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A minimalist terminal-based email client for Fastmail, built in Go with JMAP - SgtApple/fm-cli

Remember when you could open YouTube in Samsung Internet or Brave, lock your screen, and keep listening to music or podcasts while doing literally anything else on your phone? Yeah, that's done. As of this week, YouTube officially killed background playback through third-party browsers. No more workarounds. No more listening with the screen off unless you pay $13.99 a month for Premium. ## What Actually Happened Starting around January 28th, users across Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge, and Safari started reporting the same thing: lock your screen, audio stops. Minimize the browser, audio stops. The lock screen controls vanish completely. Some users briefly saw a notification reading "MediaOngoingActivity" before everything disappeared. At first, people thought it was a bug. It wasn't. Google confirmed it was intentional: > "Background playback is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members. While some non-Premium users may have previously been able to access this through mobile web browsers in certain scenarios, we have updated the experience to ensure consistency across all our platforms." > > > Translation: We closed the loophole. Pay up or shut up. ## The Technical Details (Because This Matters) This isn't a client-side change. YouTube implemented **server-side verification** that checks your account status the moment you lock your screen. Within seconds of the screen going dark, YouTube's servers confirm whether you're a Premium subscriber. If not, playback stops and the lock screen controls disappear. This is clever—and hostile. By doing the enforcement server-side, browser developers have a much harder time working around it. There's no extension to install, no setting to toggle, no user agent to spoof that works reliably. The logic lives on YouTube's infrastructure where you have minimal control. Will someone eventually find a workaround? Probably. This is the classic cat-and-mouse game between platforms and users—antivirus versus malware, DRM versus pirates, ad blockers versus ad servers. Where there's a will, there's usually a way. But each iteration makes the workarounds more fragile, more technical, and harder for average users to implement. That's the point. ## But Wait, There's Another Agenda Here Here's what Google isn't saying out loud: this isn't just about pushing you toward Premium. It's about pushing you toward **their app**. When you use YouTube through a browser—especially a third-party browser—Google gets less data about you. You can use extensions that block trackers. You can clear cookies. You can sandbox your activity away from your Google account. The browser gives you a layer of control. The YouTube app? Not so much. It has access to your device ID, location data, usage patterns, app interactions, and can tie everything directly to your Google account without the friction of browser privacy controls. It's a data collection goldmine. By breaking browser-based background playback while keeping it functional in their official app (and in Premium, of course), Google creates a three-tier experience: 1. **Official app (free)** : Full functionality, maximum data collection 2. **Premium** : Full functionality everywhere, pay with money instead of data 3. **Browser (free)** : Deliberately crippled experience to push you toward options 1 or 2 Guess which option most people pick when they just want to listen to music with their screen off? I'm not a fan of Google's data practices. But here's the brutal reality: for video content at this scale, they're basically the only game in town. ## This Is About More Than $14/Month Look, YouTube Premium isn't outrageously priced. You get ad-free viewing, offline downloads, and background playback for less than the cost of two coffees. I'm not here to argue about the price. I'm here to argue about the **principle**. Background playback isn't some revolutionary feature. It's basic functionality that should have been available from day one. Being able to listen to audio with your screen off isn't a premium experience—it's the bare minimum expectation for any media app. Think about it: Spotify's free tier lets you do this. Apple Music's free trial lets you do this. Even podcasting apps nobody's heard of let you do this. But YouTube? Nope. That'll be $13.99, please. ## The Broader Pattern This isn't an isolated incident. YouTube has been systematically closing every gap in their paywall for years: * **Ad blockers** : Throttled video load times, blocked playback entirely, forced users to disable extensions * **Third-party clients** : Shut down apps like Vanced, sent cease-and-desists to developers * **Browser workarounds** : Now this Each time, the justification is the same: "We need to protect our creators." "This ensures consistency." "Background playback is a Premium feature." But here's what they don't say: **YouTube has over 125 million Premium subscribers globally.** This isn't about survival. It's about maximizing revenue by making the free experience progressively worse until you're willing to pay to make the pain stop. ## Why This Matters For You If you're a Premium subscriber, you might be thinking, "This doesn't affect me." You're wrong. Every time a platform successfully makes basic functionality exclusive to paid tiers, they're testing how much degradation users will tolerate before paying up. Today it's background playback. Tomorrow it's quality tiers. Next year it's limiting how many videos you can watch per day. The more we accept "features" being stripped away and sold back to us, the worse the baseline experience becomes for everyone. ## The Alternatives (Such As They Are) So what can you do? **The honest answer? Not much.** YouTube has a monopoly on video content at scale. Sure, there are alternatives: * **Short-form** : Instagram (Meta is arguably worse than Google for data practices) and TikTok (if you believe they're not doing the same data collection, I have a bridge to sell you) * **Long-form** : PeerTube and Odysee exist, but let's be honest about what they are. PeerTube is a decentralized, federated video platform—basically the Mastodon of video hosting. It's great in theory: open source, self-hostable, no corporate overlord. In practice? It's niche at best. The content isn't there. Your favorite tech reviewers, educators, and content creators aren't on PeerTube because that's where the audience isn't. If you're into very specific communities—FOSS advocates, privacy enthusiasts, certain activist circles—you might find some content. But if you're looking for general entertainment, tutorials, or anything mainstream, PeerTube won't cut it. Odysee is similar—a blockchain-based video platform (yes, really) that positions itself as a "free speech" alternative to YouTube. It has some tech content and creators who've been demonetized or banned from YouTube. But it suffers from the same fundamental problem: lack of content diversity and audience. Unless you're specifically following creators who've made Odysee their primary platform (spoiler: almost none have), it's not a YouTube replacement. Both platforms are fine if you're a FOSS purist, privacy absolutist, or want to support decentralized infrastructure on principle. But as a practical YouTube alternative for the average person who wants to watch tech reviews, cooking videos, gaming content, or music? Not even close. That leaves you with limited options: 1. **Pay for Premium** - The easiest option. You get ad-free viewing, offline downloads, background playback, and YouTube Music. If you use YouTube heavily, it's probably worth it. You're trading money for convenience and slightly better privacy than the free app. 2. **Use the YouTube app** - Free background playback, but you're giving Google maximum access to your device data. This is what they want you to do. 3. **Use YouTube Music** - If you're primarily listening to music or podcasts, YouTube Music's free tier allows background playback. It's essentially the YouTube app with a different coat of paint, so same data collection applies. 4. **Self-host your media** - Download videos you want to listen to regularly and host them locally with something like Jellyfin or Plex. This requires technical knowledge, storage, and ongoing maintenance. It's also legally gray depending on how you acquire the content. 5. **Accept the degraded experience** - Keep using YouTube in browsers, but lose background playback. This is the "free" option, and Google is betting most people will find it annoying enough to pick option 1 or 2. 6. **Vote with your feedback** - Let YouTube know this sucks. Leave feedback, downvote their official statements, make noise on social media. Will it change anything? Almost certainly not. But at least they'll know some people are unhappy. The reality is that YouTube's monopoly on long-form video content means they can get away with this. Creators can't easily migrate to other platforms—their audiences are on YouTube. Users can't easily find alternatives—the content they want is on YouTube. It's a closed loop, and Google knows it. ## My Take I get why YouTube did this. They're protecting a revenue stream. Background playback is one of Premium's biggest selling points, and letting people get it for free undermines the value proposition. But there's a deeper game here, and it's not just about subscription revenue. By crippling browser-based playback, Google is herding users toward their data-collection app. The choice isn't really "pay or use it for free"—it's "pay, let us track everything, or have a deliberately broken experience." I'm not a fan of Google. I'm not a fan of their data practices, their monopolistic behavior, or their strategy of slowly degrading free services until you're willing to pay or surrender your privacy to make the pain stop. I pay for Kagi specifically to avoid using Google Search. I'm also self-hosting SearXNG as a fallback (more on that in an upcoming post). That's how much I dislike their data collection model—I'm willing to both pay money to a competitor _and_ run my own search infrastructure just to keep Google out of my search queries. But video? That's where they've got me trapped. But here's the frustrating reality: for long-form video content at this scale, YouTube is the only viable option. PeerTube isn't going to replace it. Your favorite creators aren't moving to some decentralized alternative. The network effects are too strong, and Google knows it. This is the same pattern I wrote about with passkeys and OTPs—taking something that should be straightforward and making it deliberately hostile to push people toward a "solution" that benefits the platform, not the user. Basic media playback functionality shouldn't be locked behind a subscription. The ability to listen to audio with your screen off isn't a premium feature—it's the expected behavior of any audio/video app in 2026. YouTube has a monopoly on video content. Creators can't easily migrate to other platforms. Users can't easily find alternatives. And Google knows this, which is why they can steadily degrade the free experience until people give up and either subscribe or install the app that gives Google everything they want. I'm tired of it. And you should be too. **What do you think about YouTube's background playback enforcement? Are you a Premium subscriber, or did you rely on the browser workaround? Find me on Mastodon at@ppb1701@ppb.social and let's talk about platform hostility.**

Valve says its compact, living-room SteamOS Steam Machine will miss its earlier Q1 2026 target and is now expected sometime in the first half of 2026, though it still hasn’t shared a firm launch date. Valve also says it still hasn’t locked in a final price and is “revisiting” pricing as component costs fluctuate. Across reports, Valve points to shortages and price swings in memory and storage—made worse by AI data-center demand—as the reason it can’t confidently commit to timing or pricing yet. The same constraints are also affecting the Steam Frame headset and the new Steam Controller.

Remember when you could open YouTube in Samsung Internet or Brave, lock your screen, and keep listening to music or podcasts while doing literally anything else on your phone? Yeah, that's done. As of this week, YouTube officially killed background playback through third-party browsers. No more workarounds. No more listening with the screen off unless you pay $13.99 a month for Premium. ## What Actually Happened Starting around January 28th, users across Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge, and Safari started reporting the same thing: lock your screen, audio stops. Minimize the browser, audio stops. The lock screen controls vanish completely. Some users briefly saw a notification reading "MediaOngoingActivity" before everything disappeared. At first, people thought it was a bug. It wasn't. Google confirmed it was intentional: > "Background playback is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members. While some non-Premium users may have previously been able to access this through mobile web browsers in certain scenarios, we have updated the experience to ensure consistency across all our platforms." > > > Translation: We closed the loophole. Pay up or shut up. ## The Technical Details (Because This Matters) This isn't a client-side change. YouTube implemented **server-side verification** that checks your account status the moment you lock your screen. Within seconds of the screen going dark, YouTube's servers confirm whether you're a Premium subscriber. If not, playback stops and the lock screen controls disappear. This is clever—and hostile. By doing the enforcement server-side, browser developers have a much harder time working around it. There's no extension to install, no setting to toggle, no user agent to spoof that works reliably. The logic lives on YouTube's infrastructure where you have minimal control. Will someone eventually find a workaround? Probably. This is the classic cat-and-mouse game between platforms and users—antivirus versus malware, DRM versus pirates, ad blockers versus ad servers. Where there's a will, there's usually a way. But each iteration makes the workarounds more fragile, more technical, and harder for average users to implement. That's the point. ## But Wait, There's Another Agenda Here Here's what Google isn't saying out loud: this isn't just about pushing you toward Premium. It's about pushing you toward **their app**. When you use YouTube through a browser—especially a third-party browser—Google gets less data about you. You can use extensions that block trackers. You can clear cookies. You can sandbox your activity away from your Google account. The browser gives you a layer of control. The YouTube app? Not so much. It has access to your device ID, location data, usage patterns, app interactions, and can tie everything directly to your Google account without the friction of browser privacy controls. It's a data collection goldmine. By breaking browser-based background playback while keeping it functional in their official app (and in Premium, of course), Google creates a three-tier experience: 1. **Official app (free)** : Full functionality, maximum data collection 2. **Premium** : Full functionality everywhere, pay with money instead of data 3. **Browser (free)** : Deliberately crippled experience to push you toward options 1 or 2 Guess which option most people pick when they just want to listen to music with their screen off? I'm not a fan of Google's data practices. But here's the brutal reality: for video content at this scale, they're basically the only game in town. ## This Is About More Than $14/Month Look, YouTube Premium isn't outrageously priced. You get ad-free viewing, offline downloads, and background playback for less than the cost of two coffees. I'm not here to argue about the price. I'm here to argue about the **principle**. Background playback isn't some revolutionary feature. It's basic functionality that should have been available from day one. Being able to listen to audio with your screen off isn't a premium experience—it's the bare minimum expectation for any media app. Think about it: Spotify's free tier lets you do this. Apple Music's free trial lets you do this. Even podcasting apps nobody's heard of let you do this. But YouTube? Nope. That'll be $13.99, please. ## The Broader Pattern This isn't an isolated incident. YouTube has been systematically closing every gap in their paywall for years: * **Ad blockers** : Throttled video load times, blocked playback entirely, forced users to disable extensions * **Third-party clients** : Shut down apps like Vanced, sent cease-and-desists to developers * **Browser workarounds** : Now this Each time, the justification is the same: "We need to protect our creators." "This ensures consistency." "Background playback is a Premium feature." But here's what they don't say: **YouTube has over 125 million Premium subscribers globally.** This isn't about survival. It's about maximizing revenue by making the free experience progressively worse until you're willing to pay to make the pain stop. ## Why This Matters For You If you're a Premium subscriber, you might be thinking, "This doesn't affect me." You're wrong. Every time a platform successfully makes basic functionality exclusive to paid tiers, they're testing how much degradation users will tolerate before paying up. Today it's background playback. Tomorrow it's quality tiers. Next year it's limiting how many videos you can watch per day. The more we accept "features" being stripped away and sold back to us, the worse the baseline experience becomes for everyone. ## The Alternatives (Such As They Are) So what can you do? **The honest answer? Not much.** YouTube has a monopoly on video content at scale. Sure, there are alternatives: * **Short-form** : Instagram (Meta is arguably worse than Google for data practices) and TikTok (if you believe they're not doing the same data collection, I have a bridge to sell you) * **Long-form** : PeerTube and Odysee exist, but let's be honest about what they are. PeerTube is a decentralized, federated video platform—basically the Mastodon of video hosting. It's great in theory: open source, self-hostable, no corporate overlord. In practice? It's niche at best. The content isn't there. Your favorite tech reviewers, educators, and content creators aren't on PeerTube because that's where the audience isn't. If you're into very specific communities—FOSS advocates, privacy enthusiasts, certain activist circles—you might find some content. But if you're looking for general entertainment, tutorials, or anything mainstream, PeerTube won't cut it. Odysee is similar—a blockchain-based video platform (yes, really) that positions itself as a "free speech" alternative to YouTube. It has some tech content and creators who've been demonetized or banned from YouTube. But it suffers from the same fundamental problem: lack of content diversity and audience. Unless you're specifically following creators who've made Odysee their primary platform (spoiler: almost none have), it's not a YouTube replacement. Both platforms are fine if you're a FOSS purist, privacy absolutist, or want to support decentralized infrastructure on principle. But as a practical YouTube alternative for the average person who wants to watch tech reviews, cooking videos, gaming content, or music? Not even close. That leaves you with limited options: 1. **Pay for Premium** - The easiest option. You get ad-free viewing, offline downloads, background playback, and YouTube Music. If you use YouTube heavily, it's probably worth it. You're trading money for convenience and slightly better privacy than the free app. 2. **Use the YouTube app** - Free background playback, but you're giving Google maximum access to your device data. This is what they want you to do. 3. **Use YouTube Music** - If you're primarily listening to music or podcasts, YouTube Music's free tier allows background playback. It's essentially the YouTube app with a different coat of paint, so same data collection applies. 4. **Self-host your media** - Download videos you want to listen to regularly and host them locally with something like Jellyfin or Plex. This requires technical knowledge, storage, and ongoing maintenance. It's also legally gray depending on how you acquire the content. 5. **Accept the degraded experience** - Keep using YouTube in browsers, but lose background playback. This is the "free" option, and Google is betting most people will find it annoying enough to pick option 1 or 2. 6. **Vote with your feedback** - Let YouTube know this sucks. Leave feedback, downvote their official statements, make noise on social media. Will it change anything? Almost certainly not. But at least they'll know some people are unhappy. The reality is that YouTube's monopoly on long-form video content means they can get away with this. Creators can't easily migrate to other platforms—their audiences are on YouTube. Users can't easily find alternatives—the content they want is on YouTube. It's a closed loop, and Google knows it. ## My Take I get why YouTube did this. They're protecting a revenue stream. Background playback is one of Premium's biggest selling points, and letting people get it for free undermines the value proposition. But there's a deeper game here, and it's not just about subscription revenue. By crippling browser-based playback, Google is herding users toward their data-collection app. The choice isn't really "pay or use it for free"—it's "pay, let us track everything, or have a deliberately broken experience." I'm not a fan of Google. I'm not a fan of their data practices, their monopolistic behavior, or their strategy of slowly degrading free services until you're willing to pay or surrender your privacy to make the pain stop. I pay for Kagi specifically to avoid using Google Search. I'm also self-hosting SearXNG as a fallback (more on that in an upcoming post). That's how much I dislike their data collection model—I'm willing to both pay money to a competitor _and_ run my own search infrastructure just to keep Google out of my search queries. But video? That's where they've got me trapped. But here's the frustrating reality: for long-form video content at this scale, YouTube is the only viable option. PeerTube isn't going to replace it. Your favorite creators aren't moving to some decentralized alternative. The network effects are too strong, and Google knows it. This is the same pattern I wrote about with passkeys and OTPs—taking something that should be straightforward and making it deliberately hostile to push people toward a "solution" that benefits the platform, not the user. Basic media playback functionality shouldn't be locked behind a subscription. The ability to listen to audio with your screen off isn't a premium feature—it's the expected behavior of any audio/video app in 2026. YouTube has a monopoly on video content. Creators can't easily migrate to other platforms. Users can't easily find alternatives. And Google knows this, which is why they can steadily degrade the free experience until people give up and either subscribe or install the app that gives Google everything they want. I'm tired of it. And you should be too. **What do you think about YouTube's background playback enforcement? Are you a Premium subscriber, or did you rely on the browser workaround? Find me on Mastodon at@ppb1701@ppb.social and let's talk about platform hostility.**

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon