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

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.

>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.

YouTube had a $10B Q3. I cannot imagine them spending $10B on servers and staff in three months.

Making a profit doesn't mean that their costs aren't so high that adblocking isn't compatible.

Walmart has profits of $157B in 2024, but their business model isn't compatible with people just walking in and grabbing stuff without paying - and doesn't make it ethical to do so even if "they'll be just fine even if I do that"

I don't see how ad-blocking is unethical.

There are companies that make money by placing ("out of home") ads in the public space. Not looking at those would then also be unethical? Priests sermoning on "thou shalt not hide thy eyes from the fancy displays in the bus stop"? An ad-police, the Conscious Ethical Viewing Effort Force Edict? That's some low-key dystopian thought.

It would be like attending a time-share dinner and putting in earplugs during their speech. I definitely think it's permissible to do it, but it's also permissible for them to kick you out for doing it.

It's more like tearing out the ad pages of a magazine before reading it. Even if the magazine has fine print saying "the reader may not tear out the ad pages..." It's still a ridiculous rule and it isn't wrong for people to ignore it.

The right analogy would be a newspaper delivering you the paper in ~milliseconds when you ask for it, whereever in the world, for free, and then you proceed to rip off the ads and read it.

The reason newspaper do the delivery was the promise that you'll see the ads, and they get to make money from that ads.

If they notice that you do all of the work of providing you the newspaper almost instantly and you dont see the ads, they are either gonna have to a) politely refuse to serve you b) point you to an alternate way of accessing the newspaper ("Newspaper Premium" for $$)

Firstly, ad watch time is not currency.

Second once the paper's in my hands, I get to do what I want with it, and the expectations of the paper company has no bearing on it.

If they don't want to give me the paper for free, they should stop, but they haven't yet. Their expectation to make a certain amount of revenue from ads doesn't obligate the consumer. If their business model isn't making them the profit they need, it's on them to change their strategy.

> Second once the paper's in my hands, I get to do what I want with it, and the expectations of the paper company has no bearing on it.

Absolutely! I run an adblocker as well!

At the same time, you'd agree they have the right to refuse to serve you (access denied) or make you jump through hoops (solve a challenge etc)