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
User-Agent changer fixes this issue completely for me
So does Invidious
Problem is, it shows the internet that there id a higher share of chromium browsers.
Which is bad.You’re showing a google owned website though who cares lol.
Because most people will apply it globally and will forget about it at some point.
I wish Mozilla would add the ability to set User-Agent for the different containers they offer in Firefox with their addon. Would be sweet to set it to Chrome in my YouTube container only.
How do I learn what you’re talking about LoL. Any helpful YouTube channels?
Not the person you replied to, but I just searched for “User-Agent changer” and then installed the Firefox extension that it found. When I set it to pretend to be Windows/Chrome my Youtube tabs went back to snappy and responsive.
(link to the one I found: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/)
Thanks I’ll check that out.
Holy smokes that did the trick. Not that longer loading times were bothering me too much, (It’s still less time wasted than ads) but damn it feels nice to load smoothly again.
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.
That’s why Invidious exists.
Apparently this seems to be mainly affecting Chrome users, lol.
Well, yeah! Google controls Chrome
Yeah but what I find funny is that if people had already jumped from Chrome they probably wouldn’t be having problems.
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
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
AFAIK NewPipe parses the regular YouTube website and only extracts the useful bits.
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
YouTube revanced has also been working for me
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.
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)
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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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…
Watching YouTube load slowly is better than watching ads.
Trying to use it via Firefox is pointless. I just downloaded the video and pirated. Fuck YouTube.
If you run
mpv https://urlit will stream it from youtube and play it in mpv, without having to wait for the whole video to download first.And another win for free and open source software fellas!
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.
If I started waving little billboards in front of your face, how much would you pay me to go away?
Do you have anything to offer besides the billboard in my face? If not, you get dropped.
But muh free stuff
I dun wan it.
- Some Idiot from GoT, probably.
I was a day 1 subscriber of Google Play Music All Access, which I converted into a family plan when that was available, and was told that the rate I was paying would be grandfathered in. I didn’t like the switch to YouTube Music, but it did the job and came with ad-free YouTube, so I was okay with it.
But then they told me that they were changing the $14.99/mo I was paying to $22.99/mo despite being grandfathered in, a more than 50% increase, and I said fuck that. Unsubbed, swapped to Spotify, and never looked back.
Would I pay for just ad-free YouTube? Maybe. But not for almost $300 each year. I’m keeping Spotify, so if Google made a plan for no ads for like …$1 or $2 per month?, maybe then I’d consider going back.
The end result now though is that I just use YouTube less.
I was/am in the exact same boat, but share the subscription three ways (wife+brother) so the numbers are still somewhat favorable given our music and YouTube usage as a household.
Easy: Just use the right browser and adblocker, and you basically have premium, but without the ads they still throw at you.
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I’d happily pay for premium as I use YouTube religiously. But it’s Google so fuck them, they already process my information in order to show me ads and profit off of my data. I think that’s payment enough, so I’ll just find any free way possible to watch YouTube without ads.
so fuck them, they already process my information in order to show me ads and profit off of my data.
So you don’t have any services like Netflix, Hulu, etc? I can guarantee they do the same things in one way or another.
A couple of five second ads doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m from a generation that had no pause or fast forward on the TV before the internet. Every fifteen minutes or so you’d have near enough five minutes of ads. YouTube ads are nothing by comparison.
$10 a month isn’t a huge amount, but it’s $120 saved by the end of the year that I’d rather spend on something else.
I’m from a generation that had no pause or fast forward on the TV before the internet.
Me too, but using ublock for a while it’s easy and quick to become intolerant of ads.
I do understand the appeal but I also quite like a lot of the smaller content creators and I think they deserve to get paid.
Pirating from a corporation that makes several millions in profits is one thing, I’m not going to pick the pockets of my fellow man.
Ethically it is not so easy, you are also giving money to the evil google. The ideal is to donate directly, so they are not subject to youtube’s stingy payments or demonetizations.
I agree. But I’d rather pay my fellow man even if it means corporate fat cats are also getting a slice.
I did receive a Project Farm t-shirt as a gift which was nice, but I unfortunately don’t have the resources to subscribe to each and every patreon so I’ll watch the ads in lieu.
I’m from a generation that had state television where there were no ads at all. I liked it that way.
In the UK you have to pay the TV licence for state television, so it’s swings and roundabouts.
Exactly. Starting from the premise that these services deserve the revenue from ads is completely wrong. As advertising has grown, so has corporate greed in extracting more value from users while providing a worse service.
Starting from the premise that we owe corporations the opportunity to subject us to mental abuse for any reason is the problem. Let’s not forget what ads are and how they work.
I agree with you for the most part, but at the same time people need a way to find the things they want. There are lots of products and services that genuinely make life better, but without advertising you may never even know what you’re missing.
That position is completely in the distance behind where we are now, with the pure exploitation and manipulative marketing, but it’s still a valid point.
That’s valid.
Thank you.
My rule of thumb has always been, since I was a child: if it’s advertised on TV, it probably isn’t that good.
TV advertising is expensive. The business needs to pay for that advertising, and they also expect to profit from it. Thus, the customers have to pay for the advertising, the profits to the business for the advertising, as well as the product, and the profits to the business for the product. So, in general, if it’s advertised on TV it’s probably not worth what they want you to pay.
Recently there’s been an online therapy service that has grown massively called Better Health. It sounds really good, and content producers I like have apparently thought the same and started advertising it themselves - Behind the Bastards host Robert Evans actually voices an ad for them on his own podcast. However, I’ve also recently seen advertisements for their service on TV. Now, I’m wary, and I’m just waiting for what I think will be the inevitable controversy over their service.
So yeah, advertising has some valid purpose, but it’s also basically complete and totally open warfare. Marketing executives are probably worse than estate agents at this point. At the same time, a person just promoting their idea might not be so villainous - at least right now, who knows what they’ll do later?
I mean I had that too, but fuck ads. All my homies hate ads.
I’m from a country where we barely had ads on TV back in the day, and even now it’s nowhere near as bad as on American TV. I’ve tried watching US channels online and it’s feels like nothing but an insult. YouTube is bad enough for me.
I’m from that generation too and as soon as I moved out of my folks’ house I never subscribed to cable or watched broadcast TV because that constant onslaught of advertising was offensive and I didn’t want it in my home.
Youtube is my reminder on new browser installs to install Ublock Origin. And I saw this newest effort to block it once. Updated Ublock, restarted the browser and it was gone again.
Or just use an adblocker and save the $$
I don’t understand how anyone can put up with youtube without premium
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And still, I’m more likely to stop using YouTube than to stop using an ad blocker.
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.
That’s what they want. Get all the users they aren’t able to monetize off the platform to lower their costs.
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.
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
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.
