Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers
Submitted 1 day ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/streaming-video/google-throttling-youtube-adblock-users
Comments
AlreadyDefederated@midwest.social 11 hours ago
mesamunefire@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Very good news!!
RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah they are, I noticed it get really, really bad this week. It’s an awful experience. But they’ll leave my browser before my adblocker does.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
100%. Half the time I get blocked due to VPN or whatever I just close the tab and go with my life. The rest of the time I try all known workarounds. If those fail, I just go with my life.
My hatred for monopolisation and enshittification is stronger than my desire to watch content on any platform.
Trihilis@ani.social 21 hours ago
Lol, this is exactly why I use Lemmy. Sure there might be less engagement than reddit. But I’d rather gargle a bucket of diarrhea than go back to that shitty place.
LucidNightmare@lemm.ee 23 hours ago
Amen.
zurohki@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The thing is, their anti-adblocking measures are still less unpleasant than actually watching ads.
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
just use invidious instead
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
This is also a good beginner way to learn about self hosting in docker.
Freetube can make a great backup for when google inevitably breaks something.
And for thise videos you really cant miss there is always yt-dlp scripted to download a channels latests video on a schedule straight to jellyfin of course.
I have not visited the youtube website in more then a year.
RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
This doesn’t seem very straightforward…
Psythik@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
Same. When I opened the Stats for Nerds pop-up, I noticed that I was being throttled to 1500kbps. Anything above 720p was unplayable this week.
But apparently the Ublock Origin devs yet again figured out another workaround, because streaming speeds are back to normal for me as of yesterday.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Remember when videos would buffer all the time on non-chrome browsers lol
frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 22 hours ago
A wild YouTube appeared!
Go, uBlock Origin!
Wild YouTube used Throttle!
It’s not very effective…
uBlock Origin used Evolve!
It’s super effective!
YouTube fainted!
JohneryCreatives@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
This made me laugh. I wonder which one will prevail in the end
Siresly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 hours ago
I’ve noticed occasional “buffering” before playback starts through the past week or so. Takes like ten seconds before the video starts playing. Hasn’t been worse than that so far, knock on wood.
Youtube feels like an impossible service to actually compete with, whether through the enormous and complicated setup required or amassing creators/users. It’s basically a monopoly and it sucks. One will just have to resist Google’s bullshit using whatever means available for as long as possible.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 2 hours ago
Still I prefer buffering over the inane noises of commercials
dynamoMaus@feddit.org 2 hours ago
Peertube is working on breaking the monopoly. I try to use it more.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 6 hours ago
Yeah, I run multiple ad-blockers and haven’t noticed any slowdown or other degradation.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 22 hours ago
I watched videos on Newgrounds using dial-up
They are going to have to slow ad blockers by a lot for me to consider it slow
mesamunefire@piefed.social 22 hours ago
My wife and I were discussing this. This isnt "slow" to us, its just a tiny bit inconvenient. We were used to the old AOL pictures taking a good minute or two to load.
We would get rid of Youtube before we get ads.
catty@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Ahh seeing images load line-by-line and you get excited as you can actually start to tell what the image is!
SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve started bulk downloading videos with yt-dlp and watching them locally. No ads or throttling to deal with.
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
This is the way.
When YouTube wanted to throw me some entertainment and a couple ads, very conveniently, I was down for that.
Now that it’s an all out technology knowledge battle - well, I’m quite good at that.
So I spend the time I would have laughed at their ad instead working around their bullshit.
I haven’t seen an ad in years, but I still enjoy the same content. 🤷♀️
To me, it seems like they’re working really hard, just to fail to serve me ads.
Psythik@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
I would but my issue with that is that SponsorBlock doesn’t work on downloaded videos.
Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
DVRs are back in 2025. Who would have thought?
B_DL@lemmynsfw.com 1 day ago
I’m new to yt-dlp. Care to share your flags? I’m a little confused on which ones I actually need.
SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m a filthy Windows user that’s too lazy to migrate my main PC to Fedora.
> Path\to\yt-dlp.exe -P <target directory> <URL>Multiple URLs can be separated by spaces. Put any URLs with ampersands in quotes or remove the ampersand and following arguments.
OwlPaste@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I like github.com/ArabCoders/ytptube gui. Only started using it yesterday, so far for indovidual videos. However it looks like it can also watch new videos being uploaded, thought not tried it myself.
Use docker compose for quick deployment
gruhuken@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
I’ve been doing this with band love videos and storing them on a hard drive. One I love for taken down and almost lost a whole back and it’s made me paranoid ha
whome@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
So it’s wait a few seconds and watch a black screen or watch a minute of ads? What a choice…
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
Make me wait 5 mins on a black screen and I’ll do that before watching an ad.
SinkingLotus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’d sooner spend five minutes waiting for the video to buffer than five seconds watching an ad
desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
Welcome back to 2007
catty@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I’m finding I’m using youtube less and less that I can’t actually remember the last time I used it for anything informative. Youtube has so much crap now.
Because of their monetisation scheme for content creators, it was profitable for creators to drag 15 mins of information out to one hour, and then to include shock faces as thumbs to get more clicks, and then to get more viewers just to watch a bit of the video as viewership dwindles into just mindlessly watching suggestions.
I feel sorry for those creators who have gone balls deep with youtube content and who have no “plan b”.
lemmyingly@lemm.ee 1 hour ago
I think that says more about the channels you watch and your viewing habits. I enjoy STEM and STEM related channels; I don’t experience the same as what you’ve described.
happydoors@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Yo I pay for premium and it’s been fucking slow. Cancel my subscription? Guess I might need to.
scintilla@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
I had to turn off privacy badger and ublock for it to not be slow. It’s stupid I’m paying for the service to be ad free it should be ad free without complaints.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Your premium tier has been upgraded to the basic plan with ads at no extra charge for you yet, Dear Customer! Aren’t you happy?
Grizzlyboy@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
God damn American companies love fucking up everything for money!
elucubra@sopuli.xyz 22 hours ago
Just Americans?
KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
American flavoured capitalism has poisoned the well.
VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
Nestlé: I have done nothing wrong, ever, in my life.
oh_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
“Do evil.” Google’s official new slogan.
lud@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
That’s true but I wouldn’t really classify this as evil.
Serving videos isn’t easy or cheap. It’s hard and expensive.
I obviously use an adblocker everywhere and so should you.
But saying that Google or anyone else is doing anything wrong by blocking adblockers is ridiculous. When they finally succeed, I will just accept that I finally lost after many many years. My usage of YouTube will likely go down substantially as well. Crying about it after you have used their service for free for YEARS, really makes no sense.
amju_wolf@pawb.social 9 hours ago
They can get fucked. A while ago O was like you know what let’s give them money, seems only fair. So I finally subscribed, and then like a month later they sent me an email they’re raising the prices effective immediately - basically changing the deal on me without any delay.
So I unsubscribed, because fuck that.
More recently I looked into sharing the family plan with …my family, but it turna out they consider family only in a single household, and I’m not gonna try to give them money while also potentially having to prove how much of a family we are, so yeah…
Fuck them, either take my money when I’m actually trying, or I guess they didn’t need it that bad. I’m over YouTube, and would probably ditch it earlier than ever watching an ad there.
stellargmite@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
You’re right, but also They get alot more from the deal than you acknowledge. The service has never been free. They already had a profitable model, and now they want even more. I call it evil, but in a sense it’s standard corporate behaviour.
xzot746@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Or “Might as well do EVIL”, what is anybody going to do about it, maybe make some noise but we just pay off TACO and we good.
Phegan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ive been commenting on creators videos asking them to upload elsewhere as well. I doubt it will work, but we could try
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
A lot of my favorites are already on Nebula. I’d ask the rest to follow but that would require a google account.
LeTak@feddit.org 1 day ago
I also asked some creators, but they can’t because of the Google partnership Programm, it prohibits reupload on other platforms
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Great idea. Eventually, and if enough ask, it could be a thing.
atlien51@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I love how you’re just doing your bit lol
Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent
nameisnotimportant@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
the element
Which one? That’d certainly help to know how to do that
Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 hours ago
www.youtube.com/##.paper-toast-open.yt-notification-action-renderer.style-scope.toast-button
I believe it was this one, just add it as part of the filter list in ublock
The extension I used for user agent was this one. I don’t think it matters what you spoof as, but I chose to spoof as chrome. addons.mozilla.org/…/user-agent-string-switcher/
So far it worked and I’m back to no ads and no interruptions
D_C@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I have ublock, with sponsor block and some others, and don’t have any issues on yt as of yet. Just in case though, how do I block an element and spoof a user agent?
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
YouTube does a shit ton of A/B testing so they probably didn’t roll that change out to everyone yet. I currently don’t have any issues either but they will eventually hit us with that shit.
Pofski@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Also interested in how you can do this.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
benjaminb@discuss.tchncs.de 14 hours ago
I didn’t know if I’m crazy or of YouTube is genuinely slow for me (with adblocker)
Turns out I was not crazy
KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
I lean, you can never really rule it out…
Ekeagle@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Why aren’t you using another platform?
Grimtuck@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Because I don’t watch random videos, I watch people I’m subscribed to and they don’t exist on other platforms. I would love to switch, really. The very fact I’m on Lemmy tells you that I’m open to doing that kind of thing.
BoycottPro@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
If the people you subscribe to are not ones who monetization is important you may want to consider reaching out to them and asking if they’d consider cross posting to PeerTube or another YouTube alternative. They may appreciate not putting all their eggs in one basket and reaching new potential fans.
dyc3@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Because YouTube is where shit happens dude. Yeah sure theres peertube and others, but frankly, nobody that people care about are uploading to them. Not to mention they don’t offer the monetization opportunities for creators that YouTube does.
Ad block and sponsor block and call it a day.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I’ve been seeing this for a couple weeks now along with a popup telling me “ad blockers aren’t allowed” at work where I’m forced to use Chrome. I have UBlock Lite installed. Typically a refresh takes care of the popup and a 10 second delay later, the video loads.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
uBlock Lite is simply not as potent, so it’s understandable it can be beaten. Almost like Google is abusing their monopoly
Lazer365@feddit.nl 1 day ago
We can live without YouTube, they can’t live without us.
Alenalda@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Revanced is fine so far
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Been using revanced for months and haven’t noticed a difference other than no ads or sponsors on bigger channels.
Coolkat@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
“Is your video not loading ? Check out why, you fucking ad dodging commie” is the feeling i got from youtube’s newest message while my video was unexpectedly taking 10s to load
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh no, where will I get my AI slop?
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why do i feel like this happened a while ago? Like, isn’t this old news? Or “olds” as it were?
ulterno@programming.dev 1 day ago
So here’s what happened recently:
- I opened the Google News widget on my Android phone, saw a Sponsored link, and found it interesting
- Clicked on it, the link opened in Chrome, opening the googleadservices redirection thingummy
- Took over 5 seconds to process the redirect
- I exited the browser
Guess who missed ad money?
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I also think they slowed it down for firefox users.
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll wait.
FE80@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Freetube works pretty well, there’s a cat and mouse game with youtube changes though.
freetubeapp.io