paid-on-instagram-tiktok-youtube). You are simply getting a service (hosted, searchable, collection of the largest collection of web videos in an extremely nice interface) that costs money even outside of the creator's cost. For creators they are allowing that 45% cut of ad revenue to get access to the YouTube audience, paid hosting that simply works, nice creator tools, etc.

You can state that it's a valueless thing that anyone could replicate, but the evidence is that there aren't many alternatives that do better. Today we do have things like PeerTube (which I think all creators should consider selfhosting with ads/subscriptions and federating the free stuff after a delay) and joining creator owned video services like Nebula (which could be made even better with federation). Unfortunately, with both you run into the discoverability problem, something creators and their audiences are paying to solve when you are hosting on YouTube.

I'd take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you - why should you pay for internet service when it's the content of the videos you watch not the wires that deliver it that have value? If you hacked around your neighbors WIFI to get some free network access, you could zero-cost get something you might not necessarily want to budget for, and you get quite a nice service out of it. Why shouldn't that be okay when you still Patreon the creators of your videos given your reasoning about YouTube providing no value?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can state that it’s a valueless thing that anyone could replicate . . .
I’d take your argument further back on the sourcing of getting content to you . . .
why should you pay for internet service . . .

Yeah, except I didn't say that, nor any of the other strawmen you erected to slam down.

What asinine aggrandizements and distortions. "Why should you pay for internet service" lol. (Reading your response I am momentarily rethinking it, certainly.)

Get back to me when you can address what I actually wrote, and not what you need me to have written. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Use alternative yt front ends? YT Vanced, PipePipe, YMusic, and so on...

Firefox with exentions or on PC?

I have not seen any of this on my end, my IP does get blocked though, I just change it.

I wonder how they are rolling it out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. Meanwhile in this post there are people begging others to turn off Adblock and sub to YT premium for creators sake lmao

As if handing Google your money helps creators, nobody owes anyone a damn ad view let alone multiple unskipables

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

True.

Many will help the people they like with donations and other ways instead of helping Alphabet (google) and the like.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks to this comment I discovered F-Droid and downloaded PipePipe

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

You are welcome!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My man thought he was permanently erasing it from history.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Next you’ll tell me cognito mode isn’t keeping my browsing completely private! /s