Is Google deliberately slowing down YouTube video buffering for adblock users?
Is Google deliberately slowing down YouTube video buffering for adblock users? - gHacks Tech News
Comment from a ublock developer on this:
There is a lot of chatter in the last days about how Youtube is slow with content blockers. Those performance issues affect only the latest version of both Adblock Plus (3.22) & AdBlock (5.17), and afflict more than just Youtube. uBO is not affected.
I didn't realize people still used AdBlock Plus, or that it even still existed.
So it's not YouTube doing it?
They were outright blocking it not long ago, so if they could still figure out who is doing it they’d probably just block them entirely again, right?
I think they saw it was kinda backfiring. If they make it inconvenient enough instead of impossible, people might give up? Or they are just trying to be dicks to people using ad blockers?
But that does nothing unless they tell us they’re doing that.
If I just see the service getting slow, I’m not going to “Oh this is because of my adblocker, better turn it off to go fast” I’m going to think “Fuck YT is turning to shit, it cant even load a page. I’ll go watch Twitch or something”
I think YouTube could stop adblockers and ytdlp easy if they actually wanted it
Since they failed to kill yt-dl, and in the meantime people have built plenty of very easy to use solutions to completely bypass YouTube's page, they may have finally realized that a nag screen with "subscribe for HD streaming" might be more effective than pushing even more people away.
I'm using Firefox w uBlock turned off for YouTube. It's almost unusable for me. They're not just degrading the experience of ad-blocking users. They're also sabotaging users of non-Chrome web browsers.
I have a 2Gbps internet connection, and at my desktop running Firefox, I can’t reliably stream anything fancier than 1080p60. In the next room on my TV with an AndroidTV box attached, 4K60 streams flawlessly.
I never see ads because I pay for Premium, yet they still fuck me over.
I know, it's bad. I posted about it here: https://beehaw.org/post/10393316
?
This was overtly happening and reported on a couple weeks ago
Are you thinking of the a/b test from a while back?
Luckily I just use Freetube and yt-dlp 🤷
I can’t seem to get yt-dlp to download audio with video.
Not an expert, but would our net neutrality rules that the supreme jerk Ajit Pai helped revoke have been a tool to combat this behavior?
No.
Net neutrality refers to prioritizing/throttling traffic between the provider and the client based on anything other than infrastructure limitations and QoS markings, to avoid a situation where client network providers could conspire with service providers to extort extra payments from clients.
It says nothing about the provider deciding to throttle, or even completely block/ban, certain clients. That would be separate legislation, like the proposals to prevent "de-platforming" by major social networks (see how Threads avoided giving access to people in the EU until they enabled some integration with the Fediverse, to avoid getting accused of abuse of power).
I don't disagree?
They're going to try what they're going to try. This won't sway me, but it might sway someone. In which case, that user is subsidizing me
This one turned out to be the adblockers fault not YouTube. I think YouTube could end adblockers on their site in a day if they wanted to. I think their whole thing with the popups is more about adding FUD than actually blocking their use
From the same company that intentionally degrades the quality of Google Maps on Firefox.
Really? Do you have a source for that?
Plenty of them if you just search. Not sure about maps, but I've read this multiple times about YouTube on FF from reputable sources