Remember when every billionaire apologist was telling us how no one would do shit like this when net neutrality was being gutted.
Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users
Submitted 11 months ago by TangledHyphae@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/21/ad_block_google/
Comments
Cagi@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
yiliu@informis.land 11 months ago
This has nothing to do with net neutrality. Google is not an ISP. With or without net neutrality, Google could fuck with YouTube users.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Technically false. Google is an ISP. But they aren’t using their position as an ISP to slow down traffic or fast track other traffic in this instance so no it has nothing to do with net neutrality.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Only if we narrow our scope to the commonly thought of types of net neutrality. I think if we had foreseen intentionally treating browsers differently, this type of thing would have 100% been rolled into that original conversation about net neutrality. It’s the same idea: artificially modifying a web experience for capitalist gain.
I personally wish it could be illegal for them to do this, but I do think it would be really hard to enforce such a law.
applebusch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Google is literally an ISP. They provide my internet service.
C126@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Thank you
alekwithak@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not just YouTube. Now I have to say I’m not a robot when searching from my phone because I dare use a VPN that’s not theirs.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This is because scammers and criminals often use VPNs. They actually should be doing that.
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I still remember Ajit Pai’s dumbass teeth as he smugly insisted that you’ll still be able to “‘gram’ your food” before covering a Chipotle bowl in a mountain of flaming hot Cheetos and an ocean of Sriracha. That whole fucking video was basically “you can still waste time with your bread, circuses, and creature comforts, you fucking peasants,” while ignoring every legitimate criticism of the decision to gut NN.
Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world 11 months ago
DAE nET nEUtrAliTY?!?!
RTRedreovic@feddit.ch 11 months ago
This is a good time to make aware about an amazing privacy-centric & user-friendly alternative - Peertube. It is not a big network as of now but the benefits it provides over YouTube are large - it is a part of the fediverse. Of course, only through increasing participation will the network become bigger.
If you still wish to use YouTube, you can try third party front ends like Invidious or Piped on the browser; NewPipe(Also is a front end for Soundcloud, media.ccc.de, Peertube & Bandcamp) or LibreTube on Android.
If you only browse YT Music, you can try HyperPipe in the browser. There are many apps for it available on F-Droid, an alternative app store for Android. My personal pick is ViMusic.
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 11 months ago
Peertube is a great platform. And it has its uses. But it will never compete with YouTube - YouTube’s business model actively incentivises and pays people to post media to their platform.
Peertube is more likely to be to be the opposite - donation run, and given videos are exponentially more expensive to host, it’s highly unlikely that creators will receive any compensation for their work. In fact it’s more likely theyl be in the list of people donating to the platform.
While this might be fine if a creator makes the majority of its money elsewhere, via patreon or sponsors or whatever, it’s not going to work out for any aspiring or up and coming YouTube who has yet to become big enough to start diversifying their income base.
megrania@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I feel like people mistake YouTube for a video hosting solution,
But that’s not the point.
- YouTube a huge archive of content that accumulated over the past 17 years.
- YouTube is a content suggestion machine. Discoverability is a key aspect.
- YouTube sets an incentive by allowing people to monetize their content.
- …
So, if the only thing you’re looking for is a video hosting solution, then, yes, PeerTube might be an alternative. In the same way uploading videos to your own webspace would be, and Vimeo also still exists.
But for all the other stuff, YT is, unfortunately, unmatched, and probably will be for a while …
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You’re right. It also got people and ai flagging illegal content. That takes much more money then even hiding videos does. Though if the .world owners want to make a peertube insurance, I’m all for subscripting.
Once again, I want to agree that it’s a massive undertaking that’s more than software and bandwidth.
anarchy79@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m thinking of just skipping ahead a bunch of steps and start the global resistance movement so it’s up and warm and running for when the rest of you guys start popping in
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Well that’s only fair.
It already made it worse for non-adblock users.
ademir@lemmy.eco.br 11 months ago
You had me in the first half. Ngl
Railcar8095@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I’m 3 hours late to make this same joke
domin8r@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sadly it’s not a joke.
namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 11 months ago
However bad they may make it, it can’t possibly be worse than it is for non-adblock users.
But hey, if they want to torpedo their own services, have at it. It’s not like they have a reputation for it or anything…
MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 11 months ago
i am more worried about the old videos wipe thats coming soon
Sooo many peoples uploaded memories and documentaries are going to becone lost forever
zovits@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Wait, what?
AceTKen@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I wonder why they would kill old videos instead of just removing those 10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches. You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They aren’t wiping videos.
monkE@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Wait what?
VinnieFarsheds@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Who’s going to wipe the old videos?
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 months ago
About a week ago YouTube rolled out a new interface for ads. I cannot skip 90% of ads now. Many are around a minute in length. Always 2 ads at the beginning of every video, even if it’s only 10 seconds in length. Always 2 ads at the end of every video.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
I’m not getting that many ads. Could I see the new interface?
Godort@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I don’t know why they think this change is going to get anyone to switch.
5 seconds of nothing is still way better than a minute-long ad
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They want to sell their Premium subscription. They want you to compare 5 seconds of nothing versus “0” second of nothing. That being said, I think uBlock Origin with up-to-date filter lists completely eliminated this delay for me.
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 11 months ago
At work, we can’t log into personal accounts. And my job isn’t going to buy YouTube premium. So now any video tutorials on YouTube is kinda janky.
This has now triggered a bunch of lazy developers into action in my entire company. Even our internal newsletters are explaining how to use adblock.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I haven’t seen any issues or ads on Youtube across all devices, except my LG tv. I don’t doubt they’re being scummy but the workarounds are working.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
They can try selling me their Premium subscription again when they start suggesting more than one or two videos (if that) on their homepage that actually interest me.
Not that I’ll ever pay for it, anyway. But get me something that I’ll actually click on to get served ads before trying to sell me something to get rid of them.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
uBlock Origin
I still worry that google is going to declare ad blockers against their TOS and shut down my gdrive and 20 year old gmail. I’m trying to move away from alphabet shit but it’s not so easy with such a long history. To that end I haven’t even once used yt except not logged in on a FF private window since they started pulling this shit.
LWD@lemm.ee 11 months ago
[deleted]agraves@lm.possum.city 11 months ago
still not as bad as Chrome
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
5 seconds of nothing
It’s an eternity of nothing for me now so yeah I switched. To invidious.
EdyBolos@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fuck Google and YouTube, but the title is misleading, and it’s an article from three weeks ago. I’m quite surprised that this post is so upvoted, and nobody else flagged this before.
voracitude@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Genuine question (because I’m looking too): without YouTube, where would you go to watch all the diverse videos they host? It’s a really difficult business model. Look at how expensive Floatplane is to the user. Luke and Linus have talked about how difficult it is to run on WAN Show, too: youtube.com/watch?v=1mZrsunukUA
A fediverse platform would almost definitely be a worse experience in terms of speed and video quality because residential internet (at least in the majority of the US) just doesn’t have the upload to support multiple HD video streams. Therefore, it’s not really possible to host at home; a basic server at Hetzner could probably do a dozen or two direct streams with no conversion, but storage is kind of expensive just because there’s so much content, and then there’s the need for moderation, high uptime, security, “good” UX design…
Then of course on top of all that when you don’t have creators getting paid by ad revenue, fewer will be able to spend the time on production quality because they’ll be doing it after work, so the length and/or quality suffers.
I dunno dude, I really hope someone smarter than me has figured this out, but it’s a tough problem.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You are correct. Fundamentally, it’s the hosting and storage issue that’s the crux of all this.
And the only choices available are another corporation hosting and paying/passing on the cost, or all of us hosting on a peer-to-peer network, which will be slow, but doable.
Having said that, the peer hosting method would work though, and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. We just shouldn’t expect the same level of service we do from YouTube or any corporation hosting videos.
yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Peertube is already just as good in terms of performance, it does need more content and better discoverability for sure
Imhotep@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I just read the article and I don’t see how it’s misleading. Google introduced a five seconds delay before video starts for adblock users
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Interesting, it came up in news feeds on other sites. I’ll check more in the future, that’s the first time I’ve had that happen.
lemmyingly@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I wonder if there are bot farms for Lemmy/Fediverse… There must be
anarchy79@lemmy.world 11 months ago
FAKECIENT OLDS!
TheUncannyObserver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Are they, though? I’ve been using Firefox and uBlock Origin for years and I’ve not had an issue other than needing to manually update my filters three times since this started.
samus12345@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, however “worse” it is for adblock users, it can’t compare to how awful the ads are.
systemglitch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Exactly. I’ve spent 15 seconds of my life overcoming this. Click, click, click.
Desistance@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The proven reason why you can’t beat crowd sourcing in the millions.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Weren’t adblocker-blockers judged going against gdpr?
mawkishdave@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And freetube is making it so much better.
Kakaofruchttafel@feddit.de 11 months ago
I mean they’ve also consistently been making YouTube worse for everyone not using Adblock, so it’s only fair.
TransSynthesist@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
By the looks of these default recommended videos, Youtube is great for bigots and authright traitors.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 11 months ago
Great, I’ll use it less if that’s the case 🤷
FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We’ll still figure out ways to get around ads. So suck it Google.
grayman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As a premium subscriber, it’s definitely gotten worse for me over the last month. Whatever they’re doing on the back end, it’s pretty terrible.
anarchy79@lemmy.world 11 months ago
WHAT?! I didn’t believe it for a second when the whole planet instantly noticed!
But then again, they DID admit it. Which means they have nothing to hide! And that’s transparent, and bold. We should reward companies for doing the right thing. Not only criticize them when they didn’t do wrong!
Tinkle Fingerent!
shirro@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Long time family premium user (household of parents and kids). Anything Youtube do to preserve their revenue within reason doesn’t bother me too much as long as they don’t reduce the split with quality creators. If they were successful with all this bullshit perhaps they wouldn’t have needed to notify me that subs are almost doubling next year. My guess is all they are doing is fucking things up for everyone. It is only going to get worse when their premium subscription base reduces. They should be pushing premium as an alternative to ad-blockers but instead they are pushing people including premium subscribers towards ad-blockers.
skhayfa@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The CEO said shareholders needs to be appeased by making new sacrifice
zcd@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Fuck YouTube
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 11 months ago
As a Premium user who still had uBlock installed, I was noticing the other day a loading problem when I had it activated until I deactivated and reloaded. Still, Google is entirely within it’s right to target people even according to one of its greatest critics: youtu.be/KMLMQRS3Krk?si=topYLrXiiYqpF1GE&t=17…
Toes@ani.social 11 months ago
My biggest problem with the ads is that it’s louder than the thing I’m watching, oftentimes a lot.
They are sometimes an hour long and I gotta press the skip ad button with my nose cause it’ll take me ten minutes or more to clean up.
I have no love for the automatic gadgets where you can speak your commands. They get suggested by my coworkers quite a bit.
They want too much for what is ultimately hours of people playing chess.
God is dead and we killed him.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 months ago
It doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve never been blocked for using ad blockers. It’s still the same speed it’s always been. I have all these work arounds just waiting to be used that I haven’t even had to actually try.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They are a business that makes money off of ads. Nothing to see here.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Are they making it worse than ads make it?
JoShmoe@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Despite their wasted efforts, it just doesn’t matter. Circumventing all this is still too easy. Only the impatient are doomed.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Still using Vivaldi with only the built-in ad blocking, still noticing no ads, still noticing zero performance issues.
Yoz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why can’t people just stop using google? Genuinely curious
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 11 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google has admitted its efforts to discourage the use of ad blockers now includes delaying the start of videos – a deliberate “suboptimal viewing” experience, as the corporation put it.
Earlier this year, YouTube began interrupting videos for those using advert blockers with a pop-up encouraging them to either disable the offending extension or filter, or pay for YT’s ad-free premium tier.
In a statement to The Register, Google admitted it was intentionally making its content less binge-able for users unwilling to turn off offending extensions, though this wasn’t linked to any one browser.
To be clear, Google’s business model revolves around advertising, and ad blockers are specifically called out as being in violation of its terms of service.
Google told us users who have uninstalled their ad blockers may continue to experience temporary delays loading videos, though the issue should resolve itself after “refreshing their browser.”
As we reported earlier this month, the search giant will be pushing ahead with a planned API change in June that will render legacy Chrome extensions – including ad blockers – useless unless they are overhauled.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
SirStumps@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It just doesn’t play on my Firefox anymore.
Synthead@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Whatever happens on my browser is client side, which is hardware and software I own. I can make what I own do what I want. It’s a right. It’s like Google saying that I can’t skim a magazine in my home, and that I must read the ads.
FMT99@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They’re not saying you can’t have an adblocker. They’re saying their software will try not to serve you their data if you do, or at least make it inconvenient.
You have a right to your computer. You do not have a right to their service.
Synthead@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s exactly what I said, yeah
vitamin@infosec.pub 11 months ago
No, you don’t have a right to it. If they want to they can put the entire site being a subscriber paywall. That’s their call. But until they do that i will continue to access the site with my adblocked browser.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
They don’t have the right to disregard my right to privacy either, yet here we are.
ferralcat@monyet.cc 11 months ago
But their software is just blocking based on browser. Their message to you is not “don’t use an ad blocker”. It’s “use chrome and you won’t have this problem”. Theyre literally just hoping to abuse their position as a monopoly in video to try and strengthen their monopoly on browsers.
Wrench@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And as a service provider, they can choose to degrade your experience. It goes both ways.
Chickenstalker@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Except they want to send you videos. The power is with you, the viewer. Without you, advertisers will have no reason for buying ads. Google can’t collect your data either. Realise that you have this power. Youtube is not like electricity or clean water. We can live without it if push comes to the shove.
Synthead@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yep, they can send me 500s if they want to, too
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If the service degrades to far due to using ad blockers then I’ll just stop watching anything on YouTube. Easy.
CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sure, like not sending you videos. 🤔
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Client side DRM is coming.
They’re mostly there on Android already.
BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 11 months ago
You forgot to mention it's also coming to all Chromium based browsers as well in the form of ManifestV3
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s ok. Us nerds have been defeating DRM in its many forms for decades. This will be no different.
jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
It’s called a “User Agent” for a reason.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
You can, but as a part of doing what they want serverside they can ask for sone kind of proof you don’t have an adblocker on the server-side, you can reverse engineer that and spoof the checks and it becomes an arms race just like we have now… You’re effectively just saying the status quo is a-ok with you
Synthead@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t personally enjoy the status quo, but they’re not obligated to serve me any videos of they don’t want to. However, if they have given me media to consume on my devices, it’s up to me to decide how I consume the media that was already delivered.
gosling@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Let’s just hope they don’t start injecting their ads into the video stream itself
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 11 months ago
Google is also perfectly within their rights to decide to not serve their content to you.