YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking

withersailor@aussie.zone to Technology@beehaw.org – 28 points –
YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking
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The natural next place for people to go to once they can't block ads on YouTube's website is to go to services that exploit the API to serve free content (NewPipe, Invidious, youtube-dl, etc.). If that happens at a large scale, YouTube might shut off its API just like Reddit did and we'll end up in scenario where creators are forced to move to Peertube, and, given how costly hosting is for video streaming, it could be much worse than Reddit->Lemmy+KBin or Twitter->Mastodon. Then again, YouTube has survived enshittiffication for a long time, so we'll have to wait and see.

The vast majority of people that watch youtube, are most likely not using an ad block and won't be affected by this at all. Just like the vast majority of reddit users use the official app, and the vast majority of people on twitter stayed.

It will take a lot more than this to make something else the next big thing. Just like lemmy is nowhere near as popular as reddit, mastadon is nowhere near as popular as twitter. Yes those of us technical enough or that care enough will use an ad block or similar, but we are in the minority, and always will be.

The apps you mentioned are scraping or pretending to be the official app.

The official API doesn't have public methods to build an alternative third party player .

The only way YouTube can stop those apps (beside blackmailing devs with legal letters) is to shut down both their own website and their own app

They can ban google accounts of people who use those apps though. I can see them doing it.