My guy Palestine is occupied since 1948 by Israel who, usually, “only” did sporadic bombings here and there. Now there’s an active war with some 35k dead and Israeli forces preparing to invade Rafah which has an encampment of unthinkable amounts of refugees. There’s a genocide going on right now. This kind of behaviour is encouraged, not ignored. Their ranks look bad enough committing genocide, it isn’t a few “bad apples”.

Very possible

You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.

You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.

The fact is, we are the minority.

This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.

Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.

Could be but it’s such a bad short term solution that I can’t help but think there’s a little more. Look at the other replies, they have some interesting perspectives on the matter.

This is likely to be going on indeed. It’s just that the drm failed (for now), so maybe they are trying to get the next best thing? For the short term it surely isn’t but a long term goal in case the drm fails to be implemented again could be a reason for these experimental actions. It isn’t bad to have a plan b I guess.

Great response, thanks.

To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?

Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.

I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.

Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.

Thanks I can’t believe I forgot

Thank you omg

Irrelevant but where’s the scene depicted from? It feels so familiar I’m losing my mind.