YouTube escalates battle against ad blockers, rolls out site slowdown (update)

[midian182]

A hot potato: YouTube's ongoing war against those who use ad blockers has moved up a level. The company is now rolling out a punishment to more people that causes the entire site to slow when it detects ad-blocking software is being used, causing a "suboptimal viewing" experience.

Correction: It appears that the recent slowdown issues have only been affecting Adblock/Adblock Plus users, apparently due to a bug in the software. Other ad blockers such as uBlock Origin are not seeing similar problems on YouTube.

Original story is as follows:

It was back in November that YouTube's previous ad-blocking methods moved from the experimental stage to a full-blown global effort to stop users from avoiding its slew of ads – or make them sign up to YouTube Premium.

YouTube's initial efforts involved warning people via popups that using ad blockers violated its terms of service, forcing them to disable the software or go Premium to continue.

The campaign was apparently effective, with ad block uninstalls surging in the wake of YouTube's ban. But the company wanted more ways of encouraging users to watch their ads or subscribe, so the platform started intentionally delaying video loading by about five seconds upon detecting an ad blocker. YouTube confirmed that this "suboptimal viewing" experience was the result of ad blocking detection.

Youtube started slowing video buffer with adblock enabled
byu/NightMean inyoutube

Following its introduction a couple of months ago, 9to5Google writes that several Reddit users have recently noticed YouTube being laggy and unresponsive, suggesting a wider rollout of the slowdown punishment is occurring. Videos buffer slowly, previews refuse to load correctly, and entering fullscreen or theater mode can't be done without refreshing the site. It's also noted that YouTube is throttling performance for Premium subscribers if they have an ad blocker enabled for another reason. The only way to fix the issues is to disable whichever ad blocker is being used.

The publication writes that YouTube is using an artificial timeout written within its code to mimic a laggy internet connection among ad blocker users.

There has been plenty of anger over YouTube's actions. In addition to introducing unskippable 30-second ads to its TV app, the company increased the price of YouTube Premium last year. It now costs $13.99 a month to remove ads from YouTube and YouTube Music, or you can buy a yearly subscription for $139.99. There are also student plans and one for families that cover up to five people.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101524-youtube-escalates-battle-against-ad-blockers-rolls-out.html

 

[hahahanoobs]

Someone here suggested an ad removal only option and I'm cool with that. I pay full price right now and I could live with losing YT Music but keep background play.

 

[Uncle Al]

Personally I think YouTube is cutting their own throat. Regardless of their excuses they are going against the grain of the vast majority of their users. They already make significant profit and are risking some other company coming up with a Youtube like website that all the users and video makers will flee to. In the end they will be just a shell that anyone can pick up for little to no money. Greed always has a way of turning around and biting the greedy .....

 

[oasked]

For the moment my tactic of not using Chrome for YouTube (and UBlock) seems to be working. No problems found... (yet).

 

[m4a4]

It just looks like they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. Invisible measures like this will only appear as if YT's quality is tanking, not that there's a plugin problem.

That said, I've had no issues so far with uBlock. I wouldn't be surprised if less-effect adblockers were the only ones being affected.

 

[themastergoose]

I get YouTube Premium bundled with my mobile phone provider, but also run Surfshark's AdBlock because it's not just YouTube that is advert heavy on the web as we all know.

But YouTube simply detecting the presence of Surfshark's AdBlock within the browser places me in the same bucket as those who use AdBlock. I get the slow downs, warnings and mid video adverts when skipping regardless.

I hope YouTube burns in hell. You pay and still get shafted if you want to AdBlock wider internet traffic. **** Google.

 

[Anton Longshot]

I can't live without adblocker (no salesmen inside MY home!) but I definitely can live without YouTube and I'll say goodbye once ads become mandatory.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

All they had to do was a $3 no ads up to 1080p option and they would have made far more $$$.

 

[Dr Roboto]

Advertisements and marketing are out of control IMO. It has reached a level of ridiculousness. I am bombarded by mail, TV, radio, email, internet, video games, apps for my kids sports, and the list goes on and on. Now Google is forcing you to remove/disable the one tool we have to give our life some minimal level of defense "or else" they will make their product difficult or unusable for you. @#$% you Google. I rarely use YouTube, and this only keeps me farther away.

 

[Dimitriid]

I honestly feel like it doesn't bodes well for them: The (frankly irrational) laws of free market economies dictate that any company that isn't growing is dying and youtube is suffering the fate most services like them will eventually suffer: they're so big there's not many more users to actually reach: basically everybody around the globe uses them heavily and the users they can't reach face access issues that a single corporation, even a powerful one like Alphabet, just cannot fix: They won't be able to just produce super cheap hardware and internet access for "developing" countries or somehow take down the great China firewall to capture that market in a big way.

So if we want to understand this within a bit more of a context, it was kind of inevitable that they would have to fight their own users for more monetization eventually since there isn't a good way to get more new users instead to keep those numbers growing: there aren't many other options to appease investors so all they can do is delay the inevitable by cannibalizing their own user base to post a few dozen more quarters of expected growth until most of them well, just leave.

This instead would be the right time for someone else to try and step in to capture those angry youtube users looking for a homegrown content fix but so far Twitch/Amazon haven't cared enough to bet big on what they call VoDs and Facebook is so maligned with the US user base it's going to be way too hard for them to get their video services off the ground in a big way (Again, their lack of foresight by delving into politics has pushed a hell of a lot of users out of the platform) so I see it as a kinda wide open field but also with an absurdly high level of investment required to even get that ball rolling.

 

[SiJiL]

It's just too expensive - even with family accounts.
I have a personal account, we have a shared one on the TV and then I also use an account to listen to music on my work laptop because I don't want to sign in with my personal account.
But it's still just _me_ watching it, regardless of which account I'm using. £19.99 a month to remove ads on those 3 accounts when only 1 at a time will be used is too much. If it was 1/2 the price I'd sign up in an instant, but paying more than the price of Netflix, Prime etc. is just silly.

 

[return]

UblockO works fine so far.

 

[cackocacho]

There's nothing they can do that will turn me into an ad sponge. I'll sooner just stop using it altogether, if this ever affects me. For now, it hasn't.

 

[cackocacho]

Advertisements and marketing are out of control IMO. It has reached a level of ridiculousness. I am bombarded by mail, TV, radio, email, internet, video games, apps for my kids sports, and the list goes on and on. Now Google is forcing you to remove/disable the one tool we have to give our life some minimal level of defense "or else" they will make their product difficult or unusable for you. @#$% you Google. I rarely use YouTube, and this only keeps me farther away.

Ads went out of control, a while ago. What we have now, is downright assault. It's an assault on the senses. Ads are attempted to be shoved down your throat, 24 hours a day.

I await one of these cancerous companies offering virtual currency of some sort, for listening to ads while you sleep. It's the only time of the day they haven't tried to exploit yet.

People need to start being people, and stop being cattle. This is just disgusting at this point.

 

[yRaz]

Personally I think YouTube is cutting their own throat. Regardless of their excuses they are going against the grain of the vast majority of their users. They already make significant profit and are risking some other company coming up with a Youtube like website that all the users and video makers will flee to. In the end they will be just a shell that anyone can pick up for little to no money. Greed always has a way of turning around and biting the greedy .....

Actually, youtube has never made a profit in its history. On top of that, the infustructure for 4k video is absurd but I could do without it. Google is under increasing pressure from shareholders to make YT profitable or drop it. I also would like to note that there is a reason why another free service hasn't replaced youtube.

With that said, this is the wrong way to go about making YT profitable. Also, the performance impact has been noted to be about a 20% increase over non adblock usage. Considering the amount of people who use youtube, that is a significant amount of power youtube's adblock measures are costing the economy followed by the environmental impact of that power usage. Further, nothing in the TOS says that by using adblock you are agreeing to wasted system resources and an increased power bill.

Google is going about this the entire wrong way. They have created a feedback loop where advertisers are paying less per ad so they show more ads which encourages people to use adblockers. I'm sure if Google went back to 1 preroll ad per video and then 1 mid roll ad after 7 minutes viewed per account(not video) like it was 10 years ago then adblock use would drop and they could negotiate for more money from advertisers.

However, these 3 pre-roll ads that are upto a minute each and then several mid roll ads in a video that's less than 10 minutes makes using their platform without an adblocker impossible.

And their paid version is still a worse experience than one with an adblocker. I bed the anti adblock devs at Google go home and contribute to open source projects like ublock because they use them themselves. Using the internet without an adblocker is a security risk, the NSA has even come out and said we should be using adblockers. You know it's bad when they say something like that because they want as many security holes open to exploit as possible.

 

[redgarl]

The day they will be able to implement ads for everyone is the day I will never go back on youtube.

 

[digibluez]

Youtube is totally clueless, they allow literally any shitty mobile ad( pointing at hero wars), im so sick of hearing some gurgling death sound each time I want to watch a video

offer quality ads and I gladly stop using adblockers
instead of thinking of the root issue why people use them, they force the dumbest **** down our throats maiong it even worse

 

[Anton Longshot]

Dunno what's up with Google. Left and right people are giving up on them / no longer trust them.
I for one recently prepped for dropping Gmail as soon as Google screws that up too, and I know quite a few people who've done the same ór already quit.
I know many companies became very wary of new Google projects as they managed to grow a reputation for killing new stuff before it gets old.
I think Google's currently in the stage that's called "F*ck around and find out". Sad because their services are still kind of useful (without ads ha ha) but the way things are going I won't be surprised to see that end. I'll get over that but they WILL NOT. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Ads went out of control, a while ago. What we have now, is downright assault. It's an assault on the senses. Ads are attempted to be shoved down your throat, 24 hours a day.

I await one of these cancerous companies offering virtual currency of some sort, for listening to ads while you sleep. It's the only time of the day they haven't tried to exploit yet.

People need to start being people, and stop being cattle. This is just disgusting at this point.

Creators of Futurama already called out ads in dreams back when the show originated. One of the episodes in season 1, back in 1999.

 

[wiyosaya]

UblockO works fine so far.

I agree. I have to wonder whether there is something that uBlock does to avoid detection by silly sites like YouTube.

 

[kiwigraeme]

UblockO works fine so far.

For anybody having a problem , go to Ublock origins settings , purge cache and update

 

[redgarl]

I agree. I have to wonder whether there is something that uBlock does to avoid detection by silly sites like YouTube.

Brave Browser is working to. I suspect, at this point, that it is literally the developers adapting to Youtube changes.

 

[Dr Roboto]

Ads went out of control, a while ago. What we have now, is downright assault. It's an assault on the senses. Ads are attempted to be shoved down your throat, 24 hours a day.

I await one of these cancerous companies offering virtual currency of some sort, for listening to ads while you sleep. It's the only time of the day they haven't tried to exploit yet.

People need to start being people, and stop being cattle. This is just disgusting at this point.

It always makes me think of the scene from Ready Player One when the bad guy says "We can sell 80 percent of the screen without inducing seizures!" image

 

[toooooot]

Their paid subscription sucks. First of all, I hardly ever go to YT for music.
Second, their service seems to be one of the pricier products which however
does not offer the product most people like me go to YT for.
I am not going to pay for the cake when I just want to have a bottle of water.

 

[YouShallNotPass]

That's how to kick your users to other platform like TikTok.