There are people actually paying for this crap?

I noticed that too. Thought it was just regular YouTube jank as usual.

Run a personal VPN server at the home address and have external users route through it. I'd think it'd work for any subscription service doing this crap. I'm surprised nobody has started selling a turnkey self-hosted VPN device that even a non-techie can get running in a few steps - all the end users would need is an app that does split tunneling for the media players.

So nice of them. They help me cut the strings to the last google service I was not quite committed to drop

I have to hand it to them, they are really good at finding new, innovative ways to make the platform worse.

I have a hot take. I pretty much exclusively watch YouTube as my form of TV entertainment. On most days, I watch many hours between putting something on to go to sleep or actually watching stuff in the day such as training courses or whatever. Sure, I could easily set up my TVs and devices to work around it, but I think it's actually worth it to just pay for Premium and not have the hassle. I feel I get more than my fair share out of it.

If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.

Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.

I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.

It's always nice when the garbage takes itself out. And if you're inconvenienced, I feel for you, but the writing has been on the wall for years. They will keep trying to suck more money out of you every way they can until you cancel your subscription, and because that's going to happen in the end, why not cancel it today.

NewPipe told me I was IP banned last week but it went away.

I'd rather stop using than give them money.

How are they able to tell if you are in a different household ?
If the user use different VPNs then it shouldn't be able to tell the different between that and being in different locations.
So are they gathering internal network data, are they spying on the LAN and wifi ?

Meanwhile I installed the User Agent Switcher extension for firefox to change my user agent every 30 seconds to something random to avoid tracking. A few websites don’t accept it. I just quit those websites and find a non-billionaire-owned alternative like Kagi or Fastmail. So far it’s working out well.

Anyone who actually pays for this shit has it coming.

I'm thinking of doing the same but the issue is setting up the policy based routing so that only YouTube goes through that VPN.

Ill immediately cancel and goto pure piracy if they do this to me. I'm getting so tired of this shit 🥲

I'm similar - and my kids even more so. As they only watch YouTube on the main TV it's a pain to get alternate frontends on it I also like the fact there are no ads. I think the creators get a bigger cut per premium view Vs ad views, especially if they get blocked.

I honestly wouldn't mind paying for it if it didn't feel like such a fucking rip-off.

For example, for £19 a month I could sub to Netflix top tier. For that, I and three others could watch their stuff in UHD, all at the same time. And sure, Netflix content might be somewhat average these days, but it's still reasonably high quality and costs a decent packet to produce.

By contrast, YT Premium for family is £20 a month, with which I can access a bunch of videos that, while enjoyable, do not cost Google anything to make. Yes, hosting costs money, and yes, they (theoretically) pay the video creators. But it doesn't feel like £20 a month, y'know?

Part of the trouble is that they lump YT Music in to the same subscription. But I don't want or need that. I have Apple Music with its lossless catalogue, and library that I've built up over many years. If YT offered a straight up ad-free plan that I could share with my family that cost a tenner a month, I'd probably go for it. It would mean being able to watch videos on Apple TV without having to fuck about downloading them to my Plex folder first, because they've injected SO MANY ADVERTS in now that the YT app is completely unusable.

If you pay, the platform remains great. I get a discounted YouTube premium membership through my mobile phone company. I think YouTube is great, I never see ads, lots of features.

Just to offer an alternative view.

Same here. I’ve cancelled Netflix, never got Disney plus, never use prime (though I think I have access to something through prime shipping).

YouTube however; I watch this every single day, use it for learning, relaxation, documentaries etc.

It’s a fantastic platform and well worth the subscription AFAICS.

The whole internet has gone to shit

It’s too expensive agreed. However YouTube has a lot of discounted memberships through other services. I wouldn’t pay full price for it, but through my mobile phone company I get more than 50% off and that’s a bloody great deal.