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.
This is not at all surprising. Youtube Premium (as well as any other streaming subscription service) is well within their right to add whatever "ads" they want, even if you're paying. Netflix has done this, so has Hulu and Amazon and GoogleTV. Even if you 'buy' media from them, they can remove access to it at any time.
You can't count on Google's (or anyone else's) goodwill to not show you ads when you've paid to remove them. Google in particular has a terrible track record of terminating services the moment they determine it is no longer profitable.
I mean, in the image above it specifically says “You can go ad-free with YouTube premium.”
They don’t say “get rid of pre roll ads” or “remove banner ads” they just say “ad-free” which it specifically is not. They still show me an ad, so it’s not ad-free. That’s just a lie.
I def do not believe they are within their rights to add ads whenever they want, when I specifically bought “ad free”
I know I can’t trust google to stand by their word, I’m just saying that this is what finally broke the ol camels back and pushed me away from giving them anything, even my eyes on their “free” platform.