[danielspace23]

I honestly can't wrap my head around what some users do just to have the "stock" experience.

In order to get a vaguely usable stock YouTube, you need to install at least UBlock, SponsorBlock, No Translation, and arguably DeArrow as well. And this only works for browsers, many people will cope with their mobile YouTube experience being hell on earth. Why do all this when you can get an alternative cross-platform client like GrayJay with all the same features (minus DeArrow for now), which works out of the box, has more privacy, and won't be completely useless the next time Google decides to shift things around a bit?

Same goes for Windows: you'll see people who go to great lengths to disable telemetry, remove Edge and sponsored content, often having to run random scripts from the internet with administrator privileges, just to have everything reset on the next Windows update. Remember how Windows users made fun of Linux users for having to open a command line for installing a browser (which isn't even true)?

I could go on: you can get Firefox and spend hours tweaking about:config to disable the anti-features, or you can get one of the dozen forks with the same patches pre-applied, yet some people will still defend the stock experience with their lives.

[carlosjobim]

> In order to get a vaguely usable stock YouTube, you need to install at least UBlock, SponsorBlock, No Translation, and arguably DeArrow as well.

UBlock: Solved by using YouTube Premium

SponsorBlock: Solved by not watching low-quality channels with sponsors. Also YouTube has started rolling out their own version of SponsorBlock to skip these segments.

No Translation: Yeah, this is a pain in stock YouTube

DeArrow: Why would I want clickbait thumbnails and titles fixed? Those are perfect indicators of a low quality video to not click.

> Same goes for Windows

Sure does. People who want a nice experience get a Mac, which is somewhat equivalent to paying for YouTube Premium.

> GrayJay

Can't install it on a Roku or on Apple TV. YouTube Premium is still the best option for TV watching.

[danielspace23]

What's your argument here? That if you don't pay you shouldn't get a decent user experience, and paying solves every issue so we might as well give into the enshittification?

The SponsorBlock and DeArrow argument only works some times: clickbait and sponsors can be an indicator of poor quality (see Linus Tech Tips), but they aren't always: even Tom Scott video thumbnails and titles used to get DeArrowed, and I bet no one here would argue that Tom Scott used to push low quality content.

[2Gkashmiri]

this is funny.

in "i am legend", the last man standing became the "unwanted alien" because everyone else had transformed into something else.

so the abnormal is the new normal. enshittification at its peak