A new wave of slowdowns is hitting users, with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium.
Or just switching to ublock origin.
Or just switching to newpipe.
Or just switching to freetube.
etc
etc
etc
I have ublock origin on firefox and it’s really bad for me currently. This has traditionally been the good combo I believe.
Not just slowing down, but stopping, then restarting after skipping a few seconds that you cannot access no matter what.
For now the best solution I’ve found is to copy the video url, open potplayer and just hit the paste command and the video runs flawlessly.
So they’ll have to close that loophole eventually, which means enshittifying the video streaming protocol for everything that isn’t the native web viewer, which will inconvenience more people who were used to something working, leading to another workaround, leading to…
Youtube is gradually accelerating their enshittification. I’m looking forward to when it comes to a real head. Too many serious interested parties rely on it. I don’t know if peertube will be the first fallback, but I’m sure it’ll get a big bump.
Change your useragent to Chrome.
It breaks the detection of your adblocker… for now.
Is it possible to change the user agent just for specific websites? Do you have a recommendation?
yes, I use User-Agent Switcher by Erin Schlarb
how do those youtube clients work? i thought YouTube was very closed source
AFAIK NewPipe parses the regular YouTube website and only extracts the useful bits.
No expert but I believe they access the API directly.
No,it’s exactly parser. https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor
Or downloading videos to watch later? Does Plex recognize YouTube videos?
Plex does not recognize them in terms of pulling down metadata but you can still organize them in folders and browse that way. I find the Plex route is a healthier way to engage with video content than platforms that just keep serving you whatever the algorithm thinks will keep you peeled to the screen. It’s more intentional and less of a passive consumption kinda thing.
tl;dr: Yes, but probably takes some effort for most content.
Plex will play the files, but metadata is hit or miss. If it’s something that’s on thetvdb or themoviedb, it can be matched as a series or movie, respectively. With some effort, you could also probably include all the relevant metadata when downloading the videos, then have plex use local metadata, which could cover anything not big enough for the big metadata providers.
I think it’s also possible to find plug-ins/scripts that will pull metadata directly from youtube, but I’ve had bad luck relying on that stuff and then development stopping, so I avoid it these days.
but won’t it be hassle to follow that?
YouTube revanced has also been working for me
And still, I’m more likely to stop using YouTube than to stop using an ad blocker.
That’s what they want. Get all the users they aren’t able to monetize off the platform to lower their costs.
I mean, I like a good Google hate train as much as the next guy, but that’s kind of a legitimate thing to want.
Follow the damn train, CJ!
Ooooooh my dawg
Then I’mma leech HARDER
That’s a double edged sword though, lose viewers and you lose appeal to advertisers. Lose users and they’re going to go somewhere else. That somewhere else will eventually grow and be competition. The bigger it gets, the faster it will grow.
Good news: you can have the best of both by watching everything for free through piped video!
Way ahead of you. Recently got Nebula, which has dramatically reduced the amount of time I spend on YT. Besides, this way I can help also the people who make the videos. They don’t need to be so dependent on the whimsical and unpredictable nature of the algorithm and the ever changing landscape of what is or isn’t advertiser friendly on the platform.
If YT feels like further cranking up the enshittification dial, I say, bring it on. I’m ready to drop my watch time even lower than it currently is.
Frankly, I’d stop using YouTube entirely before I’d start using it without an adblocker. At least there are no signs of it slowing down for me, yet.
I’d consider paying a few bucks a month, but not $10 or more
Get rid of shitty YouTube music and give me a tier that’s no ads only
That is precisely why Premium Lite was killed off, it did exactly what you are looking for.
That’s just leaving money on the table
So I have YouTube premium but also have ad-blocker, for the first time yesterday I was noticing absolutely abysmal speeds on YouTube and I suspect this is why. I thought my computer was starting to shit the bed initially it was so brutal.
I have YouTube premium
Wow, so you pay them and they still screw you? Glad that’s a product I’ll never buy then!
I have YouTube premium and an adblocker and I don’t have this problem. I’m skeptical that it’s related.
I have YouTube premium and an adblocker and I don’t have this problem. I’m skeptical that it’s related.
I too am a YouTube premium customer, and my video performance is horrible lately.
Funny enough, on my living room smart TV YouTube app my performance has been bad as well, even though I am logged in to my premium YouTube account.
Something is going on, and it does effect some (at least) premium customers.
Same, YT Premium, Firefox, ad blocker, no issues with streaming.
Wasn’t that exactly how the adblock blocks went out in the first place? Only a few areas at a time were affected.
I know, right? But I suppose their reasoning is that my ads are also blocked across the rest of their ecosystem, my subscription isn’t covering those losses.
Still though, a model that requires that customers look at something they don’t want to nor will engage with smells like failure.
I’m generally okay with the idea of “you can get it for free and we’ll include ads to pay for it, or you can pay instead”.
Where I’m definitely not okay is “you can pay, and we’ll include ads anyway.”
The sick twist is that I use Ublock Origin and won’t ever pay for YouTube premium and I haven’t experienced even the slightest issue streaming videos on YouTube. 😂
Anecdotally at best. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you’re making a conclusion based on something one person said.
I was wondering if this was coming. I don’t use YouTube in-browser much if at all, so I don’t see this. But I am not surprised. The fact that they’re slowing down people who pay for premium is kind of an act of war. It shouldn’t be a thing, and the fact that it’s happening at all is a misstep on Google’s part. Not that the whole slowing down people who use ad blockers isn’t. But this will detrimentally affect adoption of premium subscribers which I thought was the last thing they’d want. Because they obviously don’t make enough off ad revenue to support the platform. That’s part of why they push premium so hard. They need more premium subscribers. This is idiocy.
I can’t remember what video I watched that talked about the unsustainabilty and likely the late stages of an ad revenue driven internet content model, and this situation reeks of that.
I don’t know what new paradigm might replace it if this is the case, but the current model feels like it’s absolutely failing.
Ha! Serves you right
After getting premium I just switched the adblocker off for YouTube. Premium would be far too expensive if it didn’t also include YouTube Music :-/
uBlock Origin works on YouTube Music, too.
If you want to throw a few bucks at the people providing you a service, then donate to an ad blocker for helping make the Internet a safer, better, and more user-friendly place. …not the big fuckers like YouTube who are contributing to the enshitification of the entire web.
YouTube already has ways to block users with adblock. They just haven’t fully rolled it out yet.
Lately they blocked playing videos when I had uBlock Origin running, but it was just a warning I could click away. They might also slow down page loading and playback.
YouTube has the ability to lock users with adblock out, they are just very careful about using it. Mostly starting with trials in smaller countries and getting more bold over time.
Ublock doesn’t accept donations
While uBlock would be most deserving of a donation imo, there are others that do accept. Even if it’s an ad blocker you don’t actively use, you’d still be supporting a developer who’s using their time and skills to improve the web.
Donating to no one would be better than paying YouTube.
I have premium, uBlock Origin, and Mullvad VPN. In Firefox the other day, the stream was dying every 10-30 seconds. Like it would just stop and give me a spinner. I would have to “Copy URL at current time”, open a new tab, and paste it in to get it to go any further. I do have bad internet, but this was nuts. And then I gave up and used Duck, and it played flawlessly in their embedded player.
Good job, Google.
If it happens again, I’ll try disabling uBlock Origin on YouTube and see if it improves.
That’s why Invidious exists.
Oh no (continues to watch on freetube) anyway…
Revanced Extended ftw!
Alternative front ends are a god send.
What is freetube? (Sorry for the stupid question)
Apparently this seems to be mainly affecting Chrome users, lol.
Well, yeah! Google controls Chrome
Yeah but what I find funny is that if people had already jumped from Chrome they probably wouldn’t be having problems.
I will download videos then. I refuse to not use an adblocker on the modern internet.
Pirate everything, it’s the only way to show greedy corporations the content should be free.
Free wouldnt work either. nobody would make any content. its just that they excessively exploit everything to grab every last penny.
Free wouldnt work either. nobody would make any content.
Except it was free, and people did make content.
This is why privacy is justified. The only way is not to pay!
My worry with all this is that they might say fuck it and put DRM for all YouTube videos which would block attempts to download the videos. Not make it impossible as seen with streaming services but not as trivial as now…
Don’t worry, YouTube, I won’t be using your website anymore. But my yt-dl will be ripping max quality videos by the hundreds, just for shits and giggles.
Yarr harr, it’s the pirate life for us!
And this is why we use Newpipe
Time and time again we can only conclude: Piracy is justified!
Do people seriously think there’s something wrong with doing that?
Good things come to those who wait (and block ads)
Also I’d rather wait without ads than wait with ads, like what’s the point?
If you wait in front of an empty screen it’s much more pleasant than being in front of visual and audio spam drilling into your head.
It’s of course true that YouTube can’t support a website for free, so it would be the correct thing to watch some ads: problems arising are that (A) some ads are malicious (either as misinformation or as viruses or as links to those), (B) they’ve grown from a reasonable amount to an unreasonable one and often interrupted at the worst possible time)
Fuck YouTube
And Google. And Corporations.
I don’t have an ad blocker, I just have the standard strict tracking protection enabled in Firefox. What’s more, I pay for YouTube Premium. But still they add a five-second delay every time I visit a web page. It’s infuriating.
Might as well just stop paying for premium then if they’re going to ding you anyway.
Why pay when you can watch it for free without ads through piped video! Pirate everything, live for free!!
If I were to guess, non-android smart tv. There are very few options if any for these TVs. Since I got my TCL google tv I just put smarttube on it and that was it, no more ads and cast still works. But can’t do that with parents’ old chromecast or lg TVs
there is no way the 5 second sleep before loading isnt anti competitive, because last i heard, unless they changed it, it only checks for the firefox user agent.
Actually insane that someone would willingly implement that.
Trying to use it via Firefox is pointless. I just downloaded the video and pirated. Fuck YouTube.
If you run
mpv https://urlit will stream it from youtube and play it in mpv, without having to wait for the whole video to download first.And another win for free and open source software fellas!
I don’t understand how anyone can put up with youtube without premium. Every time I visit a friends house I am shocked at the level of bullshit they are ok with. I’d pay a lot more than 10 bucks.
I’d happily pay for premium as I use YouTube religiously. But it’s Google so fuck them, they already process my information in order to show me ads and profit off of my data. I think that’s payment enough, so I’ll just find any free way possible to watch YouTube without ads.
so fuck them, they already process my information in order to show me ads and profit off of my data.
So you don’t have any services like Netflix, Hulu, etc? I can guarantee they do the same things in one way or another.
Youtube is my reminder on new browser installs to install Ublock Origin. And I saw this newest effort to block it once. Updated Ublock, restarted the browser and it was gone again.
If I started waving little billboards in front of your face, how much would you pay me to go away?
Do you have anything to offer besides the billboard in my face? If not, you get dropped.
But muh free stuff
I dun wan it.
- Some Idiot from GoT, probably.
I don’t understand how anyone can put up with youtube without premium
Or just use an adblocker and save the $$
I was a day 1 subscriber of Google Play Music All Access, which I converted into a family plan when that was available, and was told that the rate I was paying would be grandfathered in. I didn’t like the switch to YouTube Music, but it did the job and came with ad-free YouTube, so I was okay with it.
But then they told me that they were changing the $14.99/mo I was paying to $22.99/mo despite being grandfathered in, a more than 50% increase, and I said fuck that. Unsubbed, swapped to Spotify, and never looked back.
Would I pay for just ad-free YouTube? Maybe. But not for almost $300 each year. I’m keeping Spotify, so if Google made a plan for no ads for like …$1 or $2 per month?, maybe then I’d consider going back.
The end result now though is that I just use YouTube less.
I was/am in the exact same boat, but share the subscription three ways (wife+brother) so the numbers are still somewhat favorable given our music and YouTube usage as a household.
A couple of five second ads doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m from a generation that had no pause or fast forward on the TV before the internet. Every fifteen minutes or so you’d have near enough five minutes of ads. YouTube ads are nothing by comparison.
$10 a month isn’t a huge amount, but it’s $120 saved by the end of the year that I’d rather spend on something else.
I’m from a generation that had state television where there were no ads at all. I liked it that way.
Exactly. Starting from the premise that these services deserve the revenue from ads is completely wrong. As advertising has grown, so has corporate greed in extracting more value from users while providing a worse service.
Starting from the premise that we owe corporations the opportunity to subject us to mental abuse for any reason is the problem. Let’s not forget what ads are and how they work.
I agree with you for the most part, but at the same time people need a way to find the things they want. There are lots of products and services that genuinely make life better, but without advertising you may never even know what you’re missing.
That position is completely in the distance behind where we are now, with the pure exploitation and manipulative marketing, but it’s still a valid point.
That’s valid.
Thank you.
My rule of thumb has always been, since I was a child: if it’s advertised on TV, it probably isn’t that good.
TV advertising is expensive. The business needs to pay for that advertising, and they also expect to profit from it. Thus, the customers have to pay for the advertising, the profits to the business for the advertising, as well as the product, and the profits to the business for the product. So, in general, if it’s advertised on TV it’s probably not worth what they want you to pay.
Recently there’s been an online therapy service that has grown massively called Better Health. It sounds really good, and content producers I like have apparently thought the same and started advertising it themselves - Behind the Bastards host Robert Evans actually voices an ad for them on his own podcast. However, I’ve also recently seen advertisements for their service on TV. Now, I’m wary, and I’m just waiting for what I think will be the inevitable controversy over their service.
So yeah, advertising has some valid purpose, but it’s also basically complete and totally open warfare. Marketing executives are probably worse than estate agents at this point. At the same time, a person just promoting their idea might not be so villainous - at least right now, who knows what they’ll do later?
I’m from that generation too and as soon as I moved out of my folks’ house I never subscribed to cable or watched broadcast TV because that constant onslaught of advertising was offensive and I didn’t want it in my home.
I’m from a generation that had no pause or fast forward on the TV before the internet.
Me too, but using ublock for a while it’s easy and quick to become intolerant of ads.
I do understand the appeal but I also quite like a lot of the smaller content creators and I think they deserve to get paid.
Pirating from a corporation that makes several millions in profits is one thing, I’m not going to pick the pockets of my fellow man.
I’m from a country where we barely had ads on TV back in the day, and even now it’s nowhere near as bad as on American TV. I’ve tried watching US channels online and it’s feels like nothing but an insult. YouTube is bad enough for me.
Easy: Just use the right browser and adblocker, and you basically have premium, but without the ads they still throw at you.
