- YouTube is testing server-side ad injection to counter ad blockers, integrating ads directly into videos to make them indistinguishable from the main content.
- This new method complicates ad blocking, including tools like SponsorBlock, which now face challenges in accurately identifying and skipping sponsored segments.
- The feature is currently in testing and not widely rolled out, with YouTube encouraging users to subscribe to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.
I don’t give a shit if it’s reasonable anymore.
Google has done enough shit over the years, ruined enough services, some of them paid services, and continually harmed content creators with their trash algorithm, all the while hosting hate on their platform, that I don’t give a damn what’s fair to them anymore.
They won’t get a penny from me ever again. I’ll continue to find every way of accessing any content on that platform that I choose, without ads, and without paying them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or reason. It is entirely, 100%, because fuck Google.
If needed, I would spend 40 times the time and effort to watch one of their videos without a single ad than it would take to just watch their ads with the video I want to see sprinkled in.
If you’re not actively blocking connections to their servers (by any number of means) it doesn’t matter whether you consciously give them money or not.
There is so much third party tracking in apps and websites that it’s really got to be at the network level. They make bank by tracking you and selling that data for profit.
I’ve been Google-free for months now and so far the only inconvenience has been ReCAPTCHAs not loading, but that’s limited to just a handful of websites that I don’t care enough to use in the first place.