If it takes too long to load I just use yt-dlp to download the video or whole playlist and watch it later. Do I care that it’s putting additional strain on YouTube’s servers? Indeed, I’m devastated and overtaken with guilt 😂 These are tears of regret, I swear 😂
yt-dlp is fucking awesome and it will be a sad day if it ever gets taken down or blocked.
And as an added bonus yt-dlp defaults to maximum quality! Even more strain on YouTube servers!
they also slow down videos if I use Firefox.
YouTube can eat my ass.
Really? Guess it hasn’t hit me yet. I use Firefox and haven’t noticed any slowdowns.
I use an old outdated version of FF because the new v3 google bullshit isn’t supported for my os version.
it was working fine one day and then a week after the official “cut off” it just slowed down and dropped quality.
it’s ok though. I don’t mind switching the quality and waiting for videos to buffer.
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I’m using windows xp, is that bad?
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It’s bad enough that I can’t tell if you’re trolling me or not.
If they know I’m blocking their ads, why wouldn’t they just block the video altogether? That’s what they currently do.
If it’s already blocked, slowing it down to “blocked… but slower” seems rather pointless?
If you went somewhere else their competition is winning (directly as another video site and indirectly as anything else you would do with your time).
So you don’t find something else to do.
If they give you what you want, but harass you enough, you may just stop using an ad blocker to watch the video and might just forget to turn it back once you are done.
If you had to unlock your bathroom door to enter or exit, you will either put forth effort to correct the problem or you will take the lazy route and just prop the door open.
i have been blocking them fro 10+years with none other than UBO. only recently i added more adblockers, to block other stuff the ubo wouldnt.
That’s probably a bad idea, as it makes it more likely YouTube will detect the ad-blocking. Better to add your own custom rules to UBO instead.
It’s a tarpit. If they simply displayed a blocked “no vids for u” message, you’d get outraged, go complain online, look for workarounds, and eventually find a bypass. If everything still works but poorly, you get annoyed, turn off your adblocker to troubleshoot, possibly blame the adblocker for being “buggy” and keep it off. Their help page solution implies they are hoping for just that. There is no “smoking gun” blocked message to go complain online about, even though it is indeed their servers that are degrading your connection on purpose in secret. Or maybe you give up and leave their ecosystem entirely, which is no big loss for them.
The proper solution is to develop an adblock that they cannot detect is blocking ads. This may require actually downloading the ad video in background, and then lying that the video has played.
I’ve been wondering about that, also perhaps a browser where your mouse position has seperate client and software side states? I know a lot of data can be gleaned from mouse movements so if the browser only updated its internal cursor position when you actually clicked that would potentially cut out that source of information?
In the ultimate, you’d need to do something like run a headless browser in a virtual machine, have it play out and record the entire video, then use something like AI to splice out the ad segments and distracting elements (a souped-up sponsorblock will work for a while, but eventually ads will be injected into the raw video stream at random intervals), and present the pristine finished content to you. Basically we are going to re-invent TiVo all over again xD.
In worst case, you can’t start watching until the pre-roll ad timers expire. This is how adblocking works on Twitch streams currently - you can only see a purple screen even if you block the ads.
And yes, the headless browser will need to use AI for human-like mouse movement and to solve captchas - basically whatever state-of-the-art technologies spammers and scrapers are already currently using.
Google is anticipating this future and is trying to implement and force hardware-based DRM for web video before then.
AI might be overkill? I recall back in the day people working out which images where manipulated by the way the underlying flow of colour and pixel layout didn’t line up, each image ends up with a kind of grain of different size and direction. You could spot ads by detecting which image data doesn’t line up with the majority and cutting it out that way.
I know Lemmy hates AI, but this actually would be a perfect use for it. The problem is the idea of what an ad is. Yes, you could try to use secondary characteristics like image color or sound normalized volume (WhyTF do youtube ads still sound 3x louder than content? are we living in cable era again?), but they would be error-prone for any content more visually intense than a podcast. They would also not capture sponsorblock content like “I love showing you all these foreign countries but what I love even more is having my internet connection secure” that match the video flow. A crowdsourced lookup table of all known ad clip fingerprints would go a long way, until ad videos themselves start being AI-generated on the fly for that sweet personalization revenue.
No, what I really want is to distill the idea of what I want to see into an AI and have it filter out what I don’t want to see for me. I know an ad when I see one, so AI can too. Pre-roll/mid-roll ads? Gone. Sponsorblock content? Gone. Like and subscribe? Skipped as if it didn’t exist. Virtual billboards on the sidelines of sporting events? Overlayed with kittens. Idiocracy banners squeezing the video from either side? Cropped and rescaled. Watermarks? Excised and content-aware-filled.
The last frontier is when the content itself is secretly an ad, imprinting upon you some idea or point of view. You’ll have to watch out for that one on your own.
I actually wouldn’t mind that. An ad blocking method that just plays ads in the background with the sound muted and not visible on screen.
If google only lets me stream the content I want when I stream content I don’t want, that’s fine, I just don’t want to watch it as it’s my eye balls, not theirs so it’s my choice at the end of the day
I’d be more likely to just assume delivery quality was going downhill and look for another streaming video hoster/provider. Why would someone link slow speeds to a plugin that filters out the stuff you don’t want?
Stripping down to a skeleton of a software is standard troubleshooting procedure. Ever had a plugin crash and consume 100% cpu? I had. Only way to sense is that fans are spinning up and page is laggy, and then look in about:performance and there it is. No one would have ever suspected that the website you’re visiting is deliberately introducing bugs in secret if it thinks you’re adblocking.
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Because the “Why is the video being slow?” pop-up now sends you to the page blaming adblockers instead of the ISP shaming thing it used to do.
They are probably trying to find that spot where it’s just slightly more annoying to block ads than leave them unblocked.
Currently blocking ads consists of keeping uBlock Origin up to date. Not blocking ads generally means going to a different platform after a single ad roll.
I have no issues with pre-roll ads; it’s the interstitial ones that drive me away.
i added 2-3 other adblockers. and i use UBLOCK origin to bypass facebooks login popup to look at posts. because making a fake acct for fb is extremely difficult, one of the few places on the internet that i can download new maps of old rpg game(linked to thier drive).
i added 2-3 other adblockers
Never run multiple adblockers at the same time. You gain nothing except broken websites, performance issues, and an increased chance of triggering anti-adblocks.
I have an issue with pre-roll ads. Some of them are extremely long and can’t be skipped
Remember 10 years ago the YouTube app only showed ads on every 3rd video and often only a single 5 second ad, and everything longer could be skipped.
Like a frog in a pot I could tolerate that amount, a few years later they started the ad ramp-up and what finally drove me to install vanced were 3 unskippable ads you had to endure just to watch something.
Absolutely the same for me. The only reason I block their ads is because of how frequently they interrupt the content. It’s just unacceptably greedy. Pre-roll ads is fine, I get they have bills to pay too.
Nebula’s getting better and I spend more time there now than on YouTube. Happy that YouTube is working hard to encourage this transition.
I’ll never go there. Paid is a no way situation.
So you prefer ad supported content?
Nope.
It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s reasonable to pay for a platform that pays its content creators fairly. I spend a lot of things watching videos, and even though my income is limited, some kind of payment for the service makes sense.
I don’t mind blocking ads on YouTube because they used unfair practices (endless resources from Google) to destroy the competition and become the only video provider. They put us in a corner and deserve to be put in one too.
I think I should be more clear: I agree that it is reasonable to pay a platform that is fair.
The comparison to youtube is where it gets lost for me:
The issue is that, in general, the value of watching what is typically on youtube is about the level of free. If it cost me money, I could do without, it just isn’t that important. I will find better ways to spend my time. So with Nebula, you have a platform that is more like just another streaming service, albeit a good one for independent creators. But that leaves me thinking what do they have that I would bother watching? Which is a pretty high bar (I didnt even own a tv for nearly 20 years). It seems less like youtube and more like HBO for independents on paper, and without free access how would I know the difference?
“I want endless curated content for FREE! NO ADS. NO PAY. ONLY CONTENT.”
This guy, probably.
Probably also thinks the minimum wage is theft.
Uh, it’s called a “library”.
you think libraries are free?
most public libraries and librarians spend a great deal of their time applying for grants, asking for donations, and parsing out the meager state and federal funds they receive. You can tell that a lot goes on in a public library besides what patrons see!
Did you know that staff salaries, books, other library materials, office supplies, and utilities are funded primarily by city and county taxes? (link)
Taking this chance to say support your local libraries! Even just being a patron will show that it’s a necessary resource that needs to continue. My partner and I just were talking about the library today and how we both used to go at least once a week back in the day but we’ve fallen off in the past decade.
Libraries are paid for with taxes.
Why be an asshole? Yes I like free I also make things for free. Not everything has to cost.
For ongoing series I like I support directly, like anyone else. Not the platform.
But to charge up front for who knows what? Nope.
You clearly have absolutely no idea what infrastructure costs to run.
Lol, OK.
Thanks for proving my point.
Sure anytime.
so you’d pay if there was a free trial?
That would be an improvement, how would I know I want anything in a store I have to pay before I even consume anything?
I have several subscriptions ditectly to people making things I like.
On the otherhand, I miss when people made things because they liked to. I still do that. I run several sites that has no ads, no charge, because I like the communities I am sharing with.
Then again, it’s not my job so I am afforded that luxury I guess.
It also might be worth saying that watching people do things is not my favorite thing. I would rather actually do things.
I wish the videos were longer than 8 min on nebula.
Only thing I’m getring at the moment is waiting up to like 30s until the video starts, I’il take that over an ad that long any day.
Jokes on you, I already watch them at 0.5x speed
meh, its still not inconvenient enough to pay 10+ dollars a month. The state of adverts online is so egregious that I would probably sooner stop watching Youtube than pay or put up with ads.
Time to pin Odysee and Peertube in my browser even though I pay for YT Premium (only $2 per month here in BD).
Holy crap that’s cheap! Honestly, I’d pay that.
They will never be happy with how much money they squeeze out of it. When people are watching videos that are 99% ads and the content is limited to two alternating pixels they will still find a way to further optimize their profit-taking. Nothing is ever good enough for the hyper-capitalist; product managers are a disease.
Eventually they’ll start demanding you run their crypto-miners in order to watch a video.
Don’t care, still better than the ads.
I’ll sit for 2 minutes in front of a black screen and it’ll still be better than 45 seconds of ads.
Did exactly that early days of hulu.
Same. That ole “You seem to be using a proxy service” text served as a nice break 🙌
Can’t slow down videos I’ve downloaded to my Plex server. 👍🏽
No, but Plex can. I’d migrate to Jellyfin if you can as Plex started paywalling some of their services.
As it currently stands, my Plex setup costs me nothing because all I do it stream from my server to my Apple TV. So it works well enough for me.
Never used Plex, but as a proprietary software aren’t they just requesting money for functionality and usage of servers/traffic? Isn’t it just normal business practice?
Reminder, Newgrounds is still here.
But I don’t have adblockers installed and I still get told to turn my blocker off. I have no extensions and YouTube randomly stops my video to tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Edit: I guess this is the result when dealing with the kind of users who refuse to watch ads, but also can’t fuck off like decent human beings. Just millions of people who will climb your fence, pick your locks, smash your window, because they deserve to watch content, but they won’t pay or watch ads.
Haha, I would see Youtube go bankrupt before I ever watch a single ad or pay for it. Stay mad. Google is a massive corp, I owe them nothing.
Umm… Maybe. Let’s take a look.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267606/quarterly-revenue-of-google/:
In the first quarter of 2025, Google’s revenue amounted to over 89.52 billion U.S. dollars, up from the 79.97 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same quarter a year prior.
… They’ll survive.
I guess the content creators take the hit when users block ads or refuse to use premium.
Edit: your addendum is false. Technically YouTube freely delivers (answers http gets and posts), the user just refuses to watch all of their content or take part in the tracking. No broken windows or climbed fences.
If I thought that way about YouTube, why not just be a sovcit about laws in general? I don’t want to cherry pick philosophy. Let’s go all in on technicalities and loopholes and definitions and wording. Life is a video game where X leads to Y because that’s the rules. YouTube is merely answering requests, and I’m merely watching a curated selection of data. They have a TOS but I never agreed to it. For I’m not a user or customer, but a Netizen, and we have rights.
I learned the term sovcit. Interesting concept, it isn’t mine though.
You sound angry because there are multiple point of views for a thing and I don’t agree with your pov. I think i get the gist of your reply. But without arguments this discussion is bound to go nowhere.
You say I’m wrong by using adblocking. You didn’t tell why.
- depriving content creators of their revenue. Yes. One should think about supporting them through donation platforms like Patreon. They get money from direct marketing (holy…) - I’m fine with that (no JavaScript, no tracking, I can skip ahead since I got the message the first time).
- depriving YouTube of the money they need to run their CDN. Partially. Bandwidth usage, maintenance costs. Should I mention that youtube sells/ licenses servers to ISPs… So they get paid by me, indirectly.
- TOS I didn’t sign anything, there is no contract between me and YouTube. Or is there one?
Edit: this is not about me wanting you to take my view or wanting to be convinced by you. You may disagree or even despise me. That’s fine.
Everyone has to decide for himself what’s right and wrong and life with it. And maybe I have to rethink my decisions if there are aspects I didn’t take into account or if I lied to me to justify my decisions.about laws in general
Terms of Service aren’t laws. Breaking them is not illegal. It’s like using the waterslide while sitting and not lying on your back. In fact, it’s explicitly legal to use an adblocker and control what happens on your device in both the EU and the US. There are ongoing debates whether the surveillance required for blocking adblockers is legal in the EU.
Google does break laws all the time by the way, and is holding a monopoly. If people had to pay for Youtube, alternatives would spring up overnight, but since you can still watch Youtube free, they can’t.
Also, I’d be the happiest person if Google finally figured out how to block people with adblockers completely, so that the majority of people would wean themselves off of one of the world’s biggest disinfo peddlers.
It’s the same mentality of, we shouldn’t mute ads or go to the bathroom when they come on. That’s the advertising businesses problem, not mine. They haven’t made life better for most of us and I refuse to feel guilty of depriving them of money.
YouTube can die in a fire and take its fucking premium with it.
I mean if they get forced ads I would understand, but at the current state I would say there are too many.
If YouTube premium was less expensive it would be a great in-between
I personally use YT premium and music by faking my country. Getting it for like 3.50€/month feels like a great deal
and i might just stop using youtube. does youtube think there aren’t other options?
What options? Where can I find stuff about fixing my motorcycle? Oceanliners? Deep Space documentaries? Fixing dieselinjectors in my car etc?
There exists a massive, global network of websites that are all easily searchable through various means.
I look up and view similar topics to you and never use YouTube for them.
Try searching the internet as a whole!
Reddit and Discord killed that, sorry, the Internet you’re referring to is dying and almost dead.
Most of those things are better without videos anyways. So much wasted time to get to the point.
As for documentaries… Are good ones actually on YouTube?
one option
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5bbdku
hell of a lot less censorship, and better video quality there as well.
I forgot about dm. I used to watch dm way more than yt back in the day. Thanks for the reminder!
