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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

(github.com)
798 points bertman | 4 comments | 12 Nov 25 10:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.022s | source
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bilekas ◴[12 Nov 25 13:08 UTC] No.45899689[source]▶
More and more recently with youtube, they seem to be more and more confrontational with their users, from outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service, to automatically scraping creators content for AI training and now anything API related. They're very much aware that there is no real competition and so they're taking full advantage of it. At the expense of the 'users experience' but these days, large companies simply don't suffer from a bad customer experience anymore.
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Arainach ◴[12 Nov 25 13:14 UTC] No.45899733[source]▶
>outright blocking adblockers, which has no bearing on youtube's service

The scale of data storage, transcoding compute, and bandwidth to run YouTube is staggering. I'm open to the idea that adblocking doesn't have much effect on a server just providing HTML and a few images, but YouTube's operating costs are (presumably, I haven't looked into it) staggering and absolutely incompatible with adblocking.

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1. titzer ◴[12 Nov 25 14:16 UTC] No.45900472[source]▶
> (presumably, I haven't looked into it)

YouTube broke even sometime around 2010 and has been profitable ever since. The ad revenue has always been more than enough to sustain operating costs. It's just more growthism = more ads. If you want the YouTube of 2010--you know, the product we all liked and got used to--you can't have it. Welcome to enshittification.

Personally I find YouTube unusable without an adblocker. On my devices that don't have an ad blocker, it's infuriating.

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2. Arainach ◴[12 Nov 25 14:48 UTC] No.45900913[source]▶
You can absolutely have that. You can pay for YouTube Premium and you don't get ads. It's shockingly reasonable in my opinion* - dollars spent to hours I watch, it's my personal best value streaming service.

*Bias disclaimer: I work for Alphabet. Not for YouTube. There's no employee discount, I pay full price for YTP.

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3. titzer ◴[12 Nov 25 15:38 UTC] No.45901474[source]▶
I refuse to pay on principle. The idea that a megacorp can field a loss leader for nearly a decade, enticing users to create enormous crowd-sourced content, then later, even when profitable can gradually reduce the quality of the service to the point where users have to pay to get back to an experience they used to have is textbook enshittification.
4. devsda ◴[12 Nov 25 15:53 UTC] No.45901674[source]▶
Ads, I can tolerate occasional ones but not signing in to YT or premium has a biggest benefit of all, no more creepy tracking and ads based on Google search keywords, no more shitty recommendations.

I can open a private window, clear cookies, clear app data or advertising id and have fresh slate that is not tainted by previous videos.

PS: While at Alphabet, if you ever run into the person who made the call to enable automatic AI translations on YT videos with no way to change language on mobile, please whack them on the head on behalf of us countless frustrated users.