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.
Hear me out: Google makes money by selling ads. People who buy from those ads don't have an adblocker installed. People who are intelligent enough to block ads wouldn't buy from them anyway. If Google allows it to be too easy to block ads then their model collapses. I'm ok with jumping through a couple hoops to continue to block and Google doesn't lose anything while I get to still watch the content I like without wasting anyone's time. It's to Google's benefit to serve videos to only people who will actually buy that crap anyway. If Google or anyone wants to sell to me, they simply have to make a great product. If they do, I'll see it in use for it's intended purpose and buy it. For example, I didn't have to watch any ads to buy a Nintendo Switch years ago...