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

[Raytrace3D]

I stopped using Chrome as a result of this. I will never stop using Ad Blockers.

I have a YouTube channel with over 15K subscribers and I would never force any of my subscribers to watch an ad on my channel. There are plenty of other ways to generate revenue, Google!

 

[Kashim]

Sorry Google/Youtube, but you're fighting a battle you cannot possibly win. Everyone I know will always block ads no matter what Google does, period. If there comes a time when they can't block Google's ads then they will simply move to a different platform.

Google now thinks that Youtube is in a position where they can get away with this, because they believe Youtube is a must have for everyone, but they're sorely mistaken. If I can never use Youtube again because I refuse to watch their ads then I'm 100% fine with that.

PS. - I absolutely hate ads and will not watch ads on any platform (internet, TV, etc.) I know people will say we get great content because of ad support and all that. I DO NO CARE. I will not watch ads no matter what. I don't care if every company that relies on ads goes out of business. Good riddance. Find another way to generate revenue where you don't annoy your own users. I'm old enough to remember a time when 30 minute TV shows were actually ~24 minutes long with ~6 minutes of ads. Now most of them are 20-21 minutes long with 9-10 minutes of ads. That's almost one third of your time wasted on ads!

 

[Arbie]

I'd sign right up for around $3/mo. But YT Premium starts at $14/mo (non-student) which is ridiculous. So I've gone from "lots of YT" to almost none.

$3 x (the millions who feel the same) = YT monthly loss of revenue.

Of course with less traffic they'll need fewer servers, so there's that.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

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

For me Firefox has been badly affected. I tried 4 different adblockers and they all caused pathetic YT performance. Edge had zero issues. This has been the case since Firefox 121 released for me. I'm on gigabit internet plan and yt on FF was getting 0s buffer making videos unwatchable with basically any adblocker.

For now I'm using Edge.

 

[yRaz]

For me Firefox has been badly affected. I tried 4 different adblockers and they all caused pathetic YT performance. Edge had zero issues. This has been the case since Firefox 121 released for me. I'm on gigabit internet plan and yt on FF was getting 0s buffer making videos unwatchable with basically any adblocker.

For now I'm using Edge.

I've had zero issues with firefox+ublock

 

[holydiver]

Time to dump shittube

 

[m3diapers]

Its leadership always missed the point like every other company. YouTube is losing money because its content has been unoriginal and boring and the talents have moved to other platforms like OF. And so many fake a$$ how-to videos on Youtube made me stop using it permanently

 

[colinf]

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

this feature has been removed from version 1.55

 

[ferrellsl]

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

I'm using Brave and uBlock and noticed the slow-downs. The slow-downs were pretty ridiculous but the easy workaround is to just right-click on the video and open it in a new window.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I've had zero issues with firefox+ublock

ublock was fine for yt when I last used it, but was causing me all sorts of problems loading web pages. Often pages would refuse to load with ublock enabled. One minute everything is fine, next you can't load a page in less than 5 minutes. Only happened with ublock.

So I just checked Firefox with Adblock Ultimate and YT appears to be working properly again. Not sur what was going on the previous 3-4 days.

 

[yRaz]

ublock was fine for yt when I last used it, but was causing me all sorts of problems loading web pages. Often pages would refuse to load with ublock enabled. One minute everything is fine, next you can't load a page in less than 5 minutes. Only happened with ublock.

So I just checked Firefox with Adblock Ultimate and YT appears to be working properly again. Not sur what was going on the previous 3-4 days.

Well I am aware of several "internet outages" that have been occurring over the last few days because of the storms sweeping across the US, I don't know where you are located.

Although, and this might have something to do with it, I switched to Firefox a little over a year ago as I tried to degoogle my life and I also daily drive Linux. I don't know which one, if any, of those variables contributed to my positive adblocking experience.

With everything going on these days you might want to give Linux Mint a try just to get your feet wet. I've recently started working with bone stock Debian as I now consider myself an "intermediate beginner" but I might also just be a bit of a techno masochist....

 

[Tom Yum]

I don't know why Google doesn't just implement a tiered pricing system based on resolution. 480p is $2/mth for no ads, 720p is $3/mth for no ads, 1080p is $5/mth for no ads, and 4k is $10/mth for no ads. Unbundle YouTube Music, or offer 4k bundle for the current price. That way the ad revenue scales based on actual costs incurred (bandwidth and server capacity), and it becomes cheap enough that most people are willing to pay to avoid ads. As a bonus revenue becomes less sensitive to advertising market cycles. Instead Google just seems to pick the most antagonist course of action every single time.

 

[nismo91]

No problem with edge+ublock. not even a popup. last popup I got was 3 months ago.

 

[whateversa]

I pay for Youtube premium and was affected by this throttling. 4k videos especially 60fps was unwatchable for a month. Their site still has poor performance. I am always logged into my premium account on all devices I use it on (TV, PC) and adblock is disabled on Youtube site. I am considering cancelling my subscription if they dont stop this.

 

[Adhmuz]

I noticed these "hiccups" on platforms where I can't even control the built in add blocking which was originally a selling point, at least on my Shield, the last few days I've been getting random buffering moments in the middle of a video which can last almost a minute. This also was happening on my LG TV's built in YouTube player.

The other major annoyance is setting video to "auto" almost never gives me 4K when the content is available in 4K, it almost always defaults to 1080p, which on my LG is barely noticeable at the distance I sit, but on my main screen with my Shield it's quite obvious. I even caught it defaulting to 720p on auto... I have a 1.5Gbit connection too so, not going to be blaming that.

I agree with the cost being absurdly high for a site that creates little to no original content of their own, 100$ or more a year is too much, if they could offer just 4K without music for $60 a year, I'd seriously consider it.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

Ads are only 50% of my hate for YT... the other 50% is their political stance and shadow banning and other shady tactics for silencing those they don't agree with. YT has become a public forum but they want to control the discussions. Not okay, on any side of the political aisle.

If YT knocked off their shadow banning and harassing creators crap, and offered Premium for a reasonable cost, I would gladly start paying for it and turn off my adblock for their service. Until then, they can F@(K OFF.

 

[Abaidor]

Sorry Google/Youtube, but you're fighting a battle you cannot possibly win. Everyone I know will always block ads no matter what Google does, period. If there comes a time when they can't block Google's ads then they will simply move to a different platform.

Google now thinks that Youtube is in a position where they can get away with this, because they believe Youtube is a must have for everyone, but they're sorely mistaken. If I can never use Youtube again because I refuse to watch their ads then I'm 100% fine with that.

PS. - I absolutely hate ads and will not watch ads on any platform (internet, TV, etc.) I know people will say we get great content because of ad support and all that. I DO NO CARE. I will not watch ads no matter what. I don't care if every company that relies on ads goes out of business. Good riddance. Find another way to generate revenue where you don't annoy your own users. I'm old enough to remember a time when 30 minute TV shows were actually ~24 minutes long with ~6 minutes of ads. Now most of them are 20-21 minutes long with 9-10 minutes of ads. That's almost one third of your time wasted on ads!

That is the reason I totally stopped listening to Air Radio - ads! Yucks!

I refuse to watch ad period. Not using YT on my mobile or my smart TVs because of Ads. Really, I can grab my coffee a book and sit in the garden too or chop wood, or dig, or workout, or go for a walk or have sex!- lot's of options....

 

[Impudicus]

Intentionally degrading the quality of the user experience sounds like a great idea for prolonged dominance in this part of the industry.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Ads are only 50% of my hate for YT... the other 50% is their political stance and shadow banning and other shady tactics for silencing those they don't agree with. YT has become a public forum but they want to control the discussions. Not okay, on any side of the political aisle.

If YT knocked off their shadow banning and harassing creators crap, and offered Premium for a reasonable cost, I would gladly start paying for it and turn off my adblock for their service. Until then, they can F@(K OFF.

Yup. For $14 a month they would need to stop ALL political side taking, stop shadowbanning, stop de monetizing, and stop censoring creators. They will never do this.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Well I am aware of several "internet outages" that have been occurring over the last few days because of the storms sweeping across the US, I don't know where you are located.

Although, and this might have something to do with it, I switched to Firefox a little over a year ago as I tried to degoogle my life and I also daily drive Linux. I don't know which one, if any, of those variables contributed to my positive adblocking experience.

With everything going on these days you might want to give Linux Mint a try just to get your feet wet. I've recently started working with bone stock Debian as I now consider myself an "intermediate beginner" but I might also just be a bit of a techno masochist....

I'm not located in the USA at all and how would you explain Edge performing fine and Firefox not. That's some sort of fcuked up storms you have in the US.

 

[Sir Sparkles]

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

Yeah, for $3 I'd cough up for an ad free experience, a lot of people would as that's really reasonable. Instead I cycled through the not paying $14 options until I found one that reliably works.

 

[Thrackerzod]

Probably ought to change the headline now that the story has been proven false.

 

[Benny26]

Running Adblock Plus and UBlock Origin together on Firefox. Never had an issue. I can only think that the devs of those extentions are keeping up with Youtube's crap at a nice pace which I tip my hat to them for it.