Honestly, dark theme is how they got me with that one. Haven’t used the site aside from search results since the API changes went live but I like to think I’d leave if a new redesign was worse.

Yeah, Vore. That awesome song by the British metalcore band Sleep Token.

On I 100% agree with you here. But here’s my (and I think a lot of people’s) logic:

It’s slightly different in the case of YouTube. The shop isn’t putting Karen (and everyone else) under a microscope the second she walks into the store, and using that data to tailor what she sees in their other branches so she’s more likely to buy. They’re not creating what’s effectively a gigantic influence market out of the data, and I don’t think you are doing that to your clients either (although to be honest, I’d be pretty impressed if you were).

YouTube is free because “we are the product”. They’re harvesting our data whether we block ads, skip ads, watch ads, or pay for premium (as far as I know, please correct me if I’m wrong). It may not be profitable on its own but it sure as hell is bringing value to Google’s other services. All the while, it’s actively getting worse for end users (more and more ads, no more dislikes, not respecting video quality choices as well as it used to, hiding quality settings behind obtuse menus on mobile, no home page without watch history…)

Ultimately, “line no go up big like last year grug mad” is what matters to Google’s shareholders and what ultimately drives their decisions. I firmly believe that we’d still be having this conversation if YouTube somehow making a profit with ad blockers on, so fuck em.

Okay now I feel a little bad for blocking ads on twitch if their ads are reasonable. Maybe I should consider adding it as an exclusion?

It’s been years since I’ve used YouTube without Revanced, SponsorBlock, and uBlock Origin. The vanilla experience when I see it on other people’s devices horrifies me every single time.

Already switched to Firefox for work on linux and I’ll switch on my “entertainment” windows install as well soon… just need to find time to do the sync stuff

I was wondering why my fedora install took ages to shutdown sometimes and the little googling I did got me nothing. Do i hate systemd now?