this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 191 points 10 months ago (11 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

[–] [email protected] 67 points 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Change your useragent to Chrome.

It breaks the detection of your adblocker… for now.

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[–] [email protected] 143 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 10 months ago (34 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.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago (12 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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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (8 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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[–] [email protected] 99 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (3 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

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Watching YouTube load slowly is better than watching ads.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago (25 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

Ok google, good luck with that.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 10 months ago (3 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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

The problem is that only conglomerates can eat the cost of running such a platform. Ads will be the end of free interne, that's for sure.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (9 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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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 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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[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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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[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago

That's why Invidious exists.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 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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[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (7 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Pornhub owns most of those alternatives.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 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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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (4 children)

And this is why we use Newpipe

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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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[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 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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