What is even more infuriating, I'm from one of the countries that had YouTube Premium Lite available. €6,99 for adfree YouTube with none of the 'offline' or YouTube Music nonsense that I wouldn't be using anyway.

My wife and myself have been subscribed for about 6 months now, totally seeing the value of it. Literally one month after signing my mum also onto it, she gets an email telling her that her subscription will end in a month from now.

Fuck that shit.

YouTube Premium Lite was perfect, affordable and removed exactly the main issue with YouTube: ads. Endless stupid amounts of ads.

I'll go back to Firefox with any amount of extensions that block ads and block the ad-block blockers. Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.

It can be done optionally, right? I fully agree that creating an account, which (ironically) cannot be federated using one of the big IDPs, creates unnecessary friction.

Normies are used to be able to login via one of these.

Is it an idea to get her a new DVD player which also reads USB sticks?

Brave is awesome on iOS where it will block YT ads! However, for regular desktop usage I've been using Firefox for the better part of 2 decades. Never really weaned off it actually.

Especially with the sync option, they are the perfect alternative to Chrome or any of the other commercial initiatives.

The silver lining here might also be that the internet that we knew and loved 25 years ago might actually reappear. The 'other' stuff would just become background noise to the ones 'in the know'.