- YouTube is intensifying efforts to combat adblockers, including blocking video playback and warning users of potential account suspension.
- Increased ads on YouTube have driven many users to adblockers, hurting both YouTube’s ad revenue and content creators reliant on ad-based income.
- Despite these measures, many users are leaving YouTube or finding workarounds, leading creators to seek alternative revenue streams off-platform.
Floatplane is Linus’ smartest decision he’s made. It’s going to be needed.
Ads suck, but the type of ad is what is sucking the most. All I’m getting are ads for get rich quick schemes. You never see big name brands advertise on youtube anymore.
potential account suspension.
What account?
But to be serious, this might be at actual risk to those who are logged in. They were locking out users of their whole google accounts for less, including their emails and the uploaded files to drive.
Imagine being on the YouTube ad team…that has to be the most depressing team in tech history. Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.
So tell the content creators you like that you don’t like YouTube. While YouTube Premium is the same price as like two coffees a month… Maybe your content creator will help you if you can’t afford it.
Well, to begin with, both the watcher and the creator are clients of the platform. Both sides feel bound to it, even if both dislike it.
Then, YouTube premium is literally 20 machine coffees a month in my first world country. 15 if they’re done by someone. You seem to be speaking “privileged minority”.
I’m sorry… I didn’t realize the reason that there are so many Starbucks in America, like literally caddy corner from one another is because their customer base is the “privileged minority.” I’ll have to remember that line.
In all seriousness, you could argue that ads prey on poor vulnerable people unable to afford YouTube Premium that just want to use it to learn, and that would be a semi-coherent argument.
What you are trying to point is that in the United States of America (and maybe Canada) you people have coffee that’s so expensive that two of them pay for YT premium. You’re only missing out on most of the internet (eg. Not the US).
Starbucks is notoriously expensive and nobody refers to it as coffee round here. Starbucks in my first world country is considered something for hipster digital nomads. You can’t find them outside areas with tourists as everyone else is happy with “regular” coffee that’s literally 10 times cheaper.
Saying that two coffees equate to YouTube premium while using Starbucks as a metric is like saying that a car only costs a watch or two while using a Rolex as the reference watch. If you consider a Rolex to be your reference watch, cool, you’re a privileged minority.
and it’s potentially an existential threat.
Even better, you work for one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with virtually unlimited resources at your disposal, and you still get your asses handed to you by a handful of people with laptops.
If they didn’t have to support the web, and various legacy platforms, the could lock it all down with drm more easily.
Hence Google’s proposal to DRM the web
And people’s response has shown its not easy or even working.
in tech*. most people don’t even know or care about it
That’s far less true now that they’re breaking the functionality of tons of adblockers that it was a few years ago.
most normies i know don’t care about it.
i have no idea how they use the internet without them, but here we are.
All the eggs in one basket? Computer nerds would never allow that.
Your whole existence revolves around peddling ads before people can watch the ads they want.
Ah, what. Who wants or likes to watch ads at all?
I’ve clicked in to see a movie trailer, which is basically an ad, and had to watch an ad before I could watch the ad
- Reviews
- Trailers
- Reactions
- Travel vlogs
- Beginner tutorials
To some extent, these types of videos advertise or promote a product, service, or experience.
People watch an ad for the privilege of watching a movie/show/game trailer all the time.
Yea…I’m old enough to remember when that was the content that paid for the platform. Putting an ad on top of that is fucking soulless vampic greed.
Welcome to the new Google. It’s rent seeking all the way down.
I have no problem watching a ad for a video but when I have to watch an ad just to see if I am interested in watching the video is where I draw the line. Forced ads before the video starts is the worst. Give me a min or two before forcing an ad. If I am looking for help for a particular issue I don’t want to watch ads after ad while trying to gauge the video.
I get what you’re saying but I’ve reached a point in my life where I really don’t give a shit and there is absolutely no way I’m watching ads. I’m also not paying google for anything they offer.
A lot of creators have just turned into corporate shills. I stopped watching ETA Prime’s channel about tech reviews because it was becoming pretty clear that mostly everything he got was paid for by the company. Also, most creators are putting their own ads into their content.
I don’t follow those creators!
The best part of YouTube is the small creators who are just making videos as a hobby. Once they get so big they start shilling products they wouldn’t use themselves I drop them like a hot potato. For the most part that doesn’t happen though because I prefer niche topics and creators that don’t have “sellout” personalities.
I know right… Why should content creators be able to make money from content. Am I right?
The same reasons as open source software devs.
Some content creators but not most of them. A lot of open source software advertises too.
You’re joking, but you’re right.
Once the content has been created, the near-zero marginal cost of online distribution makes the concept of charging for copies wholly untenable.
The furry community figured this out years ago, our creators work on commission or paid subscription through Patreon or one of its ilk. They (mostly) don’t care where you freely share their work because they already got paid.
The knives are out for Patreon. Apple is looking to carve a big chunk out of that revenue. Google and Amazon (owner of Twitch) will not be far behind. Believe me, Google and Twitch are very unhappy that creators skip the platform monetization methods and just tell viewers to go to Patreon to bypass the heavy commissions.
Great time for Patreon to expand more into content delivery.
Patreon is jacked to the tits with vc money and enshittifying at a breakneck speeds. Done expect goods innovations from it in the future
Patreon deserves to die, their cut of the subscription income is extortionate for what amounts to a very limited web hosting platform.
Open-source alternatives like Mirlo or Cloud Patron will take its place, it’s only a matter of time.
Or SubscribeStar or any of the other alternatives.
Welcome to Youtube. It’s ads all the way down. Unless:
Firefox browser, Ublock Origin extension, Sponsorblock extension
Save 40% of your viewing time for actual content and send tips through creator’s Paypal or whatever.
SmartTube for Android TV is a must as well
YouTube is just on demand TV with extra steps these days. I’ve stopped watching videos, I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now. 99% of the content of a 10-15 minute video can be summarized into 1 or 2 pages and read in under 2 minutes.
I have an LLM transcribe and summarize for me now.
Only a matter of time before LLMs start injecting their own ads into these responses.
Nah, local LLMs are easily in the range of transcribe/summarize. I bet you could do that nicely with llama 8B without even needing a gpu.
Cant wait to have these
By that point I’m pretty sure we’ll have an effective compact model that can run locally and transcribe downloaded videos on reasonable hardware. Or you can just sic a paid model like chatgpt on the task. The corporate Internet is entirely focused on subscription service models now, unless you run the model yourself on local hardware you’re going to end up paying someone somewhere a service fee.
Local and open source
I think I need this, finally a real use for ‘ai’.
The amount of how to videos you have to watch through, when all you want is one little piece of info you should be able to search or scan for has been a problem since before the internet figured out how to increase clicks by making a web page in to slides.
Can you link me a how-to video on how to get startedt and send me a summary from your working setup?
I hope nobody lets them know that Firefox on Linux has never shown ads for any of their content.
Don’t worry. Linux is only 4% of the total computer market. They aren’t bothered with you because Linux isn’t worth it.
That’s fine, we’re happy to keep the better choice to ourselves. 😆
Oh well, sucks to be us! /s
I’m sure they make enough money to not care. Being in the part of the company that brings in the dough is generally a pretty good position to be in as well.
It’s the only consumer product they haven’t canceled.
Gmail would like a word
At least you can tell your boss “I’m working on it!”, sit on your ass, and every 6 months add one more little UI or formula change which “finally stops adblockers” but is defeated within 3 days.
Yeah I don’t believe they really put their hearts in it. If they truly wanted to force you into watching ads, they’d manage. Their team is just not that interested.
Their team is probably using adBlockers more than the rest of us. They understand the depth of the surveillance baked into those ads.
And because they have to test the ads.
All corporate IT jobs are depressing, because working in a corporation isn’t something that a thinking person is equipped to do.
The other day I visited youtube without any add-ons and concluded I’d rather do anything else than use youtube under those conditions.
Pro tip, LLMs do an excellent job summarizing YouTube videos now. I’ve never liked YouTube content, the incentives for creators are perverse and discourage conveying accurate information simply in favor of drawing out every video to maximize ad opportunities. About 95% of the content I might have been interested in could have been better conveyed in a 1-2 page blog post and read in 2 minutes instead of stretched out into a 15 minute video. Having a robot summarize that content is so much less irritating.
What do you use for that, fetch the transcript and just feed it to the LLM of your choice? Or are you talking of the actual LLM watching and summarizing?
I’ve always just used chatgpt for both tasks. I’ll ask my SO, she does more of this and she might have better tools to suggest.
Same.
I came across someone who uploaded a 90 minute video as an ad as well.
I remember watching some video, falling asleep for a few hours, then waking up to a livestream of an ad. One of those “skip after 5s” but it was a livestream, so it just kept playing. I couldn’t believe it!
That‘s where Youtube Premium comes into play for many fools who don‘t really know about adblockers. Google‘s goal isn‘t to destroy the website, but to turn it into a much more profitable Netflix subscription based on user generated content. Sadly the enshittification of the biggest video platform will continue because enough people are willing to pay a lot for it. The site will not improve until there are mainstream alternatives that actually take revenue off Youtube.
legit, if youtube ever beats ublock origin, i’ll just stop watching youtube
Yt-dlp download script + text file with fav channel urls + jellyfin.
No bullshit, saves bandwidth.
Also look into invidious.
Also look into invidious.
And peertube, some content creators also post there, e.g., The Linux Experiment.
They were serving videos with ads spliced in, basically DAI in podcasting industry. I’m not sure how that experiment went, but if that’s how they’d serve the videos, downloaders will have ads embedded as well.
Put it on a VHS, then use one of those VCRs that removes the ads for you.
Yt-dlp supports sponsorblock, i am not worried.
I also dont even need tools for this as my usual style of watching is with my fingers on the arrow keys to skip back and forth
I actually don’t know if/how the ad block people worked around it or if YouTube pulled back. The problem with DAI on podcast and in stream ads is that the ads aren’t always 1:05~1:35, the ad could be longer or shorter, then the next ad won’t necessarily start at the same time, and most definitely won’t end at the same time. So sponsor block won’t know precisely where the ads are, thereby making it much harder for a crowd sourced solution to accurately skip embedded ads. Hopefully they figured out a way, but as mentioned earlier, I don’t know what happened to that experiment.
Its an all put assault on half your senses without an adblocker. Literal torture.
The entire web is like that without an ad blocker these days.
I miss those cheeky gif banners from the 2000s
[With hindsight] The commercial use of the internet should never have been allowed.
Do online multiplayer video games count as a commercial use? I kind of like those
I want the internet to be a network of digital libraries…communication, public events and sharing space…personal pages…services…the commercial motive starts from there and eventually consumes the rest :/
I reckon without the rule changes in 1993-94 allowing commercial use that the internet would have turned into a significantly more useful utility with higher quality innovation than the advert laden train wreck that we have now.
For this to happen, everyone using the internet should know HTML or there has to be a easy to use, MS Word-like web designer. And there should also be easy to use, free web hosting providers (neocities exists).
Owning a website as a non-techie should be normalized and be portrayed as “cool”
You could pay for YouTube Premium
Fuck that though
I’d pay for YouTube Premium Lite if it didn’t state “Note: Ads will still show on music content and outside of videos.” and if that’d make them stop harvesting all my data.
It’s only a matter of time until the premium users get ads. Just like Netflix, and cable TV before that. You will inevitably wind up paying to be advertised to.
Netflix has ads now? I thought that was only for their lower tier service? I had to cancel Netflix cause they haven’t came out with two more seasons of Stranger Things yet.
yes for lower paid tiers.
Is that what they are trying to do? Push crap ads and try to kill adblock to get a little extra user share to pay for yet another subscription?
I don’t care if you block ads… but to act like Google owes you and that you deserve free content is called entitled.
Google certainly acts like it owes me nothing indeed, that’s why it will never be good enough to pay to watch.
I’m just glad someone is thinking of the shareholders
I forgot… where can I get my free data center with petabytes of storage & 300TB/s fiber interconnects?
I get what you are saying, but the balance is off.
YT premium costs (edit) more than a streaming service per month.
There are no industry leading movies or series released exclusively on YouTube.
YouTubes benefits of premium is “not being delivered ‘skip after 5 seconds’ live streams” as an ad that will play indefinitely (or at least for hours).
Also, streaming services provide much better series discovery. Ie, find a show you like and easily discover the start of that series, then binge watch the entire series in order.
YT premium is basically a “play next” queue, 1080p, and no ads.
It doesn’t (AFAIK) support creators any more. It’s literally just a fee to not-be-inconvenienced, and it’s not great at thatYep… i actually looked at Subscribing. But… It’s basically mostly amateur hour and the subscription costs a huge amount.
Even worse, I don’t believe creators even get revenue until they exceed sufficient subscribers. So most people are actually paying youtube to put benefit from other people’s video’s which they have no involvement in.
When did this change? AIUI creators got a larger cut of YouTube premium views compared to ad share.
Not sure if its subscribers or views… But, I tried to monitize one or two of my videos, and it wouldn’t let me because I don’t think I had enough views or something.
Wait, are we acting like YouTube isn’t profitable now? If I’m going to spend money on videos it’ll be a content creator owner platform like Nebula
Google makes enough money evading taxes already. Not gonna help them make more.
I don’t care if you use ad blockers. I get annoyed when people publish articles like… “Google is losing the adblockers war” cause then advertisers are going to start pushing harder for Google to actually prevent adblockers entirely, which they could have done already. Thus far Google, despite issues, does quite a lot of good things… Android is the only open source OS out of Apple & Windows. Android lets you install third party app stores. Chrome (Chromium) is open source… etc.
These users writing this content don’t even develop the apps to block YouTube ads. If you’ve ever explored the APIs by YouTube, then you’d know that Google despite pushing ads for users without blockers, is still rather friendly to third party apps.
Advertisers couldn’t care less about adblockers. Advertisers don’t pay if the ad is blocked.
I’ve had YouTube Premium since the days when it was called YouTube Red, so like a decade. I’ve grown used to not seeing any ads from Google and anytime I watch a video not using my account it’s torture.
Same here. FreeTube for desktop and NewPipe are all you need though if you don’t want to pay and/or have access to music.
As a recent YT premium-tryer, it’s amazing how many ads they put in that aren’t obviously adverts - comparing between non-premium and premium browsing.
Not sure I’ll keep YT premium beyond the free trial, until I find more decent content producers. Even then, it’s skipping those video’s paid promotion segments.
So it’s like paying for a streaming platform to not get ads… But still getting adsI agree… however, that is an issue with the content creators relying on using content promotions. I have noticed when skipping ahead in videos that it usually indicates in the progress bar where the promotion ends. If the content producers utilized other ways to contribute and I liked them enough, then I’d do that. YouTube now has a subscriber only feature that should help with this. There are also extensions that are supposed to block sponsors too. I don’t think YouTube has implemented any functions to make blocking sponsored ads more difficult, especially for paying users… who knows though.
Tubular is newpipe + sponsorblock BTW
I use pipepipe but it’s less stable
I haven’t tried that yet. I think Libretube also does SponsorBlock too & have seen it on F-Droid.
You‘re part of the problem then. It only got so shitty in the first place so they could trap people in the Premium subscription that will get increasingly more expensive and less useful.
It’s so bad that I 1) refuse to pay for premium so I don’t enable the behavior and 2) ended up sideloading an alt YouTube app on iOS that just doesn’t display the ads. YouTube hasn’t been able to block that one yet as it spoofs as the original YouTube app. Totally unsanctioned and a pain in the ass to keep the certificate alive but worth it. YouTube is actually enjoyable again. All that because the ads interruptions were constant. If it was every 15 min or so I wouldn’t care, but every 5!? Get the hell out of here!
Just got a one-minute unskippable ad for the first time yesterday (no way to use adbockers on a PS5). I’d rather not watch at all.
I’ve been downloading my subscriptions and loading them into Plex. Plenty of room for improvement in that system, but I get a nostalgic hit of YouTube long ago. Man, it’s fallen so far over the years.
Also related, I’ve hit 2.4TB of internet use for the first time last month doubling my previous record.
Literally doubling down lmao
Which downloader do you use?
There are several out there using yt-dlp. Tube archivist, tube sync, etc. They are fairly straightforward to set up in docker if you use that.
Not OP but I use the arr family of services (Sonarr and Radar, though there are more) and NZBGet as my downloader.
Lol NZBGet is not typically used for getting free content.
It’s one of the preconfigured downloaders for sonarr and radarr which is really a fancy front page for adding media from usenet? So, I would disagree.
Well… if your idea of “free” content is something you don’t pay for then yes, but if your idea of free content is something that was intended to be distributed for “free” then no.
Is it free if it supported by ads?
People don’t use NZBGet for that reason. It is literally a platform & distribution model primarily intended for pirating content in a way that is much quicker and more reliable than torrents. Usenet would probably have died without NZBs.
Probably yt-dlp, it’s a pretty popular and relatively simple terminal application.
And Sponsorblock. Can’t imagine going back.
What’s YouTube?
Eh, I dunno if I’d say they’re “losing”.
I’ve certainly noticed disruptions on every platform except GrayJay. LibreTube stopped working for several months for me.
Certainly these interruptions could be enough for some users to abandon them.
I agree with you, but you can also think about it as a one sided battle where youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot
Not really. YouTube provides a lot of tools to make most of their services and content pretty accessible from third party clients. If Google wanted to prevent ad blockers and force you to watch ads, trust me they could. At this point I think some users that only know how to install third party software are going to start claiming they won and ruin a good thing for everyone. You don’t want ads? Then don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
youtube keeps shooting themselves in the foot
How are they doing that? Users who aren’t watching ads have absolutely zero value to YouTube, and only cause increased use of their computing resources. If they leave, YT has lost absolutely nothing, and gained a decrease in energy use. Most likely these people won’t leave YT altogether but just go back to watching ads or paying for premium, which is exactly the point.
Not saying I give a shit, that’s just reality.
absolutely zero value to YouTube this is not true. non-paying users will like, comment, share to others making the platform more popular. and if they’re ads were less intrusive they would actually be more likely to be shown.
You are grossly overestimating the value of your likes and comments.
Maybe they are, but it’s not “absolutely zero” like you said.
Disagree. You’re forgetting the part about consuming their resources.
thanks. exactly my point
you can thank the non-paying youtube members who made post like this possible
I’d argue they risk losing users who post links to their videos online. It’s likely the same group who tend to use ad blockers are also the ones more likely to link a video online, so YouTube would miss out on all the non-adblock users clicking links and watching the videos that way.
NewPipe/PipePipe and Freetube were affected for half a day max, these guys are super fast with the updates.
Once upon a time Google used few and non-intrusive ads. The ads were soo well-placed and relevant, that they almost seemed like a service to the user, rather than being forced upon you. Some of us even added exceptions for Google ads in our ad blockers, so we would not miss out.
I miss those days.
The ads are so obnoxious and frequent. It just kills it for me.
I know the reply I’m gonna get…
Meanwhile these days every time I happen to use Youtube without an adblocker I get the same car insurance ads that I’ve gotten for the last 4 years.
I don’t know of any day where I unblocked ads and felt good cause they were targeted directly at me
Then google got greedy and ruined it’s own ad service. Imagine google would’ve stopped at this early point. A single, non flashing banner ad would generate as much as 5 multiple second video ads do now. But ads got used more and more inflationary, to the point where we are now.
There are some ads that I’m fine with, but they have to be clearly an ad, and related to the content on the site, not based on my previous interactions, nor using tricks to disguise ads as part of the content.
On documentation pages: sure just have a thing related to CS courses, on pirating and streaming sites advertise VPNs, on horny sites advertise horny stuff, and casinos and sports advertise gambling and sports betting. But DON’T make the ad look like a section in the documentation, like another download button, like another horny video on the site, like another casino game or segment of the sports analysis. If I want to explore the ad I will, stop trying to trick me else I will try to block and avoid you entirely! If I figure out that are you spending more effort trying to trick me the less interested I will be in the product you offer.
disguise ads
While the intentions behind this are mostly evil nowadays, there’s also the design aspect to be considered.
Imagine a nice, modern and minimal UI, and suddenly some flashy colorful element in the feed. it just hurts a designers feeling.
I forgot where I heard this::: If there are fewer, more relevant ads, Google and YouTube should be able to make more money with fewer ads.
The advertisers though want more ads even though they are less affective. As it forces the cost per ad down.
It is totally backwards…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That was almost a decade ago or even before. I remember adockers recommending white listing search engines or recommending to disable non-instrusive ads to support websites.
Then they killed the competition and there was nobody left to stop them doing to you with ads what the farmer does with geese to make foie gras.
I unblock ads on AVForums. And honestly, the ads are either really well targeted (because I’m probably going to buy that amplifier eventually), or random ebay stuff.
If they started serving up the generic “reduce belly fat in 2 seconds with this simple trick” with some AI generated picture, I’d re-evaluate very quicly.
I’m getting Playback failed from time to time on reVanced. Maybe after 5mins of every 3rd video. I just go to my watch history, open the video again and it continues. Mildly annoying, but good trade-off for not having ads.
I have not encountered any issues in revanced. Maybe check and make sure it’s updated?
Updated yesterday. Maybe it is something connected with me running Adguard Home as my private DNS.
Remember when videos had to be at least 10 minutes long, so more ads could be added to the play time? Now they don’t give a fuck.
Now you get a 10 minute ad for a 2 minute video
Sounds like users are trying to end up in the find out phase.
YouTube… “We provide these APIs and make our apps and privacy policies more accessible than most, but we still can’t give everything away for free.”
Users… “Haha scum of the earth we think we’re beating you and that you have no way to stop us from circumventing your ads without paying.”
My brother in Christ you really think we’re using APIs?
Please consult the image:
My dude, white knighting a company that had almost $60 billion in profit in 2022 and $73 billion profit in 2023 isn’t a good look.
My dude… There are 100s of legitimate things about Google to complain about, but you pick the weakest argument and then say I’m white knighting them. YouTube doesn’t owe you cause they made profit… you’ve been able to still bypass their ads for this long, and so now users are complaining that they were able to circumvent something easier in the past?
There are 100s of legitimate things about Google to complain about
But you’re not. You’ve made several comments on this post criticizing the people who 1. want control over their own devices and 2. are sick of ads being forced into every aspect of their lives.
you pick the weakest argument
And I happen to think that a company throwing such an entitled fit over money, when they are making an immoral amount of profit that is increasing YoY, is super relevant when discussing the profitability of one of their services.
YouTube doesn’t owe you cause they made profit
Pretty sure I didn’t say they did.
you’ve been able to still bypass their ads for this long, and so now users are complaining that they were able to circumvent something easier in the past?
People always complain when their convenience is removed from them. Welcome to the human condition.
But you’re not. You’ve made several comments on this post criticizing the people who 1. want control over their own devices and 2. are sick of ads being forced into every aspect of their lives.
They have control over their devices. You’re not making sense and can’t even articulate how they don’t have control. If they want even more control, they can install GrapheneOS or a plethora of third party ROMs that removes all Google services. Apple users can’t even do that. No one is making them use YouTube either. Google allows third party apps that blocks ads. It isn’t like a… “Ha, Google you’re idiots we are smarter than you cause you are too stupid to block ads.” Seriously, what kind of dumb person takes this attitude?
And I happen to think that a company throwing such an entitled fit over money, when they are making an immoral amount of profit that is increasing YoY, is super relevant when discussing the profitability of one of their services.
Dumb users are the ones throwing an entitled fit. Why is making profit immoral? If you want to say, “I’m anti-capitalist and don’t think the world should be about money…” then just say that. It is a much stronger argument and one that should be discussed more, but singling out Google is dumb. In terms of ethics, they are still way better than most companies, including Apple & Microsoft… In what realitydoes it make sense to attack the more ethical companies before going after the least ethical?
YouTube doesn’t owe you cause they made profit
Read your previous comment.
People always complain when their convenience is removed from them. Welcome to the human condition.
Not always. If I go to a coffee shop and they give me a free one out of convenience… I don’t go back and demand they keep giving them to me for free cause they did it once.
Please rewrite this to make sense and we’ll get back to you in 3-5 working days.
Meh, paywalling some videos behind Google+ (or whatever the current iteration is) would’ve been the honest option. But they chose ads and tracking for everything (makes more money), i can understand why people circumvent them.
I can understand why people circumvent them too. I can’t understand why they’d claim… “Hey Google, you suck at blocking ads. You can’t stop us from doing it.”
Seriously, fuck people that do this. Google knows people use third party apps that block ads. They might as well say… we’re not happy not having ads. We want Google to block it entirely so we can be even more pissed off.
"but we still can’t give everything away for free.”
Then why have they positioned youtube to be a public worldwide service freely accessible all these years?
It is the usual tactic of operating at a loss for years, building an unsustainable service and supporting it with revenue from other places. Google was officially declared a monopoly, and youtube is not profitable, so it’s easy to connect the dots and say youtube grew to it’s current dominance unfairly through that monopoly money.
Now they want to enforce their TOS on you, pay up or watch a million ads or leave. Well fuck their TOS, I avoid anything google like the plague, but their unfair position on video sharing makes it hard to avoid youtube particularly. I respond unfairly in turn, by proxying youtube through invidious.
