YouTube begins new wave of slowdowns for users with ad blockers enabled
9to5google.com
9to5google.com
https://gitlab.com/adblockinc/ext/adblockplus/adblockplusui/...
Out of curiosity I investigated these performance issues myself using profiling sessions[2] and the faulty code is definitely in the latest versions of these extensions.
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[1] https://gitlab.com/adblockinc/ext/adblockplus/adblockplusui/...
in this specific instance the performance issues are caused by ABP/AdBlock
I absolutely can't wait to see these people automated out of a job. I have zero doubts GPT-4 would have produced a better article given the same source information.
Now, how do we fix this? YouTube's ad model sucks. Their algorithm sucks. Their front page sucks. They've captured a bunch of creators though so often YouTube is the only place you can find someone.
I want those creators to benefit from me viewing their videos. I want the fact that I view a video and like it to help other people find that video in their recommendations. I want an algorithm that shows me things that are interesting and relevant not one that promotes the spammiest and most ad heavy videos that barely have anything to do with my watch history.
Having an alternative front end is nice but I don't want to rob YouTube of the money they spend on hosting the videos.
So, how do we do this?
Peer to peer fails when there is little interest in something or when most people leech and it sucks for archiving old content.
Hosting it all in one place is super expensive and hard for a small group to manage without turning into YouTube.
Maybe we could find a way for the creators to host their own content and get paid when people view it while being part of a large federated network for easy discoverability?
Please list any projects you know of, I'm sure there are a lot of people here who would be willing to contribute or donate.
YouTube serves me an ad every 3 minutes or so (I've not timed it). If I ever seek in a video, again, an ad. Even if it didn't play any video yet.
I can't figure out why they think is is a good idea. I've seen the same iPhone ad so many times.
(And I wonder if advertisers know how their ads are being played? That ad is worth a lot less to Apple on the 5th play, and negative on the 10th).
A similar thing happens in a lot of the streaming platforms. The same ads are shown relentlessly. Advertisers aren't stupid, and they are aware of ad fatigue. I can't imagine they are possibly happy about the situation. OR...I have no clue what I'm talking about and they are quite tickled about the situation and this is why it continues
I'll slam a door on your foot once for a $, or 100 times for only 10 cents!
I started paying for YouTube a couple of years ago and decided it’s worth the money. I watch YouTube a lot more than, say, Netflix and they’re priced around the same.
Still better than YouTube ads, I guess, but I hope we can do better.
It's nice to know that it can be toggled back off, though. The ads themselves certainly gave no indication.
Loads of people were happy with the ads early on. One ad, immediately skippable but occasionally it would grab your attention and you'd stick through it, and then you got to the content.
Now it's multiple ads, many unskippable, and then randomly inserted ad breaks with zero respect for the content (you would think that Google would have the AI chops to find appropriate "intermission" points), all so you can watch the content where the creator is pushing snake-oil supplements, pillows and VPN products. It has reached the point of absurdity. For a content system where a tiny fraction of creators are yielding all of the rewards.
And while Premium seems like the solution, at least for the former problem, we all surely realize that once Google has captured enough of the market in Premium, "trials" of Premium, "curated" ads will begin. Something something support creators.
As a total aside about ads, I'm surprised the ad industry has made zero headway into ad customization or even variations. There's some gambling ad that plays over and over again during NFL games here in Canada (and probably all other sports) that has a guy talking about his "system" for gambling responsibly or some such whitewashing of a garbage industry. The other guy then reveals his system and it's a cat pawing at some balloons. I've seen this ad literally thousands of times. I don't even know what fungible, evil gambling company runs the ads because it's tuned out so much. But couldn't they have dozens of variations of the guy revealing his system? How is that not a thing? 100s of variations. Thousands. It would probably capture my attention instead of always the same cat balloons thing.
Interesting thought. There is a big cost to this on the ad creator side. I also wonder about how they would make a customizable standardization for this?
In email we can use fields like your name and job title, for example with targeted LinkedIn recruiters.
I can foresee video ads which utilize AI calling your name.. I guess this is Minority Report..
But underlying this modern web ads already give us granular targeting though interests. So most of the benefit is already there.
https://about.google/philosophy/
To be fair they didn't state this in the positive or negative sense.
Or pay for Nebula. Or any others.
Support Nebula. Support PeerTube. Pay them.
I paid YouTube Premium Lite to get rid of ads, I will not pay 2x for the same feature since I do not need offline, Music, nor background play, if they decided to cut my use case from their offering by forcing me to pay extra rent then I can decided to not pay them and use an adblocker.
I do not need to bend over for a digital feudal lord.
You are either being extremely naive about the state of the internet in 2024, or do not use YouTube for the content I do, or are just being obtuse to try to make a point.
"No one is forcing you" is a non-sequitur, it's a thought-terminating cliche that does not work when platforms have taken over and fenced off huge parts of the internet, c'mon. I'd love to avoid YouTube if there was another option, there simply isn't.
Comparing YouTube with Hulu and BBC is... Just stupid. What do these services have in common apart from "they display videos"?
Please, read this: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/
Which are now also starting to add ads to their "basic" offerings, even though the "basic" offer is costing more than the "full package" used to cost 2-3 years ago.
Let me summarize: I do not accept the premise that I owe them anything for viewing the videos that are publicly available. I do not accept the premise that they are entitled to their business model. I do not accept the premise that they can dictate how I watch the video or how my browser (aka the user agent) must behave.
If they do not want to serve content for customers that do not pay, they need to authenticate and paywall their site. Destroying the competition by price dumping and changing the rules after you are a de-facto monopoly is not only immoral, it is illegal.
They fenced of parts of the internet, there's no way to compete with Google on YouTube, there's no way to create an alternative marketplace to Amazon, they control these now and we all need to pay rent.
Edit for the angry down voting hackers: Try searching YouTube next time you have a problem with your vehicle or household appliance. There is usually somebody there who made a video showing you exactly how to fix it by yourself, so you don't have to buy a new one or pay somebody to fix it. There is no better resource AFAIK.
They are positioning YouTube as a super-premium product (relative to other streaming services). An underlying takeaway might be that advertisers no longer value users "on very little income" in a positive real-rate environment.
(I'd prefer if YT would prevent creators for advertising in Premium videos, but I bet that would not be accepted happily either.)
...alongside advertisements. They do get a share.
I don't think most people who use ad blockers understand that the ads are literally the price you pay for the service. If you think your time is worth more than the ad length, work for an hour and pay the subscription. I know it sounds crazy when I put it this way, but there's no such thing as free internet video.
If they don't, someone else will.
I will gladly pay content creators that leave youtube and set up their own distribution channel, though.
It would be cool if some other platform appeared, that paid creators better. But YouTube is the only platform letting anybody be a paid creator that exists for video. Expecting creators to set up their own distribution channel and payment platforms would mean that only creators who are also web developers deserve to be paid.
YouTube in 2024 is also completely different to YouTube in 2014. It has much more quality content than all other streaming platforms combined, just because of the immense of amount of content there. If you set up your subscriptions right, it is a good experience.
Why is that only YouTube can pay so much? If no competitor can come close to them, does it occur to you that perhaps this is a problem?
Of course you don't have to let them off the hook. If you don't like them, don't watch them. That's how boycotting works. You don't need to pay them any mind at all. There is plenty of room for competition against YouTube, as evident by YouTube not even being the largest service in the sector. That is still Netflix and cable TV. And they pay their content creators much more than YouTube do, but only the content creators that they choose for you to watch.
Simply "boycotting" won't do much here. The idea is to find a way to signal to content creators that relying on Youtube is a losing proposition.
Why not? They're not forcing anybody to watch their videos. You know this. And they're explicit about ad-blockers not being welcome. YouTube is not a losing proposition, it is the only platform accepting everybody as content creators. You haven't provided an alternative.
But I hope that the entire platform becomes premium only and ad-free. That would be a fair solution for everybody.
They operated their business at a loss until they were the only alternative.
Remember Joost? Remember Vimeo? Again, why do you think that no other competitor managed to compete with YouTube? What is more likely to happen: Google has created a product so inherently good that no one can even come close to it, or Google has cheated its way into a winning position?
> They're explicit about ad-blockers not being welcome.
"Not being welcome" is not something they can enforce in a contract and there is already legal action against them in the EU, because they can not discriminate against users of ad-block without collecting user data.
> But I hope that the entire platform becomes premium only and ad-free. That would be a fair solution for everybody.
I wish that as well, but it would require them to willingly stop with their (unethical) practices that put them at an advantage. Do you realistically think this is going to happen?
I don't think it's out of the question. All the largest YouTube competitors operate on this model. Customers are used to it.
That's a cop-out.
Let me put another way: what odds do you give for them closing down YouTube for non-paying customers in the next 3 years? If we make a bet where I pay $10.000 that they will not close, and you have to pay $1.000, do you take it?
What is the real value in YouTube? It's the videos, and there's a much greater amount of videos and a much greater amount of the highest quality videos on YouTube than on any other platform. Yet, many more people pay for Netflix and cable. As long as YouTube has the free, ad-supported tier, many people will not pay for the product. Only because of psychology and the way that "free" messes with people's reasoning. If YouTube became paid only, I think a lot of consumers would rethink.
But do I expect that this is going to happen? No.
You really don't see a problem here? Do you think that people should not react to this complete disregard for ethics? Do you think that people should just accept that content creators (who are in on it and stand to gain from that) are just victims in this system and should still be protected?
I am not defending this. In fact, as a "user", I am actively using Youtube less over this. Just providing the example of these internal concepts can be twisted by perspective.
Just look around -- a lot of amazing creators talk about how YouTube is what really enables them to do what it is they do. Mark Rober, Destin Sandlin, Linus Sebastian, Marques Brownlee, etc have all made statements to that effect.
If you, as a user, don't want ads, that's okay. There's a no-ads version of YouTube, YouTube Premium.
I pay for YouTube premium, I see no ads and the content creators are supported. I’m glad Google is going to war with ad blockers in this context where there is a paid alternative.
The whole thing is enshitification. YouTube is now making their product worse in order to push people to pay them more for it. Those who go along with this are likely to keep on paying as they gradually increase prices while reducing functionality.
Those who choose refuse to pay more to avoid having hour long unskippable ads and other nonsense are telling YouTube that this whole process will not be better for them in the long run. That they are fighting an unwinnable battle.
I get it when people were willing to pay before. Maybe they actually care about having YouTube Music, and they liked it as a convenient way to pay creators, and also chip in a bit for YouTube. What I don't get are those who choose to pay now that YouTube has started deliberately making their service worse by adding a ton more ads and now trying to keep you from blocking them.
And I very much do not understand anyone who is okay with any company going after adblock users, as you're just encouraging the Internet to get worse--either showing more ads or having to pay to access.
But I’m not going to complain about something they haven’t done yet.
There is some price I wouldn’t pay but I probably watch 10-20 hours of great content a month on YouTube and that is worth $15 to me.
At this point I may as well go back to regular cable and... Tivo. Yes I said it, Tivo.
There was a great 20 retrospective on CNN (24 years ago in June and no doubt put together by a thoughtful intern) that showed the CNN anchor talking about how being a paid cable news program meant they could be trusted not to be influenced by advertisers... then they cut to advertising!
Crazy. The ad blocker wars are reaching new levels. If this implementation is client-side the fix should be trivial. Thwarting ad blockers and optimizing ad delivery is the main focus at google and other ad-supported tech businesses such as Meta, not Ai or anything else even if Ai is getting all the media attention now.
Also, if I were an advertiser, I would not want my ads shown by people using ad blockers, no? These are viewers who are least inclined to buy anything. Google should take this as feedback that the ads are bad.
Are there serious and conclusive studies showing that ads affect purchasing decisions "subliminally" like this? Even when you are not interested in the ad, or even irritated by the fact you're not allowed to skip or hide it?
If you are that desperate for me to buy your product instead of your competitors’, and I don’t see them aggressively advertising, I assume it is because their product is superior and you need to make up the difference with ad dollars.
Even if that wasn’t true, a small part of me won’t want to buy your product out of sheer spite.
In spite of your hatred for them, you just provided better advertising than they did for free.
How do you figure? No one likes ads and everyone thinks they are personally immune to them. But they are still effective, somehow. I seriously doubt whether someone has an ad blocker installed is indicative of some characteristic about them that makes them not worth advertising to.
In fact we can gauge from advertiser actions that probably the most relevant fact about them is simply the ad blocker, which is why they want to get rid of the blockers and advertise to them. They know ads work on us, even when we believe otherwise.
There was this article on HN in the past few days [1] about a company that gave up on the use of cookies on their site. Go look how full of jargon and dubious inferences it is. Even if they're trying to do a good thing, they still seem isolated in their own marketer's bubble.
There was also an article about some new Google anti email spam protections (lol, Google protecting us from marketing). I'm not going to try and link to that one. Edit: surprising but i found it [2]. If you look at the comments here on HN you'll see some people either honestly believing or pretending to believe that their email newsletters are something that people want. Again, bubble.
[1] https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-...
I don't see how both can be true and I find both equally compelling, with comparable explanatory power of different things I see. But for the specific purpose of deciphering the actions and motivations of ad companies I think assuming they work is a more useful view. Presumably ad companies are acting as if ads work, and are assuming they work equally well on people running ad blockers, if they can get them past the ad blockers.
I find them corrosive to my soul and culture either way, and ad companies are acting towards me as if they work. So in this context I think it makes sense to also act as if they do.
This is a good point that marketers will never accept because their livelihood depends on the proposition that what they push down the trough will seem so delicious that the hogs will slurp it up.
I’m an ad blocking zealot and feel a big FU towards ads that slip through. Much less likely to trust the brands or their products, especially the scummy junk that pops up on yt. (“I bet you think doing cardio is the best way to lose weight…”)
But you know we can't be that huge of a % of your viewership so maybe just deal with the fact we're unprofitable and focus your engineering efforts on making your ad viewers more profitable and less time on doing things that might just push me away.
You think you're irreplaceable but TikTok will launch long form in the next 2-3 years and in 5 years from that you'll be Facebook. So like maybe just be happy you have my eyeballs at all.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38987489
I have refused to pay for premium b/c they frequently wrap up paying members in their silly antics, and don't have the foresight to exclude paying users from their ad-block efforts.
It might be an AdBlock error. As soon as I disabled AdBlock, YouTube returned to normal. (Brave, AdBlock, Youtube Premium)
I know some people hate bundled Music. But I doubt unbundling it will reduce the prices.
What Youtube does is pretty much the infamous U2 album but with an entire streaming service, forced bundling like that is never not obnoxious in my opinion.
It is, in general, a very poor substitute for the player + server experience YT offers.
Yet 10+ years later, no one at YT has sat up, taken notice and said, "Hey, maybe people don't want to pay for YT directly, but what if they want to support their favorite creators?"
"What if we really doubled down on the creator experience? What if we made it possible for them to post uncensored, subscriber only videos? What if we made it possible for their most loyal fans to ALWAYS see their video without clicking a bell?"
"What if we made it easy for them to sell merch? What if YT channels were actual channels and way more focused on the creator?"
"What if we made a better editing suite? And what if we AGGRESSIVELY paid the largest creators on this other platform to switch to us exclusively for X years?"
And then rolled these features out across the world at insane Google scale. Something this languishing feature-as-a-company can't compete with.
I'm willing to bet that would make far more money than YT driving off creators and users.
Creators are the future of content. With some ads mixed in. Viewers spend billions supporting their creators. Apparently that languishing competitor has a GMV of $2B. It's fair to say that with Google's scale + resources to invest initially, they could easily 10x that.
There's one creator on their platform that has launched a multi-billion dollar brand off of it. An individual creator. And YT gets (almost) none of that sweet sweet upside.
It seems that Google doesn't want to make more money by building a better mousetrap anymore. That kind of thinking clearly isn't welcome at Google/Alphabet/Soup.
edit — "Channel Memberships" and "Subscriptions" are Google's half-hearted version of this, but it's not a serious attempt. It's the usual Google Allo, Google Messages, Google Chat, Google Spaces, Google+, Google Messenger, Google Duo style of product execution. So half-hearted that you probably didn't notice that Google Messenger doesn't exist.
They've never given a serious monetisation strategy a shot. It could be far more valuable than the ad driven market they're serving right now.
They do make that possible (Channel Memberships, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7544492).
As far as I can tell the reason creators put extended videos on alternative sites (not sure why you're being so coy about what service you're talking about) isn't that they make more money there, but as an insurance policy since YouTube is a single point of failure for them. Making subscriber-only videos on YT doesn't help with that at all.
It isn't entirely clear where that data's going yet, but they are definitely scanning the DOM to check for anything suspicious (read: ad-blocking) added by the user. It's worth running "ytbin.polymer.shared.lib.tampering.info()" in a YouTube tab and checking the results if you get a minute.
Never seen this level of persistence from them before.
Unfortunately for them, I don't watch talking heads or other kinds of "influencers". My main use was background music.
I am now a happy subscriber to ... Spotify :)
YouTube premium is bad because it supports Google. It’s bad because it includes other things. Fundamentally anll YouTube music is, is a visual wrapper around YouTube. All of the “music” is literally just YouTube videos. Ads put in by the creator themselves are bad too because reasons.
It’s very simple. Do not watch. Done. Folks on here got the message with Facebook, but not yet with YouTube.
Support content creators and get YouTube Premium.
Support content creators and pay creators directly
People do deserve to get paid for their work. But the only way to safely browse is to block this shit. If Google did a halfway decent job of managing their ad network to keep the scum off, I’d consider turning off ad blocking.
The only reason I use it is because I work on vehicles as a hobby sometimes and people often put up a video of how to do some specific thing. They don’t get paid for it because it’s niche and views are too low, but I still have to sit through ads.
Also, I do not click on ads. In fact if I see something being advertised I immediately put it on my shit list for interrupting me and am LESS likely to buy the thing in the ad as a result. I know that’s not everyone, but I also don’t think I’m alone. Ads are a scourge. YT can bite the bullet and go subscription only and I am sure that would change a lot. But as is, it’s getting less usable every year while providing fairly marginal value to the users.
"How dare you Freeloaders not look at the ads in the newspaper?!?!? Dont you know Journalists get paid from those!?!?! Oh the mercy!?!?"
Its a free service. If its not a free service why are they offering it for free? I dont owe google anything and neither do you sir.
You seem like you might be part of the population who are the kinds of people to get outraged when people fake drinking their verification cans.
I make videos, they cost me real money to make. When you steal views, you are costing me the money I should have been paid for your view to help cover those costs associated with entertaining you.
This isn't some moral puzzle, you are a thief.
They make most of their money from things like channel memberships, which do not involve as much of having to deal with Google's many ways of robbing creators of their money when it comes to advertising.
Why would they recommend that?
Because Google are happy to have ads to malicious stuff.