From the article: “In some ways, the current situation has spurred an arms race. YouTube has inadvertently improved ad blockers, as the new knowledge and techniques gained from innovating within the YouTube platform are also applicable to other ad and tracking systems.”
I think this will only end up with YouTube winning. Google has been caution for years, but they can bring the big guns if they see there are no more options. Google is clearly desperate to bring those numbers up and they don’t care if user experience suffers.
First, they can decide to deploy a restrictive CSP that prevents external scripts from running in the page. This would break lots of extension that work on YouTube.
And then they can just enforce DRM like Netflix. This will be horrible for users, cost them more to serve, and potentially break Youtube for older clients. But then ads will be impossible to skip, and downloading videos will because almost impossible.
But if they decide the numbers are worth it, they will do it. But honestly at this point I really don’t care. Will I miss YouTube? Sure. But I rather watch less content on nebula than support this horrible user experience.
Enforcing DRM has a big downside: it paints a massive target on the DRM implementation, and it will likely end up getting broken.
At this point the majority of channels that I like are on Nebula. You’re right, it won’t be a huge loss.
Nebula is a walled garden though. They don’t even have a formal process for applying to be on it. I hear it’s invite only basically
Yeah that is unfortunate. They will probably never fully replace Youtube until they change drastically. They also serve a niche of interests only. It happens to align with my interests really well but it’s definitely not for everyone.