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YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household

Technology
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  • Firefox + ublock origin still works to block all YouTube ads

    Invidious is a frontend for YouTube that blocks all their trackers and ads

    PeerTube is an alternative community ran platform to replace YouTube in the future

    I really wanted to like and use Peertube more, but it's so devoid of any content aside from political podcasts, as far as I can tell. I can't tell if the search function is bad, or I'm using it wrong, or there really is just that little content. Any recommendations for Peertube content?

  • Weird number of downvotes here -- I thought they were meant for low-effort or non contributive comments, not an "I disagree" button. This person is giving a unique perspective as a subscriber (in this thread, anyway) and should be met with curiosity, I think. It is helpful to know that there are people who enjoy paying for it, so thanks for giving your opinion here.

    I disagree because they have a dominant position for reasons other than having a good product -- they squash competition trying to make the space better while themselves actively making it worse. Subscribing means supporting that style of inhibiting innovation, not to mention the other user-hostile practices they embrace (extend, extinguish). They are an ad company and obligated to make a profit, I get that, but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices. If your product is good, it shouldn't need to be artificially propped up.

    but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices.

    Indeed, no company should be praised or rewarded for emulating the moves that made companies like Walmart and Amazon big.

    This capitalist hellscape would be slightly more tolerable if there was ample competition in every space. Companies need to be motivated to make their profit in ways that please the consumer, but also in ways that are increasingly more ethical.

    But truly, as they say, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Modern slavery and third-world exploitation...even literal child slavery are rampant in our supply chains and offshore manufacturing.

    Even Google indirectly uses child slavery. The court threw the case raised against them (and other giants) out last year because these companies simply purchase "unspecified amounts" of cobalt through "global supply chains" - never mind how it came to be on the global supply chain to begin with and how much obscene profit these companies make off these resources.

  • I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don't need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don't need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it's easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you're sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don't give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).

    And Prime? Don't think people won't start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don't need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.

    People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure...but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.

    Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. "It's 2 days from when the order is processed." I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it's processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you're telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?

  • I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don't need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don't need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it's easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you're sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don't give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).

    And Prime? Don't think people won't start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don't need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.

    People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure...but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.

    I think it's important to keep expectations realistic though..

    in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it's still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don't know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.

  • I think it's important to keep expectations realistic though..

    in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it's still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don't know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.

    Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there's been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory...it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it's not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It's just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further...

  • For those select few that have an iPhone

    You have a few options:

    • be EU citizen and sideload a cracked YouTube (similar to vanced, but you need certificates on iOS which sucks)
    • pay for a dev account and sideload regardless of above
    • buy two apps: vinegar and AdGuard. AdGuard speaks for itself, vinegar is a tool that forces YouTube to use the html 5 player inside of safari and thus forcing it to your will

    I know iPhones are hated here, but I saw the android will stop sideloading coming from a mile away. At least here in the eu apple can suck one and I can still sideload whatever I want

    You can sideload up to three apps without a paid dev account, they just expire in 7 days. Use something like AltStore (or better yet SideStore) and you have an easy way to install and re-sign two other apps. They also have the ability to essentially “offload” apps so you can have more than two other sideloaded apps, but only two can be active at a time (other than the signing app)

  • Gabe Newell is 62 years old. Gonna enjoy this gravy train while we can...

    Gaben is gonna be the first person to digitally upload their consciousness.

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    I'm on my brother's premium. I told myself if my brother stopped wanting to pay for it I'd pay for it myself because I hate ads that much.

    On the other hand, if Youtube itself takes it away from me I'm going to just stop watching Youtube.

  • Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there's been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory...it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it's not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It's just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further...

    I've been using Nebula, and I dig it. It's owned by the creators and there's no algorithm. Only sucks you can't really share since it's all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.

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    Gotta give it to them. They are extremely innovative in coming up with ways of enshitifying stuff.

  • I've been using Nebula, and I dig it. It's owned by the creators and there's no algorithm. Only sucks you can't really share since it's all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.

    I had recently heard about that service for the first time and I do think it's a good step forward. But like you said, being properly walled off is a big miss w.r.t the ideal vision of Internet culture. I think that's why I like the idea of server bill crowdfunding (same model that Lemmy instances use basically). Some people need to step up and pay for it, and once a threshold is reached, the content is publicly available for all. But it's not like the people who pay are martyrs, since of course if nobody pays then the thing is lost entirely.

    For a video hosting service, I feel like paywalling features is a good compromise, too. Once the bills are covered, everyone gets to enjoy ad-free, unsponsored videos... something along those lines would be preferable, at least to me since I feel like the openness of the internet is a great component to what makes it such a special place. Not that I mind private internet spaces either. I think both are important. So I think Nebula has a place in my personal utopian internet landscape too lol

  • It's called Premium Family, not Premium Household for fuck's sake.

    I’m willing to bet my left nut that they will rename it as such in the future.

  • Amazon is doing the exact same thing. Just got an email today that they're shutting down the family Prime sharing thing. Had that for ten years now.

    No they are keeping the family plan but shutting down the non household sharing. Now it is "one additional adult and four kids."

  • I'm on my brother's premium. I told myself if my brother stopped wanting to pay for it I'd pay for it myself because I hate ads that much.

    On the other hand, if Youtube itself takes it away from me I'm going to just stop watching Youtube.

    Revance if you're on android man. I mean I pay for premium but I still use it to patch the app at least.

  • Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. "It's 2 days from when the order is processed." I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it's processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you're telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?

    This depends heavily where you are. In urban areas the one day and overnight options have expanded quite a bit, but seemingly at the expense of rural two day options.

  • For those select few that have an iPhone

    You have a few options:

    • be EU citizen and sideload a cracked YouTube (similar to vanced, but you need certificates on iOS which sucks)
    • pay for a dev account and sideload regardless of above
    • buy two apps: vinegar and AdGuard. AdGuard speaks for itself, vinegar is a tool that forces YouTube to use the html 5 player inside of safari and thus forcing it to your will

    I know iPhones are hated here, but I saw the android will stop sideloading coming from a mile away. At least here in the eu apple can suck one and I can still sideload whatever I want

    I just use Brave on iOS. It works fine for YouTube.

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    God forbid you have a parent who's living away from home for work purposes who's using that subscription

  • God forbid you have a parent who's living away from home for work purposes who's using that subscription

    Yeah and you are also already paying for a set number of people that can use the account so why would it make a difference where they live? My brother is still my family even if we don't live in the same state. They didn't call it a household plan

  • Revance if you're on android man. I mean I pay for premium but I still use it to patch the app at least.

    I'm using Grayjay on android, I wonder how the feature set compares to Revanced? I like that Grayjay has sponsorblock built in.

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    Sure, it takes a bit of effort. But if you replace your routers with ones that have open-source firmware or actual workstations acting as gateway routers and running business-class open-source software, you can create a personal VPN between everyone involved that shows only one exit point to world+dog.

    The trick is with ensuring that all YouTube stuff gets properly and comprehensively funnelled through this exit node - VPNs can easily leak data if not configured properly, and sometimes do so despite good configs - and implementing this even on other devices that require individual VPN connectivity (roaming, like phones).

    Plus, having a mobile device’s VPN auto-recognize when it’s connected to a known good network, and have it automatically disable itself in favour of the VPN on that network, is not something that’s easy to do.

    Finally, doing so without a high-quality, high-speed ISP plan can easily lead to an unusably slow VPN. The “mothership” exit node, in particular, would have to be gigabit or better - and symmetrical as well, so fibre and not cable - because it has both the node and connections to other homes and devices. If everyone started suckling the YouTube teat at the same time, things would likely slow down pretty fast on anything significantly less than a symmetrical gigabit connection.