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.
I didn't wanna maintain an ad blocker, especially since I use youtube on a bunch of diff devices. Desktop/laptop/Ps4/Tv/Ipad/Phone like, everywhere. Premium just meant no ads on any of them with no fuss or maintenance.
Also the bonus of downloads/music/background play etc was very nice.
Honestly for someone like me who uses youtube as much as I do, it was 100% worth the money. I just ethically can't bring myself to pay for it now that they straight up lied and took my money without even trying to be subtle about it.
You don't have to maintain an adblocker.