I made a hypothesis a while ago that, if #YouTube were to continue with its aggressive and user-hostile actions in order to defend its ads-funded business model, we would have witnessed at some point levels of enshittification as high as hour-long unskippable ads.
And I also wondered if users (both viewers and creators) would have still kept using the platform once it sacrificed user experience so much on the altar of immediate revenue.
Now the moment of hour-long unskippable ads has apparently come.
Let's see if users act accordingly.
Again, if you are a content creator that still publishes to YouTube, you are part of the problem, period. It's because of people like you that a good portion of the earth's population is hostage of a rapacious platform that feels entitled to push more ads to users than a local TV channel in the 1990s (on top of the sponsored content already made by many creators because the money they make from YouTube isn't even enough). A platform that btw doesn't care of breaking the whole web and the way browsers work in order to defend its business model (see that abomination called Manifest V3).
I don't want to hear any more excuses from you creators on why you aren't publishing on PeerTube, on Nebula, cross-posting on Vimeo or alternative video platforms, or experimenting with different business models.
And if you are a user, keep pirating and don't be ashamed. After years of ripping off YouTube videos to stream them on my Raspberry Pis I've got plenty of experience on how to evade YouTube's checks. Just ask me if you're curious. If you like a channel, donate to the creator directly. Bypass Google as much as you can and ensure that they don't earn a single cent. We need YouTube to become so bad and desperate for money that they enshittify their own platform beyond a point of no return. Only then needles can be moved and viable alternatives can become competitive.
https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-long-unskippable-ads-problem-3519957/
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