I've been getting very close to ditching YouTube. This change showed up a few weeks ago for me and pushed me a bit further.
If they succeed in inserting ads into the video stream I'll bail alltogether. I can fit a subscription to Brilliant, Dropout, and several creator Patreons into the cost of a YouTube Red subscription, and I won't have to deal with these attention-optimizing UI changes.
i haven't used their search in ages. ddg is good enough and doesn't flood you with ads instead of actual results. still not as good as Google used to be once upon a time, but I'll take 80-90% quality over the garbage that is Google search.
Yes, let's abuse a country's poor economy so the service providers eventually raise the price in the region as a direct countermeasure and fuck over the real citizens that needed that cheaper regional pricing.
I'm sorry for my previous tone, it's just that this subject makes me irrationally angry and I acted without forethought. In retrospect I shouldn't have written what I did, I apologize, have a nice day.