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YouTube now flooding your ad-block with "fake" ads that slow the browser
- sebstefan 2y agoI'm guessing there's just a mundane retry mechanism that's not designed with uBlock in mind..?
- TrianguloY 2y agoOr not tested, but yes I'm going to assume for now that it's just a "happy mistake" that they will revert or change soon. Hopefully...
- Arnt 2y agoI don't suppose they spend a lot of resources on testing with ad blockers. Accidental breakage is plausible.
- dtx1 2y agoI've been wondering why my firefox has been so laggy on youtube but didn't put it together.
- slowmovintarget 2y agoI immediately went to refresh my adblocker signatures.
- dtx1 2y agoHow would one do that.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoBy clicking 'update now' as visible in the screenshot there: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lists https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Filter-lis...
- slowmovintarget 2y agoBecause the overall button is disabled you can click the little clock icons next to each category which forces an immediate refresh. This will sometimes pick up new signatures that haven't crossed the threshold for the "time to check for updates" refresh timer.
- key_peace_pulse 2y agoI noticed this myself as I had been using Firefox with ublock to mostly listen to music on youtube. It seems like there's a sometimes-auto-downgrading where any video above 360 p gets throttled and causes buffering. I've recently been trying out a Chrome extension called Clear Skies which has been working well. It's not an adblocker but it does hide and skip ads and avoids the performance hit that I was seeing previously when viewing youtube with Firefox.
- drcongo 2y agoNot if you use Vinegar [0]. This extension is the main reason I can't switch from Safari to Orion as my main browser. The hit areas on YouTube's player controls are so obnoxious, I installed this just to work around them but it has the side benefit of loading the videos directly into the native video player without ads. [0] https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar https://andadinosaur.com/launch-vinegar
- stalfosknight 2y agoVinegar and Baking Soda are truly the bee's knees for taming just about any embedded video by replacing them with a simple <video> tag.
- rideontime 2y agoHere's an easy workaround that's been pretty reliable for me: https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dvngnt_ 2y agocan i get a referral to google? on a serious note, i can't reproduce with firefox maybe it's not rolled out yet
- rideontime 2y agoIt doesn't take a Google salary to afford a YouTube Premium subscription, it's actually pretty affordable.
- aquova 2y agoThe ole pay off the mafia approach
- rideontime 2y agoThe ole pay for a product approach?
- lovethevoid 2y agoSlowing down the user's device with malicious ads isn't going to make them pay for the product.
- desumeku 2y agoNobody for 200,000 years prior had the need to pay off others in order to not be forced to endure crazed, blatantly manipulative, deceptive, and generally poor quality advertisements in order to access content not even made by the people enforcing this advertisement scheme. I'm not going to start now.
- goodbyegoogle 2y agoAnecdotally, Youtube has gotten pathetically slow for me over the past few months. It freezes constantly and on any video longer than ten minutes I have to refresh the page part way through. My response will not be to disable my adblocker, but to stop using youtube completely. Youtube is the very last Google product I still use, and like most other parts of Google it seems Youtube has run out of good ideas and is now pushing bad ideas.
- lern_too_spel 2y agoIf you're not giving them revenue but are using their network and compute, isn't this working as intended?
- lovethevoid 2y agoNo, as they encouraged using their network and compute for free as a method of monopolizing the market. Getting people addicted for free and then demanding they pay after the fact certainly isn't something the market should encourage as "working as intended".
- lern_too_spel 2y agoThey encouraged people to use their network and compute in return for watching ads in order to make a profit. If you're not giving them anything in return, they would prefer you not use their resources at all. GGP seems to think he is sticking it to the man, but he is doing exactly what the man intended for him to do.
- slowmovintarget 2y agoThey're getting: - Stats on what I watch - Stats on how far in I watch - Whether I skip over embedded host-read advertising - What I search for - What sidebar vids I tend to click on and whether I watch those or tap out All of this information is already sold to other companies, and already used to push ads in the Google search results. They can f*$% off with their ads in the video.
- qiine 2y agohope we are close to the point where fighting anti anti adblocking becomes more expensive than it is worth
- supertrope 2y agoThe service provider always has an advantage as they move first. It's like trying to reverse engineer an API. They can break your unofficial access tomorrow.
- hagbard_c 2y agoThat is true up to a certain point beyond which the annoyance of the ads in combination with the service provider's aggressive moves to make them unavoidable outweighs the benefits of the service. If Youtube can not be visited without being subjected to aggressive and obnoxious advertising then Youtube will not be visited. There are plenty of alternatives out there after all, Youtube does not have a monopoly on video distribution. Source: my own experience. I never use Youtube directly. I use Peertube to distribute whatever video content I publish - not much but there is some - and use a proxy of some sorts whenever I have to get something from Youtube. When the proxy stops working - which happens every now and then since they are essentially web scrapers - I search elsewhere using my own SearxNG instance. If I do not find the video elsewhere I usually just wait for the proxy to start working again. Only in exceptional circumstances will I go to the Youtube site directly and in those cases only in a 'private' browser window/tab. I do not remember the last time I had to do this so it is not a regular occurrence but what I do remember for the few times I visited that site is just how slow and bloated it is compared to my normal way of using it.
- flerchin 2y agoPeacock is worse for this. It eventually uses all memory and crashes the tab. Still worth blocking the ads.
- crazysim 2y agoThe more serious issue here is that other sites will use what YouTube is doing as a license to do this. It's happened before. YouTube was instrumental in kicking off the acceptance of killing IE6.
- Aardwolf 2y ago> YouTube was instrumental in kicking off the acceptance of killing IE6. That was... not a bad thing?
- crazysim 2y agoThat isn't. But it's an example of how influential they are.
- octopoc 2y agoTheir point was that YouTube has influence, not that they’ve always used their influence for bad things. They’re doing bad things now though, and with their level of influence those bad things might spread all over the web.
- jerojero 2y agoThey really are at war with the adblockers. I wonder how much money they're spending in trying to fight this rat race. It's not just engineering hours but also people switching from chrome to Firefox, and the bad press associated with it. I never thought adblocker usage was so prevalent, but this is just personal experience. No one I knew personally, normal people I mean, used adblocked. I remember I had a class in university where they encouraged people to install adblock, only a handful of us already had it installed. There were some pretty interesting ethical arguments for using adblock, sad that I can barely remember any!
- ryosuke97 2y agoGetting offended over ethical issues about what I'm (not) allowing on my own screen is quite the useful filter to see whom I should ignore in life.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoMost people know some dirty nerd that can provide help here, so even people not so affine with tech ("normal people") have them installed by now. Everyone that had an ad blocker once will never want to go back. Ads do finance some infrastructure, especially platforms like youtube and large commercial social media sites. But that is not all infrastructure at all and I believe there is a strong ethical case that you should protect people from unwanted advertising in any case.
- mozempthrowaway 2y agoNo one (and I mean that in the sense of a significant number) is switching to Firefox over this. Our user numbers are consistently heading downwards. Besides Google does other things to slow YouTube down on Firefox so this isn’t really a compelling reason to switch browsers for most people. They’ll likely just disable their ad blocker. For the person who values privacy that much, they’re likely staying off Google properties anyway, and for the average user, their YouTube experience is more important.
- desumeku 2y agoI seriously find it hard to believe that most people who are computer-savvy enough to use adblockers would choose to live with ads again rather than switch to a virtually identical product that doesn't allow companies to disturb users in the same way (at least for now).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lovethevoid 2y agoAnother reason Google should get decoupled.
- sethops1 2y agoIn the past few years I have been cutting more and more of the internet out of my life. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to YouTube as well.
- mbirth 2y agoIt's day 2 for me and I almost got productive today. A few more days and I might start working on some forgotten hobbies again instead of spending time in front of meaningless YouTube videos.
- soraminazuki 2y agoSo this marks yet another [1] instance of Google serving malicious code to users. I'm sure I'd instantly be put behind bars if I tried anything like this on the same scale. Don't be evil, what a joke. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-google-circumvents-privacy-settings-safari-users https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/time-make-amends-googl...
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoAre we going to keep fighting megacorps in this cat and mouse game or do what’s needed and split them up? A big problem is the same company influences/controls web standards, builds the most popular browser, operates the biggest ad network, and controls a public facing utility for hosting videos (YouTube).
- supertrope 2y agoWho will pay for the hosting? Even if a competitor is built with something like PeerTube they will need to monetize it with subscriptions and/or ads.
- mariusor 2y agoQuite a small number of people seems to get this: the value of PeerTube is not in providing a global alternative for the whole of YouTube, instead it allows an alternative for specific content creators that can control everything about how they monetize their content, and for which, me as a viewer, can make the proper arrangements if I want to support them.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoMaybe there should be an alternate public funded equivalent for these public squares like video hosting, social media, etc.
- manuelmoreale 2y agoOr maybe creators that want to run their passion project as businesses should do what other businesses to and pay for their expenses and that includes hosting and serving their videos.
- talldayo 2y agoWe can't even keep NPR running without people saying it's an evil empire built by demons to suppress traditional thought. If you think the Government could run, let alone find funding for a public-resource social media then you've got another thing coming.
- supertrope 2y agoGoogle is an advertising company first.
- stevespang 2y ago[dead]