Redditors have sounded another alarm on YouTube, claiming that the Google-owned platform is now deliberately slowing its website down and stalling video playback for any user who is browsing with an ad blocker enabled. Those who want to skip the ads on YouTube can subscribe to YouTube Premium ($13.99/month), but according to one user, the lag is happening even for premium members.
Top comments:
- “And I thought there was something wrong with my internet connection.”
- “One thing to add also, this messes up the resources on the computer as a whole. It just kills chrome it seems.”
- “omfg i have youtube premium and still i faced this lag. I was almost about the reinstall chrome lol”
- “It makes the whole site laggy. I can’t type a comment, load anything, but every other tab on chrome is normal, even other video steaming stuff like twitch or netflix”
- “I was wondering why everything was lagging so much. Slide Preview, entering Fullscreen etc. Thought my PC was dying.”
We tested this theory ourselves, and sure enough, YouTube looks sickly whenever an ad blocker is enabled. Videos buffer incredibly slow, previews refuse to load properly, and entering theater mode or fullscreen is impossible without refreshing the website.
Source: reddit
Via: 9to5Google
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →I've heard they are also increasing compute load by a bit on all of these. Makes me wonder if Youtube is using add blocker punishment to run their own digi coin mining in code.
Sure fire way to make people abandon youtube. I mean if the video keeps buffering and doesn't play properly what is your first thought? That this site sucks, or the servers can't keep up. Not that they must be punishing me deliberately. Not as if that would help.
Is this happening only on chrome? Does FF work w/o issue?
Just saw this and might explain a few things I noticed recently
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That is a logical response, you would think it's the website, or maybe your computer. But then you'd see your computer is working fine on every other site and application, so you would then assume it's the site, and not visit it as much. That is logical.
Have not tried it on FF, but I did try Brave, and it works just fine on Brave, super smooth.
My uncle has an adblocker and he can only watch 2 things on YT and then he's blocked unless he turns of his adblocker
Your uncle needs a better blocker. ;)
They are punishing FF users even without adblockers. There are literal timeouts built into the code that delay the loading of pages if you are on FF.
I thought that was simply a feature of FF.. that's why I stopped using it a very very very long time ago...
The problem here is that Youtube's ads are entirely too intrusive. These ads appear during the content and there is nothing like watching a two minute video with a five minute ad right in the middle of it. Or more than one unskippable ad in a video that's 20 minutes. If I wanted to watch network TV and get interrupted 4 times in 30 minutes (to watch 22 minutes of an actual show) then I would actually tune into one of the networks.
Is that the fault of YouTube or the creator? As a creator, I know how ad placements work, the creator chooses where the ads fall in the video, how many, what time intervals, and what types of ads.
For example, you can set in your videos to add pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads. The creator can then either let YouTube automatically place mid-roll ads, or the creator can manually edit the ad placements and decide what times to show the ads, and how many mid-roll ads. In addition, the creator can decide if those ads are the kind you can skip, or not, and if they are bottom bar type ads, or full-screen ads, there are many different types, all configurable by the creator. The creator can also just disable mid-roll ads entirely, and just use pre-roll and post-roll ads, or even turn those off as well and have no ads.
Therefore, isn't the onus on the creator, and not YouTube?
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/6/23862198/youtube-ad-controls-creators-remove[/URL]
Oh wow, I didn't know any of that. I thought YT chose when and where to inject ads, and what types of ads. I had no idea that the creator gets to choose from so many options.
Oh well look at that.
That doesn't say anything about mid-roll ads though, I think most people will sit through a pre-roll ad, but don't like it if interrupted during a mid-roll ad in a weird place, or that is not skippable. That article says this is just for pre-roll and post-roll ads. Plus, the creator can still turn them off completely and does still have the option to select where mid-roll ads get placed, and how many. So far, my options have not changed for youtube ad placements and options.