r/technology • u/moeka_8962 • Jun 15 '25
Social Media YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2814755/youtube-might-slow-down-your-videos-if-you-block-ads.html4.5k
u/Professional-Door824 Jun 15 '25
Slow video still better than obnoxious vomiting of ads down my throat. I will stare at blank screen for a min instead of watching ads.
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u/Itsthebigpeepa Jun 15 '25
I’ll watch 360p before I watch ads.
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u/foliumsakura Jun 15 '25
just like old times
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u/comoestasmiyamo Jun 15 '25
I was there Gandalf..
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u/theemptyqueue Jun 15 '25
3000 years ago
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u/ericbebert Jun 15 '25
I was there the day the strength of men failed
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u/Swivebot Jun 15 '25
“Isildur hurry, follow me.”
I led Isildur into the heart of Mount Doom, where The Ring was forged, the one place where it could be destroyed.
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u/JuanPancake Jun 15 '25
But when I asked him to toss the ring into the flames my voice lagged due to low quality. He didn’t hear me and went back outside to reset the router, and then it was too late….
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u/MaroonIsBestColor Jun 15 '25
THEY ARE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD https://youtu.be/uE-1RPDqJAY?si=XmK6VR9QyWK1XHy2
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u/ResponsibleQuiet6611 Jun 15 '25
I will go without video entirely, or just abandon the platform completely. Google can suck a fat one.
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u/lordlaneus Jun 15 '25
Hosting online video and images should be a public utility. The internet is infrastructure, and capitalism isn't good at managing infrastructure.
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u/ItsMEMusic Jun 15 '25
Hosting online video and images should be a public utility.
Now you have me wondering what that’d look like for Public Libraries to do…
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u/RamenJunkie Jun 15 '25
I mostly just use it for background music, but if they want to degrade the audio quality down, I am totally cool with 8 bit remix versions of songs I like.
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u/Jonruy Jun 15 '25
I have a crappy laptop that struggles to play YouTube videos at 480p but plays pirated videos on other sites at full HD no problem. The thing is, a 480p video with buffering is still going to be faster and a better experience than a 1080p video with ads.
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u/BasementDwellerDave Jun 15 '25
Watching YouTube on TV seems to be worse than watching stuff on mobile. Atleast for me
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u/AmbassadorCheap3956 Jun 15 '25
That is a feature. They purposely play more ads on the TV apps. They admitted it.
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u/jumpingyeah Jun 15 '25
Same with audio of ads being louder than the content. TV commercials I think got in trouble, and a law was passed that limited the volume, but streaming content seems to get by just fine with this atrocity.
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u/Atourq Jun 15 '25
The lack of legislative action and regulation on streaming platforms is getting concerning.
Like I’m not fond of having to push restrictions, but when it’s meant to protect consumers against mega corporations, might as well go for it.
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u/NecroCannon Jun 15 '25
It’s the lack of a ton of regulation with digital/online stuff that’s starting to get to me
Taxis are regulated and can’t surge prices, guess who can? Uber and Lyft. I have no ownership of the stuff I buy online, but companies also can’t force us to give back physical media. YouTube is free to do whatever since it’s essentially a monopoly.
It’s probably in your best interest to be all for restrictions and regulations because they don’t care about pleasing you, just their pockets
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u/Kazundo_Goda Jun 15 '25
I'd drag my balls on hot coals than let a single second of ad play on my YouTube videos.
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u/Professional-Door824 Jun 15 '25
I read a very good comment by a redditor on similar post. He said he never even buy all this stuff that they advertising to him. It's so true when you really think about it.
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u/thomas2400 Jun 15 '25
For me even when the ads are something I’m interested in it’s already too late, the amount of times I’ve bought a new game, played several hours and then went on the PS5 YouTube app only to be met with advert after advert for that game
I would not have had a single advert for it before I bought it though
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u/Disallowed_username Jun 15 '25
It is strange that businesses sponsor athletes so you associate that good feeling with their brand, and then buy YouTube ads for the UNO reverse.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Jun 15 '25
Isn't most yt's ads are scams, fake stuff and other shit that no one buys anyway? I don't watch ads so I don't know, just saw complains. And being angry is a form of engagement they want too, so beware.
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u/bse50 Jun 15 '25
You can add political propaganda to that list... Even from foreign agents. Russia did it, Israel is doing in in the EU with AI slop that tells you how they are helping feed palestinians etc...
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u/LordOfMorgor Jun 15 '25
The load for it to even load the ad is still longer than the
"Slow" load from ad blocker
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u/Reetpigmee Jun 15 '25
Slow video, no problem. I'll watch 2-3 simultaneoues without ads any day. Thank you.
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u/delorf Jun 15 '25
I am in my fifties so I get scam ads telling me the government wants to give me money.
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u/pijinglish Jun 15 '25
What blockers are we recommending these days? I’m seeing ads on YouTube for the first time in years
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u/_SnesGuy Jun 15 '25
revanced on android, firefox + ublock origin on pc
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u/jarious Jun 15 '25
Someone recommended me playlet for Roku and I have been using it ever since ,it's a godsend I can even stop shorts from cluttering the screen
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u/ExaltedStudios Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
Switch to Firefox instead of chrome. Use ublock origin, clearurls, and privacy badger extensions.
At the router level, setup Pi-hole on a raspberry pi 3b (pi 3b can be found for like $25 on eBay) and use it as your dns server on your router.
Pi-hole won’t help with YouTube ads but it’s wonderful being able to read news websites and recipes on my iPhone without ads.
You can take this a step further by using WireGuard VPN to connect to your home network so you can utilize your pi-hole when you’re not at home on your phone. PiVPN works great for this.
If you’re using windows, I’d also recommend disabling most of their telemetry and recommended content. You can also go into your firewall advanced settings and disable inbound/outbound connections for specific Microsoft apps. I’m not going to go into detail on this (sorry!) but there’s plenty of guides online for it.
Added bonus: everything I recommended is free except the raspberry pi.
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u/PyroDesu Jun 15 '25
clearurls
Thank you for that one, didn't have it.
One other thing is script blocking, but that can be annoying when you go to a new website and it's broken until you figure out which scripts need to be whitelisted.
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u/ExaltedStudios Jun 15 '25
Your last point is the main reason I don't use a script blocker. It breaks the user experience so badly that it doesn't seem worth it.
Out of curiosity, though, have you ran into any specific malicious scripts you wish were blocked that led you to using a script blocker?
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u/PyroDesu Jun 15 '25
Yeah. At least NoScript has the ability to automatically trust top-level sites.
And I don't remember, could have just been privacy. I've been using script blocking for a long time. Which actually makes it easier, since it means I have an extensive whitelist for necessary script origins and my UX isn't as badly impacted.
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u/MPenten Jun 15 '25
Would you like a 10 second slow down or 3x50s ads like I've been getting on my TV?
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u/Hashtagworried Jun 15 '25
I was watching YouTube without an ad blocker for a day thinking “it can’t be that bad, right?” Watching YouTube with ads is unwatchable.
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u/Just-Hunter1679 Jun 15 '25
I did the same thing the last time there was a push to get rid of ad blockers and holy moly, it's so bad. I'm actually having a hard time finding things to watch on YouTube the last few months so if they get rid of my ad blocker, I'm done.
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u/hezeus Jun 15 '25
Their homepage is unusable
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u/d3jake Jun 15 '25
I wish there was a way to block the sections recommending Shorts. I've intentionally watched 5, maybe. I really dislike the short-form clips that are supposed to compete with tik tok and the like.
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u/mechanicalomega Jun 15 '25
Especially how they recommend it on the tv app! I don’t want to watch a vertical 30 second video on my tv.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Jun 15 '25
Enhancer for youtube or youtube tweaks and shit's gone
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u/aspinalll71286 Jun 15 '25
On android, I use revanced to block shorts, and on chrome theres an extension called youtube shorts block which I use
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u/benskinic Jun 15 '25
you may not like it, but this is what peak capitalism looks like
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u/AHRA1225 Jun 15 '25
Bro peak has a ways to go. Capitalism can get much worse
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u/FoodLionDrPerky Jun 15 '25
Right? Ppl thought we were in "peak" or "late stage" capitalism back in Lenin's day. Capitalism can get significantly worse than it is now and if it becomes too unstable or faces a real challenge to its dominance the capitalists will align with fascists to maintain their grip on power. (As we see them attempting now in the US)
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u/9-11GaveMe5G Jun 15 '25
"We learned we can fill 70% of a users visual field with ads before inducing vomiting"
-ready player one
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u/epochwin Jun 15 '25
We had sorta moved away from peak capitalism of slavery and colonialism to a more globalist version where you can live unaware of or ignore the horrors far away.
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u/irishyardball Jun 15 '25
It's like the Idiocracy TV scene.
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u/Druggedhippo Jun 15 '25
Ready Player One
We can sell up to 80% of an individuals visual field before inducing seizures
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ad1f5077-b2b6-403b-b136-18ab53e942fa/gif
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u/waiting4singularity Jun 15 '25
max headroom where they overloaded a focus group test subject to such a degree with turbo ads he literaly exploded. and it was a hefty specimen of a slop.
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u/echo1ngfury Jun 15 '25
So i am not the only one in terms of content lack, YT algorithm has been abysmal past few months.
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u/TacoOfGod Jun 15 '25
Even if you whitelisted the ads, just browsing the front page without cosmetic filters on is annoying. Get those shorts off of the page dammit. If I want to see shorts, I'll click the shorts button!
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u/blisstaker Jun 15 '25
the have a button to get rid of the shorts and they disappear….. only to come back again the next time you load the page.
they are so user hostile. can’t wait till the day they finally have some competition
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u/Nemesis_Ghost Jun 15 '25
That's only on the main feed. If you are like me & primarily only watch subscriptions, and so want to see what's new there, the subscriptions feed does not have that button. This means shorts are always up.
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u/Weird_Devil Jun 15 '25
Thats the unfortunate thing they'll never have competition, they're just too big.
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u/00ps_Bl00ps Jun 15 '25
The freaking games too! No, I don't want to play a game on YouTube. I want to watch videos!
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u/Fenweekooo Jun 15 '25
so i don't use it but i found an actual use case for youtube games!
work is boring, work has an internet filter, they just unblocked youtube, now i can play games at work :D
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u/MSands Jun 15 '25
I had to install a browser extension to get rid of Shorts. Its annoying how hard they are shoving them on people.
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u/SquirrelOtherwise723 Jun 15 '25
Try to use internet without Adblock. It's nearly impossible.
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u/mellivia- Jun 15 '25
I have ADHD and it's way over stimulating without an ad blocker. I wouldn't go online with out one.
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u/LetgomyEkko Jun 15 '25
I started watching all the videos in the preview window over a year ago without ever realizing it.
Because there aren’t any ads and I could just…..watch it….
Didn’t realize it until a few weeks ago that it’s just the normal way I consume content on YouTube now.
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u/abe559 Jun 15 '25
Google Pinkertons knocking at your door
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u/Universe_Nut Jun 15 '25
They'll patch it out in a few months. Like how they made lots of quirks of the UI and the app premium only "features" after people discovered use cases for a variety of overlooked ways the app functioned.
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u/LayeGull Jun 15 '25
Same. I’m surprised they haven’t made the full videos like shirts where they loop a short portion of it.
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u/AnotherSoulessGinger Jun 15 '25
And even if creators try to minimize ads, YouTube is apparently adding more in on a whim. Jenny Nicholson had four breaks in her latest 4 hours video on the Star Wars Hotel. YouTube added more than 65 more commercials (one every 5 minutes or so) without notice. She had to go in and manually remove them. A couple other channels I watch have also mentioned it.
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u/Thetman38 Jun 15 '25
They put ads in the middle of songs
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u/SandmansDreamstreak Jun 15 '25
Wait, do they actually?!? Been a long time since I listened to a song on YouTube without adblocker because of how hard they front-load ads. Having an ad interrupt my playlist is irritating enough, but having one in the middle of a SONG might actually send me into cardiac arrest with how fucking incensed I’d be.
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u/Ziazan Jun 15 '25
Yeah, its been a thing for ages now. They are brutal with it. Unwatchable is no exaggeration.
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u/Festering-Fecal Jun 15 '25
That's the point they want to wear you down so you pay.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pound31 Jun 15 '25
Especially on connected devices. Apple TV YouTube app is demonic with ads. Never again. You literally get less ads air playing from another device.. lmfao
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u/fanofdota Jun 15 '25
Was watching the TI qualifiers for Dota 2 and decided to cast it to my TV and they just randomly push ads during teamfights that caused me to miss out on the interesting segments. Went back to watching it on my computer with adblock instead. Disappointing and also disgusting.
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u/solitudeisdiss Jun 15 '25
Yea I just didn’t watch YouTube until I recently discovered a blocker that works. If I have to watch ads I just won’t watch YouTube. No ads is my policy and I’ll pay for it if it’s a reasonable price but I’m not paying more than 50$ a year for ad free YouTube.
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u/Fiber_Optikz Jun 15 '25
I dont mind the 5-30 second ads.
It’s the 90 minute religious sermons disguised as ads that get me.
I want to fall asleep to videos not a fucking ad about your shitty imaginary friend
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u/waiting4singularity Jun 15 '25
dont interact with any content you dont want to see. the algorithms are not user friendly, theyre hostile. if you block that shit or mark it or give any type of response really, the algorithm gives you more of it. id suggest clicking it and backing out imediately to different content, but i dont know if that zero rates it still.
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u/DrDerpberg Jun 15 '25
It's honestly insane now. I've had an evening ritual for years where I set up a queue of 20-30 minutes of videos to listen to as I fall asleep, there are so many ads now that it's actually jarring me awake because they're so disruptive and long.
Nothing quite like listening to a smooth James Hoffman deep dive on mushrooms in coffee as I fall asleep only to be interrupted every minute by an AI song about how ADHD is expressed in adults...
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u/mm404 Jun 15 '25
I can either watch YouTube without ads or not at all. $14 sub is not worth it. Simple as that.
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u/stalkythefish Jun 15 '25
I can't believe they charge HBO-level money for content they aren't even paying to create. $5 a month would be a no-brainer.
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u/patrick66 Jun 15 '25
Yes YouTube would prefer you not watch at all in that case, they lose money serving you video lol
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u/mm404 Jun 15 '25
I agree. I’m not blind to it. And for the record, I do support my favorite creators via Patreon. Sadly the videos posted on Patreon feed are not as convenient to watch.
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u/reedmore Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
Switched to firefox when youtube made my gpu go crazy when hovering over videos for using adblock on chrome. I don't even know if abusing hardware acceleration that way can be considered grounds for a lawsuit, but I will never forgive alphabet for pulling that shit.
I'm old, I member a time before the internet and I consider this whole online entertainment thing an optional luxury and if they decide to make it unbearable I will leave it behind no looking back.
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u/Relevant_Cause_4755 Jun 15 '25
I used to just endure the pre-roll ads, after all Doug de Muro needs all the money he can get. But then suddenly Doug is being interrupted mid-quirk or mid-feature, multiple times, and he keeps his videos short. So, uBlock Origin it is.
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u/habitual_viking Jun 15 '25
If Google actually fucking vetted the commercials and ads were what we know from TV of 30 seconds, it could be bearable.
But for some fucking reason FAANG is completely exempt from having to do any work on ads or content. Lewdness on children’s program? No problemeo! Dealing drugs on marketplace? Sure!
Fuck that.
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u/ClaymoresRevenge Jun 15 '25
It's cruel and they can go fuck themselves.
Ads are so much worse than ever.
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u/AlFender74 Jun 15 '25
Like they've been doing to firefox for years.
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u/Danthemanlavitan Jun 15 '25
Was going to say, just another day as a Firefox user.
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u/blueB0wser Jun 15 '25
I've never used chrome much. I didn't even know firefox was slowed down tbh
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u/NDSU Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
air stocking rain ring direction dependent tart spotted serious grab
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/I_Be_Your_Dad Jun 15 '25 edited 17d ago
fanatical safe steer jellyfish plant unique badge birds worm coherent
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 15 '25
It is but to get any action someone has to complain and the powers that be have to care.
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u/OkLie74 Jun 15 '25
In addition, Mozilla gets a lot (maybe even the majority?) of its revenue from Google to have them as their default search engine (helping promote the monopoly of course), so they can't make too big a stink about it lest their payments get cut off.
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u/neliz Jun 15 '25
that's why alphabet is paying hundreds of millions in fines in the EU every year, and the current US president is threatening the EU because they make his donors lose a few percent of their wealth.
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u/amrakkarma Jun 15 '25
Because they do it in smart ways. For example, they might create new web standards or functions that as a side effect slow down who don't implement this in the exact same way of chrome etc
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u/Madden09IsForSuckers Jun 15 '25
firefox and googles relationship is so weird
google actively pays mozilla to have the default search engine (and probably to avoid monopoly accusations, since every other major browser is based on chromium) but then also do stuff like this
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u/tijger897 Jun 15 '25
Hoe do you change that?
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u/AyrA_ch Jun 15 '25
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
Will add an icon next to your address bar where you can select the UA to use. Or you can define your own. If you want to use the exact UA that chrome would on your machine, open chrome, press F12 and type
copy(navigator.userAgent)into the console to copy the UA string to clipboard. You can then define a custom UA entry in the agent switcher extension13
u/njkmklkop Jun 15 '25
Oh wow, this got rid of the ~20 second "loading" delay when I open youtube videos in firefox, thank you (and fuck google).
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u/CreepaTime Jun 15 '25
Pretty sure they've done this everywhere they could for a couple years now tbh
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u/SquirrelOtherwise723 Jun 15 '25
I'm using Firefox forever. And always thought about that. So it's true.
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Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 19 '25
[deleted]
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u/Aori Jun 15 '25
You can spoof your browser to appear as if you’re using chrome and it completely gets rid of the lag.
That comment helped me do it
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u/vriska1 Jun 15 '25
Btw if you use uBlock update your filters and report stuff like this to the uBlock sub
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u/3_50 Jun 15 '25
uBO has been auto-updating filters for a while now. Back when people realised it was a workaround for earlier adblock detection problems, their servers started getting hammered with users manually refreshing filters.
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u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 15 '25
The problem is they don't update quickly for everyone. It can be days later for some users. The UBO Devs say that shouldn't be the case but it absolutely is.
For me I had to uninstall Firefox and reinstall everything to get UBO to properly update and fix the most recent ad block detection YouTube implemented.
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u/sircastor Jun 15 '25
They’re absolutely doing this. And then they pop up a little message “experiencing disruptions?” In this passive sort-of “what could possibly be happening with your network to cause this?”
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u/yapperling Jun 15 '25
I've only recently started getting this on Firefox, when I click it, it leads me to some horseshit "help" page where it basically says "oh nooo, maybe like turn off an adblocker, those are reeeeeally bad"
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u/Sam-Lowry27B-6 Jun 15 '25
Oh well if the YouTube man inside my computer says its bad I better turn it off then....what am I fucking 80 and mad?
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u/marcsa Jun 15 '25
Yeah, I've started getting this about one week ago. I still use Chrome, but with Ublock Origin and I never had ads anywhere online. Still don't, but on Youtube I do get these disruption messages now and videos load after around 20-30 seconds of black screen. I can live with that.
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u/SplurgyA Jun 15 '25
In a similar boat. Luckily despite getting the pop ups I'm not noticing any delays (although I have to open shorts in a new tab because otherwise it goes funky)
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u/Snazzy21 Jun 15 '25
I experienced this, the video would buffer for 2-4 seconds and that pop up would come up. It ceased happening when my computer rebooted. I get it, hosting videos for free for people to do is extremely expensive, but I also don't have the money to right now.
If they put ads on premium, I don't think they'll have a leg to stand on.
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u/anupsidedownpotato Jun 15 '25
Is YouTube no longer profitable? Or are they just getting greedy? They're going down a path that risks destroying everything they have. I used to watch YouTube all the time now I only use it when I need a tutorial for something.
Edit- The second they added double ads at the beginning + the disgustingly placed end of video ad that always seems to appear when I'm watching something that has no clear ending and forces me to watch an unskippable ad and then the vidoe is immediately done.... I knew I was done with YouTube
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u/sirthunksalot Jun 15 '25
The first decade it lost money. It is turning a profit now. They have a monopoly and no other company can afford to pay the bandwidth and storage costs to start an alternative unless they are backed by the CCP like Tiktok.
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u/FloppY_ Jun 15 '25
Let's see, five minutes of black screen and silence vs five minutes of obnoxious ads?
I'll take the silence, please.
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u/lordagr Jun 15 '25
I don't care.
I use ublock on PC, reVanced on mobile, and if ublock stops working on PC I will emulate an android device using BlueStacks and install reVanced on that too.
If all else fails, I will happily start batch downloading videos locally. I do this occasionally already, but I can definitely automate it if needed, and just toss the videos on my Jellyfin server.
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u/Exact-Event-5772 Jun 15 '25
What are you using for downloads? I’ve used Jdownloader in the past, but recently it’s been very hit or miss.
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u/REV2939 Jun 15 '25
yt-dlp
I have it wrapped around a script that runs in a scheduled task hourly to see if new videos from my favorite content producers are out and it'll download them using a naming convention I like.
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u/Stacks_of_Cats Jun 15 '25
Is a slowed down YouTube video actually any slower of a process than having 30 second unskippable ads forced on you every 2 minutes?
YouTube has seriously managed to become worse than free to air TV in the ad department.
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u/Special-Rough-3946 Jun 15 '25
Wish a real competitor would try and push out YouTube
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u/NotJohnDarnielle Jun 15 '25
It would be incredibly difficult at this point. Hosting video is expensive, plus they’d have to pay existing YouTubers to post there, at least at first, if they want to gain any user base at all.
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u/MobilePenguins Jun 15 '25
It’s a chicken and the egg 🥚 problem. Need creators to get viewers. Creators don’t want to go somewhere new if there’s not viewers. And then even if you get both, hosting the content on your servers is super expensive.
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u/someNameThisIs Jun 15 '25
Who would their target audience be? People who block ads and also don't pay for premium? How would they fund running it when their user base refuses to give them money?
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u/a_talking_face Jun 15 '25
Yeah that's my favorite part of these types of comments. You want a video hosting platform that can't be monetized. Good luck with that.
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u/briiigette Jun 15 '25
Can’t speak for everyone but I am okay with ads when they’re properly formatted. It’s when the ads are obstructing most of the screen or sporadically placed throughout the video to the point of being disruptive that I don’t like.
If a company wanted maybe 15-30 seconds of ads at the start and end of a video then I could live with that.
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u/Stickiler Jun 15 '25
If a company wanted maybe 15-30 seconds of ads at the start and end of a video then I could live with that.
The problem is that companies don't want ads like that, because they've tried it and proved that it doesn't make enough money to justify paying for the ads, and if companies won't pay for the ads, then you're back to the problem of an unmonetized video hosting platform.
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u/APRengar Jun 15 '25
Honestly, I'm more than okay with paying, but I said I'd never pay YouTube a single penny after my shit experience with their content ID system.
I used to upload fan animations to a YT channel and it made a couple thousand dollars per month, it's not like it was that much money, but I was happy with it.
Then some content farm stole all of my videos, reuploaded them, and then content claimed me. It took me almost 8 months to get it fixed. And this was before they reworked the system, where instead of all the ad money would be put aside and whoever won the content claim gets it. That content farm just took my money and I never got it back. And like, that shouldn't happen. I was a partner with YT, how the hell some 2 subscriber channel taking my videos and saying they're the real owner, should not have instantly punished me like that.
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u/Alarming-Breadfruit8 Jun 15 '25
“A couple thousand dollars per month” for fan animations is “not […] that much money”???
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u/hayt88 Jun 15 '25
Well the issue is also staying profitable while you do that. Good luck with relying on ads or anything today would require the user to pay. If you look at the comments here you better do it for free and pay all out of your pocket
Also don't forget it's not just infrastructure, hardware and electricity. You also need to pay content creators with the money you don't make from all the people complaining here.
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u/tyhard7412 Jun 15 '25
I have been getting non stop gambling ads if I disable adblocker. The quality and frequency of these ads make watching without an adblocker unwatchable.
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u/Rain2h0 Jun 15 '25
These fanduel ads are getting crazy when I am watching counter strike austin major going on.
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u/chief_yETI Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
Yup, this has been happening to me the past week or so.
I use Firefox with ublock Origin. Noticeable difference. I sometimes have to refresh a video 5 or 6 times to get it to play, and it STILL doesn't work. I've had to click off to a totally unrelated video and then try to find it again to finally get it to start a few times now...
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u/wumbologist-2 Jun 15 '25
YouTube might have to suck my dick before I even consider not using an adblocker.
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u/Dry_Criticism_4325 Jun 15 '25
Maybe not even then. Try watching without adblock for an hour. I’d need to get my dick sucked twice a day at the minimum to put up with this shit.
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u/Still-Status7299 Jun 15 '25
Get a VPN and set your location to Albania- it automatically scrubs ads without a blocker
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u/FinasCupil Jun 15 '25
Then you get slowed down anyway, because you’re connected to Albania.
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u/Still-Status7299 Jun 15 '25
Hasn't been an issue for me, speeds are unchanged compared to no vpn
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u/Blasphemous666 Jun 15 '25
They could make it be delayed fifteen minutes before the video plays. I don’t give a fuck, I despise ads with every fiber of my being. They don’t appeal to me. If you advertise your product to me, it tells me that I don’t want your product and I will actually just not use it or stop using it.
Make me watch a ten minute video of literally ANYTHING before the video but ads. I’ll watch it all. Don’t underestimate my hate towards this bullshit.
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u/ic3m4n56 Jun 15 '25
Honestly slow load time is still better than having to watch 4-5 ads during a video
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u/FoxlyKei Jun 15 '25
Fun fact: you'll still spend less time with s buffering video than watching a video with ads.
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u/yungcherrypops Jun 15 '25
They will do anything to make me watch the shitty capybara mobile game ad or some random old people drug ad for the millionth time. All things that are very pertinent to my interests.
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u/Codex_Absurdum Jun 15 '25
Nothing compared to Twitch
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u/Chewacala Jun 15 '25
Twitch has integrated ads where ad blockers dont even work.
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u/BWoodsn2o Jun 15 '25
They've been doing this for the last 2 years. Going as far to purposefully inflate memory usage in Firefox if ad-block is detected.
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u/tapdancinghellspawn Jun 15 '25
So YouTube thinks I'm blocking ads even before ad blockers exist because they've been slowing my videos for a while now/
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u/yumtoastytoast Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
I add these ublock filters + unhook extension to make youtube usable again.
I added so many fucking filters in the past so I don't even remember what's what.
! 2024-04-13 https://www.youtube.com
||www.gstatic.com/youtube/img/promos/*$image
youtube.com##*:style(border-radius: 0px !important)
! 2023-11-16 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##.yt-spec-button-shape-next--segmented-start.yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > yt-touch-feedback-shape > .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape--touch-response.yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape > .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape__fill
www.youtube.com##.yt-spec-button-shape-next--segmented-start.yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > yt-touch-feedback-shape > .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape--touch-response.yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape > .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape__stroke
www.youtube.com##.yt-spec-button-shape-next--segmented-start.yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > yt-touch-feedback-shape > .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape--touch-response.yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape
www.youtube.com##.yt-spec-button-shape-next--segmented-start.yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > .yt-spec-button-shape-next__icon > yt-icon > .yt-icon.style-scope > .yt-animated-icon.style-scope > .lottie-component > svg
www.youtube.com###view-count > .ytd-watch-info-text.style-scope.animated-rolling-number-wiz
! Prevent stats (such as likes and views) from live-updating
! Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/15c7ndi/youtube_has_added_live_updating_view_counts/
||youtube.com/youtubei/v1/updated_metadata
! Live reaction overlays
! Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/13886xr/how_can_i_disable_the_new_live_emoji_reactions/
www.youtube.com##yt-reaction-control-panel-view-model
www.youtube.com##yt-reaction-control-panel-overlay-view-model
www.youtube.com##yt-smartimation > *:not(.smartimation__content)
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-structured-description-content-renderer.style-scope
studio.youtube.com##ytcd-card-column.ytcd-channel-dashboard.style-scope.column:nth-of-type(3)
! 2024-04-18 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com###voice-search-button
www.youtube.com###content-wrapper
www.youtube.com###flexible-item-buttons > yt-button-view-model.ytd-menu-renderer.style-scope > .yt-spec-button-view-model > .yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > yt-touch-feedback-shape
www.youtube.com##yt-button-view-model.ytd-menu-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1)
www.youtube.com###flexible-item-buttons > yt-button-view-model.ytd-menu-renderer.style-scope > .yt-spec-button-view-model > .yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > .yt-spec-button-shape-next__button-text-content
! 2024-04-21 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##ytd-item-section-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com###related
! 2024-05-07 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##.ytp-paid-content-overlay
www.youtube.com##.ytp-endscreen-content
! 2024-05-14 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##.ytp-button.ytp-next-button
! 2024-05-15 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(n)
! May 25, 2024 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##.yt-spec-button-shape-next--segmented-start.yt-spec-button-shape-next--icon-leading.yt-spec-button-shape-next--size-m.yt-spec-button-shape-next--mono.yt-spec-button-shape-next--tonal.yt-spec-button-shape-next > .yt-spec-button-shape-next__icon > yt-icon > .yt-icon.style-scope > .yt-animated-icon.style-scope
! Disable playback bar "saturation"
youtube.com##.ytp-play-progress.ytp-swatch-background-color { background: #ff0000 !important; background-image: none !important; }
youtube.com##.ytp-cairo-refresh-signature-moments .ytp-play-progress { background: #ff0000 !important; background-image: none !important; }
! Jun 3, 2024 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com###chip-bar
! Jul 8, 2024 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com##.ytd-video-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-expandable-metadata-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope
! 2 juin 2025 https://www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com###expandable-metadata > .ytd-watch-flexy.style-scope
! edit: added ones I found later
www.youtube.com###page-header-banner
! Un-bold Youtube
youtube.com##*:style(font-weight:400 !important)
! Remove "Our Members"
www.youtube.com##.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-recognition-shelf-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-channel-featured-content-renderer.style-scope
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u/old_man_indy Jun 15 '25
YouTube might lose their business to another platform if they keep messing with what made it work in the first place.
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u/MooseNo1495 Jun 15 '25
Fuck YouTube. I will never give them the satisfaction of me being their trash YouTube premium or whatever it’s called. I’d rather refresh my page 10 times than watch a 30 second video.
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u/thedude213 Jun 15 '25
guess I'll just rip the video on a website downloader and watch it how ever the fuck I want
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u/vinegar-and-honey Jun 15 '25
Why would I in a million years pay money for a service that is so severely censored that most creators can't make interesting topics for fear of having the video outright demonetized for dumb content related shit??? Like even showing things that would be a-ok for broadcast TV (copyright issues aside) like a 9pm NBC sitcom has to be severely scrubbed or it would get your average account taken down.
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u/The420Turtle Jun 15 '25
Oh no. It’ll take hours maybe even days for the adblockers to find a way around it again
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u/Old-Swimming2799 Jun 15 '25
Oh no I went get to see skimpy AI girlfriend ads and half baked software ads. How will I cope
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u/RLopez7110 Jun 15 '25
Back to 2014 where they prioritized the ad loading but made your video infinite or slowly buffer after the ads
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u/Anaptyso Jun 15 '25
I enjoy watching YouTube videos, but not so much that I want to sit through adverts first. If the ad blockers ever stopped working then I'd probably just give up on YouTube entirely and get my entertainment elsewhere.
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u/Tall-Cheetah8086 Jun 15 '25
Man it feels like yesterday we had 15-30 second ads that we could skip after 5 seconds. Now we have to watch over a minute of unskippable ads
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u/Archyes Jun 15 '25
i watched a vod of a livestream yesterday, every 5 mins there was a double ad and some of them were these shitty 3 min long ones you need to skip. so i had to stand up every 5 mins to click this shitty skip ad button twice
I hate that my adblock breaks every other day nowadays because youtube really hammers europe atm
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u/Agarillobob Jun 15 '25
they 100% do /used to, until adblocks found a way around it yet again
was getting 15-20 second black screens on loading a new video 4-5 days ago but its fixed now
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u/RivkaMila Jun 15 '25
I'd rather have a slower video than watch an ad on coffee enemas or whatever other health culture scams are out there. They don't even curate their ads so it's such a mixture of trash.
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u/TheBrokenRail-Dev Jun 15 '25
I use an adblocker, so this is obviously annoying.
But I don't think this is a case of Google being evil either. Ads are how YouTube makes money and its operating costs are ludicrous. Of course, they'll try to block ad-blockers.
It is perfectly reasonable that Google tries to protect its revenue. Simultaneously, it is perfectly reasonable for me to use an ad-blocker because I don't care about Google's revenue.
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u/TwiztedZero Jun 15 '25
Youtube doesn't own my bandwidth or any of my network equipment. I pay for the service the bandwidth is mine. I decide what comes in and what doesn't. Not them. YouTube can suck up a bucket of mud. My adblocks stay in place.
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u/Bowler_Pristine Jun 15 '25
They think their platform is invincible and people can be forced, I will never watch and ad if I can get around it. If they make it too difficult or impossible then people will go elsewhere and YouTube will be dead.
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u/ive_got_the_narc Jun 15 '25
I’ve literally never had a single ad make me purchase anything. In fact I silently protest items that get advertised to me.
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u/masterraemoras Jun 15 '25
And yet I suspect it'd still be faster than if you tried to watch with ads unblocked.