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.

  • BReel@lemmy.oneEnglish
    312·
    1 year ago

    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)

    • DeprecatedCompatV2@programming.devEnglish
      156·
      1 year ago

      This is not the kind of ad most people are talking about though. This is like Amazon trying to get me to buy insurance whenever I purchase electronics (which I never do, of course).

      • BReel@lemmy.oneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I only ever saw it on Desktop since I do most my viewing there, and even then only on specific videos. So its not crazy frequent, just annoying its a thing at all.

        I do love the idea of youtube building in a skip for in vid sponsors though, that would possibly bring me back haha. Like if sponsored creators were required to add a “sponsor” chapter to their vids, so premium users could have it just skip that block of the video 🤔