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.
How does one quit YouTube?
There is just so much stuff on there and no alternative.
Use an alternative front end.
https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
That's still YouTube though and they could and probably will shut down those.
This looks cool, are there any that you'd recommend from the list?
Many channels I watch are on Nebula as well - that one is paid but it's yearly 15$ or so. You can get it bundled with curiosity stream. Some channels upload to rumble, but I am not familiar with that platform. Then there is odysee... it's kinda all over the place. There are channels that upload on odysee, but I don't like the crypto bullshit that is associated with that platform. The other thing not only with odysee but all new smaller platforms - they are a good place for all the scummy outcast that gets filtered on YT. I try not to read comments otherwise I would have to puke.
Also a happy customer of Nebula here. I've come across some pretty interesting content on there.
YEs and some YT creators even add bonus videos.
i disabled my history, so now youtube doesn't suggest me anything, I have a blank page. I still have my subs but blank page by default, but the good thing is I do have have to engage and if I don't know what to look for, I close the page.
ublock still work, btw.
Ublock is good so far for me too. If they ban it then I guess I will have more free time to spare :D
For some, apparently. For me it stopped working about a week ago.
I started using RSS reader for my YouTube feed and it's much better than YouTube itself.
Do something else with your life.
You won't be able to watch the content you want on other sites until people start uploading there.