And still, I’m more likely to stop using YouTube than to stop using an ad blocker.
That’s what they want. Get all the users they aren’t able to monetize off the platform to lower their costs.
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.
It’s YouTube’s fault for setting the wrong expectations when they benefited from wild growth and success by being free all these years. I dare they go 100% paywalled. I know they won’t. Otherwise they can’t double dip on both premium and advertiser money. Even if they manage to go 100% paywall, it’s inevitable that they will start introducing adverts to paying customers as well.
Follow the damn train, CJ!
Ooooooh my dawg
Then I’mma leech HARDER
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.
They used the “You” as in the people, during their growth years to build their platform. Now they are going against the people since they no longer need us.
Good news: you can have the best of both by watching everything for free through piped video!
Way ahead of you. Recently got Nebula, which has dramatically reduced the amount of time I spend on YT. Besides, this way I can help also the people who make the videos. They don’t need to be so dependent on the whimsical and unpredictable nature of the algorithm and the ever changing landscape of what is or isn’t advertiser friendly on the platform.
If YT feels like further cranking up the enshittification dial, I say, bring it on. I’m ready to drop my watch time even lower than it currently is.
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.
Ha! Serves you right
I have YouTube premium
Wow, so you pay them and they still screw you? Glad that’s a product I’ll never buy then!
I have YouTube premium and an adblocker and I don’t have this problem. I’m skeptical that it’s related.
I have YouTube premium and an adblocker and I don’t have this problem. I’m skeptical that it’s related.
I too am a YouTube premium customer, and my video performance is horrible lately.
Funny enough, on my living room smart TV YouTube app my performance has been bad as well, even though I am logged in to my premium YouTube account.
Something is going on, and it does effect some (at least) premium customers.
Same, YT Premium, Firefox, ad blocker, no issues with streaming.
So, since writing the above I’ve been having issues with YouTube. I’ve been connected to my VPN, so perhaps that’s part of it (by which I mean Google slowing it down, the VPN doesn’t noticeably slow down any other sites).
I tried deactivating my ad blocker, but it hasn’t made a difference. I’ll try more stuff to see if I can figure it out.
Wasn’t that exactly how the adblock blocks went out in the first place? Only a few areas at a time were affected.
Anecdotally at best. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you’re making a conclusion based on something one person said.
I know, right? But I suppose their reasoning is that my ads are also blocked across the rest of their ecosystem, my subscription isn’t covering those losses.
Still though, a model that requires that customers look at something they don’t want to nor will engage with smells like failure.
I’m generally okay with the idea of “you can get it for free and we’ll include ads to pay for it, or you can pay instead”.
Where I’m definitely not okay is “you can pay, and we’ll include ads anyway.”
The sick twist is that I use Ublock Origin and won’t ever pay for YouTube premium and I haven’t experienced even the slightest issue streaming videos on YouTube. 😂
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.
I can’t remember what video I watched that talked about the unsustainabilty and likely the late stages of an ad revenue driven internet content model, and this situation reeks of that.
I don’t know what new paradigm might replace it if this is the case, but the current model feels like it’s absolutely failing.
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 :-/
uBlock Origin works on YouTube Music, too.
If you want to throw a few bucks at the people providing you a service, then donate to an ad blocker for helping make the Internet a safer, better, and more user-friendly place. …not the big fuckers like YouTube who are contributing to the enshitification of the entire web.
Ublock doesn’t accept donations
While uBlock would be most deserving of a donation imo, there are others that do accept. Even if it’s an ad blocker you don’t actively use, you’d still be supporting a developer who’s using their time and skills to improve the web.
Donating to no one would be better than paying YouTube.
YouTube already has ways to block users with adblock. They just haven’t fully rolled it out yet.
Lately they blocked playing videos when I had uBlock Origin running, but it was just a warning I could click away. They might also slow down page loading and playback.
YouTube has the ability to lock users with adblock out, they are just very careful about using it. Mostly starting with trials in smaller countries and getting more bold over time.
I have premium, uBlock Origin, and Mullvad VPN. 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 have 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.
If it happens again, I’ll try disabling uBlock Origin on YouTube and see if it improves.
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
how do those youtube clients work? i thought YouTube was very closed source
AFAIK NewPipe parses the regular YouTube website and only extracts the useful bits.
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…
No expert but I believe they access the API directly.
No,it’s exactly parser. https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor
Or downloading videos to watch later? Does Plex recognize YouTube videos?
but won’t it be hassle to follow that?
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.
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.
YouTube revanced has also been working for me
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.
Change your useragent to Chrome.
It breaks the detection of your adblocker… for now.
Is it possible to change the user agent just for specific websites? Do you have a recommendation?
yes, I use User-Agent Switcher by Erin Schlarb
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.
Yarr harr, it’s the pirate life for us!
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Yes. You people just cost money. Pay, or find a new service. I’m not so sure what’s confusing about this.
Google isn’t going to let you use the service for free anymore.
Edit: Reading comprehension seems to be at an all time low. None of this has to do with you liking YouTube or not. Nobody cares if you don’t like Google’s data farming. It’s 100% irrelevant.
Thank you for your concern, but I have other ways of avoiding YouTube’s ads and associated punishments.
Neat. None of you really understand the point or can read.
Don’t expect YouTube to cater to you people who just steal 🤷♂️
Whats so complicated?
It is sad that it took me so long but you’re a troll. 100%.
You are a fine example of a troll. Well played.
👌👍 it’s amazing to me how many people can’t read and have turned this into a complicated and personal thing
Google is already making millions by profiling its users and stealing their data. All these YT changes are not caused by them losing money, but by them not growing enough to please their (multi-millionaires) investors.
(1) I’m not shedding any tears for a corporation that’s big enough to have more money that I’ll ever see in ten lifetimes.
(2) I’m not paying for a “Premium” experience to allow them to keep profiling me (and thus gain more money). They are already gaining money off me, they don’t need my premium subscription.
(3) You should stop arguing in favour of exploitative big corporations that don’t even know you and are probably actively exploiting you in this very moment.
What does any of that have to with what I said? Great, you don’t like yt, good for you. Who is asking you to shed a tear?
YT doesn’t want freeloaders. Pay up, see ads, or play cat and mouse avoiding them.
I’m not a freeloader because Google is already making a profit off me by profiling me. They are just being greedy and asking for more. If you are happy donating your hard-earned money to the trillion-dollars corporation that’s exploiting you, good for you. I am a sane individual and I’d rather put that money to good use. In fact, by donating to the WWF, I’m spending less money yearly than a YT premium subscriber, and I’m making someone happy that deserves it more than Google’s sleazy investors.
So you go into restaurants and demand half priced food? The price is the price. Pay it out deal with Google making your videos slow. I’m really not sure how all of you are turning this a value thing. It’s utterly irrelevant.
Your argument falls flat the moment you realize an alternative to YT doesn’t exist because all these bit corporations have spent years either starving off or buying the competition, and they are now happily enjoying the monopoly they have created.
I don’t expect Google to ever cater to me, and I fully expect them to keep their war going against AdBlock. It’s their job to make more money, after all. But the point is, it’s their job, not mine. I’ll keep doing what I think I rightfully deserve, which is, watch a few videos without the hassle of ads provided by the big corporation that has taken my data without my consent, sold it to the highest bidder, and made a fuckload of money off it.
Oh so tiktok isn’t real and competing with YT? And twitch is just in my imagination? And I guess the curiosity stream is fake too!
I’m confused about what you’re trying to say, because none of those are YT alternatives.
TikTok is centered on short videos. Twitch is a platform for streamers, mainly for video game content creators. Curiosity Stream is a platform hosting professional documentaries and science shows, it’s great but it has nothing to do with the amateurish nature of YT content.
All of those cater to a specific niche of YT (YT shorts, video game let’s play, and science channels, respectively), but there’s a huge chunk of content that doesn’t appear on any of those services, but is present and thriving on YT.
YT doesn’t want freeloaders
Nobody is a freeloader on Youtube (or any other Google app)
If you’re blocking ads you are
That assuming that they don’t harvest any data.
Irrelevant.
Fine, I understand. You think that your personal data and preferences have no value for Google (or any other service).
Good for you.
Is your “you people” targeted at the ones using Adblock?
If so, here’s another approach; If YouTube actually had a decent ‘premium’ without all the unnecessary “features” in it and the price wasn’t so unreasonable high. People might have paid for it.
In my country YouTube Premium costs €12/monthly which is €144/yearly and for what? Unnecessary features and to block advertisements while still having in-video advertisements (sponsors). No thank you.
I will go with uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock.
People love premium. Let’s not confuse you and lemmys average user with the general public.
$18 a month for family streaming + music is a bargain.
Also, that’s all great that you use tools to get around it. My point is stop bitching about it or acting like Google is evil for blocking people who refuse to pay 🤷♂️
$18 a month for family streaming + music is a bargain.
Wow your brain really has been taken hostage hasn’t it?
YouTube is a terrible music platform.
YouTube videos aren’t worth that much.
If I’m paying for streaming video content, I prefer to pay the creators directly than let YouTube take an outsize cut.
YouTube has hundreds of times the reach of any other comparable service. They’re milking their monopoly. They can bite a dick.
But you don’t pay them directly. Hardly anybody does, except YouTube and whatever midroll sponsor they can hack a deal with. That’s WHY content creators insisted on paydays through YouTube to begin with and why YouTube is trying to make enough money to pay them all and look profitable.
But I do pay the ones I value directly.
Most Creators have communities where you can voice that desire if they don’t give you the information outright. Some do it through having companies of their own. Merch, coffee, and alcohol are common salespoints. JackSepticeye has a coffee brand and shares a clothing brand with Markiplier. Phillip De Franco also has a coffee brand and a clothing brand. Devin Stone (LegalEagle) doesn’t, but he’s part of the following push:
Some are on other platforms that more directly reward the content creators, like Nebula. This allows them to have a Patreon-like model where some content is publicly available to drum up interest while other deeper or more long-form content exists behind a paywall. Communicate in communities with your favorite creators to find out how you can show them your support more specifically.
I know. I pay the creators I value by means such as that.
👌👍🤣
I don’t generally agree with the corporate side of the argument, but financial support for the platform itself has to come from somewhere.
I’d agree that people love the tag-name ‘’Premium’’ therefore might pay for it. I’d also say tech-illiterate people will pay for it because of no knowledge.
However most of the general public do find the price-tag absurd.
Also your ‘’€18/monthly is a bargain’’ just makes me think, I’m arguing with a teenager or at least someone who does not pay for themselves (a friend or family member pays for most of things, I suppose). €18/monthly is €216/yearly, that money can be spent elsewhere, important things (food, education and bills).
Not only that you are essentially saying ‘’Hey, Google. You the one who already owns most of the things, you the owner who’s already A billionaire and have immense data of its users – take more money of me’’. Google is essentially evil in the sense that their track-record isn’t clean. Their ways to gain profit/revenue is not really morally nor ethically right. They can just do it because they are one of the biggest companies in the world.
I personally do not care if YouTube blocks itself for me, that just means – I will find another way to gain access to music and videos. There will always be ways, always.
I love how people who disagree with your value assessment are all technology illiterate. Just hand wave away all your problems 🤣.
You’re arguing with a 40 year old with commits to Apache, Python, CNCF, NGinx, TF, and more. So again, your hand waving away because of a different opinion is quite off base.
To address the comment, none of that matters at all and is irrelevant. Yes you can keep on stealing the content and you shouldn’t be shocked every time Google finds a new way to make it more of a pain in the ass. I’m not sure why that’s a difficult concept for most of the readership here.
What in the world is motivating you to justify YouTube’s corpo enshittification? If you’re telling the truth, you’re easily old enough to realise that Baron Google isn’t going to share his wealth with useful idiots. Why would you spend your weekend extolling overpriced subscription services and berating ad avoiders on Google’s behalf?
God forbid I find value provided by successful companies. THE HORROR!
But why the finger wagging? I get that you’d drop in and say “I prefer to pay for premium rather than play cat-and-mouse with Google” but that point was made long ago.
“Lets just say that person is tech-illiterate without actual knowledge about the particular person - because I have no counterargument”
That what I just read from you.
I’ll just block and ignore you, you’ve proven to be a total troll. Wasted enough of my time and energy on you. Unfortunately.
ETA: if you’re truly 40 y/o, your behavior doesn’t show it. You are behaving like a teenager with the same mentality/mindset as one.
Stealing is entirely different than using an AdBlock. With your “knowledge” in technology, you should know that by now. The question of “is piracy stealing” is a whole another topic which can be argued to infiniteness.
👌👍
I agree with you. Google is a company and so will do as much as they can to provide as little and to profit as much as possible.
if one wants to use their products, they have to play their game. by either paying (with money and or data, regardless if it’s overpriced) or “cheating” around that - as we do with literally everything else in the free market system, to many other monopolistic shady companies
what’s interesting to see around here is this sense of self entitlement, as if Google owed them anything, and of naivety, as if a company would ever provide a service (which is very costly) for absolutely free. video streaming is not an essential service and didn’t exist until very recently
it may come as a shock, but you don’t need to use any service such as YouTube to survive and you only do because you want to and find value in it (whether to learn new skills or watch people reacting to cats)
the underlying problem here which all of you are actually mad about is the system where technology and knowledge belongs to giant hoarding dragons instead of the people who made it. that’s where we all should be focusing our energy on.
in the meantime, we just keep cheating… and if the cheats fail, we move on to other things
One rational person in a sea of anger.
Yes. You people just cost money. Pay, or find a new service. I’m not so sure what’s confusing about this.
I already pay, with my data. They stop to harvest data, I pay the service.
Google isn’t going to let you use the service for free anymore.
And I am not going to pay to be the product.
You 👏 don’t 👏 dictate 👏 the 👏 terms 👏 and 👏 price 👏👏.
My God, you people 🤦♂️.
Maybe not the price, but the terms yes, at least partially, which are that I use an adblocker or I don’t use the service. Or pay for a service in which I am the customer and not the product.
And I am really curious to see how Google can force me to use Youtube on its terms when I can simply stop using it.
What a crazy round about she desperate way to describe being forced off a service lol
Following your logic, I am forced off every service I don’t use because I don’t need it. Interesting.
👌👍
They had premium light which gave you just a no ad experience and nothing else for about $7/mo. Totally reasonable, I was happy to pay it. Then right at the same time they started going nuclear on ad blocking, they killed that plan and forced everyone to move to a plan that costs about 70% more and added a bunch of stuff I didn’t ask for and will never use. They had those added services available already prior to that change. If I had wanted them I’d already be subscribing. This was just a greedy cash grab.
They’ll just keep jacking the price up and decreasing the quality of service and mining your data and annoying you with ads and algorithmic bullshit just up until they can’t anymore and it stops being optimally profitable. A lot of people will just put up with it, but they lost me as a customer.
Correct. Also irrelevant. All of it.
It is honestly embarrassing as shit spending 3 hours of your time on a weekend arguing with like a dozen people in defense of one of the highest market cap megacorps in the world. Get a hobby dude.
I assure you it’s been like 30m of time between shits. If you are angry enough to be checking the history at least get it right.
Please tell google then, if we allow ads, then dont shoot at us 10 unskippable ads.
1 ad per video < 10 minutes. 2 ads per video > 10 < 20. 4 ads per video > 20 +2 ads per extra 10 minutes
Ads maximum length of 30 seconds. Ads should be monitored for anything illegal or harmfull for the viewer ( Scams, Malicious websites … )
If google chose to do this instead of every minutes 2 unskippable ads ( or soon 5 ) i would think, there would be less adblock users on youtube. And with that you support more your favorite creator ( if you want to really support him, just give him some bucks on patreon or so ). Or just suggest him to go to any other video hosting website ( like peertube ) then users will have 0 ads and you can get support over donations.
None of any of that matters.
If you don’t like it you can move along. That’s what is being said.
We can simultaneously move along and criticize their decisions as exploitative double-dipping on their users. Criticizing them thankfully doesn’t require a subscription, or even an account.
In a nutshell a ad blocker is just a form of protest.
.
Then don’t be shocked when they start putting up walls. It’s shocking to me how many people take this as some kind of right and act indignant and make up every excuse under the sun to justify why YouTube should cater to pirates 🤣
Oh, go ahead and let them place YouTube behind the paywall. We need some new players in this area.
I’m the product in the current YouTube business model, why should I care about their profits?
Also I promise I won’t be whining if YouTube shuts down. I will be celebrating. For now, as they hold monopoly, I will watch them however I wish and help anyone else to do the same.
- Firefox + uBlock - desktop
- ReVanced, NewPipe - phone
- SnartTube - TV
I never said you should care 🤷♂️
I said you shouldn’t be shocked when freeloaders continue to be locked down.
Lol jokes on you. They wouldn’t dare make it completely paywalled.
👌
Ad blocking is not piracy. That’s like saying that muting ads on broadcast TV is piracy. Get the boot out of your mouth.
You are very much stealing the right to distribution and revenue for creators as well as YouTube.
It’s amazing to see folks still try this tired argument.
You are very much stealing
No, no you are not. Words have meanings.
Yes. You don’t believe rights can be stolen?
They can pry the mute button from my cold dead heads.
Is that a part of the terms of use? Do you honestly believe that would be enforced under US law? Irrelevant then.
Usually a remote is standard issue with a TV, most(all?) of them have a mute button.
I bet you think “right click, inspect, delete <element>” is “piracy” too.
If you’re breaking the terms of service to access the service for free absolutely. People have a right to distribute their content as they see fit within the confines of the law. You’re stealing that right. You’d all lose your shit if companies just started ignoring GPL and you all certainly would be calling it theft.
And yet they were perfectly okay with providing the service for free while they were still busy starving off the competition. No tears for Google shall be shed here.
What? They are exactly a billion video and comment streaming platforms.
And I’m not telling you to have years for Google. I’m highlighting that the free ride is over. Pay or use a different service.
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I will download videos then. I refuse to not use an adblocker on the modern internet.
Pirate everything, it’s the only way to show greedy corporations the content should be free.
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This is why
privacyPIRACY is justified. The only way is not to pay!Edit: 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Free wouldnt work either. nobody would make any content.
Except it was free, and people did make content.
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?
My worry with all this is that they might say fuck it and put DRM for all YouTube videos which would block attempts to download the videos. Not make it impossible as seen with streaming services but not as trivial as now…
Can someone create (or does it already exist?) an app that plays the videos in the background, remove the ads and then let you playback the whole video ad-free? Sort of like you did back in the VHS-days…
i feel like this has been going on for months now no? or maybe it’s the fact that my laptop is 11 years old now lol
YouTube speed has been shit ever since they stopped actually buffering.
Anything better than listening 3 songs and getting 5 ads.
Stop being trash youtube. Be normal like you once were and i would actually consider a paid subscription IF i get to fully exclude shorts on my side of the platform.
Wasn’t this confirmed to be an AdBlock (Plus) bug? https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919
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.
And open it up to the world, too. Google might get to keep their website, but everyone else can access the same database, too. May the best front end win.
Good things come to those who wait (and block ads)
Also I’d rather wait without ads than wait with ads, like what’s the point?
If you wait in front of an empty screen it’s much more pleasant than being in front of visual and audio spam drilling into your head.
It’s of course true that YouTube can’t support a website for free, so it would be the correct thing to watch some ads: problems arising are that (A) some ads are malicious (either as misinformation or as viruses or as links to those), (B) they’ve grown from a reasonable amount to an unreasonable one and often interrupted at the worst possible time)
