this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024

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YouTube started slowing video buffer with adblock enabled (old.reddit.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The best part is, no matter how terrible they make Youtube with adblock, they still can't get it as bad as Youtube without adblock.

[+] LemmyIsFantastic -53 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yet everyone here is so desperate to use it 🤣

It's like watching a sad boy be angry at his ex leaving them. I DIDN'T WANT YOU ANYWAY 🤣

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nobody wants to use YouTube without ad block

[+] LemmyIsFantastic -44 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Whatever you need to tell yourself 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's pretty obvious, isn't it? That's why people are trying to use ad block with it, or YouTube alternatives. People definitely still want to use YouTube, I think that's your point? But the relentless number of ads makes it very hard to do, which is their point - they want you to buy premium. If they added any more ads they might as well paywall the whole site.

[+] LemmyIsFantastic -28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You think fediverse is representative of the general population? You think the general population is installing an blocking? You realize how much money Google makes right? I've been yelled at for blocking ads because they were braking when people wanted to purchase something.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No, I don't. I do think Google is putting in a shit ton of ads because premium makes more money than ads do, which is represented by creators getting more money from premium users than ad supported users. They want the average person to be overwhelmed by ads and buy premium, which is the same effect as using an ad blocker.

Nobody wants YouTube with ads. That's literally the entire point.

[–] Scolding7300 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

And they wouldn't have done anything to combat ad blockers if they weren't becoming or are popular

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

They've been incredibly popular for a very long time, they're only just now doing it because it's the next lowest hanging fruit on the money tree

[–] RubberElectrons 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It unfortunately has technical videos I need to watch.

But keep being an ad-loving assclown, someone will be right along to actually love you any day now. Cheers 😊

[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah and the worst shit is its happening to me and I have goddamn youtube premium so it wouldnt be showing me ads anyway.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Guess that's your signal to unsubscribe if the premium experience is this bad. Hit Google where it hurts the most.

[+] LemmyIsFantastic -36 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's not. They are not logged in or some shit.

YT premium works great.

[–] grayman 2 points 11 months ago

I have premium and am logged in. I get the stalls. It's also a new experience. I also have to manually adjust quality to get better than squareville.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't believe this for a minute. Why would anyone trust this?

[–] LemmyIsFantastic -5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

🤷‍♂️

It's not.

You think you'd be on here and not see 40 posts of people screeching that YT is serving ads to premium users?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't know a single person who has ever paid for YouTube premium, and would consider anyone who does to be a mark. And I'm certain that, for a variety of reasons, the userbase of this place are very unlikely to use premium.

So no, I don't think I would have heard about that

[–] grayman 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Premium user here. Sorry I'm outside of your bubble. Unfortunately, there still is good reason to have it right now. At least for those in my circle.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Paying for something that adblockers and workarounds give you for free makes you a mark.

Google isn't my friend and they don't deserve my money. I'm sure "your circle" is very prestigious and hard to deceive though

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, that would explain the issues I've been having. The odd thing to me is that there's no feedback provided to let the user know that this is a response to adblock. I assumed that there were just technical problems somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I haven't had any issues with slow buffering yet, but I have experienced something different: Sometimes the video playback suddenly stops altogether in the middle and throws me out of the video completely. I suspect that an ad is supposed to be played in this particular part of the video. I have to re-start playing the video from the part where it threw me out. Sometimes this happens several times in the same video.

I use the latest Firefox in combination with uBlock Origin (also always up-to-date).

Edit: typos

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Only way I watch YouTube is with Vanced app. This is getting ridiculous though.

[–] Thcdenton 4 points 11 months ago

Looking forward to finally quitting youtube. My quality of life is gonna improve.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am a premium member but over the last week or so my YouTube videos suddenly started to take an eternity (5-10 seconds) to start playing when they were near instant before. Does YouTube assume I have an ad blocker? I have no Chrome Extensions and no deliberately installed Ad Blockers on Win 11. Going to play around with it tomorrow to see if I can determine what is going on.

[–] grayman 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have pihole and premium. I get a lot of buffer stalls too. Started recently. But they're also updating the Android app every couple weeks, so I assumed they are screwing things all up out of incompetence.

This must be some exec's hard focus right now. What a tool.

[–] yabai 1 points 11 months ago

I'm in the same boat, wondered what was up with this weird buffering that I've never had before. Guess I'll white-list YouTube ads...

[–] Carighan 1 points 11 months ago

Apparently, this time it wasn't on Youtube. Rather some users are still using AB/ABP, and there's a bug in those that affects a lot of content, not just Youtube.

[+] LemmyIsFantastic -44 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, you don't make them or creators money. You arent the customer, you are a free loader who costs them money.

Deal with it or God forbid pay.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

YouTube's greedy decisions are pulling me away from YouTube and towards the creator-owned Nebula platform. It's fairly inexpensive, I'm supporting creators and not Google, and there are no ads.

[–] Scolding7300 3 points 11 months ago

Tldr business did a video on their inckne sources, Nebula views get them much more money per view than YT. However YT is still their main income. I really hope Nebula picks up more popularity

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

I support the creators by buying merchandise and supporting Kickstarter etc. and others support using Patreon.

With those miniscule amounts Google pays to their creators (except the top 0.01%) I estimate that what I have brought is equal to 100-1000x of what they would have gotten from ads. And I'm no saint at supporting, there's people giving 100x more than me.

[–] TragicNotCute 5 points 11 months ago

Get out of here Susan, I’m not paying for premium.

[–] WormFood 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't give a fuck about Google's bottom line