YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads
After yet another crackdown on ad-blockers, YouTube users are noticing videos that load slowly and direct them to a support page about turning off ad-blocking extensions.
Thanks uBO team I don't even know yt is trying anything
Using uBO, but have noticed a slightly longer delay of a few seconds between hitting play and the video starting, but I can deal with that over being forced to watch 30s of ads.
Honestly it just felt like youtube's servers were shittimg themselves again, so I baely even register it as a real interruption.
There have been periods where one of my accounts was getting an ad-length black screen with buffering throbber (I hate that name) and, the most recent time, it was accompanied by a pop-up asking me if I'd like to find out why that was happening. Yeah. I know why that's happening, thanks.
Then that stopped happening again. Either they gave up or UBo have worked around it somehow. Never ending arms race.
This happens to me too, especially when it’s a computer that I haven’t used in a while, which makes me think that yeah it’s the arms race. It stops once my browser is open long enough for uBO to update
It’s the people that make blocking lists that we should thank. I don’t think uBO makes anything themselves
Google will never get a cent out of me, willingly.
If it gets annoying enough, and FreeTube stops working, I'll find something better to do with my time.
Maybe people will start torrenting youtube rips if they somehow manage to kill ad blockers.
Yep, lol. Same mindset here. Although I doubt YouTube will ever do a hard cut on piracy. That would lead to a major decline in viewership and wouldn't look good to shareholders.
They've been doing this for close to 20 years. Ever since shortly after google bought them.
You know the people who created youtube are all part of the same OG corp/group that gave rise to the monsters who have created the hell we currently live in.
The PayPal mafia.
Thiel, musk, howry, Chen(yt), wong(reddit),Hoffman(LinkedIn)
If you are a content creator please consider upload your content on other video platforms too.
The trouble with that is that there is barely any money outside of YouTube.
That's because of missing views though mostly, no? The ad revenue isn't big anyways I think.
Idk how one gets content on Nebula, but I wish more creators would join. Ik nebula isn’t Fediverse like PeerTube, but I still really like it and think it’s worth the $30/year to not get ads.
Being a majority artist owned co-op is in the fedi spirit. I know Rebecca Watson is crushing it on Mastodon, are there any other nebula/fedi crossover creators you’d recommend?
Then support them monetarilly
Bro those Mf should’ve started doing that YEARS ago like…
If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.
If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?
It's a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked "no vids for u" message, you'd get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being "buggy" and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no "smoking gun" blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.
The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.
I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.
If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day
I've been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?
They are probably trying to find that spot where it's just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.
If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.
If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.
So you don't find something else to do.
If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).
i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.
That's probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.
Oh no! You are going to make your platform work like ass? And you expect us to do mental gymnastics in such a way that instead of blaming you (you know the one that has control over the platform) we blame uBlock? The same uBlock that has made using your platform bearable for many years, to the point that I will sit in silence with the screen off instead of watch with ads?
I think even if you make us wait a min before playing the video most would take that over an ad.
Don't care, still better than the ads.
I'll sit for 2 minutes in front of a black screen and it'll still be better than 45 seconds of ads.
Did exactly that early days of hulu.
Same. That ole "You seem to be using a proxy service" text served as a nice break 🙌
And i stop using youtube when my adblock doesnt work. fuck em
YouTube might just go fuck itself!
If it takes too long to load I just use yt-dlp to download the video or whole playlist and watch it later. Do I care that it's putting additional strain on YouTube's servers? Indeed, I'm devastated and overtaken with guilt 😂 These are tears of regret, I swear 😂
yt-dlp is fucking awesome and it will be a sad day if it ever gets taken down or blocked.
And as an added bonus yt-dlp defaults to maximum quality! Even more strain on YouTube servers!
For about the last 3 years I've been hearing about YouTube cracking down on ad blockers. Not once has it affected my. Ublock still stops ads on the browser. Revanced stops em on the phone.
Their attacks are never a global rollout, you somehow dodged them all! Lucky.
FWIW, I've been using ublock origin, too, and it's mostly worked fine.
Until a few days ago, when Youtube started detecting it and showing down the site and telling me I can only watch 3 more videos before it cuts me off. That hasn't happened yet, but I definitely feel the slowdown. I'm hoping a ublock upgrade will fix it soon.
I've been getting them over the last week or so on both Chrome at work (Ublock lite) and Firefox at home (UBlock Origin). It's just a popup telling me adblockers aren't allowed and then a second smaller popup saying something to the effect of "loading issues?" with a link as the video delays playing for a few seconds.
Stop feeding me dog shit AI videos about a condom delivery boy who has to deliver some to a hotel only to find his girlfriend cheating on him and maybe I’ll stop blocking ads you fuck sticks
Condom delivery service you say? 🤔
Seems like a great ad
Please support peertube sites - here's a list of instances to find something matching your interests: https://joinpeertube.org/instances
Relevant as well:
They've added two more days to the current donation request https://support.joinpeertube.org/en/
"Might"? They're already doing it.
YouTube in Firefox with Ublock Origin is getting throttled down to 1500kbps. I can't watch anything above 720p on my desktop anymore (with gigabit internet).
YouTube ReVanced on mobile and SmartTube Next on the TV still thankfully work without issues.
I was watching 4k yesterday. 🤞 Ublock has it sorted by the time they find me.
where do you get your YT Revanced from?
https://revanced.app/ is the only official source (along with the GitHub, of course.)
This does not happen on my Firefox. 4k no problemo with 3rd world country internet.
They do it to groups of people at a time to prevent mass anger and hysteria. Don't worry you'll eventually get throttled too.
Not only that but the bit-rate as of late seems horrendous, 1080 looks more like 720 or lower with artifacts all over the place.
Yes, some video have a 1080p Premium high nitrate quality option that you need to pay for. It's just the standard quality, but the free 1080p is now shitty.
It's very sad there isn't anything that can even remotely compare to YouTube at this time. All the content is there, can't get it elsewhere. At least with Firefox, ublock and SponsorBlock, it's bearable.
Oh, did you not pay for YouTube Extra Premium Plus for the enhanced bit rate?
Bloody peasant...
And really you're just paying extra for the original 1080 bitrate. What a fucking scam, like I'd pay for that crap.
Artificial scarcity so you'll pay their dumb subscription fee
Jokes on them, I already watch videos at 0.5x
Thats a good one for 0.5x (soup store)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fNcYtcVn-8k
how did you turn those anime boys into New York City grandpas, that was amazing
That's a lot of effort for a website that mostly offers background noise.
YouTube can die in a fire and take its fucking premium with it.
I mean if they get forced ads I would understand, but at the current state I would say there are too many.
If YouTube premium was less expensive it would be a great in-between
I personally use YT premium and music by faking my country. Getting it for like 3.50€/month feels like a great deal
they also slow down videos if I use Firefox.
YouTube can eat my ass.
Really? Guess it hasn’t hit me yet. I use Firefox and haven’t noticed any slowdowns.
I use an old outdated version of FF because the new v3 google bullshit isn't supported for my os version.
it was working fine one day and then a week after the official "cut off" it just slowed down and dropped quality.
it's ok though. I don't mind switching the quality and waiting for videos to buffer.
Youtube works a lot better for me after switching from Firefox to Librewolf.
"Might"... it's introducing an artificial delay when loading videos.
Can't slow down videos I've downloaded to my Plex server. 👍🏽
No, but Plex can. I'd migrate to Jellyfin if you can as Plex started paywalling some of their services.
As it currently stands, my Plex setup costs me nothing because all I do it stream from my server to my Apple TV. So it works well enough for me.
That explains the "are you experiencing interruptions" message I keep getting these days, though I kinda expected this.
If you press on the "learn more" button, it brings you to a page that ends with "try disabling extensions, such as adblockers".
They will never be happy with how much money they squeeze out of it. When people are watching videos that are 99% ads and the content is limited to two alternating pixels they will still find a way to further optimize their profit-taking. Nothing is ever good enough for the hyper-capitalist; product managers are a disease.
Eventually they'll start demanding you run their crypto-miners in order to watch a video.
meh, its still not inconvenient enough to pay 10+ dollars a month. The state of adverts online is so egregious that I would probably sooner stop watching Youtube than pay or put up with ads.
Nebula's getting better and I spend more time there now than on YouTube. Happy that YouTube is working hard to encourage this transition.
I wish the videos were longer than 8 min on nebula.
Philosophy tube and jet lagged are both longer than 8 minutes, I think nilered is on there as well and is definitely longer than 8 minutes.
There's a ton of content that's much longer. There's no 8-minute limitation.
I'll never go there. Paid is a no way situation.
It's not for everyone, but I think it's reasonable to pay for a platform that pays its content creators fairly. I spend a lot of things watching videos, and even though my income is limited, some kind of payment for the service makes sense.
I don't mind blocking ads on YouTube because they used unfair practices (endless resources from Google) to destroy the competition and become the only video provider. They put us in a corner and deserve to be put in one too.
YouTube was lagging to play vids the other day now i wonder if it was A B testing. screw off YouTube. 10 ads for a 20 minute video isn't normal and never will be. also the ads pause if you aren't watching them. wtf? as always I expect uBlock Origin to get around this
And this is different from the usual YouTube jank how, exactly? I can't block ads on the YouTube TV app and it's a buggy mess and I have no idea why one of the major tech companies in the world allowed that to happen.
You can block ad on tv by side loading smarttube
On LG WebOS, the Homebrew Store has an Ad-free YouTube app that works well too.
How desperate can you be to put yourself out of business?
That’s great! I spend too much time on yt, it’ll break me of my addiction and I’ll do something else besides passive consumption.
Having to wait with a black screen before the video starts is completely acceptable to me.
Having to watch Ads is not.
They've already tried this.
We've already sidestepped it.
It's just going to keep on going like this till a viable alternative shows up.
How? I've been noticing buffering the last few days with 1080p60 videos and up even using the suggested app version in Revanced.
I'm trying very, VERY hard to pound the correct knowledge into my brain to be able to switch my freelance business services away from Google to something like Proton Unlimited.
Leaving the Google ecosystem will literally make me lose work, but man, this shit has gotta stop
The problem is, nothing short of NA and EU governmental intervention will force Google to stop being such a nefarious, monopolistic, antitrust piece of shit. They're just so utterly ubiquitous for Western businesses. You cannot have a small business* and hope to be successful without partaking in either Google or Facebook/Meta's ad services. TikTok was becoming a huge threat to both those companies and look how viciously they were attacked.
The whole thing is beyond fucked, man. Kudos to you for trying to break free for your business, but I feel like you'll just be fucking yourself in the long run.
Edit in advance: I should clarify that there will of course be exceptions where a small business can be successful just fine without advertising, but for those that rely on being discovered on a larger scale versus purely local, it is essential.
Agree with this. For my business, and most customer facing ones honestly, Google is how people discover you. They are the modern day Yellow Pages. You don’t exist on Google and you may as well not exist. It sucks but they have that much of a stranglehold. This is why everyone is shitting themselves over Google using AI (it’s harder/unknown how to game).
Depending on which services you want to replace, Nextcloud might also be worth a look. There are quite a few hosted options available by Hetzner and others.
FYI: Depending on your politics, you may also want to avoid Proton.
Youtube acting like it has anything to offer aside slop and people who think they're philosopher kings because they play video games.
Youtube acting like it has anything to offer
This is weapons-grade copium, there is no other platform with even 1% of the content on YouTube.
Sounds like projection but hey, you do you, it's not as if we can learn from video games right
Stop using it completely then, and we’ll see if that’s the case
Ai slop and right wing propaganda, copaganda and military propaganda . The MSMs are considered rw propaganda
we live in a neoliberal gorgon dystopia
You said it hombre😅
Only thing I'm getring at the moment is waiting up to like 30s until the video starts, I'il take that over an ad that long any day.
Oh they already do as of this week. But I am sure it‘s only temporary like last time and even then it‘s better than being served an ad. Google won‘t win this feud.
I pay for YouTube premium so that I can leave the app and listen to videos. I still get ads even though I’m paying. I don’t think there’s a single surefire way to avoid them.
Get Revanced or Newpipe or something like that. You get the same benefits you're paying for, plus many that you aren't, and it's all for free. Not only that, but you're not giving you're money to Google.
Newpipe may be of interest to you.
Use Firefox + ublock origin.
Start the video, get out of the app/lock you phone, then swipe down and click on 'play' on the media controls.
This works on andriod, unsure about ios.
and i might just stop using youtube. does youtube think there aren't other options?
What options? Where can I find stuff about fixing my motorcycle? Oceanliners? Deep Space documentaries? Fixing dieselinjectors in my car etc?
one option
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5bbdku
hell of a lot less censorship, and better video quality there as well.
Most of those things are better without videos anyways. So much wasted time to get to the point.
As for documentaries... Are good ones actually on YouTube?
makertube.net, youtube is mask off at this point
Time to pin Odysee and Peertube in my browser even though I pay for YT Premium (only $2 per month here in BD).
Holy crap that’s cheap! Honestly, I’d pay that.
Yeah. Spotify also has similar pricing. I bought YT Premium as it includes both YouTube and YouTube Music.
Ads on youtube are getting even more stupid. Does anyone get those ads about "procastinations" and "ADHD"? It starts off with some songs like "Procastination isnt your fault....." and some dolls dancing? So annoying
Haven't seen ads in 10 years, people actually use the internet without ublock?
So annoying
Those two words describe about every ad on youtube.
USE PORNHUB, Start uploading your content there.
YouTube might bite me
The banned my ip. Been looking at alternatives
How they ban you? They aren't like reddit Nazis
They probably overused yt-dlp and are now required to fill a captcha + log in to an account.
Must have been temporary. Pipepipe displayed a message saying ~"youtube has blocked this ip", but it's working now.
it already happened, it takes few seconds to star the video, a popup comes upa nd says, "whats slowing your video down"
Reminder, Newgrounds is still here.
A previous version of uBlock Origin (1.64.1b4) seems to work perfectly on Firefox, just in case.
Dang, thanks. I read the post, thought it wasn't happening to me, and I just realized that the start of some videos is being throttled. The more ya know 🌈
