Google admits it's making YouTube worse for ad block users

Reddfugee42 , 6 months ago

Sure if you consider captcha to be a punishment. Poor baby.

I use VPNs but I’m not going to be a slave or a fanboy to avoiding facts and reality.

steelrat , 6 months ago

Still not going to give them a dollar ever.

KonalaKoala , 6 months ago

I have LIbreWolf with uBlock Origin and NoScript (and Redirector I can turn on to redirect me from watching videos on YouTube.com to YewTu.be on a moments notice of something funky going on with YouTube), and so far, I have not noticed any ads or anything for a long time. I’m probably at the point of beginning to wonder what a YouTube Ad is.

skhayfa , 6 months ago

The CEO said shareholders needs to be appeased by making new sacrifice

shirro , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Long time family premium user (household of parents and kids). Anything Youtube do to preserve their revenue within reason doesn’t bother me too much as long as they don’t reduce the split with quality creators. If they were successful with all this bullshit perhaps they wouldn’t have needed to notify me that subs are almost doubling next year. My guess is all they are doing is fucking things up for everyone. It is only going to get worse if their premium subscription base reduces. They should be pricing premium as an alternative to ad-blockers but instead they are pushing people including premium subscribers towards ad-blockers.

I already have ad-blockers and apps for circumventing youtube ads. Not using them in favour of a fairly priced (to me) subscription was a choice but sadly one Google seems to be discouraging.

vonbaronhans , 6 months ago

I’ve also felt like YouTube Premium was a pretty good deal, given the sheer amount of YouTube content I consume and how much I detest ads.

That said, I also feel like most of what I really value from YouTube is on Nebula, to which I am also subscribed. I constantly wonder if it would be worth it to drop YouTube altogether, to save some money but also a huge amount of time.

The only other thing really keeping me on YouTube Premium is the included YouTube music. Not like Spotify is much cheaper, and I’m not much into manually managing libraries of my own music files like I did in the days of my 2nd Gen iPod (it had a touch wheel!).

Kakaofruchttafel , 6 months ago

I mean they’ve also consistently been making YouTube worse for everyone not using Adblock, so it’s only fair.

KonalaKoala , 6 months ago

Sounds like its beginning to reach the point someone may decide to code an add-on or extension that adds a “F*** YouTube” button to a Youtube Video page where if you click that button, it would take you over to the equivalent YewTu.be page of the video currently being viewed.

EmperorHenry , 6 months ago

if you get adguard for desktop and load it with userscripts from greasyfork to block youtube’s bullshit it’s still okay, I barely ever have any hiccups since I loaded 5 different userscripts to block youtube’s anti-adblock bullshit. I sometimes get an error telling me the video couldn’t be played, but I almost never see their bullshit telling me to turn my adblocker off.

There’s also “FreeTube” which is an app for several desktop operating systems. there’s also the many instances of invidious you can check out and access from almost any device with a web-browser.

Dultas , 6 months ago

I’m running uBlock Origin and a pi Hole and I haven’t seen shit change for months. Not sure what voodoo I have going on judging by other experiences.

EmperorHenry , 6 months ago

recent updates to ublock for firefox have made its adblocking way more powerful.

Where do you go to get pi hole? is that the one that requires docker?

linearchaos , 6 months ago

Pi-hole.net

You can install a container or you can install it as a package on debian or Red Hat based distros.

EmperorHenry , 6 months ago

I tried to do that, I looked it up right after I typed my comment. I wasn’t able to get docker to work on my system. Does it have anything to do with core isolation being enabled? I don’t have anything installed on my system that should be blocking it.

Adguard for desktop is working for now. I don’t need it to work right this second.

linearchaos , 6 months ago

Not sure I’ve been using this one to be exact

hub.docker.com/r/devzwf/pihole-dot-doh

cashews_best_nut , 6 months ago

I’ve got Adguard installed on my router (openwrt). 👍

EmperorHenry , 6 months ago

Well, I’m disabled and can’t work, unfortunately I can’t afford a place of my own or my own router to install my VPN or adguard onto.

cashews_best_nut , 6 months ago

Being born German is a terrible affliction but I didn’t realise it counted as a disability. My condolences on your Germanity.

c0mbatbag3l , 6 months ago

Still using Vivaldi with only the built-in ad blocking, still noticing no ads, still noticing zero performance issues.

Orionza , 6 months ago

I use Vivaldi. I’ve been getting the ads mostly. I have to open YouTube in a private window and view from there. Do you have Unblock with scripts? My scripts only worked for awhile. The built in adblocking is just not working for me.

c0mbatbag3l , 6 months ago

It’s just a regular install with “block trackers and ads” enabled. The only YouTube related plugins/extensions I have are tube buddy and dearrow to remove clickbait thumbnails. I don’t use unlock, ad block, or anything like that.

grayman , 6 months ago

As a premium subscriber, it’s definitely gotten worse for me over the last month. Whatever they’re doing on the back end, it’s pretty terrible.

Fades , 6 months ago

Why are you paying your abuser

IntrepidIceIgloo , 6 months ago

Stockholm syndrome

Mercival , 6 months ago

Stockholm syndrome was made up to cover for police incompetence

cybersandwich , 6 months ago

Thats the first I’ve heard of that. Got a link? this sounds like a rabbit hole I’d like to go down.

Mercival , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Here’s a springboard article, if you want to do your own research.

nzz.ch/…/how-the-myth-of-stockholm-syndrome-came-…

The woman, based on whom the term was coined (the psychiatrist never even talked to her) wrote an autobiography “I became Stockholm Syndrome”.

There’s also the works of Allan Wade, a Canadian psychologist, who has talked to the victims throughout his career.

Basically when you’re at the whims of an armed lunatic, you might cozy up to them in order to appease them. The victims were also really afraid of the police coming in and shooting them. Which is pretty justified, considering the police couldn’t even identify the perpetrator before conceding on his demands and bringing in his prison buddy.

The guy with a gun, whom they’ve been talking to for days and has not hurt them in the slightest looked much less dangerous than the impending doom of the police barging in and shooting the wrong person.

Appoxo , 6 months ago

Honestly: I’d rather pay for YT and pirate Netflix.
The amount of Entertainment I get from YT exceeds the scale of Netflix and I use it daily at 2-3h per day.

And while yes, it’s free, I can also support the creators with a better click price than a regular click.
Is it a better solution then the respective patreon/whatever? Nope
Do I want to pay 5€/month or video each time? Fuck no. I am not king Midas.

wishthane , 6 months ago

Yup, that’s how I see it too. I don’t like seeing ads, the creators do at least get more money, and the actual value I get out of YouTube is pretty high

FehrIsFair , 6 months ago

Not to mention not every creator will have a patreon anyway so this covers that scenario as well.

grayman , 6 months ago

There’s a ton of educational content only on YT and so it’s a part of our homeschool curriculum. My kids were getting a lot of super inappropriate ads a while back, so I got premium to avoid all ads.

there1snospoon , 6 months ago

What homeschool curriculum provider are you using?

grayman , 6 months ago

Acton and we participate in a state program and several private programs depending on the kids’ interest.

Wogi , 6 months ago

I’m not sure what the hell is going on at YouTube but I’ve noticed a significant drop in decent videos being recommended, and a huge uptick in videos I’ve already seen showing up at the front of the feed. Probs gonna drop it when the price picks up and just go to nebula.

Kolanaki , 6 months ago

It doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve never been blocked for using ad blockers. It’s still the same speed it’s always been. I have all these work arounds just waiting to be used that I haven’t even had to actually try.

Are they only doing this shit to like 12 people who write articles about it? Why wouldn’t it be globally done all at once for everyone?

twack , 6 months ago

Yes, they are rolling these changes out in stages to make it harder for the internet to collectively address the issue.

Trust me, you will get hit eventually.

Kolanaki , 6 months ago

It doesn’t seem to be making it harder; shit’s in the news all the time and damn near every discussion on those articles has work arounds mentioned constantly.

If it ever does hit me, as previously stated, I have several solutions already lined up. Not least of which is simply using Piped. Which I could just use now, even without getting screwed… 🤔

twack , 6 months ago

That’s the point my friend. The articles and the resolutions are mudying the water. Which is easier:

Finding one post that states “on October 12th, my adblocker stopped working and the resolution was to update the block lists.”

Searching three months of varied news articles all related to the issue and with completely different resolutions.

Appoxo , 6 months ago

Personally I don’t watch it in the Browser instead I use the AndroidTV app.
Amd I am patient in that regard. Can’t scare me with a 5sec delay.

onlinepersona , 6 months ago

Great, I’ll use it less if that’s the case 🤷

ILikeBoobies , 6 months ago

That’s not a bad outcome for them

onlinepersona , 6 months ago

If everybody with adblockers quit youtube and used alternative platforms, I agree, that would be great.

ILikeBoobies , 6 months ago

Saves them money because they aren’t delivering content for free

And the remaining population won’t raise the issue when they add more

linearchaos , 6 months ago

I moved over to new pipe. No more algorithm on regular basis. I have the 20 or so people that I want to see. If one of my existing 20 people recommend somebody else, I’ll go check them out.

Between getting rid of reddit algorithm and YouTube’s algorithm I’m clawing back huge swaths of time.

TheObviousSolution , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

As a Premium user who still had uBlock installed, I was noticing the other day a loading problem when I had it activated until I deactivated and reloaded. Still, Google is entirely within it’s right to target people even according to one of its greatest critics: youtu.be/KMLMQRS3Krk?t=175

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

Still, Google is entirely within it’s right to target people even according to one of its greatest critics:

[Citation required.]

Could you give us a timestamp of when he says that?

TheObviousSolution , 6 months ago

It starts at 2:55, when I linked it, but it’s a long argument. You can forward into 3:20 for the first short conclusion, 4:57 for his rebuttal of a common counterargument, and you can forward into 5:40 for his own experience with freeloaders. You can fast forward to 12:40, to 13:15, to 13:46, and to 14:16 as well, but he’s pretty based throughout the whole video and the point remains consistent throughout.

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

It starts at 2:55, when I linked it, but it’s a long argument. You can forward into 3:20 for the first short conclusion, 4:57 for his rebuttal of a common counterargument, and you can forward into 5:40 for his own experience with freeloaders. You can fast forward to 12:40, to 13:15, to 13:46, and to 14:16 as well, but he’s pretty based throughout the whole video and the point remains consistent throughout.

Thanks for the timestamps. I think just starting at 13:53 would be more than enough to make your point of “Google is entirely within it’s right to target people”.

Having said that, generally speaking I would also strongly suggest people listening to the next point directly after that at 14:25 as well, and especially what he says starting at 15:43.

TheObviousSolution , 6 months ago

Yeah, but the point beginning on 14:25 is really for the business to determine, not something to demand or not demand from a consumer side. YT has had over a decade to determine what works for it and to see what’s working for its competitors, and it may really be a last hail mary to save their business model with the collapse of easy investor money from silicon valley banks and stricter data privacy laws. As to 15:43, that’s what I do already, I just pay for YT Premium even with uBlock Origin installed and data collection disabled as much as I can.

SocialMediaRefugee , 6 months ago

They are a business that makes money off of ads. Nothing to see here.

namingthingsiseasy , 6 months ago

However bad they may make it, it can’t possibly be worse than it is for non-adblock users.

But hey, if they want to torpedo their own services, have at it. It’s not like they have a reputation for it or anything…

MaxVoltage , 6 months ago

i am more worried about the old videos wipe thats coming soon

Sooo many peoples uploaded memories and documentaries are going to becone lost forever

zovits , 6 months ago

Wait, what?

monkE , 6 months ago

Wait what?

VinnieFarsheds , 6 months ago

Who’s going to wipe the old videos?

1995ToyotaCorolla , 6 months ago

Google’s going to delete inactive google accounts. So if you see a channel whose last upload was six years ago, there’s a good chance it’s about to be deleted

Sacha , 6 months ago

Oh I suppose my diseased father’s small channel with a few of his live music performances will be deleted. Lovely.

Riven , 6 months ago

By the look of it they won’t be but I would make an offline copy just to be safe. Maybe re-upload it on a newer account/website.

MaxVoltage , 6 months ago

Save it bro to your cloud

capital , 6 months ago

Grab those vids.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube-dl

Candybar121 , 6 months ago

deleted_by_author

capital , 6 months ago

It’s just my go to for a “this is a thing” comments.

Has an explanation and links to the site.

manwichmakesameal , 6 months ago

Goddamnit, I didn’t even think about this when I saw they were doing the mass delete. Here’s to hoping that they’ll at least keep the videos up. Waaaay too much stuff on YT to lose it all. Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

Anyone know if archive.org is backing them up?

At this point you got to imagine that archives hardware infrastructure has to be as big or bigger than Google’s.

Obi , 6 months ago

Man this stuff should not be left to the hands of random corporations.

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

I was just speaking towards server hardware and infrastructure, and their costs, and not making a value judgement on corps vs. not-corps.

VinnieFarsheds , 6 months ago

Thanks. I looked it up and read that Google decided according to the latest news they’re not deleting YouTube accounts with video uploads. We’ll see.

AceTKen , 6 months ago

I wonder why they would kill old videos instead of just removing those 10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches. You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space.

pokemaster787 , 6 months ago

You’d think those giant loop videos would be taking up far more space

Someone above posted an article saying they aren’t actually. But you’d be surprised at how little space those 10 hour videos can actually take. They’re highly compressible since they’re just the same still image and the same audio on repeat. A good compression algorithm (which Google certainly is using) would basically compress it into one instance of the song and how many times to repeat it (more complex than that, but that’s the idea)

AceTKen , 6 months ago

Sometimes they are, if it’s just audio and a static image. Some of them definitely are not that though. The ones with visualizers or full music videos or the like are not nearly as compressible.

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

isgleas , 6 months ago

Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

10-hour plus loops of the same song over and over again that nobody watches.

I tend to fall asleep to one of those videos of being on the beach with ocean sounds, so /shrug.

Not the same as 10hr nyan cat or bacon pancakes

Definately not the same. Also, what “nobody watches” is in the eye of the beholder.

AceTKen , 6 months ago

So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

So to combat use cases like this, why not just add a repeat option? There would be no break if it cached the beginning again.

The first two minutes are an ad, and having a loud voice talking to you all of a sudden in your bedroom while you are asleep tends to wake you up.

Also just download the audio you want and loop it yourself. It would take roughly 2 minutes and use way less bandwidth.

With compression techniques being as they are today, I truly don’t even worry about the bandwidth.

AceTKen , 6 months ago

But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn’t use an ad blocker on YouTube? All of those problems that you listed have incredibly easy solutions that you can execute with zero training.

And realistically if they are looking for profit (and they absolutely are) I still see no reason why they would keep these up. The benefits are absolutely minimal at best and the drawbacks are quite large.

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

But manually looping any part of it inside the video which you can do past the first 2 minutes would still not be an ad. Also, who doesn’t use an ad blocker on YouTube?

My YouTube app on my phone, which doesn’t have an ad blocker. And as far as I know, there’s no way to restart a video at a certain timestamp, it just restarts from the very beginning. I’d be glad to hear otherwise though?

AceTKen , 6 months ago

Ah! A few ways to do things:

1. Go into the YouTube “three dots” options and you can “Create Clip” which will allow you to shave out or repeat any length of video you want. If you shave it out, you can make it private and just repeat the single video. and / or
2. Use any YouTube download site (say like this one) and just get the MP3 or video which you can play over and over using any media player. and / or
3. If you’re on a phone, use a third-party YouTube app like GrayJay and it’ll block ads.

If you have questions, ask away!

CosmicCleric , 6 months ago

Thanks for the info, much appreciated!

NikkiDimes , 6 months ago

They aren’t wiping videos.

From a literal 5 second Google search: rollingstone.com/…/is-youtube-deleting-old-videos…

PersnickityPenguin , 6 months ago

About a week ago YouTube rolled out a new interface for ads. I cannot skip 90% of ads now. Many are around a minute in length. Always 2 ads at the beginning of every video, even if it’s only 10 seconds in length. Always 2 ads at the end of every video.

SuperSpruce , 6 months ago

I’m not getting that many ads. Could I see the new interface?

TheUncannyObserver , 6 months ago

Are they, though? I’ve been using Firefox and uBlock Origin for years and I’ve not had an issue other than needing to manually update my filters three times since this started.

samus12345 , 6 months ago

Yeah, however “worse” it is for adblock users, it can’t compare to how awful the ads are.

systemglitch , 6 months ago

Exactly. I’ve spent 15 seconds of my life overcoming this three times. Click, click, click.

Appoxo , 6 months ago

You’d be surprised how sensitive normies are regarding 3 additional clicks.
For us tech literate folks it’s a regular sunday but they are literally raging internally if they need another 5 clicks more than usual.

systemglitch , 6 months ago

Lol quite true

Desistance , 6 months ago

The proven reason why you can’t beat crowd sourcing in the millions.