643
YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads (www.pcworld.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
210 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 88 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 224 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Thanks uBO team I don't even know yt is trying anything

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 113 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Using uBO, but have noticed a slightly longer delay of a few seconds between hitting play and the video starting, but I can deal with that over being forced to watch 30s of ads.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There have been periods where one of my accounts was getting an ad-length black screen with buffering throbber (I hate that name) and, the most recent time, it was accompanied by a pop-up asking me if I'd like to find out why that was happening. Yeah. I know why that's happening, thanks.

    Then that stopped happening again. Either they gave up or UBo have worked around it somehow. Never ending arms race.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    This happens to me too, especially when it’s a computer that I haven’t used in a while, which makes me think that yeah it’s the arms race. It stops once my browser is open long enough for uBO to update

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 150 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Google will never get a cent out of me, willingly.

    If it gets annoying enough, and FreeTube stops working, I'll find something better to do with my time.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I have already started finding peertube replacement channels.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Please share!

    I’m happy I am finding some people on Nebula but being a payed service, it’s doomed to eventually show ads.

    I now watch Climate Town and City Nerds on Nebula. I wish Dr Becky would move. I love her videos.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • [–] 60 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.

    If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 22 child comments
    •
  • [–] 88 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    It's a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked "no vids for u" message, you'd get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being "buggy" and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no "smoking gun" blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.

    The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you're visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you're adblocking.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.

    If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I've been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In the ultimate, you'd need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.

    In worst case, you can't start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.

    And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.

    Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn't line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn't line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like "I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure" that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.

    No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don't want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn't exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.

    The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You'll have to watch out for that one on your own.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    They are probably trying to find that spot where it's just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.

    I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can't be skipped

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.

    Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    i added 2-3 other adblockers

    Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.

    If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Oh no! You are going to make your platform work like ass? And you expect us to do mental gymnastics in such a way that instead of blaming you (you know the one that has control over the platform) we blame uBlock? The same uBlock that has made using your platform bearable for many years, to the point that I will sit in silence with the screen off instead of watch with ads?

    I think even if you make us wait a min before playing the video most would take that over an ad.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [+] -13 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I would prefer an ad 🤷 if it doesn’t last a stupid amount of time

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [+] 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Unless we have some serious alternatives, that won't happen anytime soon

    Video hosting is really expensive. Every service running for free will eventually enshitify and turn out similar, because there's no such thing as free massive servers

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Peertube has already delivered the sustainable model: creators host their own videos and viewers assist distribution.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Who pays for the servers? Because if even big platforms like Signal sometimes struggle to pay the bills, in part because they spend a lot on their servers, then it’ll be dozens of times worse with video hosting

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Content creators. It's hard to host everyone's videos, and it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary, as it prevents new entrants. It's not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted). It becomes harder when you suddenly become popular, a situation which Peertube explicitly compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers, which scales with popularity.

    Signal makes it's own bed like YouTube by being a single centralised server for everyone. Nobody ever asks "who pays for the servers" when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    It’s not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted).

    Do you really expect more than even 5% of all youtube channels to do it? You have high hopes.

    compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers

    I believe it's done in a kinda P2P way? Didn't really check, but wouldn't that just not work with NAT internet connections, which many people have because that's just more secure this way? Also, bad for privacy.

    Using a TURN server would also add huge costs so it's basically like hosting your own server

    Nobody ever asks “who pays for the servers” when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

    I don't so I wouldn't, but if I was, I would be wondering, as I always do. Anyways, I believe XMPP doesn't store stuff and only transmits, and Matrix doesn't store things forever (and doesn't store videos like YT), and the main instance is funded by donations, and smaller instances are just pretty small and have media wiped when needed

    it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary

    That's the POV of people in !technology@lemmy.world or selfhosted. Most people can't be bothered with this shit and are pretty tech illiterate. Some don't want to waste even a minute. And that's the case of the very vast majority of people on the internet.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Just to be clear before I respond to the rest of this comment, my position is that Peertube solves the sustainability problem and in no way am I suggesting Peertube will replace YouTube

    I do not expect the vast majority of channels to survive the end of YouTube, as is normal for any paradigm shift.

    P2P is completely achievable using NAT Hole Punching. I have no clarity on if Peertube is doing this but since there's already a trusted server involved it would be silly not to.

    In a hypothetical, unlikely future where YouTube dies and people generally move to Peertube, I expect the majority of content creators to pay small fees to have instances host their videos. I expect small, free but restricted instances will continue to be the home for amateur videographers as they are today. The more technical folk will likely self host, and groups of like minded creators will pool efforts to run group specialist instances (not unlike Nebula).

    Frankly the most likely scenario is YouTube dies and everyone starts posting videos to Instagram or Tiktok or something equivalently anti user.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (-1 replies)
    • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Don't care, still better than the ads.

    I'll sit for 2 minutes in front of a black screen and it'll still be better than 45 seconds of ads.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [–] 77 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They've been doing this for close to 20 years. Ever since shortly after google bought them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • [–] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    If it takes too long to load I just use yt-dlp to download the video or whole playlist and watch it later. Do I care that it's putting additional strain on YouTube's servers? Indeed, I'm devastated and overtaken with guilt 😂 These are tears of regret, I swear 😂

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Stop feeding me dog shit AI videos about a condom delivery boy who has to deliver some to a hotel only to find his girlfriend cheating on him and maybe I’ll stop blocking ads you fuck sticks

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [+] 26 points 1 year ago (9 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah, I download whatever I want to watch and fire up vlc. 0 ads, 0 buffering.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Technically that's 100% buffering.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    I already do this. There are several apps for it but I really like Pinchflat because it has metadata settings for Jellyfin.

    All I have to do is add a video to a playlist and it gets automatically downloaded. I use it for archival but there's nothing stopping you from making it the only way you consume YouTube content.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I had a time, when i had frequent internet disconnections, and connection speed was slow in general, so while i had the internet connection, i just downloaded a bunch of videos, to then watch offline. Suprisingly, downloading video even with slow internet is faster than streaming it, despite when streaming it, videos was always buffering. Now i have stable internet and i can just stream videos without the problem, even by using third party app with no ads and without account.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Not only that but the bit-rate as of late seems horrendous, 1080 looks more like 720 or lower with artifacts all over the place.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Yes, some video have a 1080p Premium high nitrate quality option that you need to pay for. It's just the standard quality, but the free 1080p is now shitty.

    It's very sad there isn't anything that can even remotely compare to YouTube at this time. All the content is there, can't get it elsewhere. At least with Firefox, ublock and SponsorBlock, it's bearable.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    YouTube can die in a fire and take its fucking premium with it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I mean if they get forced ads I would understand, but at the current state I would say there are too many.

    If YouTube premium was less expensive it would be a great in-between

    I personally use YT premium and music by faking my country. Getting it for like 3.50€/month feels like a great deal

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 44 points 1 year ago

    YouTube might just go fuck itself!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    That's a lot of effort for a website that mostly offers background noise.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They will never be happy with how much money they squeeze out of it. When people are watching videos that are 99% ads and the content is limited to two alternating pixels they will still find a way to further optimize their profit-taking. Nothing is ever good enough for the hyper-capitalist; product managers are a disease.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Can't slow down videos I've downloaded to my Plex server. 👍🏽

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    No, but Plex can. I'd migrate to Jellyfin if you can as Plex is paywalling more of their services.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    "Might"... it's introducing an artificial delay when loading videos.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    That explains the "are you experiencing interruptions" message I keep getting these days, though I kinda expected this.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    And this is different from the usual YouTube jank how, exactly? I can't block ads on the YouTube TV app and it's a buggy mess and I have no idea why one of the major tech companies in the world allowed that to happen.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    YouTube was lagging to play vids the other day now i wonder if it was A B testing. screw off YouTube. 10 ads for a 20 minute video isn't normal and never will be. also the ads pause if you aren't watching them. wtf? as always I expect uBlock Origin to get around this

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    load more comments
    view more: next ›
    7 comments in c/google@lemdro.id view that post
    4 comments in c/Anticonsumption@europe.pub view that post