Comment on YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 months agoI definitely got really awful, unplayably spotty playback that seemed linked to adblock usage. Then I saw an article about it and confirmed I wasn’t going crazy, and that day it stopped happening, so it felt like I was going crazy all over again. It’s like the moment they realised it was going to become a problem and they weren’t as sneaky as they thought, they turned it off. I haven’t had an issue since then.
That would be quite a funny strategy that they could definitely implement. Creepy as hell but clever.
They know everything you do and look at, so they know if you’re the sort of person that would look up a fix for this or just take it on the nose. If they realize you’re looking at articles about the problem they just turn the function off.
I guess possible, but more likely they saw the level of general attention on the issue and backed off globally.
The kicker there is … Nobody I know is going to think “wow, playback on this video sucks, I should disable my ad blocker”.
Like, it wouldn’t occur to ANYONE I know that a piece of software we consider necessary could be the problem, ESPECIALLY if everything else is working fine.
That’s not even number ten on the list of troubleshooting steps and most people don’t make it past one or two before giving up.
WTF were they thinking?
Honestly it sounds like someone was paid to do something about adblocking and just like… did something. Like if you were tasked with reducing adblocking, and your first and most obvious idea of “reduce the obnoxious ads” was disallowed because enshittification is mandated, you could say no, which most workers won’t do, or you could just do whatever random bullshit feels like it might work because it’s punitive. Or at least it’s a gesture that shows your boss you’re trying.
Authoritarian systems like capitalist corporations are inherently low-information for exactly this reason. People on the low rungs doing the real work who understand what needs to be done will typically not report problems to their superiors. And when they do, those superiors tend not to listen, because the idea that lower workers know something they don’t threatens their leadership status.
Also our society’s legal system trains us to believe punitive measures must do something even though they don’t.
Also I guess another reason they might wind up at this strategy is that straight up telling users that the problem is their adblock is the fastest way to get adblockers to block your countermeasure, so they think they have to be sneaky.
smeenz@lemmy.nz 2 months ago
I had the same experience with shitty playback buffering every few seconds on popular videos that should be cached on a nearby cdn, and then saw lots of articles about it and then boom a week later everything was back to normal