Open Menu
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
lotide
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
Login

YouTube is slowing down for users with ad blockers in new wave

⁨737⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨fne8w2ah@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://9to5google.com/2024/01/13/youtube-new-wave-slow-downs-ad-blocker/

source

Comments

Sort:hotnewtop
  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A new wave of slowdowns is hitting users, with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium.

    Or just switching to ublock origin.

    Or just switching to newpipe.

    Or just switching to freetube.

    etc

    etc

    etc

    source
    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I have ublock origin on firefox and it’s really bad for me currently. This has traditionally been the good combo I believe.

      Not just slowing down, but stopping, then restarting after skipping a few seconds that you cannot access no matter what.

      For now the best solution I’ve found is to copy the video url, open potplayer and just hit the paste command and the video runs flawlessly.

      So they’ll have to close that loophole eventually, which means enshittifying the video streaming protocol for everything that isn’t the native web viewer, which will inconvenience more people who were used to something working, leading to another workaround, leading to…

      Youtube is gradually accelerating their enshittification. I’m looking forward to when it comes to a real head. Too many serious interested parties rely on it. I don’t know if peertube will be the first fallback, but I’m sure it’ll get a big bump.

      source
      • Cypher@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Change your useragent to Chrome.

        It breaks the detection of your adblocker… for now.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • HolyDiver@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      how do those youtube clients work? i thought YouTube was very closed source

      source
      • puppy@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        AFAIK NewPipe parses the regular YouTube website and only extracts the useful bits.

        source
      • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No expert but I believe they access the API directly.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • FrameXX@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Some probably use an API of some sort, because SmartTube for Android TV even synchronises your watch history, subscriptions, you login with your google account etc…

        source
    • FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Or downloading videos to watch later? Does Plex recognize YouTube videos?

      source
      • nicetriangle@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Plex does not recognize them in terms of pulling down metadata but you can still organize them in folders and browse that way. I find the Plex route is a healthier way to engage with video content than platforms that just keep serving you whatever the algorithm thinks will keep you peeled to the screen. It's more intentional and less of a passive consumption kinda thing.

        source
      • quirzle@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        tl;dr: Yes, but probably takes some effort for most content.

        Plex will play the files, but metadata is hit or miss. If it's something that's on thetvdb or themoviedb, it can be matched as a series or movie, respectively. With some effort, you could also probably include all the relevant metadata when downloading the videos, then have plex use local metadata, which could cover anything not big enough for the big metadata providers.

        I think it's also possible to find plug-ins/scripts that will pull metadata directly from youtube, but I've had bad luck relying on that stuff and then development stopping, so I avoid it these days.

        source
      • spiderman@ani.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        but won’t it be hassle to follow that?

        source
    • Latuga17@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      YouTube revanced has also been working for me

      source
  • lloram239@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ll never understand why they spend so much effort pushing ads into people’s faces that don’t want see them and so little making ads more attractive.

    A very large chunk of what people consume these days is effectively already ads. Every Youtuber holding a product into the camera is an ad. And people want to watch that. They want to know what new products are out there. It just has to presented appropriately.

    Forced ads with mandatory 5sec isn’t making people interested in your product, heck, numerous times I might have been interested in a product, but lost interested since I couldn’t rewind the ad or because the ad didn’t link to anything that gave me further information. A 15min video from a Youtuber reviewing a product in detail is way more effective than any regular ad I have ever seen, yet there are almost no ads in that style.

    source
    • camelbeard@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Too be honest I was fine with seeing an ad every few videos. But at some point it became unskippable ads before , during and after a video.

      source
      • verysoft@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Ads got too aggressive, people made adblockers, ads got more aggressive because of lost revenue, almost everyone starts using adblockers. They did it to themselves, people were content with simple ads on a page, it's once they started interfering with the content that they became a problem.

        source
      • Tak@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        What boils my blood the most is how manipulative marketing is. The number of worthless ass jingles I remember from the 90’s from companies I’ve never purchased anything from is ridiculous.

        source
    • NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I never had an issue with YT’s 1-2 skipable ads at the beginning, or even the banner ad. But they got greedy.

      The midrolls and the unskipable ads was the trigger point for me.

      source
      • SeaJ@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I was fine with even having a couple very short unskippable ads every other video. Now it is all of them with one in the middle of videos longer than 5 minutes. And then of course the content creator has to put in an ad because YouTube does not pay shit for views.

        source
      • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean, they didn’t get greedy, as far as everyone knows they are losing a ton of money (at least if you can extrapolate anytbing from the fact that twitch is massively unprofitable)

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah and I wouldn’t even mind like 5 minutes of ads at the beginning compared to randomly dispersed in the middle

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • minibyte@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A very large chunk of what people consume these days is effectively already ads

      That’s what grinds my gears. I understand ads pay bills, but showing multiple ads before a trailer for a video game or movie is excessive.

      source
      • TigrisMorte@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Plus nearly all advertising is insultingly stupid as to appeal to idiots.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • bitwolf@lemmy.one ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I find it extremely funny that YouTube serving ads also strains the same video infrastructure they’re trying to increase revenue on.

        source
    • Chobbes@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There is potentially a world in which you want to see ads because ads themselves do technically provide a service. You do want to know about things you care about and would want to buy… you just don’t want it obnoxiously shoved into your face all of the time in psychologically manipulative ways.

      source
      • evranch@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Look at the way ads used to look “back in the day”, with details about the product, its features, and reasons you would actually want to buy it. New tractor model, this many HP, pulls 4 bottom plow, burns this much diesel per hour, buy now and grow more corn.

        However it turned out that it worked better just to try to trick people into buying a product that they didn’t need, and that’s how we got the ads we have today.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • skulblaka@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It would also help if I were served ads that even attempt to approach the vicinity of my own interests. That is vanishingly rare.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Like for real, you have all the money in the world and you know what I like and don’t, so why don’t tailor the ads to not annoy the fuck out of me?

      source
      • TigrisMorte@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        "MORE!" - already wealthy people.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • Plopp@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I’d much much much rather watch ads for products that are not the least relevant to me. I’m not going to be an active participant in my own manipulation. I’d rather be annoyed.

        source
    • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Youtube doesnt make money with the youtuber reviewing the product.

      source
      • lloram239@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yes, but that’s self inflicted. They make the rules. They build the software. They decide how ads are presented.

        source
      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They sure are.
        Those creators drive the traffic to the page.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah the last ad I remember seeing was for a movie, that actually looked interesting. But rather than tell me the name in the first 10 or 20 seconds they wanted me to watch to the end before revealing. So I skipped straight out of that.

      source
      • Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They used to have a popup that told you the movie title and they took that away, so now they get a skip. If I am actually interested, I just google the actor I recognize.

        source
    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A very large chunk of what people consume these days is effectively already ads. Every Youtuber holding a product into the camera is an ad. And people want to watch that. They want to know what new products are out there. It just has to presented appropriately.

      I doubt so - Sponsorblock exists. I guess some don’t mind it because it supports the creators they like directly.

      source
      • lloram239@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I don’t mean the sponsor segments, but the rest of the video. LTT, MKBHD and all the other tech channels, every movie and game reviewer and a lot of other stuff is all ads. Every single channel that is focused on showing you a new product is effectively an ad. And people watch it because they are interesting in seeing what new or interesting products are out there. There is no aversion to ads, there is an aversion to bad and annoying ads.

        source
    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because that has been tried so many times over the decades.

      The good sites put effort in to curate their ads and make sure they are things their audiences would enjoy. Lots of webcomics STILL have blog posts about doing this. Same with one of the more popular “steam deck” websites.

      The problem is that this doesn’t work. Because people don’t permitlist those sites. They just block everything for the exact same reasons “I pirate it and if I like it I’ll buy it” was always a blatant lie for the vast majority of people (and no, I don’t care who consider themselves exceptions to that).

      So when curated and “good” ads have almost zero benefit over shitty and obnoxious onces?

      source
      • lloram239@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Because that has been tried so many times over the decades.

        When? “Will it Blend?” is about the only time I can think of when a company went in an alternative direction and turned their ads into entertainment and was quite successful at that. How many products do even have as little as an official unboxing video? Stuff like the SteamDeck teardown is what I would love every company doing for all their product. But it’s super rare. Why limit your ads to 30sec fake nonsense when you could have 15min of talking about your product in detail?

        They just block everything for the exact same reasons

        There wouldn’t be a need or even the ability to block anything if it wouldn’t be forced on the user. If Youtube had a “show me a random ad” button, I’d click it. I don’t hate ads. I hate bad ads that are forced in my face when I don’t need them. I have plenty of downtime where I wouldn’t mind seeing what new products are around. Gameify that stuff. Make it interesting. Make it explorable. Make it interactive. You have million dollar budget, mountains of collected data and random garbage forced into the users face is the best you can come up with?

        “What can we do to actually get ANY ad revenue out of this so that we can keep the lights on?”

        You are forgetting that there is an advertiser in all this. People that care about getting clicks on ads will have no problem tricking users into accidentally clicking on ads. But why are the advertisers themselves ok with that? If I want to advertise a product I’d not be interested in paying for accidental clicks users were tricked into, I’d be interested in finding users that are interested in the product I want to sell. And I really don’t see current ads doing that very well. They might be better than literally nothing, but I really don’t see them being better than all the potential ways to make better ads.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’ll never understand why they spend so much effort pushing ads into people’s faces

      money

      Also, disappointingly, most people don’t care about the ad.

      source
  • notannpc@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And still, I’m more likely to stop using YouTube than to stop using an ad blocker.

    source
    • very_well_lost@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what they want. Get all the users they aren’t able to monetize off the platform to lower their costs.

      source
      • danielbln@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean, I like a good Google hate train as much as the next guy, but that’s kind of a legitimate thing to want.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • ARk@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Then I’mma leech HARDER

        source
      • InternetUser2012@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s a double edged sword though, lose viewers and you lose appeal to advertisers. Lose users and they’re going to go somewhere else. That somewhere else will eventually grow and be competition. The bigger it gets, the faster it will grow.

        source
    • muh_entitlement@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Good news: you can have the best of both by watching everything for free through piped video!

      source
  • Underwaterbob@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Frankly, I’d stop using YouTube entirely before I’d start using it without an adblocker. At least there are no signs of it slowing down for me, yet.

    source
    • trafficnab@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’d consider paying a few bucks a month, but not $10 or more

      Get rid of shitty YouTube music and give me a tier that’s no ads only

      source
      • nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That is precisely why Premium Lite was killed off, it did exactly what you are looking for.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s just leaving money on the table

        source
  • Suavevillain@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I will download videos then. I refuse to not use an adblocker on the modern internet.

    source
    • muh_entitlement@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Pirate everything, it’s the only way to show greedy corporations the content should be free.

      source
      • quackers@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Free wouldnt work either. nobody would make any content. its just that they excessively exploit everything to grab every last penny.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • XTornado@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My worry with all this is that they might say fuck it and put DRM which would block attempts to download them. Not make it impossible as seen with streaming services but not as trivial as now…

      source
      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Time to quit YouTube then

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • weirdo_from_space@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It would be really cool to be able to download YouTube videos withour the sponsorship segments, I wonder if there is a way to do his already?

      source
      • Euphoma@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        yt-dlp has a command-line option to download videos while using sponsor block.

        source
  • davemeech@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So I have YouTube premium but also have ad-blocker, for the first time yesterday I was noticing absolutely abysmal speeds on YouTube and I suspect this is why. I thought my computer was starting to shit the bed initially it was so brutal.

    source
    • Hawke@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I have YouTube premium

      Wow, so you pay them and they still screw you? Glad that’s a product I’ll never buy then!

      source
    • atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I was wondering if this was coming. I don’t use YouTube in-browser much if at all, so I don’t see this. But I am not surprised. The fact that they’re slowing down people who pay for premium is kind of an act of war. It shouldn’t be a thing, and the fact that it’s happening at all is a misstep on Google’s part. Not that the whole slowing down people who use ad blockers isn’t. But this will detrimentally affect adoption of premium subscribers which I thought was the last thing they’d want. Because they obviously don’t make enough off ad revenue to support the platform. That’s part of why they push premium so hard. They need more premium subscribers. This is idiocy.

      source
    • Steve@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ha! Serves you right

      source
    • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I have premium, uBlock Origin, and Mullvad VPN. I can stream in Duck browser fine, which has built in ad blocking, but in Firefox the other day, the stream was dying every 10-30 seconds. Like it would just stop and give me a spinner. I would havr to “Copy URL at current time”, open a new tab, and paste it in to get it to go any further. I do have bad internet, but this was nuts. And then I gave up and used Duck, and it played flawlessly in their embedded player.

      Good job, Google.

      source
    • Vlyn@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      After getting premium I just switched the adblocker off for YouTube. Premium would be far too expensive if it didn’t also include YouTube Music :-/

      source
  • Somecall_metim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh no (continues to watch on freetube) anyway…

    source
    • fne8w2ah@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Revanced Extended ftw!

      source
    • aliteral@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Alternative front ends are a god send.

      source
    • McDropout@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What is freetube? (Sorry for the stupid question)

      source
    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      One of the few uYou+ users on iOS.

      source
  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I really wish government would just come in already and shatter google into a million pieces with the anti-monopoly hammer already.

    Google is far worse than AT&T ever was when it was shattered into the baby bells.

    Just gotta learn from AT&T to not let them re-congeal back together like somekind of fucked up liquid metal terminator 20+ years down the line.

    source
    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      50% of congress wants to know how the computer mouse stays alive without food.

      source
  • Dehydrated@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s why Invidious exists.

    source
  • tias@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t have an ad blocker, I just have the standard strict tracking protection enabled in Firefox. What’s more, I pay for YouTube Premium. But still they add a five-second delay every time I visit a web page. It’s infuriating.

    source
  • TWeaK@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Apparently this seems to be mainly affecting Chrome users, lol.

    source
  • 000@fuck.markets ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Don’t worry, YouTube, I won’t be using your website anymore. But my yt-dl will be ripping max quality videos by the hundreds, just for shits and giggles.

    source
  • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And this is why we use Newpipe

    source
  • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    YouTube speed has been shit ever since they stopped actually buffering.

    source
  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Watching YouTube load slowly is better than watching ads.

    source
  • zcd@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Fuck YouTube

    source
  • S_204@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Trying to use it via Firefox is pointless. I just downloaded the video and pirated. Fuck YouTube.

    source
  • ZombieMantis@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nationalize YouTube.

    Specifically, nationalize the backend, Google can keep their website. And place it in the hands of something like the UN, rather than any specific country. I hardly trust Uncle Sam any more than Google’s investors. They’ve successfully monopolized video hosting, now turn it into a public resource.

    source
  • ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good things come to those who wait (and block ads)

    source
  • aniki@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t understand how anyone can put up with youtube without premium. Every time I visit a friends house I am shocked at the level of bullshit they are ok with. I’d pay a lot more than 10 bucks.

    source
  • Crafter72@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Been using revanced, sometimes using Iceraven (ff fork) w/ ublock origin on phone, and using librewolf (another ff fork) also w/ ublock origin on desktop. So far never encountered slow down since November 2023.

    Is this slow down only on select extension issue? Although when it first happend (late 2023) I was thrown up by sudden yt not loading on my librewolf but it only happend only on single day, afterward it gone.

    source
  • net00@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I dusted off an old laptop, put debian on it, put an SSD and now I have my own invidious instance.

    No ads, no throttling, no bullshit. Google is very welcome to suck it. I’d gladly stop using youtube, but there’s no competition.

    source
  • Zummy@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I am for sure one of the smaller number of people doing this, but I watch YouTube on my TV using the TV app. As a result I always had to watch ads. I wish I could avoid them. I suppose a could watch from an alternative and then AirPlay it to my TV, but that’s about it.

    source
  • Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    User-Agent changer fixes this issue completely for me

    source
  • zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t always click on a YouTube ad, but when I do it’s a UI failure because it’s an accidental click. How much do you want to bet this crackdown is a distraction from the fact their ad system doesn’t perform as well as advertised?

    source
  • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes. You people just cost money. Pay, or find anybody service. I’m not so sure what’s confusing about this.

    Google isn’t going to use the service for free anymore.

    source
  • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Try opening a link from Gmail in Firefox or searching Google for a specific piece of information. SSDD. Fuck Google. At this point they’re in par with the evil Amazon.

    source
  • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I feel its slowing down Smarttube too, because I have to wait a few seconds for the video to start now. I don’t know if it’s a bug

    source
  • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I haven’t experienced this because I don’t log in, and haven’t since all this fuckery started a couple months ago. I have to double-click play, but that’s it. Fully loaded uBlock Origin and AdBlockPlus, no problems in browser at all.

    I keep FreeTube loaded with my subscriptions, so if I want to see what’s new I can open FreeTube and either watch there or copy the YouTube link and watch on YouTube.

    source
-> View More Comments