Google Ramps Up Crackdown on YouTube Ad-Blocking, Targets Third-Party Apps
Google Ramps Up Crackdown on YouTube Ad-Blocking, Targets Third-Party Apps
Google just announced that it is intensifying its fight against adblockers on YouTube and specifically against third-party YouTube apps.
Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may "experience buffering issues" or see errors such as "the following content is not available on this app" when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
You know, they'd probably get a tenfold increase of Premium subscribers if they just, I don't know, dropped the prices a smidge and had better regional pricing. Not everyone can or will subscribe, but Google is only making this more difficult for themselves by making it such an expensive service.
I was a happy subscriber when I was paying $15/mo for a family plan for 6 people. I was grandfathered into a low rate for being an early adopter of Google Play Music All Access.
Then they decided that grandfathered plans no longer applied and wanted me to start paying $23/mo, a more than 50% increase, so I canceled. I switched to Spotify for the music, where I pay less, and just watch less YouTube since the ads are ridiculous.
If they kept it at $15/mo, I'd still be a subscriber. If they sold just ad-free YouTube for like $3/mo, I'd consider subscribing to that and keeping my Spotify subscription.
I was about to pay for it when they doubled the cost. No joke I told my wife I was going to start paying since we watch it all the time. The next week they doubled the cost. It irritated me. Not because I couldn't afford it but because they added no value with the increase. Nothing changed.
I believe there's a sort of death-loop phenom taking place here. The enshitification, you know.
How much you think the salaries of the pencil pushers are, the ones who get paid for little else but squeezing every single possible cent out of the supply/demand curve? The corporate greedsters, err the “revenue maximizers”.
Startup founders are told:
Raise your prices. You’ll triple them and only lose 10% of your customers, and it will be your worst 10% of customers.
Lol good luck Google. No way im watching YouTube with ads.
Then don't.
Yeah let me fork over my rapidly disappearing regular people money for a service which used to be free, whose price will only keep going up, and whose features will only keep disappearing to be locked behind a higher tier of paid subscription, thus giving me less and less, for more and more payment. You meet me over there. Let me just grab my little red wig and honk my nose a few times first and I'll be right over.
There's multiple issues with this but a lot of them come down to: it's Google.
They will charge. They have heaps of money, they will enzhittify. They will kill and recommend a new less capable app.
They're Google and I'm moving away from them hard.
I do use YT a lot, and for now I pay. But give me a little time and that won't be as true.
By now just paying for adblocking alone wouldn't cut it, I have also grown accustomed to YouTube sponsorblock in my client.
Indeed, paying for YouTube would still result in loads of advertisements. So it's pretty crazy that Google (and various people) are saying you need to pay because you'd just pay and still see loads of ads.
It's not just the ads either. Automatically skipping interaction reminders, zelf promotion and non-music parts is such an improved experience that it's just too painful to go back.
I said the same thing for Reddit before the third-party apps crackdown; instead of cracking down on users who just want a better experience, they could allow third-party apps to be officially used if you have a paid/Premium subscription?
That way Google gets paid, and the users who enjoy their third-party apps can keep using them without worrying about them suddenly breaking.
That doesn't solve the privacy issue which is a good reason why people use these, but at least it partly solves the monetary issue.
It would only work if it was still a massive privacy invasion. They either feed you ads or sell your data, they're not going to offer a service that can't at least do one of those.
It's ok google, we have just as many engineers across the world that hate you and your ads and want to watch videos without your predatory pricing.
Indeed. However, they have that web DRM thing in their back pocket. The more we resist (as we should) their efforts to shut ad circumvention down, the more they'll look at web DRM I'm sure. And they'll have all large media outlets with them when they load that ball into the cannon.
Even if my client couldn't block ads, I'd still keep it for the downvote button count and sponsor block.
Fuck Google and their price gouging.
No. No fucking ads, or lack of swipe controls.
I uninstalled the YouTube app on my phone a long time ago. I only visit the site in an ad blocking browser.
Had no idea you could do that. I just went and did it, thanks for the tip. I use Newpipe anyway
Does anyone know how to add my subscriptions and channels from regular YouTube to newpipe? There isn't a login feature.
You have to export your youtube data at "google takeout manager" and import it in new pipe. Also you can read about it at newpipe FAQs
Thanks to my internet friend. Got it working!