YouTube punishes ad-blocker users with slower videos on non-Chrome browsers
androidcentral.com
androidcentral.com
YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, not the browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38363114 - Nov 2023 (220 comments)
YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345858 - Nov 2023 (459 comments)
Disclaimer: fmr Googler, used to work on YouTube
Likely, this isn't necessarily targeting Firefox/Safari/Etc, but rather is using the UserAgent as part of a tuple with other factors. It _is_ however an anti-adblock measure meant to determine if the video is automatically getting skipped forward.
The reason on why changing your useragent "fixes" the problem, is that you're changing the tuple and the anti-adblock system won't serve the code-at-issue until it determines whether you'd be a good candidate for the experiment.
Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent.
Nonsense. A Google controlled browser runs plugins Google allows with privacy settings Google creates. More data and no ad blockers is worth many billions of dollars to YouTube in the long run.
They directly benefit from people thinking Firefox is slow.
Making Chrome the dominant browser has been a huge focus of Google since Chrome's inception. You may not know this, but Google owns YouTube.
> rather it is using the User Agent
This is literally the most common method of targeting browsers.
Chrome could equally be as effected by this as any other browser.
Google has big financial incentives to punish non-Chrome user agents.
First, we've seen that Google pays a large amount of money to be the default search engine in competing browsers. A big reason for funding Chrome development is so that Google doesn't have to pay someone for the majority of its search traffic. If Google is paying out 30-40% of search ad revenue from non-Chrome browsers, that's many billions of dollars if they can get more people to use Chrome. If non-Chrome browsers are a bad experience on one of the most popular sites on the internet, that pushes people to use Chrome.
Second, Google is altering Chrome so that ad blockers won't be as effective. If they can push people to use Chrome, they'll get more ad revenue since ad blockers won't be as effective.
Google has been pushing Chrome because people using Chrome makes them billions of dollars. Maybe YouTube itself doesn't have a financial incentive, but Google definitely does.
If Chrome vanished tomorrow, Google would then face steep fees when their deals with Mozilla and Apple were up for renewal since they'd be dependent on traffic from Firefox and Safari. Instead, Google can keep paying Mozilla less and less money over time as more people use Chrome instead of Firefox.
Youtube does experiments based on user-agents. I think this is well known and if not, a former Googler just let you know.
In any case, for those who are complaining, it's their website. Either pay or stop using it?
Conspiracy is unlikely purely because Neal Mohan is empowered to tell the Chrome team to pound sand and will do so if he thinks they'd make a call that would damage YouTube's numbers.
If this were an actual mechanism to try to get users to switch, it would be an idiotic one.
Until Chrome can no longer block ads... ?
It's not targeting non-chrome browsers, it's just a before penalty that only applies to ... non-chrome browsers?
> Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent.
With Google's ongoing desire to break ad-blockers in Chrome, and make tracking a mandatory web specification via essentially monopoly browser status[1], Google has a _very_ strong financial incentive to punish non-chrome UAs - anything that pushes people to Chrome over browsers that they don't control is a win for them.
[1] let's be real: the only reason many sites work in browsers other than chrome is iOS safari, that's it
>> Regarding financial incentives:
Google is an insanely large organization, and the priorities and KPIs of one org (Chrome) largely don't impact another org (YouTube).
Additionally, YouTube is a regarded as a red-headed step-child within Google and is generally outside of the general interactions with other orgs.
That's based on years of working on that fine line.
>> Regarding Useragent Targeting:
The targeting scheme treats the useragent as a string, rather than a distinct value that the useragent is set to. Chrome is likely to hit this bug as much as any other browser vendor.
If the claim is true, then Google is using dominance in one platform (videos - YouTube) to achieve dominance in another (browsers - Chrome).
If the US govt wanted to sue google for it, they would have years ago.
If a person can measure the time the page spends loading with a complete break down across a number of different browsers both on the same machine and on identically-specified machines together with a an external running stopwatch, then they would be able to show that which browsers are being slowed down.
There is less hand-waving here with questions like, "Well, does bundling Chrome on Android really affect the browser market?" . We know that slower load times is a worse user experience, and if this claim is true, then YouTube and Google are squarely to blame.
It is obvious that anyone who still uses YT while complaining about these measures should quit their BS learned helplessness and take an afternoon to figure out an alternative.
Do you do anything to avoid that?
(I don't know what the playlist id for your Watch Later would be, and the API for listing playlists doesn't seem to work either. Fun.)
Step 2: Run script
I'm a lot happier to pay for VPN and hard disks than for Google's bait-and-switch games. Youtube and Google became popular based on a social contract where I gave them by content, and now that it's a near-monopoly, they're breaking that social contract. That's not illegal, but it is sleazy, and I feel dirty giving money to support sleazy.
Or you want to continue feeding Google via your Gmail account. Or just plain old receive email and pretend that you're not feeding Google.
You don't need an account for youtube. I have a Google account for gmail, and since I use Android I unavoidably have a Google account because of it, but there's no reason to use that account for youtube. In fact, there is (or, at least, there used to be) a good reason to never use a Google account for youtube: they have (or, at least, used to have) a "real name" policy for youtube, so if they for some reason decide that your real name is not your real name, you could lose access to your whole Google account, including more important services like Google Talk. Therefore, whenever I watch any video on youtube, I very carefully make sure that the browser is not logged into the Google account, and watch it anonymously.
My NAS has been using yt-dlp to download various Warhammer 40k videos from youtubers for 3+ years, I'm around 10TB.
My working theory is there is no way to actually get banned from using google services permanently unless perhaps you do a charge back or something I haven't tried.
I also do everything I can to not use google services after my "fraud" lockdown. I've made longer comments about it here before in my history if you want the full story.
Low
Uses the least storage on your device
Bitrate: 48 kbps AAC and OPUS
Normal
Default setting
Bitrate: 128 kbps AAC and OPUS
High
Higher-quality audio will use more storage on your device
Bitrate: 256 kbps AAC and OPUS
I typically only use Youtube Music for discovery then buy albums that I like (or rip them if they're not available for purchase). I, personally, have never experienced low quality audio on YT Music.
Considering this is about losing 5 seconds lost for every video being watched on youtube, I am pretty sure this time investment would amortize in <1 month of yt watching.
Do you show the same concern for how cheap the time is for the people spending their time bitching on reddit / HN / twitter about this issue for weeks on end?
I think money ruins things that it touches, and the things that are made in pursuit of money, especially in today's computerized world, will be predatory and exploitative.
The Internet used to be for hobbyists, making content out of passion in addition to having actual jobs (sort of like free software).
But then they made content creation their jobs. Then the platforms got "professionalized". Now, content creators have to be professional eggshell dancers while the consumers are trapped in mind prisons where advertisers have the keys. We're now cattle in some corporate money printing machine, of which the creators are hapless contractors.
That's never what I signed up for. I didn't ask the creators to do this for money. I never opted into the game their playing (I also didn't read the EULA ;D). I also wouldn't pay money for Asmongold's 500th "IS THIS THE NEXT POGGERS MMO?" video (but I will watch it for free for like 15 seconds, then question my life choices and close it before watching some better video for free). So I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, they should go back to being hobbyists, get real jobs for their livelihood, and the Internet should be demonetized.
Money is a tool to get people to do something that they don't want to do otherwise. That's all it is. All trade is fundamentally a person who has a thing and doesn't want to give it up giving it up in exchange for money. Labor is the same with a persons time.
There are plenty of instances where the thing you get someone to do is "evil": bribes, assassinations, creating and distributing propaganda, having people fight in unjust wars, etc.
While it is unlikely that most money is used to cause "evil" acts, it is very likely that most "evil" acts occur due to money changing hands.
I disagree. What is a farmer going to do with 100 bushels of wheat? What is an oil producer going to do with 1 million gallons of oil? Trade happens (much of the time) because a person who has Thing A would rather have Thing B and is willing to give up Thing A for it. And person with Thing B would rather have Thing A and is willing to give up Thing B for it. And money is the technology that enables this exchange to happen more quickly and easily.
>While it is unlikely that most money is used to cause "evil" acts, it is very likely that most "evil" acts occur due to money changing hands.
This has nothing to do with money or trade. A bushel of wheat or barrel of oil could have changed hands instead of money. The evil act occurred because someone wanted it to occur, and it could occurred with or without a trade.
This is a bad idea.
For a start, once you do it, it's done.
Honestly, I think YouTube/Google is doing this to setup an argument that ad-blockers are piracy tools so they can be legislated away. Much easier than investing time into a technical solution.
I watched YouTube ads when they were normal blocks of short ads. But now they aren't, and I watch YouTube with no ads at all. This punishes content creators, and the blame lies firmly on Google.
Per societal norms today, the perpetrator of the offense is now whining about people fighting back. And in doing so, Google has popularized ad blockers among people who would never know they existed. Morons getting what they deserve.
Although protip is to find UK streams instead of US for the same events, shorter ad breaks
It was jarring. But I’m also not sure complaining is fair. Hosting and serving video is expensive. I definitely don’t expect to receive it for free.
You know, I'm curious, I've never asked, and never actually gave it a true, real, hard thought.
You, rando internet person, is making a claim:
"they already get my user data"
So you are completely aware of what this data is?
You are completely aware of its true, real, actual value?
Maybe user data is less valuable than we all perceive?
It could explain the increase in ads.
It could explain why paying for YouTube Premium is an overall much better solution to the problem.
I imagine a future where you don't use YouTube Premium simply because you're checking something quickly somewhere where you're not logged in.
Remember, most videos are 1 time watch. Maybe YouTube should consider a pay-as-you-use system?
I frequently get 30 seconds of unskippable ads multiple times in a video. One set at the beginning and following sets at approximately 3 minute intervals.
At least some mid-rolls are skippable but they are totally random. Like, maybe a set of 2 ads where the first is 15 second and the second is 15 seconds that is skippable after 5 seconds. The combination of length and skippable is confusing.
More annoying is the tendency to sneak a 3 minute ad in there that is skippable. So unless I am in the room and near the remote it will just play the whole thing. I've had ads that are up to 15 minutes long.
If they would offer me a sign-up deal I'd probably just get YouTube premium at this point.
I once had the whole AMD event revealing a new Ryzen generation and some GPU as an ad, like more than an hour. The fact that you can just put whatever as an ad is wild.
The unfortunate thing was, the ad itself was actually interesting, going into a lot of manufacturing details but I didn't have time to watch it them and there is no way to find it.
Some more on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38363114
These tactics are nothing new for non-Chrome users. Most of the "Oh they just didn't have Firefox in mind, no malice on Google's part" it's just bullshit at least in part.
This is just one more instance of it, and it's getting pettier and pettier..
Of course I'm "a free loader" but there is still some residual "value" in me.
Either way I don't care about Google, if they "win" I also would win by not wasting my time watching videos.
In a world where people didn't share videos with others, you might be correct. This is not that world.
But they can fingerprint on all layers (tls, http, web api, js engine). To fake that all requires a lot of effort. Not all can be changed with an extension alone.
Welcome to my world of browser emulation. But then again, all depends on what they check :)
Youtube Premium. Firefox on Windows, ublock origin. Haven't tried it on the roku yet.
Instead of an ad-blocker, try a YT premium subscription. Or use a different platform that doesn't serve ads. Or sign up for some other subscription service. Whatever.
Do people also get mad at barbers that don't give free haircuts?
Ideally the offline/background play/queuing should be included because they're unrelated to the cost of serving video, but any other features like music/4K/etc should be an extra purchase. However, I strongly doubt enough people would even bother with those to justify having as separate features.
If they had one based on a scale of how many videos you watch, I'd be much more keen. Of course, I expect they wouldn't do that for multiple reasons.
I once had a website that would have been profitable if not for ad blockers, so I definitely get it. I don't know what the real solution is. Ideally they could block ad blockers and then keep the number of ads under control, but I doubt they'd actually reduce the numbers if they did manage to stop ad blockers.
For your actual numbers, 5 cents would be fine. I don't think I'd go for 25 cents.
Doing it democratically would mean that instead of privileging addiction and watch time, we might include other metrics that relate to educational value or public interest and would prevent censorship due to the 1st amendment being directly applicable.
The government is a site of democratic struggle. The corporate world is a group of allied dictatorships.
Exactly: Nobody's entitled to my information without paying me. I use adblockers to keep out the freeloaders.
Subscribing doesn't stop them from collecting information or showing me ads. Quite the opposite.
I have never watched a show on TV stop for 3 minutes to tell me why I should be using NordVPN with their code to SAVE TODAY!
Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVcRMh3T_rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjcDJmioWng
I cannot ignore an individual talking about NordVPN for 3 minutes.
All I know is I'm keeping my eyes open for their next swing at remote attestation. If you follow the money, it's a logical step.
And I understand the other side of this. It is fair game for youtube to try to insert ads one way or another and make it as difficult as possible for me to remove them.
And about supporting creators: Yes, that needs to be done. I give directly to creators through patreon or other. Youtube is a middleman that provides very little value.
There you go: https://www.youtube.com/premium
"YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free, offline, and in the background"
And I'm also paying 5* that monthly subscription costs to creators I support.
At the end of the day, I'm issuing an API request to youtube servers and they are free to reply to me or block me. I'm also free to do whatever I want with the reply, which includes NOT displaying the ads.
Strictly speaking, yes. Colloquially speaking, no.
But would youtube have a markedly higher revenue if no ads were blocked, even if some percentage fewer videos were viewed?
The business model youtube works with is clear:
+Ad-view income - operational cost - creator payout = income.
So what is it called when the user uses the backdoor to input $0 as "ad-view" income?
Most people in the ad-block camp want no ads and no subscriptions. But they are then wholly dependent on honest users to keep their choice services alive. There is this intense cognitive dissonance that prevents people from recognizing that.
Use ad-block, I can't stop you, but don't pat yourself on the back like you're the hero of the open internet waging some kind of war. Recognize that you're just dead weight making the situation even worse. Its either pay directly or pay through ad views. That's it.
If you have adblock turned on, whether it's an extension or built into your browser, you are undoubtedly one of these freeloaders as well. The only "honest" users as you put it are those with ad and tracker blocking completely disabled when they browse the internet.
What is the next step? I should be forced to LOOK at it as well? If not it is "stealing" as indirectly the companies advertising are not getting what they pay for?
So how do you propose people compensate the creators and the servers for the cost they incurred?
Pay directly? Ok, there is a yt premium, or patreon, or nebula, or netflix, hulu, etc.
Pay with ad views? Well then just watch the ads on these services that have them.
Rely on others to pay for you? Not a sustainable model for obvious reasons.
Another method?
I will send you $50,000 if you can name another good monetization method. But you'd be an idiot to tell me since it since the solution would be worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars to the tech industry. But no one knows it since it's about the same as the question of free energy.
Why should I pay 10 times more what Google gets if I was watching ads? Where's the logic in all all of that?
Such a tiny fraction of subscription and ad revenue goes to creators.
> Who's paying Google for delivering that content?
ISPs who have peering agreements with Google.
Premium views pay substantially more than ad views, both pay infinitely more than ad-block views ($0).
It is completely lost on them that maybe the reason there is no competition is because nobody wants to watch ads or pay for premium.
The barber stopped giving free haircuts and now people are pissed that nobody wants to open up a "competing" free-haircut barber shop.
But I cannot and refuse to pay Google, especially youtube given their stance on censorship.
Then it went bankrupt because what everyone actually wants above all else is a totally cost-free/ad-free platform.
As for a lot of things there is a big network effect at play here.
But how can you expect creators to move to a platform that cannot provide compensation?
Live by the sword et c. et c.
you have a bunch of barbers in a city, well, i open up a business where i cut hair. BUT I do a shitty job, so you kinda need to come back maybe 3 times for a decent haircut. Wow it sucks. Yeah. BUT...
I also put in a giant screen with ads, and an advertiser that counts people watching the ads. And then I say... ITS FREE.
Woah okay. At first not much happens, but eventually the other barbers start to lose money, thats because they can't compete with my free haircut business. I quickly expand and now have shops all over town, and competition is dying.
Now some people realized they can take a quick nap while getting a haircut so they don't see the ads. And suddenly I kick out anyone who takes a nap. Those people can no longer get haircuts because everyone else closed down because they couldn't compete with my free. And as those people complain everyone says "EVERYONE WANTS A FREE HAIRCUT BUT NOT WILLING TO PAY FOR IT!"
Edit: I also start selling packages of 20 ad-free haircuts a month. Most people think this package is a bit insane given that they don't get 20 haircuts in a month. Or every month. And they still have to listen to the barber push their "cancer cures" and other nonsense they keep pushing every time they get a haircut.
This is the reaction I am seeing.
This means that people who watched Youtube for up to 18 years with ad blockers are now forced to decide whether they want to pay money, watch ads, or stop using the service.
None of those choices is better, except possibly morally, than the now-unavailable but previously-very-available choice of getting Youtube for free with no ads.
If Google showed text ads for a few seconds before every search and used technical means to prevent people from bypassing that process, there would be a similar outcry -- even though everybody knows that it costs Google money to provide search results.
>To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men. Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes, competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation.
>The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed" into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew how much price and package manipulation the customer would accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern."
>And we're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the espionage arm.
The Santaroga Barrier,
Frank Herbert, 1968
Why is YouTube Premium $14/m? I find it hard to back into the economics based on either comparisons with Netflix, Hulu, etc or based on the amount YouTube have to pay creators per viewer per month for a typical amount of engagement.
I've gotten viruses from ads, and I will not allow them. Google is never going to sell me on that.
Maybe instead of slapping users, they should have had some fiscal responsibilities in the good times and not setup a complete adult daycare for their employees.
tbh, I don't find it obnoxious at all, if they're really doing that to try and annoy me, they've instead brought back the ability to disable autoplay, which I'm thankful for.
Then pay for youtube premium. why should google provide you a service for free, without ads? They aren't slapping users, they are offering ads or paid. Free ad-free was never a sustainable solution.
But online this seems to have become "Socially Acceptable Theft".
It's not like youtube access is a human right, there's a million other alternatives to entertainment online, if you can't agree to terms of one just use another?
If they change their mind and then start offering free pizza but only if I take a stack of advertisements I will take the pizza and throw the ads in the trash.
If they then start having people follow me home and harassing me for not looking at every ad, I will take the pizza and tell the harasser to fuck off and throw the ads in the trash in front of them. If they refuse to serve free pizza after that I'll just go pay for higher quality pizza elsewhere.
What I won't do is pay the harasser. It's even crazier when the harasser isn't even making the pizza, just delivering it
YouTube isn't following you, as soon as you close the browser window it goes away. Youtube doesn't do anything to harass you when you leave, but they will try to make you watch the advertisement as long as you continue sitting there and continuing eating.
Much lighter too, appreciate it most on my Raspi desktops.
Remarkable product-market-fit.
If you are a normal techie. Ask yourself: How many hours will I spend circumventing this, then having to deal with when it breaks etc. Vs. paying the bill. For me, it was an easy call, and one I don't regret.
Also 2: I got rid of Spotify because of that so that's a win. (Considering the payment changes they are making now + Joe Rogan and anti-vax stuff from during the pandemic, not going back there)
How do they keep pulling this anti-competitive bullshit? Do they not realise what they are doing, or are the fines still too low for them to take it seriously?
The scary thing: they might be right.
* YouTube running at a loss for years until they achieved overwhelming market dominance. We might all be using Vimeo or something else.
* The forced bundling of YouTube Music. Leveraging a monopoly for a foothold in another market is also not okay.
Oh wait, thats right, it went bankrupt in 2017. They released a statement saying "Nobody wants to watch ads, nobody wants to pay a subscription, we have no revenue stream."
The goals of creators and youtube are more closely aligned than the goals of creators and their audience.
If the videos you're watching have a lot of ads at inconvenient times it's because the creators wanted them there.
Anyway, all of these viral video sites are concentration destroying garbage. Hopefully YouTube will choose to die on this hill, and then we can ban Tik Toc and be free of this waste.
Is TikTok popular for long-form video content?