YouTube is trying to block Invidious
github.com
github.com
apparrantly the money lost seems to be big enough for them to care (or they run out of actual features to code so tossing this problem to engineering to fix).
google's investment to stop ublock/invidious/etc > money lost = no blocking google's investment to stop ublock/invidious/etc < money lost = blocking
The community assumed the first one, google calculated the second option so are proceeding with it.
(Or perhaps explicitly request YouTube Premium account?)
I think the surprise is that % would be enough to care. But apparently it is.
It's never been about ad blockers and the alternative frontends, they are covering up their own failures.
Secondly, imo technical measures is fair game - much better than their previously scummy tactic of sending legal threats to the stellar team at invidious.
Thirdly, adversarial interoperability is a human digital right.
Fourthly, godspeed to the invidious team, their hard work and story is important for the wider internet.
The ad will be a clip of a celebrity with what’s clearly a separate ai-generated voiceover telling you “you can get thousands of dollars now if you do this one thing.”
I’ve seen the same style of ad nearly every day for the last month. The celebrity changes every time I see it and has had so many people. Oprah, The Rock, Steve Harvey, Joe Biden, etc.
I’ve reported the ads every time. They are always different companies from different countries. If YouTube is doing anything about it- it isn’t working.
And then YouTube is trying to stop me from blocking these ads? They can try. But I refuse to pay for premium.
One of the reasons I block advertising is that I think it works. I'm only human. I can be deceived and I can be manipulated. I don't see any reason to give people the opportunity to hurt me.
That user is using YouTube resources, without being of benefit to YouTube.
MS and Adobe had similar logic for not going after piracy very hard in certain markets. They wanted users on their platform, even when they couldn’t get them all to pay.
YouTube is by far the dominant video hosting platform in the world; I'm guessing they probably don't feel they require the network effects from alternative systems that bypass their UI and API. They provide a site and app that are used free-of-charge by billions, and get all the network effect they need from those.
If going after piracy of locally installed software were comparably simple, easy and cheap, similarly to blocking an IP address, everyone would do it. Mainly it's not done against individual users because it's prohibitively expensive. Once the users have defeated the anti-copying measures in the software executables, they have gotten away with it. You'd have to send cops to their house to seize the warez.
The hypothesis that Youtube Premium subscribers might be using any given Invidious instance, so it's a bad idea to block it, is rather weak.
Even easier, one click oauth to automagically give the key to the client.
It's trivial.
API key so premium users can use invidious makes total sense - it makes creator revenue attribution more accurate also.
As a paying user to any service I should have the right to interop with whatever client or third party service I want.
YouTube is way, way less interesting than it even was just 5 years ago. Discoverability is in the toilet, and being discoverable usually means a high level of investment on the part of creators. Everyone is playing it very safe as a result, and your average YouTube video today is remeniscent of where cable television was just before streaming began drinking it's milkshake.
Being aggressive against Invidious, youtube-dl, and ad blockers won't help them in the long term. Maybe they are covering their tracks for something, but even so, they will lose relevance. For many, their content isn't worth paying for, and even when it is, some hesitate to give money to a company that is likely to pull the rug from underneath them.
The best thing YouTube can do right now is get rid of their current C-level and replace them with people who are either actually YouTube enthusiasts or creators themselves. Corporate bozos always bring down companies that have revenue models based on creativity. That isn't to say YouTube will go extinct, but it's second life may be a rebranding and only allowing content from established businesses, and being of little relevance.
When it comes to Invidious, YouTube wouldn't have to do much to keep people in their own frontend. Their search function is complete bullshit today, and that would be an extremely easy fix. They can stop bubbling CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and co. to the top if you type in certain keywords. (obviously they will never do this though) They can improve the filtering of searches. They could fix the bugs with the queue and stop introducing new ones all the time.