Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers (www.windowscentral.com)
from mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:26
https://piefed.social/post/943871

#technology

threaded - newest

CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 22:32 next collapse

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.

OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 02:06 next collapse

uBlock Lite is simply not as potent, so it’s understandable it can be beaten. Almost like Google is abusing their monopoly

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 03:19 next collapse

I run portable Firefox on my work PC. I refuse to use chrome. some of our apps require Edge, but outside of that, I don’t touch chrome.

myreel@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 01:41 collapse

I switched to Firefox basically as soon as ublock origin didn’t work on chrome. It was easier than I thought it would be.

RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:34 next collapse

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.

WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:26 next collapse

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.

generallynonsensical@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 03:26 next collapse

So say we all.

timetraveller@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:07 collapse

So say we all.

LucidNightmare@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 13:50 next collapse

Amen.

Trihilis@ani.social on 18 Jun 16:16 collapse

Lol, this is exactly why I use Lemmy. Sure there might be less engagement than reddit. But I’d rather gargle a bucket of diarrhea than go back to that shitty place.

zurohki@aussie.zone on 18 Jun 04:21 next collapse

The thing is, their anti-adblocking measures are still less unpleasant than actually watching ads.

stebo02@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 05:15 next collapse

just use invidious instead

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 05:46 next collapse

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.

RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 14:03 collapse

This doesn’t seem very straightforward…

stebo02@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 14:41 collapse

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

RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:08 next collapse

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.

stebo02@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 17:00 collapse

not many but there are

docs.invidious.io/instances/

burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de on 19 Jun 04:15 collapse

Sadly, most of the instances seem to be completely nonfunctional. Nadeko.net seemed to be the only one working for months.

stebo02@sopuli.xyz on 19 Jun 04:39 collapse

yehh it’s been a while since i used it and my instance seems to be down too…

Psythik@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 19:23 collapse

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.

resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:49 next collapse

Oh no, where will I get my AI slop?

Agent641@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:51 collapse

Like it or not, YouTube still has a fuckton of good, informative tutorials and advice on how to fix things or make things made by individuals with a phone camera and no script, who make them not for money but for the pride in sharing their knowledge. I shared some fix it videos for my van and a very obscure phone, and consumed a lot of fix it videos for washing machines, motorbikes and furniture.

bassomitron@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 02:47 next collapse

This. YouTube is extremely helpful for anyone who can’t afford to take their stuff to a repair service or hire someone to fix something at their home. Just a few months ago, I thought my washer was done for, but it turned out to be a super simple fix that no website mentioned except for a super obscure YouTube video with only a couple hundred views. Saved me hundreds of dollars. There’s countless other anecdotes like that over the years.

This is what sucks so much about Google’s monopoly. I truly wish a cooperative of governments and/or academia created a publicly funded alternative as well as hosting an archive of YouTube on it. It would of course need to be administered by a non-partisan committee made up of representatives from multiple countries that had numerous safeguards against governmental political censorship. Hoping for a grassroots alternative is a lost cause, as the hosting and administrative expenses are just way too cost prohibitive, so publicly funded is the only solution I can see as being plausible

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 18 Jun 15:23 collapse

Give it a couple of years. AI is just getting started.

the_abecedarian@piefed.social on 17 Jun 22:55 next collapse

https://joinpeertube.org/

theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:56 next collapse

I’ll wait.

SpicyTaint@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:01 next collapse

I’ve started bulk downloading videos with yt-dlp and watching them locally. No ads or throttling to deal with.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 23:18 next collapse

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…

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 17 Jun 23:19 next collapse

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.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 23:26 next collapse

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.

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 17 Jun 23:32 collapse

Ok cool! I updated yt-dlp via pip, and it looks like its working again. No warnings or anything. Awesome.

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:18 collapse

I’d just hop a vps around to different countries.

…I’d never do it here, admins, honest lol

SpicyTaint@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:24 next collapse

I’m sure they could. Other methods will crop up. All else fails, I ditch YT altogether.

rumba@piefed.zip on 17 Jun 23:38 next collapse

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 :)

solrize@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 00:11 collapse

can’t stop us from HDMI capturing

Look up HDCP.

cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de on 18 Jun 00:33 next collapse

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

RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:48 next collapse

it’s not hard to do it yourself either

trevor@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 11:08 collapse

How would one DIY HDCP stripping? I’ve never looked into this.

RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:51 collapse

Open PassDCP software is one method, or you can obtain a splitter that strips hdcp

Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:49 next collapse

They aren’t fool proof, and relatively easy to detect from the source.

Source: high end AV tech for like half a decade

solrize@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 21:50 collapse

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.

cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de on 19 Jun 00:38 collapse

It’s certainly not an ideal solution, but it’s an option that will usually work.

rumba@piefed.zip on 18 Jun 21:09 collapse

I break HDCP right now. Those keys have been leaked for AGES. $10 amazon HDMI copy in between your videocard and the capture.

throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 00:38 next collapse

Nah. How would you crack down a program that just play the videos in the background and then just capture the content while it’s played?

Just queue up a bunch of vidoe you wanna watch, and let the program just essentially screen record it.

Well if you say “DRM”? Well we could share it to a display that itself is hacked and record all the signals.

Unless they are doing proctoring as if it were a test, there will always be some way to circumvent it.

ChaosMonkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 01:42 collapse

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

throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 01:48 next collapse

I’m so used to the sponsorship thing that I just instinctively tap/click the right side of the screen a few times to skip it.

(As for why I don’t use sponsorblock: I don’t block them because I wanna take a few seconds to take a peak into the sponsor segment to make sure they don’t have very evil sponsors like ahem “Betterhelp” (I don’t trust someone that still have that as a sponsor in 2025)

Edit: Also, I’m pretry sure someone will build a locally run AI model that can detect the ads/buffering and cut it out. “AI” might not give you true information in terms of search results, but pattern recognition is like its main job, right?

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:09 collapse

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.

passenger@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 03:36 collapse

What they should be imaginingn instead is a better video sharing platform. There are alternatives already…

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org on 18 Jun 04:26 collapse

Cause all you need is your imagination!

And billions of dollars to build and run the site with servers worldwide. No biggie

RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:47 next collapse

theoretically anything is possible so what

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:14 collapse

Right. At the end of the bullshit, the content still plays to completion if the user hits play. We can script and Ai and remove ads all day long after a program snags the feed.

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:07 collapse

Virtual desktop program that watches videos and uses sponsorblock and adblock after the fact to pick it clean and re-encode it.

I’m that level of anal

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 02:57 collapse

I’m not really following video DRM, but my understanding is that Widevine won’t run in a VM with a virtualized video card like that.

B_DL@lemmynsfw.com on 17 Jun 23:24 next collapse

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

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 23:28 next collapse

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.

LodeMike@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 01:33 next collapse

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

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 03:00 collapse

Thanks.

EDIT: There isn’t an –embed-auto-subs, but there is a –write-auto-subs.

LodeMike@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 03:36 collapse

Fixed thanks.

sh00g@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 22:40 collapse

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.

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 23:06 collapse

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.

SpicyTaint@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:36 next collapse

I’m a filthy Windows user that’s too lazy to migrate my main PC to Fedora.

> Path\to\yt-dlp.exe -P <target directory> <URL>

Multiple URLs can be separated by spaces. Put any URLs with ampersands in quotes or remove the ampersand and following arguments.

You can find a list of all the arguments on the yt-dlp github page

[deleted] on 18 Jun 02:40 collapse

.

OwlPaste@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:30 collapse

I like github.com/ArabCoders/ytptube gui. Only started using it yesterday, so far for indovidual videos. However it looks like it can also watch new videos being uploaded, thought not tried it myself.

Use docker compose for quick deployment

Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com on 18 Jun 00:47 next collapse

Me too. I’m up to 3TB locally. Had to do that slowly though. Hit some temp bans a few times.

pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 03:26 next collapse

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.

Psythik@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 19:23 collapse

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

pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 22:45 collapse

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

Psythik@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 23:04 collapse

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.

pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip on 19 Jun 03:29 collapse

Same here. The SponsorBlock in SkyTube skips intros and “like and subscribe”, too. Even in downloads.

Psythik@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 03:36 collapse

Good to know, thanks.

Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 10:19 next collapse

DVRs are back in 2025. Who would have thought?

gruhuken@slrpnk.net on 18 Jun 11:52 collapse

I’ve been doing this with band love videos and storing them on a hard drive. One I love got taken down and almost lost a while back and it’s made me paranoid ha

Coolbeanschilly@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 23:01 next collapse

It’s a good thing I’m patient when it comes to when the videos load. If they keep doing this, I’ll just find another platform. Nebula seems like it has the same types of videos I like to watch.

Of course, I can get into PeerTube as well.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 23:10 next collapse

Nebula seems like it has the same types of videos I like to watch.

I mean, Nebula is commercial service and I assume that they’d profile, the same as YouTube. Like, if you’re okay with that, you can get YouTube Premium.

Of course, I can get into PeerTube as well.

I’m still skeptical that this is going to scale sufficiently either in bandwidth or in amount of content.

peertube.fediverse.observer for people who want to try it, though.

Coolbeanschilly@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 23:29 collapse

I mean, at least Nebula is owned by the content creators. Eliminate the middle man and all that.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 23:40 collapse

Fair enough.

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 17 Jun 23:22 collapse

Yeah Peertube is awesome. It already scales very well with its tech. Its been growing too. I think its good to have multiple alternatives. Its a good free option.

Ultimately the platform is the last important part of watching a video. If the creators can get more $$/activity going somewhere else they will. It happened to Vimeo, it will happen to Youtube.

apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:06 next collapse

Good, kill your product

Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 01:48 collapse

I use adblockers, but I’m confused how this would hurt google if people using adblockers stopped using youtube.

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org on 18 Jun 04:36 collapse

Less views = less relevancy of the platform. For live streams they have always played second fiddle. For short videos there is even more competition. Just wait for China to open up Billie Billie or instead make a separate version for the west.

throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 14:04 collapse

I’ve never seen anyone irl use an adblocker. Not even the teachers use an adblocker.

I asked a teacher why not, and they’re were like, “really, you can do that?”.

Techers are supposed to educated… so you have highly educated people not using adblockers. Imagine the average person.

There is not gonna be significantly lower views. Most of my classmates when I was in highschool, use iPhones, never sideloaded before, use the official youtube app, so they either paid premium or just suffered ads.

(These are the same kids that obsess over their $1000 sneakers… and also made fun of me for beng poor… I’m like: 🤦‍♂️)

DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:10 next collapse

I feel like this has been happening for a while, but maybe it’s just that YouTube’s website is shite.

MagicShel@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 23:10 next collapse

Oh no! What will I—Video Downloader. I’ll just watch offline at my leisure.

ieatpwns@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:12 next collapse

I mean sure I guess but I can just like download them for later?

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 17 Jun 23:20 next collapse

I saw something that might be this happening last week where every video took an extra 20 seconds to load and presented a popup that took you to the support page where the first thing listed to troubleshoot your problem was disabling ad blockers, but this week the videos are perfect and load normally; but the rest of the page is absolutely fucked. Like the “playables” section last night was tripping balls and looked like a slot machine as the entries randomly changed around at light speeds. The comments, related videos section on the right, description, etc all just refuse to load now on Firefox for me.

Considering these issues for me have only happened recently, and coincidentally around the same time an issue with Google services took a shitton of the entire Internet down for almost a whole day, I suspect it’s not about blocking ad blockers so much as it is Google just fucking sucks at implementing any changes across the board of their products.

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 17 Jun 23:26 collapse

Ublock origin (if your using it) "fixed" the issue shortly after. Im convinced someone at google works on adblock lol. Probably not true but the timing was really fast.

Steve@startrek.website on 18 Jun 03:05 collapse

Spy vs spy

Geodad@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:37 next collapse

I haven’t noticed on Tubular.

Xanthrax@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:52 next collapse

I also think they slowed it down for firefox users.

teft@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 03:10 collapse

If you get a user agent switcher and change your user agent for youtube to chrome then that slowing down goes away.

JayGray91@piefed.social on 18 Jun 10:37 collapse

Wait I can do it just for YouTube? Never occurred to me. I'll have to look into this

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:58 next collapse

HA! Jokes on them! I’m running a budget dell PC from 10 years ago! The PC itself is slower than any delays they cause! I’m talkin’ 3-5 minutes to load each video. Sometimes the whole PC freezes, and you need to unplug it. Sometimes the browser crashes right at the end, so you gotta relaunch the browser, and then wait 20 minutes for all the tabs to populate. Then you gotta end task on all the individual windows. Then you gotta reload just the tab you’re looking at, and THEN you can wait 5 minutes again.

You think I’m even going to notice your 10 second delay?

bassomitron@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 02:55 next collapse

I know times are hard, but you could build/find a PC for <$300 that doesn’t run that badly. Hell, even a ~$150-200 tablet would be way better than that.

a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 11:42 collapse

try to get a ssd from somewhere, that gives devices like yours a second life (and if you switch to linux it gets even smoother - sorry i couldn’t resist)

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 19:52 collapse

I’m running ZorinOS on an SSD.

a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 20:35 collapse

damn, your description reminded me of my experience with laptops running off a 5k rpm hdd using windows 8. sorry for assuming.

BakerBagel@midwest.social on 18 Jun 00:28 next collapse

I’ve got 500Mb fiber internet and YouTube refuses to stream above 360p unless i manually change it. Which each update becomes harder and harder to do as they hide the video quality button somewhere else.

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 01:31 collapse

If you use Firefox:

addons.mozilla.org/…/youtube-video-quality/

BakerBagel@midwest.social on 18 Jun 02:55 collapse

I’m don’t having a functioning computer right now because i can’t afford even a used one. I’m just using the YouTube app on ny phone or tv

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 03:08 next collapse

If your phone is Android, NewPipe is an open-source, third-party client that permits setting quality. It’s on F-Droid (the big open-source app repository) if you use that, and probably on Google Store as well.

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 03:10 collapse

If you’re on Android, get pipepipe from f-droid.

Not only is it a way better and more functional YouTube app, it doesn’t do ads.

winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 13:15 collapse

I like Grayjay

G4Z@feddit.uk on 18 Jun 00:30 next collapse

I’ve been using this

skipcut.com

leckiesock@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:34 next collapse

Clear cache

shalafi@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:54 collapse

No longer working for me on Firefox, Win11. Now what?

leckiesock@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:20 collapse

I have no answer. I’m almost 40 and could no longer care less about BabyTube. I’m now more interested in life and travelling. Long gone are the days where YT was interesting.

yucandu@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:38 next collapse

uBlock Origin->gear icon (settings)->My Filters->add this line:

||googlevideo.com/videoplayback$xhr,3p,method=get,domain=www.youtube.com

Chivera@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 05:23 collapse

Thanks I will try this

RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:46 next collapse

I noticed this today

SinkingLotus@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:54 next collapse

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

MycelialMass@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 03:06 next collapse

Too true

timetraveller@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:06 collapse

Truth

desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 16:48 collapse

Welcome back to 2007

Lazer365@feddit.nl on 18 Jun 01:31 next collapse

We can live without YouTube, they can’t live without us.

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 03:07 collapse

This is their way to try and get you into their money making fold.

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:05 next collapse

I can’t tell an honest difference between 1080p and 720p from across a room. On a monitor, sure, but I grew up in the 90’s. Anything 480 and above is tolerable to me.

I’m pirating it, should I demand my money back for poor service? Lmao

southsamurai@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 05:22 collapse

Did you comment in the wrong place?

Your comment is talking about resolution, and the post is about YouTube throttling speeds, not resolution of videos.

I suspect you were trying to respond to a comment instead of making your own top level comment, though I’m not certain.

In any case, if the comment is in the wrong place, now you know. If it isn’t, well, it may help to know that it’s out of place thematically.

Edit: I think this comment midwest.social/comment/18120563 is where you intended to respond

Phegan@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 02:37 next collapse

Ive been commenting on creators videos asking them to upload elsewhere as well. I doubt it will work, but we could try

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 03:06 next collapse

Great idea. Eventually, and if enough ask, it could be a thing.

atlien51@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 04:21 next collapse

I love how you’re just doing your bit lol

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net on 18 Jun 05:05 collapse

A lot of my favorites are already on Nebula. I’d ask the rest to follow but that would require a google account.

LeTak@feddit.org on 18 Jun 05:42 collapse

I also asked some creators, but they can’t because of the Google partnership Programm, it prohibits reupload on other platforms

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 02:47 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/d0f40d45-4afa-4f99-9ac8-1d4c5269313e.webp">

criticon@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 03:07 next collapse

I had to allow a bunch of stuff in pihole because I wasn’t able to use Google flights or Google News and some functions in Gmail, the sites never finished loading

PushButton@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 03:59 collapse

You might need a little bit of degoogleizer.

In a small dose, it eases the pain, but with the right treatment, your life will become yours again.

rdri@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 03:21 next collapse

Wish they could use Gemini to generate ad clicks instead.

farboo99@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 03:22 next collapse

Ok so im not crazy. I was wondering why videos kept buffering every minute this past week.

Fizz@lemmy.nz on 18 Jun 04:29 next collapse

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

Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 05:39 next collapse

Why do i feel like this happened a while ago? Like, isn’t this old news? Or “olds” as it were?

theangryseal@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 06:45 next collapse

I’ve been dealing with this forever.

Some issues I have that I only deal with when I’m not signed in without an adblocker:

If I try to skip back to a spot in a video, I get the loading circle and sometimes it doesn’t come back until I refresh the page. I have to make a mental note of the time and do that pretty often.

In safari and Firefox I will get a black box for about 40 seconds, no play button, and sometimes I have to refresh the page a few times just to get it to work at all.

Comments will not load sometimes until I refresh the page, sometimes more than once.

The video will sometimes stop and start “loading” while I’m watching it. The solution is always a page refresh or two.

Signed in with an adblocker, the problems drop by about 50% (pulled that number out of my ass, but I’d be willing to bet it’s close). Signed in with no adblocker on Firefox or Safari and the issues become significantly less noticeable, with exceptions from time to time. Signed in with no adblocker on chrome or edge, I experience none of this.

I believe they purposely throttle it on non chromium browsers too.

Sorry if this comment is jumbled. Woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache, got bored waiting for it to pass, so now I’m here and barely conscious.

remon@ani.social on 18 Jun 06:46 next collapse

Yep, for me it ha been “fixed” for about a week now.

CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:11 next collapse

It was reported a decent amoint of time ago and i thought i felt a difference…turned out my isp was sending air bubbles through the internet cable.

After the internet stabilized i noticed exactly zero, just an occasional “restart browser because video’s stopped playing alltogether”

pHr34kY@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:33 collapse

It was previously a “thread.sleep(5000)” in the client code IIRC.

colonelsharki@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 06:23 next collapse

Is google’s company motto still ‘Don’t be evil’?

Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 06:56 collapse

They removed that from their official code of conduct in 2018.

belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 07:10 next collapse

Grayjay :)

toothpaste_ostrich@feddit.nl on 18 Jun 07:22 next collapse

Bless you.

DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org on 18 Jun 07:55 collapse

YT’s blocked on it. Fuck you, Google.

github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/issues/2351

If Google’s going to be further tightening YT to the degree where they might roll out DRM platform-wide as opposed to just limiting it to movies on the platform, I’m about to seriously start looking for stuff to watch on PeerTube because YT is not long for the world and will probably start pushing away anything that isn’t AI slop at some point in terms of content.

UPDATE: A workaround has been released for this issue.

CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:00 next collapse

YT’s blocked on it.

Just tried it. It works.

DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org on 18 Jun 17:19 collapse

Workaround got released, that same issue just updated itself to indicate that. Still shitty of Google to be going full Reddit like this though.

lud@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 16:45 collapse

Does grayjay rehost content from YouTube or are they using the YouTube backend for streaming video? I would be quite annoyed if anyone used my website as a host for content that’s being consumed on another website.

A few years ago (and to a lesser degree nowadays) you occasionally came across images which wouldn’t work if you “hotlinked” to them on another website. Images aren’t a huge deal anymore but video absolutely is.

DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org on 18 Jun 17:21 collapse

They don’t host anything, they’re just an alternate front-end that lets you download stuff.

Aetherion@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 08:20 next collapse

They cannot kill Adblocks, because if they would — a lot of html5 embedded YouTube videos would be coming worthless and so would youtube (discord for example)

Opinionhaver@feddit.uk on 18 Jun 08:27 next collapse

As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.

Traister101@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 08:32 next collapse

I did not always use an ad blocker. Frankly my stance is they’ve made their bed, now they get to lie down in it. If it wasn’t for YouTubes ad quality being so poor I would have never bothered taking the 30 seconds it takes to install an adblock those 10 or so years ago

squaresinger@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 09:52 next collapse

YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for

That’s the really annoying part.

I’ve been considering swapping to other services for a long time, but to follow the creators I want to follow I’d have to subscribe to Nebula and Floatplane and I’d still miss out on quite a few creators.

TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 10:44 next collapse

oh i absolutely can blame them, because they made a choice. either you take my money and respect my privacy, or you sell all of my data and won’t get my money. however you can’t sell all of my data and take my money, nono, f u alphabet, that’s not how this works.

theneverfox@pawb.social on 18 Jun 18:59 collapse

How about: they’re a major factor in the rise of post truth and in ruining the Internet. And in hacking democracy itself

Their control is endangering the human race. They’ve crushed countless innovations to keep a stranglehold on technology. They proactively helped fascists get into power

They don’t deserve to make ever increasing money off us. They’re not content creators - they’re bad stewards of a public forum they bought and expanded through monopolistic practices.

I’d say it’s not only moral to deny them ad revenue, I think watching their ads is a danger to society

Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 08:30 next collapse

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

D_C@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 09:15 next collapse

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?

Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 14:11 collapse

YouTube does a shit ton of A/B testing so they probably didn’t roll that change out to everyone yet. I currently don’t have any issues either but they will eventually hit us with that shit.

Pofski@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 09:48 next collapse

Also interested in how you can do this.

nameisnotimportant@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 10:43 collapse

fixed it by blocking the element

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

Sunflier@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:57 next collapse

Lemme know if they ever reply.

nameisnotimportant@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 16:50 collapse

Yes they did! See right above or direct link sh.itjust.works/comment/19270078

Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 13:51 collapse

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. addons.mozilla.org/…/user-agent-string-switcher/

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

nameisnotimportant@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 16:51 next collapse

Thanks, I’ll have a look at this later and I’m sure it’ll prove useful for everyone!

Sunflier@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 22:18 collapse

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

Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 23:18 collapse

Yea, I have a couple more that I forget does what (I think a couple are for hiding youtube games and shorts and stuff), but it should just look like this in my filters.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/d23090ff-2cc8-477d-8262-0ea7e30132f8.webp">

Sunflier@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 01:04 collapse

Ty so very much kind person.

Coolkat@slrpnk.net on 18 Jun 08:37 next collapse

“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

ulterno@programming.dev on 18 Jun 09:05 next collapse

So here’s what happened recently:

  • I opened the Google News widget on my Android phone, saw a Sponsored link, and found it interesting
  • Clicked on it, the link opened in Chrome, opening the googleadservices redirection thingummy
  • Took over 5 seconds to process the redirect
  • I exited the browser

Guess who missed ad money?


But of course, maybe they got the ad money and the only losers were:

  • me, who didn’t get to see the website that might actually have had something I wanted
  • the website owner, who not only didn’t get my business but also had to pay Google, because Google most probably processed the ad first and didn’t care to process the redirect

I feel like I understand why they removed the “Do no evil” sign. Because now, they are messing with both, the product and the customers, only providing as much as is required to take their money, instead of the full, advertised service.

Grizzlyboy@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 10:52 next collapse

God damn American companies love fucking up everything for money!

elucubra@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 15:31 collapse

Just Americans?

VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 16:47 next collapse

Nestlé: I have done nothing wrong, ever, in my life.

elucubra@sopuli.xyz on 18 Jun 18:38 collapse

OTOH, Danone is a B corporation, so there are choices in that space.

KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 Jun 01:49 collapse

American flavoured capitalism has poisoned the well.

YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 11:09 next collapse

Been using revanced for months and haven’t noticed a difference other than no ads or sponsors on bigger channels.

oh_@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:52 next collapse

“Do evil.” Google’s official new slogan.

xzot746@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 15:27 next collapse

Or “Might as well do EVIL”, what is anybody going to do about it, maybe make some noise but we just pay off TACO and we good.

lud@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 16:38 collapse

That’s true but I wouldn’t really classify this as evil.

Serving videos isn’t easy or cheap. It’s hard and expensive.

I obviously use an adblocker everywhere and so should you.

But saying that Google or anyone else is doing anything wrong by blocking adblockers is ridiculous. When they finally succeed, I will just accept that I finally lost after many many years. My usage of YouTube will likely go down substantially as well. Crying about it after you have used their service for free for YEARS, really makes no sense.

stellargmite@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 19:00 next collapse

You’re right, but also They get alot more from the deal than you acknowledge. The service has never been free. They already had a profitable model, and now they want even more. I call it evil, but in a sense it’s standard corporate behaviour.

Crashumbc@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:07 collapse

The line must go up, it enshitifies every company eventually.

amju_wolf@pawb.social on 19 Jun 03:54 collapse

They can get fucked. A while ago O was like you know what let’s give them money, seems only fair. So I finally subscribed, and then like a month later they sent me an email they’re raising the prices effective immediately - basically changing the deal on me without any delay.

So I unsubscribed, because fuck that.

More recently I looked into sharing the family plan with …my family, but it turna out they consider family only in a single household, and I’m not gonna try to give them money while also potentially having to prove how much of a family we are, so yeah…

Fuck them, either take my money when I’m actually trying, or I guess they didn’t need it that bad. I’m over YouTube, and would probably ditch it earlier than ever watching an ad there.

[deleted] on 18 Jun 13:35 next collapse

.

PixelPilgrim@lemmings.world on 18 Jun 15:00 next collapse

fine by me i listen to audio of videos i watch and i dont mind the lower resolution because it means im using less internet

ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 15:17 next collapse

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

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 18 Jun 15:21 collapse

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.

catty@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 22:29 collapse

Ahh seeing images load line-by-line and you get excited as you can actually start to tell what the image is!

frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world on 18 Jun 15:34 next collapse

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!

JohneryCreatives@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 00:32 collapse

This made me laugh. I wonder which one will prevail in the end

phantomwise@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 16:11 next collapse

That’s a relief. I’ve been dreading the day when they introduce server-side adsm but it seems we’re not there yet 😅 I’m not sure what they think they’ll accomplish with this when it’s A LOT less painful than turning off your adblocker and dealing with the ads, though. Maybe they’re just trying random things to see what works.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:18 next collapse

I’m curious what people would prefer for revenue generation models. Just subscription fees? A lot of folks also seem resistant to that as well.

SnortsGarlicPowder@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 16:22 next collapse

What they had like 10 years ago a couple ads here and there. Not 5 minutes ad 5 minutes ad 5 minutes ad 5 minutess ad.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:01 collapse

Interesting. I didn’t think anyone was cool with any ads.

Manalith@midwest.social on 19 Jun 04:01 next collapse

I’m fine with reasonable ads. Plex Live TV has ads that don’t always get caught by NextDNS for me and it’s always some local business and like 30 seconds, NBD it’s a free service and needs to operate somehow and I’m not aware of any major privacy breaches from Plex. I feel the same way about YT video sponsor segments, they don’t always get caught by ReVanced, also, NBD the creator also needs to get paid for their work.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 07:17 collapse

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

SnortsGarlicPowder@lemmy.zip on 19 Jun 10:15 collapse

I remember a time when ads were loud, obnoxious and popped out. So I’m fine with minimal sidebar and an ad at the start middle if the video was long enough and at the end.

poloqualle@feddit.org on 18 Jun 16:23 next collapse

I would happily pay for yt premium, if that also meant that google does not violate my privacy and sell my data.

Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:39 collapse

That’s my problem, you have to be logged in if you pay and that’s just more data for them to suck up. I watch not logged in. If I want to comment I use a different device.

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 18 Jun 16:26 next collapse

Direct sponsoring has worked in the past with many open source projects (including lemmy.world). Could be closer to what Patreon does.

surph_ninja@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:45 next collapse

I would prefer a model that does not demand infinite growth, leading to ever declining quality and services. I would prefer a tech site that’s satisfied bringing in a comfortable and steady flow of profit.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:02 collapse

All decent people would. I meant within the bounds of treason and tyranny.

Soggy@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:21 collapse

Oh, uh, pass.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 22:45 collapse

Pass on what? Using YouTube at all?

Soggy@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 04:39 collapse

Pass on sticking within the bounds of treason and tyranny. I’m gonna keep idealizing beyond that.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 07:18 collapse

No shit. The question is just about the current system. Your answer is like saying “How should we implement universal healthcare while capitalism still exists?” “Pass”. It doesn’t make sense.

Coil@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 18:56 collapse

There was a time where they only used banner ads. Or ads before the video and not in the middle. Honestly, if they had a cheap, no frills ad free sub, I’d pay for it.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 22:48 collapse

That’s really interesting! Would you pay $8 for a no ads subscription?

Coil@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:17 collapse

Most likely, especially if it’s not locked to one device. I know about their premium lite sub, but 8 dollars for “less” ads isn’t going to do it for me.

buttnugget@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:40 collapse

That’s how much my student subscription is, that’s why I was curious. I think it’s $6.99 plus tax?

Reygle@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:37 next collapse

Then I suppose it’s a good thing they’re limiting non-premium users from using the “high bitrate” quality options?

^ that was sarcasm. HARSH sarcasm. With both middle fingers pointing toward a Google logo and spitting.

dil@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 21:12 collapse

yeah I had some blender visuals I made that only look good high quality because of the detail and it looks sick as my desktop wallpaper with hidamsri but horrible and blurry viewing it on youtube at the highest quality

whome@discuss.tchncs.de on 18 Jun 17:32 next collapse

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

happydoors@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 18:35 next collapse

Yo I pay for premium and it’s been fucking slow. Cancel my subscription? Guess I might need to.

scintilla@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 20:37 collapse

I had to turn off privacy badger and ublock for it to not be slow. It’s stupid I’m paying for the service to be ad free it should be ad free without complaints.

Lemminary@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 02:34 collapse

Your premium tier has been upgraded to the basic plan with ads at no extra charge for you yet, Dear Customer! Aren’t you happy?

hefejefe@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 18:49 next collapse

Down with google

Lemminary@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 02:39 collapse

And his stupid CEO specifically. I’ve yet to hear him pitch a good idea.

Alenalda@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 19:12 next collapse

Revanced is fine so far

Leg@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 22:09 collapse

Can confirm.

catty@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 22:28 next collapse

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”.

dullbananas@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 23:05 next collapse

Daniel Suelo for CEO of YouTube!

benjaminb@discuss.tchncs.de on 18 Jun 23:05 next collapse

I didn’t know if I’m crazy or of YouTube is genuinely slow for me (with adblocker)

Turns out I was not crazy

KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 Jun 01:46 collapse

I mean, you can never really rule it out…

Ekeagle@lemmy.zip on 19 Jun 00:28 next collapse

Why aren’t you using another platform?

dyc3@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 01:25 next collapse

Because YouTube is where shit happens dude. Yeah sure theres peertube and others, but frankly, nobody that people care about are uploading to them. Not to mention they don’t offer the monetization opportunities for creators that YouTube does.

Ad block and sponsor block and call it a day.

Grimtuck@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 04:47 collapse

Because I don’t watch random videos, I watch people I’m subscribed to and they don’t exist on other platforms. I would love to switch, really. The very fact I’m on Lemmy tells you that I’m open to doing that kind of thing.

BoycottPro@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 05:13 collapse

If the people you subscribe to are not ones who monetization is important you may want to consider reaching out to them and asking if they’d consider cross posting to PeerTube or another YouTube alternative. They may appreciate not putting all their eggs in one basket and reaching new potential fans.

AlreadyDefederated@midwest.social on 19 Jun 02:26 next collapse

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

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 19 Jun 02:32 collapse

Very good news!!

Siresly@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 19 Jun 05:11 next collapse

I’ve noticed occasional “buffering” before playback starts through the past week or so. Takes like ten seconds before the video starts playing. Hasn’t been worse than that so far, knock on wood.

Youtube feels like an impossible service to actually compete with, whether through the enormous and complicated setup required or amassing creators/users. It’s basically a monopoly and it sucks. One will just have to resist Google’s bullshit using whatever means available for as long as possible.

EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com on 19 Jun 07:29 next collapse

Yeah, I run multiple ad-blockers and haven’t noticed any slowdown or other degradation.

Akasazh@feddit.nl on 19 Jun 10:41 next collapse

Still I prefer buffering over the inane noises of commercials

dynamoMaus@feddit.org on 19 Jun 11:01 collapse

Peertube is working on breaking the monopoly. I try to use it more.

UltraBlack@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 08:47 collapse

Remember when videos would buffer all the time on non-chrome browsers lol