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.
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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/
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.
I think op meant he requests google to delete the history through the account settings, which they are required to comply with.
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!
This isn’t some trivial information like your precise location history, this is serious.
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…
I doubt turning off history truly does what it says either though. I think it was more about avoiding the shitty algo recc’s that try to turn everyone’s dad and uncle into a far right extremist.
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
“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.
So, stop using Chrome ffs, ublock and Firefox have zero issues
YouTube: starts putting 2, sometimes even 3 ads that are often unskippable before and in the middle of 10 minute videos
Also YouTube: Why are people using adblockers?
Ublock Origin literally works fine for youtube. If you ever receive a warning like this just clear your cache and refresh your filters.
If you’re on PC use Firefox with uBlock Origin.
For Android, Im personally using Libretube but using mobile Firefox with uBlock Origin also works.
On android you should try to go with youtube revanced, its a little tedious and time consuming to install but it is worth every single second.
Nah I prefer Libretube.
I’m curious, what makes you prefer Libretube?
PSA:Firefox + ublock origin combo works on android as well. If you don’t want to install revanced.
NewPipe is another good option for android
Another option on Android is NewPipe. Doesn’t look as nice as Libretube imo, but it goes to Youtube directly for content which is useful since public piped instances can be a bit unreliable or slow from time to time. (Also on Libretube you have to sign up and re-import your subscriptions whenever you switch instances which can be tedious)
Revanced still pretty much works for me
Yeah I just clicked X on their popup and went back to watching videos lol
That is just the beginning of your warnings. Later there will be a countdown before the x appears, and eventually there will be no x to click. You need to use ublock origin (and non-Chromium browsers). Remember to purge cache and updage ublock origin.
For iOS users, I highly recommend using Vinegar. 👌
I just tried libretube but it crashes every time I click on a video :(
It’s such a shame because I used to use newpipe all the time and I absolutely loved that, until it also stopped working
NewPipe still works for me. But i see only crap, so i close it again.
I use Firefox with uBO on Windows and it doesn’t help. I tried installing filters I found online but they don’t do shit.
I’ll just install FreeTube.
clipious exists
Just to let you know, if you use uBlock you can expect it to adapt to this new shenanigan pretty quickly. Also I think €120/year are ridiciously overpriced. Ask me about €30/year and I might consider it for a second.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind ads on Youtube if they were less per hour and less obnoxious. But no, every 12 second video now has an ad leading to it.
Not to mention, if I would pay for every single Video service the usual 8-15€ I would pay like €1000 per year and THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Give me “pretty much everything” for €100 per year and we can talk. My offer stands.
You don’t have a choice.
Also Ublock Origin on Firefox already bypass this.
When they take out uBlock Origin, they take me out as well.
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.
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That works as well.
Invidious has still been working for me too, though I’ll be clear I’m also using firefox
Hey I had a lot of problem with invidious how can u mitigate the long loading times and what about the front page … it changes content maybe once a day yeah I know I probably consume too much yt but it’s pretty annoying to search for content manually…
Sorry for the delayed responce, but yeah I understand if it’s not working for you it might not be a great option sadly.
If that’s happening, I’d try a few different instances. Try inv.tux.pizza which works well for me. I do sometimes have to click the address bar and then enter though instead of just reloading, which is also strange
Thanks I will definitely give it a shot I’m tired of yt policies (eventhow thanks to various addblock its normal for now … )
any iOS suggestions?
Use Altstore and sideload uYouPlus
This is the best an iOS user can do I think. Does Firefox exist in App Store? If yes, if it doesn’t use Safari as base, it might be supporting extensions. Never had an iPhone so don’t know much about it.
Slightly better, instead of Altstore get your device registered on the apple developer program (there are cheap ways of doing this) then you can sign as many sideloaded apps as you want and they stay working without having to constantly connect altserver.
It uses Safari as a base, for now. Hoping that with the EU forcing other app stores or sideloading we get full Firefox on iOS. Would be amazing.
I remember seeing something saying they were testing a full build for iOS a while back. They essentially have one feature complete with the macOS Apple Silicon version as well.
I use safari with an adblocker extension (AdGuard) on ios
youtube works just fine in a browser, the youtube app sucks anyway
Use a product not designed to remove all control from you as its number one core design principle
ok but I like the iPad. Great hardware
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People always recommend this, freetube, revanced, etc. When I looked into these, each one either did not work or seemed complicated to setup so I said screw it.
I’m just curious… why not use Firefox and install ublock origin? Even if you’ve never used Firefox before the whole setup process would still be far easier and it works 100% of the time.
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.
Newpipe is still working great, I haven’t used an official interface in like 3 years.
They’re begging for a direct competitor.
Lmfao, no one is dropping YouTube. You’ll be back one way or another.
