910
Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
239 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 99 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 1 point 1 year ago

Yeah the moment you open invidious on the same machine it stops. Curious huh.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 259 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    Yeah they are, I noticed it get really, really bad this week. It's an awful experience. But they'll leave my browser before my adblocker does.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 18 child comments
    •
  • [–] 143 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    100%. Half the time I get blocked due to VPN or whatever I just close the tab and go with my life. The rest of the time I try all known workarounds. If those fail, I just go with my life.

    My hatred for monopolisation and enshittification is stronger than my desire to watch content on any platform.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    just use invidious instead

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    This is also a good beginner way to learn about self hosting in docker.

    Freetube can make a great backup for when google inevitably breaks something.

    And for thise videos you really cant miss there is always yt-dlp scripted to download a channels latests video on a schedule straight to jellyfin of course.

    I have not visited the youtube website in more then a year.

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

    It's not perfect, but I use grayjay. They have an android app and a desktop client, and are usually pretty quick to make updates that will sidestep Google's anti-adblocking measures (within 1-2 days.) Again, not perfect, but I don't mind a slightly worse experience to avoid having to see an ad. Plus it has sponsor block support built right in

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    This doesn't seem very straightforward...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    https://invidious.io/

    it's like lemmy: you choose an instance, make an account, import your subscriptions from YouTube and done. you can watch all channels from there

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

    Ok, so there are hosted instances? At face value this looks like you need to self host. Which I am more than capable of both in terms of equipment and experience. I just don't want to go that far to watch youtube. Thanks for explaining.

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

    Same. When I opened the Stats for Nerds pop-up, I noticed that I was being throttled to 1500kbps. Anything above 720p was unplayable this week.

    But apparently the Ublock Origin devs yet again figured out another workaround, because streaming speeds are back to normal for me as of yesterday.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [+] 123 points 1 year ago (43 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 43 child comments
    •
  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago* (24 children)

    If Google really wants to, they can crack down on yt-dlp, and I assume that if enough people are using it, they're likely to do such a crackdown. Like, this works for the moment, but...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 24 child comments
    •
  • [+] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Hmm, but in this case you would be recording either the ads or the buffering.

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

    Imagine adblock re-rencoding software that picks mp4s clean based on repeated content(ads). The user could select each ad as they happen, mark them as such and let it identify them from there. Imagine sharable or federated caches of these ad records between users.

    Someone who can code, please, imagine it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It will happen eventually. All they need to do is start new/rotating keys on wildvine and put the ads at random times right in the stream, then disable fast forward if you use it to skip ads. It'll be a UX hit, so it'll need to be worth it to them.

    In the end, they can't stop us from HDMI capturing and using comskip to detect / remove but there are a million ways to play tag between where we are now and that which don't require people posting videos to pirate bay :)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    can't stop us from HDMI capturing

    Look up HDCP.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    There are HDMI splitter boxes you can get from China that conveniently strip out the HDCP.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    strip out the HDCP

    Interesting, I had figured that was possible in principle but hadn't kept up with what was actually around.

    But still, the HDCP stream is decompressed video, so if you want to save it, you'll have to either put it through yet another layer or lossy compression, or burn a ridiculous amount of disk space compared to the compressed stream that Youtube sent to your computer.

    We'll see how things go. Google in the past has made occasional modest gestures to get in the way of downloading, but they haven't made serious effort to prevent it. Who knows whether that will last.

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

    My ip was blocked a LONG time ago by google for using yt-dlp. Works with VPN but nothing else. Fun times. I think I only pulled a couple of videos off for archival services. On my own channel non-the-less.

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

    You might try again. I was blocked for a couple weeks after I pulled a bunch of videos from a channel using yt-dlp, and for a while YouTube required an account (which I will not get) from that IP. But a couple weeks later, things were working again.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    This is the way.

    When YouTube wanted to throw me some entertainment and a couple ads, very conveniently, I was down for that.

    Now that it's an all out technology knowledge battle - well, I'm quite good at that.

    So I spend the time I would have laughed at their ad instead working around their bullshit.

    I haven't seen an ad in years, but I still enjoy the same content. 🤷‍♀️

    To me, it seems like they're working really hard, just to fail to serve me ads.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I would but my issue with that is that SponsorBlock doesn't work on downloaded videos.

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

    Skytube has an option for clipping mid-video ads out of downloaded videos, if that helps.

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

    I use SponsorBlock for more than just skipping sponsored segments. It's also useful for skipping intros, "like and subscribe" messages, and other general annoyances in most YouTube videos. Once you get used to it, you can't go without.

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

    I’m new to yt-dlp. Care to share your flags? I’m a little confused on which ones I actually need.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    I mean, you don't need anything; it'll work with no flags. I have these:

    $ cat ~/.config/yt-dlp/config
--embed-subs
--embed-metadata
--embed-chapters
--embed-thumbnail
--sponsorblock-mark=all
$

    That'll just embed some useful metadata in the file.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Note that subtitles doesn't include automatic subtitles. For that you have to do --write-auto-subs in conjunction

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

    Also if you just want the audio to listen to (I like to do this with TTRPGs) you can do:

    yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio

    Also works great in a pinch for getting sounds and music for FoundryVTT.

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

    I'm pretty sure that it defaults to best quality.

    goes looking at man page

       By default, yt-dlp tries to download the best available quality if you don't  pass  any  options.   This  is  generally
   equivalent to using -f bestvideo*+bestaudio/best.  However, if multiple audiostreams is enabled (--audio-multistreams),
   the  default  format changes to -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best.  Similarly, if ffmpeg is unavailable, or if you use yt-dlp
   to stream to stdout (-o -), the default becomes -f best/bestvideo+bestaudio.

    So I think that it should normally pull down the best audio unless you get into some situation where YouTube doesn't offer a format that simultaneously has the combination of highest audio quality with the highest video quality; if it has to do so to get the highest video quality then, it'll sacrifice audio quality.

    EDIT: Hmm. I could have sworn that there was more text about prioritizing relative audio and video quality at one point in the man page, but I don't see anything there now. Maybe it can just always get the best audio quality, regardless of video quality, can pull 'em entirely separately.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • [–] 91 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I'd sooner spend five minutes waiting for the video to buffer than five seconds watching an ad

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

    Make me wait 5 mins on a black screen and I'll do that before watching an ad.

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

    A wild YouTube appeared!

    Go, uBlock Origin!

    Wild YouTube used Throttle!

    It's not very effective...

    uBlock Origin used Evolve!

    It's super effective!

    YouTube fainted!

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

    In related news, PeerTube just achieved its funding goal - including all of its stretch goals.

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

    Is it possible to post the same video both to youtube and peertube without trouble? I wonder if this is prohibited cause I think many creators would mirror their content to peertube if they could.

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

    I watched videos on Newgrounds using dial-up

    They are going to have to slow ad blockers by a lot for me to consider it slow

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    My wife and I were discussing this. This isnt "slow" to us, its just a tiny bit inconvenient. We were used to the old AOL pictures taking a good minute or two to load.

    We would get rid of Youtube before we get ads.

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

    I've been seeing this for a couple weeks now along with a popup telling me "ad blockers aren't allowed" at work where I'm forced to use Chrome. I have UBlock Lite installed. Typically a refresh takes care of the popup and a 10 second delay later, the video loads.

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

    So it's wait a few seconds and watch a black screen or watch a minute of ads? What a choice...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

    Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent

    Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    fixed it by blocking the element

    Which one? That'd certainly help to know how to do that

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

    www.youtube.com/##.paper-toast-open.yt-notification-action-renderer.style-scope.toast-button

    I believe it was this one, just add it as part of the filter list in ublock

    The extension I used for user agent was this one. I don't think it matters what you spoof as, but I chose to spoof as chrome. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/

    So far it worked and I'm back to no ads and no interruptions

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

    Okay, I am trying to add it. Just copy your YouTube stuff -> go to myFilters -> paste?

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

    I have ublock, with sponsor block and some others, and don't have any issues on yt as of yet. Just in case though, how do I block an element and spoof a user agent?

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

    I'll wait.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [+] 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    "Is your video not loading ? Check out why, you fucking ad dodging commie" is the feeling i got from youtube's newest message while my video was unexpectedly taking 10s to load

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I'm finding I'm using youtube less and less that I can't actually remember the last time I used it for anything. Youtube has so much crap now.

    Because of their monetisation scheme for content creators, it was profitable for creators to drag 15 mins of information out to one hour, and then to include shock faces as thumbs to get more clicks, and then to get more viewers just to watch a bit of the video as viewership dwindles into just mindlessly watching suggestions.

    I feel sorry for those creators who have gone balls deep with youtube content and who have no "plan b".

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments
    view more: next ›
    14 comments in c/deGoogle@lemmy.ca view that post