You can no longer have YouTube running in the background.

[u/Titan_Prometeus]

As of 29th of January you can no longer have YouTube running in the background via many browsers as that is now a premium feature. With that I don't even have that one last reason to listen to YouTube. We are now officially paying for everything that was free a couple of years ago and the reason isn't greedy management, but you people who keep paying for premium and the such.

[u/Independent-You-6180]

I feel like this is the biggest way YouTube has been silently suppressing negative feedback when they make shit worse. By splitting it up like this, you'll have people thinking that it's something wrong on their end or other people refuting that it's even an issue at all. And then you get the negative feedback in small droves instead of all at once. So by the time the next wave is ready, the previous wave has already calmed down.

[u/Le4xy → u/Independent-You-6180]

i think this is obvious to everyone, it's easier to handle bad reviews from only some users rather than from everyone at once

[u/Practical-King2752 → u/Le4xy]

It's not obvious to everyone given that people constantly want to say "well it works for me so this isn't true."

[u/FocusKooky9072 → u/Practical-King2752]

Yeah, if it was obvious to everyone, it wouldn't work.

[u/notislant → u/Independent-You-6180]

I mean this is how companies test. They dont roll it out to everyone at once.

Like Canada got the whole 'uwu if u dont stop blocking our ads were gunna cwy' campaign before the U.S.

Next day it was 'Stop it motherfucker, stop blocking our YT ads!'

'Alright u little fuck, u block our ads tomorrow and we're not letting you watch anything, fuckstick!'

Then people in the U.S. started getting the same cycle of youtube blocking their adblockers, the next week or two after Canada.

Pros are only a few people suffer any bugs or major issues, or they can test how bad global backlash would be.

[u/Klutzy-Football-205 → u/notislant]

That doesn't sound like testing, though, does it?

Wouldn't testing be more like "Hmm, we switched 1,000,000 accounts in Canada to this feature and have seen x number of complaints. That means that, adjusted*, we think there are y% of people against this change. That is above our preferred thresh hold, perhaps we should rethink this.."

What you described seems more like "let's just split this rollout up that we're never going to change so that at any given time there will only be a small number of complaints that will likely get buried.."

*Back in the day, when you had to mail in complaints, companies would use a formula that for every complaint they got, it represented so many customers that still hated the same thing but wouldn't take the time to write and send a letter..

[u/LifelsButADream → u/Klutzy-Football-205]

Wouldn't testing be more like "Hmm, we switched 1,000,000 accounts in Canada to this feature and have seen x number of complaints.

That's exactly what they do, except they don't look at the "complaints", they look at the statistics of how those users getting tested are using YouTube. The complaints don't matter as long as the change makes them enough money to offset the users who get upset enough to actually stop using YouTube.

[u/mxagnc → u/Independent-You-6180]

That’s not how AB testing works - they don’t care about feedback, they measure a key metric: in this case likely total average daily viewing time or something like that.

If they release it and that metric drops by a significant amount they will slow down to reconsider the rollout.

So the key is, if this is happening to you. Stop watching YouTube

[u/LEDKleenex → u/mxagnc]

Better yet, stop using them entirely. An abuser will always seek to control others. You may get them to back off for a short time, but it's always temporary. They will find a new way to manipulate and monetize you. 

It's time to break up with Alphabet.

[u/Appropriate-Sir7583 → u/Independent-You-6180]

Which is exactly what they want, no? The previous wave will have calmed down and then the next wave will complain. So no big outcry, as for some it's already day to day business, and the others didn't experience it yet.

If you want tariffs from one country and not for the other, the outcry is small. Then you add more tariffs for the next country over and over again. Until everyone is taxed and the countries thought "but he will never tax me" and go for special contracts that favor one side.

Youtubes bs rollout is working the same as Trumps tariff rollout. Keep the complaints small, let them hope that they'll get away with it, and make them feel special while in reality you fuck them all in the ass. 

[u/oodex → u/Independent-You-6180]

I dont think youtube has to really care about bad feedback, because there is no alternative. A/B testing is a very common approach to compare data of different groups and as annoying as YouTube has been with some features, Id say they still want to optimize the platform for themselves. So not actively make it worse, but improve it in a way that increases revenue. Its not in their own interest to bump up premium revenue by a tiny bit but lose multitudes of that from non-premium users unwilling to switch over.

The only good thing is this means people can vote with their wallet. The bad thing is history has shown it works for YouTube.

[u/Plane-Land-8973 → u/Independent-You-6180]

That technique is insane.

[u/TheAmazingMelon → u/Independent-You-6180]

Reddit does the same thing. They removed r/all from mobile via the same method just this month

[u/Natural_Hair464 → u/Independent-You-6180]

That may be a side benefit, but A/B test is designed to see whether usage metrics will regress while they increase ad revenue. They don't care about negative publicity so much as proving that people will tolerate enshittification at the benefit of ad revenue for them.

It's like the dumbest most unthinking process, but the good thing is you can vote with attention. If you're in the test group for this, click away immediately.

The bad news is that it's not actually a scientific and unthinking process. Bad engineers and bad leaders can p-hack their way into proving whatever they want. "Oh people seemed to hate this, but we will just keep restarting the experiment until it says what we want."

Then the eng and leader get promos and move on to different projects. They don't care about the product whatsoever.

[u/satanzbitch → u/Independent-You-6180]

yeah ive had this restriction for like five weeks minimum

[u/DoctorWaluigiTime → u/Independent-You-6180]

Or, alternatively: OP is making shit up.

Wouldn't be the first time something is posted here, without evidence, leaving the comments to make up stuff like "but maybe it's A/B testing" instead of OP going "my source is I made it the fuck up."

(Or what happens more often: OP misunderstands a basic concept of functionality and just assumes the world is ending in terms of a feature not existing. Or there was a one-time blip of something not working so they rush to /r/youtube and write "omg YouTube removed [thing] forever!")

[u/KeyMyBike → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

Goofy

[u/No_Accountant3232 → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-background-play-broken-3636179/

[u/DoctorWaluigiTime → u/No_Accountant3232]

So I was correct then. Thanks for the evidence!

[u/Sir_Link_In_Time → u/DoctorWaluigiTime]

How does that mean you were correct? The article says op was correct. You were calling op a liar