this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 166 points 9 months ago (10 children)

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

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 58 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Cypher@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Change your useragent to Chrome.

It breaks the detection of your adblocker… for now.

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[–] lloram239@feddit.de 109 points 9 months ago (24 children)

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.

[–] camelbeard@lemmy.world 56 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] verysoft@kbin.social 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 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 and access of it that they became a problem.

[–] Tak@lemmy.ml 19 points 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.

[–] NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 39 points 9 months ago (11 children)

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.

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[–] minibyte@sh.itjust.works 23 points 9 months ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 92 points 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.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 83 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Watching YouTube load slowly is better than watching ads.

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 75 points 9 months ago (18 children)

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

[–] muh_entitlement@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 73 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] TeoTwawki@lemmy.world 70 points 9 months ago (2 children)

"We'll make our service worse, that'll show them!"

Ok google, good luck with that.

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[–] net00@lemm.ee 46 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (17 children)

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

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

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[–] davemeech@lemmy.ca 46 points 9 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 36 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I have YouTube premium

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

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[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 43 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I wish we can fast forward to the part where Youtube completely destroys itself and a new platform takes its place so we can enjoy it for 10 years before the enshittification cycle restarts again.

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[–] Dehydrated@lemmy.world 43 points 9 months ago

That's why Invidious exists.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 42 points 9 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Thteven@lemmy.world 59 points 9 months ago

Might as well just stop paying for premium then if they're going to ding you anyway.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 9 months ago

there is no way the 5 second sleep before loading isnt anti competitive, because last i heard, unless they changed it, it only checks for the firefox user agent.

Actually insane that someone would willingly implement that.

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[–] Somecall_metim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Oh no (continues to watch on freetube) anyway....

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[–] cryptosporidium140@sh.itjust.works 37 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Why are there so many PornHub alternatives but only a handful of YouTube alternatives?

[–] IndyRap@lemmy.world 42 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Pornhub owns most of those alternatives.

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[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People dont really care where their content comes from, so long as it loads properly. But content creators dont want to migrate from the platforms they have all their followers on. If i have a decent YouTube channel that is large enough to be my primary income, I'm locked in because there is no real way to migrate all those followers over to a new platform. Nebula is the closest i think we have to a true YouTube competitor, but it's a tiny fraction of the user base and most Nebula videos are available on YouTube for free.

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[–] 000@fuck.markets 32 points 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.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 25 points 9 months ago

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

[–] CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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?

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[–] zcd@lemmy.ca 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

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