we’ve known for a while that Google’s been targeting content blockers on YouTube, but now they’re getting into blocking the real power‐user shit. i use NewPipe, FreeTube, and yt-dlp‐in‐mpv for their accessibility features, but these are the things being targeted now. here’s one issue page with a bunch of discussion.
it looks like feeding session cookies from Google accounts into downloaders is getting them at least rate‐limited or blocked, possibly even banned or terminated. what’s the next thing that Google’s going to decide i can’t do without my account getting deleted? use a VPN? use uBlock Origin? use a custom OS on my Pixel phone? use Firefox instead of Chrome?
i’ve already had to deal with Discord nuking my account for unknown reasons, which was a nightmare and stole swaths of my own conversation history from me, as well as control of servers i created. (these days i keep most of my direct conversations on Signal — but still not all!) a Google account termination destroying access to what has always been my primary email address would be devastating, weeks of work to recover whatever is recoverable at all.
after years of big comptech corporations making the masses dependent on their free services, these horrifying punishments for such minor “misbehaviours” (as determined by them) are downright irresponsible. but as much as i revile this situation, i’m being made powerless to change it. the anxiety from feeling like i’m walking on thin ice at all times just because i’m trying to make my experience using walled‐garden services more palatable, is horrible.
but like, YouTube remains the only free and reliable video hosting service, right? i mean it’s such an expensive problem to tackle. but even my own uploads aside, i have >100 channels i follow there, and tons have no presence anywhere else. ditching Twitter was easier to stomach since i’d already been treating it as write‐only for years, but there were still plenty of connections i had there that haven’t moved anywhere else. with Discord too, a ton of contacts were abruptly taken from me.
well, the only 2 things i use my Google account for anymore are Gmail and YouTube. i guess i’ll have to get more hard drives to archive of all my uploads, and start working on getting a new email address somewhere else and changing the email on all the accounts i’ve made basically ever since i started using the computer. what other email services are people using these days? Proton Mail seems to get blocked a lot…