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.
It’s totally not fair that a Bently costs so much money. Sure, I could, you know, buy a different car, but fuck Bently for their unfair pricing model, so I regularly steal them.
I’m sure Bently would love to have me not stealing their cars and Google could not give less of a fuck about not having to lose money from you consuming content and server resources without paying. Over half of the money YouTube makes goes to creators. Consider who you’re stealing from.
Edit: you = OP
You wouldn’t download a Bently.
Holy fucking shit I had no idea that I couldn’t download a car. So if it’s really easy to take something without paying, it’s legit, but if it’s difficult and I might actually go to jail, then it’s not. Got it.
It’s easier to take because it’s fundamentally different. If I take my neighbour’s crops they can’t eat or sell them but if I take their poem they still have it and can perform it. Laws to restrict unauthorised copying will be arbitrary instead of a simple concept like “don’t steal the thing”.