Software that does things the user doesn't want, like try to trick money out of him, waste his bandwidth, or fill his screen with unwanted ads used to have a name: Malware. We've redefined that term to mean when a non-BigTech firm does those things, but the definition used to be functional, not attributional.
RMS warned us of this day, and now it is here. You don't control your data or the code that operates upon it. That would've sucked in 1990, but since then, we've migrated our entire lives into that code/data. The degree to which it embodies your very existence is the degree to which you have lost control over your life, which for most of us is total. You lost that control but it didn't disappear; it is now owned by someone else, commoditized and exchanged, redirected and engineered. Enjoy the ride if you can, because you're just in the passenger seat.
Your data is worth far more to them than a $13/month subscription fee. In fact, if you do pay it, the data becomes even more valuable, because you're now guaranteed to always be logged in. You're also likely to use it more to get more "value" out of your purchase, generating even more value (for them). Finally, you've also identified yourself as the kind of person that pays for things that should be actually free.
Worse than all of this, when you use Google (or any of these malware/spyware companies), thanks to network effects, you don't just pay for it with your freedom, you pay for it with some of everyone else's too.
It’s not as though free users listening with the app in the background is somehow an additional marginal expense as opposed to them listening with the app in the foreground.
NewPipe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47020218
PipePipe: https://pipepipe.dev/
As recommended by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47021252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47020412
I haven’t used any of these alternatives myself.
[0]: https://grayjay.app/
Instead its disabled to try to extract more revenue out of users, so my personal use case becomes a potential road hazard for people who didn't give in and instead are fiddling with their phone to ensure that it keeps playing.
Can't imagine this is even a moment of discussion in 2026 when making the decision to block something like this.
my current flow for this if i ever have the misfortune of only having youtube as a source, is to turn on the video, and face the screen away from me in the cup holder. So personally I've found what i consider to be a safe alternative.
Can't imagine younger drivers are going to go through the same amount of caution to avoid grabbing their phone or looking at a video playing while they are driving.
A bit more effort, but downloading the podcast and listening to it via a basic audio player app that does not further enshitify itself daily is even safer.
For now its a rare enough occurrence where i just keep neglecting it.
It should frankly be illegal for Google to interfere with this like they try to do, but luckily this extension solves the problem.
Sometimes I get double audio; usually a refresh of the page fixes it.
For android and desktop, it's automatic when you lock your screen.
For the latest ios they have a Pip and audio mode button.
Ah yes, the Five Second Gaslight. “Experiencing interruptions? Find out more!” when it’s the site intentionally shoving a 5 second delay in and getting people to blame their ISPs for connectivity issues when YouTube was the one dicking around.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/
They are now in the phase of making everything worse in a vain attempt to increase ad (or subscription) revenue streams.
At least they had a few tricks up their sleeve to keep it looking like growth is happening. Wonder how long it can last, though.
