1y ago

YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

www.404media.co YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."

Firefox @lemmy.ml

www.404media.co /youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

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Technology @kbin.social

YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

www.404media.co /youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

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406 comments

"They're the same picture."
Also, that does not explain why:
Chrome users who use an adblocker don't get the issue
Firefox users who do not use an adblocker get the issue
FIrefox users who use an adblocker, but change User Agent to Chrome, don't get the issue
Now, if only we knew who made Chrome and YouTube... The mind boggles.
- Given that Google's been talking about switching Chrome to a new plugin format that would limit the ability of adblockers to function on Chrome, and given that Google owns Youtube and profits from the ads Youtube displays...
  Nope, I'm not connecting the dots. Not sure why Google would be wanting people switch from Firefox to Chrome at this time.
  
  It's more obvious than that even; their SEC paperwork states that adblockers are a risk to their profits. That's more than enough info to assume they're going to go to war in the near future (now) with them.
  
  Just for clarity, they already switched protocols (Manifest v3), they just have continued to support the old format (v2) that allows unlock origin to work. They are discontinuing support for v2 next year.
  
  What really pisses me off is that mv3 is becoming a standard that Vivaldi, Firefox, Opera, Edge, etc. will use.
- The last scenario is clearly a breach of anti-trust laws. It is time for alphabet to be broken up. Their monopoly is way worse than AT&T every was.
  
  Alphabet's monopoly is bad, make no mistake.
  But they aren't controlling all electronic means of communication for 90% of the continental United States, as AT&T did in the ma' bell and pa' bell days.
- Also, that does not explain why:
  undefined
  
  Chrome users who use an adblocker don’t get the issue Firefox users who do not use an adblocker get the issue FIrefox users who use an adblocker, but change User Agent to Chrome, don’t get the issue
  I am a Firefox user who uses adblock and I don't get the issue.
  
  I think uBlock might already be blocking that code.
  
  Same here. Firefox, ublock origin, privacy badger. Videos start playing in under 2 seconds. I've also never got the adblock warning.
  Lucky I guess.
- Chrome sends every single website you visit to Google. You already pay with your privacy.
- I know several websites consider firefox's built-in privacy settings an adblocker in certain configurations. I get notices on many sites and use no adblocker. Not sure if it's the case here.
- What do you mean by change user agent to chrome? Asking 4 a friend
  
  For a specific how to, there's a bunch of firefox addons that do it, but the mozilla recommended one is this
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
  It's super easy to use, just open it and it gives a bunch of options.
  This is my current (fake) user agent;
  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  With two or three clicks, this is my new (fake) user agent;
  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x8664 14541.0.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  A few more clicks;
  Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; HLK-AL00) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.5112.102 Mobile Safari/537.36 EdgA/104.0.1293.70
  And finally;
  Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 1073; Trident/6.0)
  Now, that last one is making it look like I'm using internet explorer... Youtube videos will not load with that last one active. Claims my browser is too old and not supported.
  I don't know why they all start with Mozilla/5.0 but the apparently a lot of websites will block your requests if you don't have it (or a valid browser strings like it?)
  
  When you browse to a website, your browser passes info about itself to the server hosting that site. This info is intended to help the server provide the best rendering code for your browser. This is called your User Agent.
  However, Google is using it here to identify Firefox users, and is apparently choosing to lump them all in a box called "adblock users" instead of trying to identify an ad blocker more accurately.
- Supposedly Firefox users spoofing the Chrome user agent don't get the issue because the script tries to execute the 5s delay in a way that works on Chrome but not on FF. Because the Chrome method doesn't work on FF, it just gets skipped entirely. But I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate, just read about it.
  
  But then shouldn't there be a delay when using actual Chrome?

5sec vs 3x20sec.
Easy choice
- 3x20, a bunch of wasted CPU cycles and probably a rare form of malware
  
  Not too mention .01 points off your san permanently

The degree in which corporations engage in psychological warfare against customers is astounding. Not surprising, just outrageous. Don't want notifications on? We're going to ask you to turn on notifications in the the program every single day until you do it. Don't want to watch ads because our infinite greed has destroyed what used to be a good platform with a reasonable number of ads before we bought it? Then we'll make the experience less pleasant until you comply. They already make multiple parts of YouTube disagree with ad blockers on purpose to break the sites features. Not that I use anything other than NewPipe and Piped anymore anyway. I'm just sick of shitty corporations acting like we're children who can be punished.
- We are in a war indeed.
  I think it’s a new trend with CEOs and investors. They want infinite growth so the strategy is aquire / create, grow, squeeze, throw away, while creating new products to migrate fed up customers. Rinse and repeat.
  Investors goal: maximize ROI this year.
  CEO goal: infinite growth and/or increase share price to keep funds flowing.
  I believe the current economic behavior isn’t sustainable. Some day things will go south.
  
  I actually think they are currently all going south. This increase in ads is just one part of the fall I think.
  
  The idea that the only real duty of corporate leadership is to drive shareholder profit is apocalyptically naive and ultimately nihilistic, and it has been since the words dribbled from Milton Friedman into the NYT magazine back in 1970.
  
  Infinite growth in a finite world is impossible.
  Do we need to start requiring all C-suite managers to learn thermodynamics?
  
  Welcome to the basic problem of capitalism. It's unfortunately by design
  
  I think it’s a new trend with CEOs and investors. They want infinite growth so the strategy is aquire / create, grow, squeeze, throw away, while creating new products to migrate fed up customers. Rinse and repeat.
  This is it and there's another wrinkle driving it IMO which is the end of QE. When rates were at sub-inflation (so basically negative) and investor capital was everywhere, none of these companies really cared about milking the customers because they were already fat and happy milking the government indirectly. Now the government cheese machine has dried up and so now we've gotta get the stock price up a quarter of a point by any means necessary instead.
- It's literally like that shit from Ready Player One where the guy suggests that you can fill up the VR screen with like 80% ads before the user gets sick from it. That's what they are doing now, they will push ads until people either stop watching or not enough people subscribe to Premium. The fact that you can't even skip ahead in a video without getting more ads, even if you just got the pre-roll ads. It's completely unacceptable and I think that there should be laws that would prevent that type of consumer abuse.
- Don't you just love being fed plausible deniability BS over and over and over again. I've lost friends over this bs. People who always argue in bad faith, always invoke plausible deniability, always min/max each interaction with hidden motives - should be given no attention and credibility. Unfortunately, those people strives in corporate environments, and as you would expect, they're often responsible for marketing, PR, sales, and corporate strategies. Corporations are the annoying lying friends you don't want around.
- YouTube didn't have ads before it got bought IIRC, not that it would have lasted that way even if it was not bought
  
  It's been many years, but I remember a small banner ad below the video and maybe one to the side. It was so reasonable though it's hard to remember for sure.

I'd still prefer to wait 5 seconds than have to watch a fucking sanitized corporate advertisement trying to sell me bullshit I don't want and won't buy with annoying fucking music, voiceover, and footage of people pretending to be happy.
Fuck off, Google. Good thing this will be easily bypassed anyway.
- If it were one ad I might be fine with it, but it's usually 2-3 ads every 5-10 minutes, at a volume twice as loud as the video, and each up to 2 minutes long.
  
  A made the mistake of watching YouTube on my TV a few weeks back, without an ad blocker. I was getting 1-3 15 second ads every 2-3 minutes!
  
  And inserted randomly within the content
- footage of people pretending to be happy.
  Oof, get'em.
- I hate ads too. Would you consider paying for a service so it's user supported instead of ad supported? I do, pay for YouTube, Spotify, Hulu no ad tier. It gets old because it starts adding up. I'd rather pay for a user owned platform like a coop of some kind, but still, these things do cost money to run.
  
  I won't pay for Youtube because they keep making their product worse and treating creators horribly.
  
  People don't have issues paying. As you said, if it was a user-run co-op, people would be fine with it. But as it stands right now the services keep raising their prices just because they can while all the money goes to the bosses and shareholders while the actual people who do most of the work get whatever is left over
  
  I do pay for some services, where there is reasonable value.
  However I rarely use YouTube so was fine with dealing with the devil of ads. Was. The inexorable march of enshittification will likely make me either never use that service or try technical workarounds for some of the enshittification (excessive ads)
  
  Hulu no ad tier.
  I won't be shocked when they eventually get rid of this altogether. They shouldn't be shocked when I switch to 100% piracy when they do.
  Fuck ads.

But wait, wouldn't a 5 second pause on loading still be way better than sitting through minutes of adverts? :-D
Punishment my arse

I'll take a 5 sec delay over ads any fucking day of the week.
- 5 sec delay
  Just now
  
  Next up will be resetting the volume control every video, or limiting the resolutions you can view at.

Wouldn't it be neat if YouTube had reasonable competition? You know, so when YouTube adds a five-second delay as a strange style of punishment, a different platform would look more attractive?
- There will never be a real competitor to YouTube, because nobody else is willing to run at a net loss for a decade before seeing their first profitable quarter, like Google did with YouTube.
  Turns out, free video hosting is expensive as fuck.
  
  There will never be a real competitor to YouTube
  That sounds reasonable but you're thinking way too small. Lets not forget that Tiktok is already more popular than YouTube with a very, very large chunk of younger people, for example.
  But besides that, let's not forget that absolute giants in the business have been toppled. Look at Yahoo! as one example. Hell, even entire countries can fall within a few decades, whole empires.
  So, assuming that there will never be a decent YouTube competitor is a very limited way of looking at it. Who's to say Google will still exist in any meaningful market leading way in 20 years?
  Sure they're big now, but what if the entire face of the internet and how we use it and what we want fundamentally changes (say with the addition of highly advanced AI that brings changes we can't even predict right now).
  There will absolutely one day be a service that can rival YouTube and eventually replace them, it's the same with every product from every business, it's the circle of life I suppose. But whether that will happen within the next 5 years, or 15, or 30, only time can tell :-D
  Never say never, though!
  
  Im surprised Amazon hasn’t stepped into the space to advertise their own products. They already own a huge storage cloud backend.
  
  Maybe. But give decentralised federated hosting a few years. It might never be a rival but it's possible it will become a viable alternative.
  
  Yet there is a gazillion of porn sites out there. The thing is, once YouTube become shitty enough its users are itching to find an alternative, porn operators like MindGeek might launch a competitor site because they're already have a scalable video delivery service. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already working on it.
- It's funny too because ads literally are a 5 second delay (at least) that you get when you dont use an adblocker!
  
  I honestly think I prefer the delay over the ad.
- I've been using Nebula. It's a subscription-based alternative with no advertising, but I get it for free because I'm subscribed to Curiosity Stream (which is basically Netflix, but for documentaries).
  The only downside to Nebula is that there aren't a lot of content creators on it, so you don't have the variety of videos that YouTube offers.
  
  The captions suck too. I subscribed to the same deal as you. I did it mostly to support the creators. But I basically never use it. The creator whose affiliate link I used to sign up? Their own captions are amazing on YouTube (human written with colour and positioning) and auto generated garbage on Nebula.
- I'm still waiting for MindGeek to launch an SFW version of pornhub to compete with YouTube. If YouTube keeps getting shittier, they might eventually do it.
- Turns out people don't want to compete with something that runs at a loss. and as soon as someone figures out how Google will just copy them with a massive infrastructure lead.
- Peertube is almost there. Just needs a good server really, most of the servers are too small for the market share. Or at least fit the general public, I'm loving it ATM.

All of the people saying "I'd rather wait five seconds than watch an ad" seem to be optimistic that it will continue to be 5 seconds and YouTube won't keep upping it.
- But they can't extend it longer than the shortest ads, since then it'll affect users after they watch ads too, which kinda defeats the point
  
  Exactly, so this still guarantees a better experience than ad viewers because you will always have the minimum ad length
  
  That's not a problem. Just put in longer ads. Or multiple ads in a row.
- Honestly, worst case scenario, if YouTube manages to completely eliminate adblockers, maybe by making some kind of cryptographic system where the browser has to provide a token embedded inside the ad video stream in order to access the video, I would still use an extension to mute sound and draw a black bar over the ads while technically playing them in the background, it's not the wait time that bothers me, it's how repetitive and obnoxious the ads are, I just don't want to perceive them.
  
  Which is why you have to void warranties and go through a lot of hassle to r Unlock the bootloader, or root your own phone and have actual control over it.
  And that's the reason Google is trying to push shitty web standards to remove your control.
  And why Apple and Microsoft keep restricting your access to your OS, with rumors of Windows 12 being cloud-only.
  Many governments around the world don't want you to have any control or privacy. Many tech giants don't want you to have any control or privacy. It's the same old thing religions have done forever. Enforce a lack of control and privacy through violence, social pressure, or resources. Only now, the enforcement style is indirect, trying to say you don't own your device, can't use ad blockers or privacy tools, have to agree to terms and conditions that waive your rights, your usage has to be monitored, or that backdoors have to be built into everything.
  Don't expect this behavior to stop unless regulation is created to prevent it, or the company caves to financial or social pressure to change....for now.
  Don't expect regulation to be created unless you put people who care about privacy and such in power.
  Even then, people in power need to be held accountable if they misbehave, or nothing else matters.
  It all comes back to class struggle and politics.
  
  "Which color hat did the extra in the background of your latest ad wear?" Wrong answer = 10 ads.
  If they could, YouTube would hire someone to sit on your couch and make sure you consume the ads with your utmost attention.
- I'll take 20 minutes of silence over 1 second of ads. I will never willingly watch an ad I didn't explicitly request. Ever.
  Life is short and I won't devote any of it to advertisements.
  That being said, I do pay for YouTube premium because I do use it a lot and understand that the platform has every right to make money. But that makes what they're doing with Firefox and ad blockers worse.
- Ads are psychological abuse. I will not watch them. If YouTube make it too hard to use their service without watching ads, I don't need to use YouTube.

This is why I refuse to pay for YouTube. They are literally actively making the experience worse, rather than trying to make the paid experience better. This is laughable.

"supposed to"
Oopsie whoopsy, we accidentally made competing browsers disadvantaged.
Deliberate, disguised as accidental. Disgusting.
- Hanlon's razor - "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  This is not only adequately explained by stupidity, but it makes the most logical sense to be explained by stupidity. They are actively fighting a war with AdBlockers. They are trying to block AdBlockers, and AdBlockers are working as quickly as possible to fight those changes. Then Google has to fire back as quickly as possible. This is resulting in rapid published changes to counteract AdBlockers and their retaliation. It makes all too much sense that their fight against AdBlockers did not work as intended. The people making these changes are Google software developers, and I really do not think any of them have an issue with Mozilla.
  
  I don't know how stupid YouTube devs would have to be to:
  Tie the delay that was supposed to fight AdBlock to user-agent (changing it to chrome fixes the issue)
  Ignore Youtube Premium users that pay for ad-free experience
  For those reasons I think it's pretty safe to say that this goes beyond stupidity and into malice territory.
  
  Unless you consider fighting adblockers a futile stupidity, you should first apply Occam's razor - explanation requiring least amount of assumptions is probably the correct one.
  In this case spoofing user-agent string of Chrome is enough to fix all the performance issues on Firefox, meaning there is no fancy anti-adblock code or anything like that.
  
  Except Google has done the exact same thing to numerous other products and have multiple anti competition cases against them specifically related to Chrome. Hanlon's Razor doesn't apply IMO if there is a track record of the behaviour, as that clearly shows intent and premeditation.

There is no acceptable answer to "why do you make your own services suck?"
- Because we need go punish those who have the GALL to not want to have consumerism shoved down their throat 8 times in a 5 minute video.
  
  I know I have not be a very good echo in this echo chamber, but you don't think it's a tad ridiculous to say YouTube is forcing it down anyones throat? Nobody is forcing anyone to watch YouTube, yet you say it as if they are.
  Not to mention they literally have a legitimate option to remove the ads, so they REALLY aren't forcing it down your throat. Which means if the service isn't worth it enough to you to pay for it or watch ads, don't use it?
- Do you think using adblockers to watch YouTube for free is stealing? It is, after all, getting a paid service for free against the services permission. If that is enough of a definition to be considered stealing (I think it is), then it's quite easy to understand why they might make their own services suck.
  Walmart has implemented plenty of inconveniences to combat shoplifting. Things locked behind glass. I've had to wait 15+ minutes for a Walmart employee to unlock a door for me to grab a $20 power tool. If that isn't make services worse, idk what is. I am not saying it is right, but rather pointing how the double standards in the way we think. If you are going to be up in arms for ad blockers, I think you should also be up in arms about commercial retailers inconvenient anti-shoplifting measures. Both are means to stop users from obtaining the good/service without proper payment, even if it means legitimate customers get a worse experience.
  And even if you agreed with the Walmart analogy, and also think the measures Walmart takes are on the same level as AdBlocker blockers, I think we can agree most people would not.
  And if you do not think using adblockers to watch YouTube is stealing, I'm curious what your definition of theft is.
  
  It clearly isn't theft to use an adblock. It is simply electing what contents are played on your own machine. If it was theft to not download ads, it would be theft to grab something from the fridge during TV ads. Ad-absurdum we would end up in that black mirror episode where they force you to watch ads and lock the room.
  That being said. I believe it is within googles rights to make the life of not paying customers hard. Whether it is a smart decision, is another question.
  
  I back channels and projects I like on Patreon because yeah, I'd rather not steal if I don't have to. But YouTube needs to know they are BETWEEN the content I want and me. I bought into Google Music and stuck with it through its change to YouTube Music, and it's always come with YouTube Red/Premium. The kicker is I'm paying for a lot of my video content twice but I'm happy with it because it's on my terms and not a PENNY of it goes to Jake Paul.
  You're right, a lot of companies suck and I wish most of them behaved differently.

"We know you didn't do anything wrong. We meant to hurt someone else."
Normally this is when I'd go all yar har fiddle dee dee, and don't get me wrong Imma do a lot of that too, but a lot of my favorite video essay nerds are also on a platform called Nebula that's dirt cheap, ad free and owned outright by the people who make the content. It's a good way to balance the whole "people need to get paid for the content they make" thing with the whole "these platforms are predatory and abusive" thing.
- Nebula will also sell lifetime subscriptions for $300 occasionally. When you compare it to netflix's standard price of $15.49/month, it pays for itself in less than 2 years.
- I admire their mission. Giving the power to the video creators is great. I'm all for coops. But, as a user I find it lacking. If you want to watch anything outside of educational videos and video essays you have to go elsewhere. It doesn't have very good content discovery. I know creators don't like chasing an algorithm, but as a viewer I like having recommendations based on what I watch.
  I bought a one year membership, because I support what they are trying to do, but I rarely watch anything on it.

So 5 seconds of silence... Yeah punish me daddy google.

I do not think Google deserves the benefit of the doubt anymore, people need to stop using their services.
- ~~Do No Evil~~
  Be A Lil removed
- No one's going to unless someone recreates YouTube, which isn't happening anytime soon.
  
  It's already been recreated (vevo, peertube, etc.) it's just that those services don't have anywhere near the content Youtube has.
  
  The ad funded model is dying AKA endless free money is dying, it doesn't work because there's no real business there it works based on the empty promise of making money elsewhere on the products they are selling without any guarantee that the advertisement is what's making them the money. The analytics are starting to tell them that it's not as good of an investment as they once thought. Advertisement has become overvalued, that's why people are saying that there is a bubble and that it's going to burst, just like it happened before with the dotcom crash.
  In other words a platform like YouTube is already very flawed. Sure you can make alternative video sharing platforms and you can get them by on donations (or maybe even nationalize it in some places) but that money making component for creators isn't something that can be as easily replicated. They can do sponsorships, they can ask for donations, but donations are hardly anything to live by unless you're famous, and sponsorships can have the same problem as the aforementioned over-inflated ad revenue.
- Idk, this one is pretty easily explained by Hanlon's razor. I'm sure others will disagree, which is fine, but it seems not only plausible, but likely that they intended for this to target all ad block users and not just FireFox. Google has waged a war with adblockers, and they are making quick retaliatory changes as the adblockers block the adblocker blockers. It's literally Google making changes and people changing the adblockers back. It genuinely seems more realistic for them to have tried to target all adblockers than just FireFox...
  
  Yeah except changing your user agent to chrome bypasses the load slowdown lol
  Thanks to HTTP being a complete mish mash and meme of protocols and standards, there's no way for google to easily target ad blockers without either significantly changing the entire youtube API, or trying to enforce stupid DRM bullcrappary by updating or pushing for a new web standard.
  Even crunchyroll doesn't crackdown on ad block even with DRM playback enabled.
  
  Pretty much. Doesn't help that Firefox is the best browser for customizing your browsing experience. So all adblockers are very good on it.
  Probably some summer trainee tasked with solving the Firefox + ublock Origin combo made an oopsie.
  With all that said: fuck Google for even beginning their crusade against adblockers.

I'd rather a 5 second pause then see something trying to hijack my freewill.
- No ads or delays > No ads with delays >>>>>> ads
- Honestly, as long as the video itself doesn't have interruptions, I'm okay with the ad-free experience having a small delay or even lower video resolution. I don't have to have 4k 120 FPS video on everything.
  What I don't want is constant interruptions, wild changes in emotional tone or volume, obnoxious and manipulative ads, politically sponsored bullshit, or constant pestering to disable my ad blocker and tracking protection. In short, once the video starts, leave me alone.
  I can appreciate that Google has spent its entire existence trying to find another revenue stream beyond advertising, and largely failed, but I don't care. If my choices are to continue being manipulated and lied to by companies and politicians paying for the privilege, and not using YouTube, I'll just stop using YouTube. I've done it before with other services I used much more frequently.
  Either they shut up about using ad blockers, or they give me an alternative.
  And yes, I realize this is a very selfish and entitled response. If I get value out of something that costs other people time and money to provide me, it is fair that I give back in some way. Traditionally, that was done via companies serving ads and spying on its users.
  But enough is enough. Modern advertising and tracking keep getting worse, and trying to enforce them is not the way to move forward.

YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing"
As opposed to the perfectly optimal experience you get when allowing ads
- A 5 second break, while suboptimal, is significantly less suboptimal than having to watch 20+ second ads.
- Yes, but ads make them money.

5 second ad delay in blessed silence
5 seconds of someone screaming into my ear "BUY! BUY! BUY!"
Oh, no! Better disable my ad blocker quick!
- Yeah, not sure what they are expecting to happen...

If you're on desktop and open several videos at once (such as getting home from work/school and opening all the new videos on your subscriptions tab) you really don't notice.
What I do notice are the ads at the beginning, quarters, middle, and end of a video

Ah yes, because ad viewers get to enjoy the video immediately with zero delay whatsoever. You sure showed those adblock using scum by... Still having a better experience with adblock enabled by virtue of only subjecting them to silence instead of an ad while still not making any money.
Even assuming what they're claiming is truely their intention, it's still dumb as hell.
- Not to mention the ad would almost certainly be longer than 5 seconds anyway

Lol, I'd rather wait 5 seconds than see an ad lol.
- Frog, meet boiling water. This is standard play, like adding ads in the first place. First it’s one short, then slightly longer, then two in a row, then interspersed… eventually it’s commercial TV, just one big ad. Give em inch, they take a mile. Advertising shits in your head, don’t let it.
- ads can be 30 seconds
- Wait 5 seconds and it plays or bombarded with ads that, at best, takes 5 second and an manual action before watching a video?
  Yeah, if I wasn't using Freetube on desktop I'm still not watching ads.

Bro my position is very clear. I'd rather forget about YouTube entirely than let ads back into my life
- While I think Google is a monster that needs to be destroyed, it's silly to me that your two options are either block ads or leave. The third option would be pay for the service. If your only problem is the ads and not the tracking (which probably isn't true, but it's the only complaint you made in the comment), then paying for it is a valid solution. It shouldn't be controversial to say video hosting costs money to run, which obviously includes YouTube. So giving it out for free is simply not a realistic option. You're free to leave, but you won't have anywhere else to go that meets the "free and no ads" requirement. If you realistically don't want ads, you will have to pay. And if you're fine with paying, YouTube is currently the platform with the most content to offer.
  Honestly, I'm thankful paying is an option. I wish Google would offer a paid package overall to stop the tracking/data collection. I would literally just give them my money for actual privacy with their services.
  
  The problem is that the paid option eventually gets ads anyway. See cable TV and soon Netflix.
  
  I would pay for the service if it weren't an absolutely ridiculous price.
  $14 a month is bonkers.
  I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.
  
  do you know what makes them even more money? Making you pay, and then selling your data anyway!
  You CANNOT opt out of data collection from youtube. Just pay them or they'll put an absurd amount of ads to the point it's not usable anymore.

This is bullshit even being truth lol "is supposed to punish adblockers" such entitlement and normalization.

Honestly, I never bothered to install an ad blocker before today. I just figured ads were tolerable. This move by YouTube got me to switch to firefox and install ublock origin and oh my is it glorious. I can wait 5 seconds for my video to start since I am used to ads anyway.
- I hate ads so much that I typically would start a video on YouTube with my phone/PC muted and then put the phone face down or turn off the monitor for ten seconds before going back to the video and rewinding to the start.
  
  They honestly never bothered me too much but I have to say if they ever succeed in defeating the ad blockers it will be hard to go back now that I've seen this side.
- You can spoof it as Chrome because it's a bias towards other browsers that aren't chrome, regardless of whatever bullshit statements they put out to avoid getting sued or otherwise in trouble.

YouTube can go screw themselves, use Invidious or Piped to access YouTube. You can also combine this with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links to Invidious or Piped. There are amazing mobile clients like LibreTube or NewPipe for Android and Yattee with this guide for iOS. All of these don't have ads or trackers.
- Can vouch for Yattee on iOS, but every once in awhile I’ve had to grab new invidious instances as things happen
  
  AFAIK if you use https://r.yattee.stream/manifest-invidious-piped.json, it automatically fetches the list of instances. Can't try it out right now since I switched away from iOS. On GrapheneOS I don't have any of these issues, I can simply sideload any app I want meaning I can actually use a proper YouTube client like LibreTube.

So they will allow ad blockers now? I'll take a five second delay instead of shitty ads.
- I'll spoof the user agent because that shit is disgusting.
  
  If it actually targets ad blockers and not FF in particular, that won't do much other than telling all the websites you visit that yet another user is using chrome and not FF.
  
  There are other ways to detect FF, but they can almost always be worked around with enough effort.

Deliberately and actively try to make user experience worst is shit evil. Now im gonna actively share ubo to all people i talk IRL

They forced our hands in creating and using adblockers. Remember how awful the web was getting before we could adblock? Pop ups, force play videos with full sound, entire webpages full of ads with a tiny bit of content in the middle.
- The funniest part is that the abject uselessness of web ads is well known to the advertisers. They do it anyway, and for so little gain that it's effectively a statistical rounding error. They have no idea what else to do soon they shrug and burn the money anyway because thems the rules of capitalism.
- Embedded .midi files

Hmmm, watch an ad or wait five seconds..... Not sure they thought this one out.
- At this point i would rather watch an empty wall for a minute than a 10s ad
  
  But... It may alert you to the existence of a game that has a completely different mechanic than the one presented in the ad!
  
  I mean that's why Hulu got rid of the free tier.

YouTube sucks now. Just constant ads.
- cough piped cough
  All jokes aside, I strongly recommend a service like Invidious or Piped.
  
  piped does not support live streams at this time unfortunately
- laughs in "phoronix" without "adblocking"...

I don't mind ads, I understand that websites need to finance themselves to cover their costs (and maybe build up some capital to expand). But I do mind tracking, user profiling, personalization / user targeting, trading this data with dubious companies worldwide, and obnoxious ads, for example pop-ups or auto-play videos with a 1 micron sized close button, or a forced timed ad which is hiding the content.
It's like having a bunch of people following you around, taking note of everything you do, evaluating that data, making statistics, dicsussing it with other people you don't know, etc.. Then, when you want to make yourself a sandwich, step in between you and your sandwich, taking up a megaphone and scream into your face : "OH, WE NOTICED THAT YOU ARE MAKING A SANDWICH. CAN WE INTERST YOU IN NEW FANCY BUTTER KNIVES FOR ONLY 59,99 €?" [Then going on about it for 3 minutes before they are stepping out of your way].
There are laws against that in real life, and in the digital realm this is missing. Considering how much time a lot of people spend online this is something which needs to be taken seriously.
It's really scary sometimes. There was a time when I was stupid enough to use facebook, just to stay in touch with friends. Once I talked with a friend about allergies and asthma, and I told them I have a pollen allergy. A short time later an ad showed up on my facebook feed, advertising some nasal spray for allergies. Wtf?! And that's just the surface. "Harmless" ads. Who knows what else happens with that data?
And then we get stuff like Cambridge Analytica.
- Personally, I do mind ads. They exist purely to convince people to buy stuff. In most cases, they are dishonest, or at the very least present the products in a favorable manner that hides flaws people might deserve to know. And even good ads are a distraction from what I actually want to see or do.
  I completely agree, ad companies have taken user tracking too far. It is absolutely scary how much ad companies know about my private life, and there's no realistic way to stop them. We really need better legislation.
  
  It is absolutely scary how much ad companies know about my private life
  The ad company does not actually know anything about you or your life. That's an illusion.
- Look up resources on helping someone with an addiction of any sort and watch the avalanche of ads for alcohol and such :( that's one of the darker "harmless" ads I've heard of. It's disgusting.
- I find this so weird. Like, I want the exact literal opposite of what you want - I want personalized ads about shit I might conceivably click on.
  I want usable personalized internet that knows where I am and offers me local deals and hotspots.
  The hell are you so afraid of? Honestly?
  
  The ads are not necessarily for things that are helpful to you, they are for things that other people want you to spend money on. There's a big difference.
  
  So you want to constantly be a slave to your consumerist impulses as you uncritically consume everything thrown at you, despite all the evidence that these companies can literally manipulate your perception of reality through targeted political advertising and echo chambers? Enjoy your terrifying dystopia, but at least you think you're getting a 'local deal' so who cares, right?
  
  Filter bubbles are one thing, which I find is a huge disadvantage to personalization. You'll never learn about new stuff, because it will never be presented to you, since someone assumes that you blong to a specific box.
  Another is that I value my privacy. It's no one's business what I do, when, where, with whom and how. Apart from that, there is no guarantee that this information is not being misused.
  For example, I'm thinking about political campaigns, which target specific user groups on the one hand, or spread misinformation and distrust to others. I see such forms of information steering as detrimental to democratic societies. Free and unbiased information is crucial for critical thinking.

“People say breaking up Alphabet into heavily regulated entities is supposed to benefit the public, not investors”

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17tm9rp/comment/k9i62zu/ for a working fix
- For those that don't want to click on a reddit link:
  Credit to u/paintboth1234
  www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
  
  For those that had no clue where to put this:
  Click on uBO icon > ⚙ Dashboard button > Add the filter(s) in "My filters" pane > ✓ Apply changes > Open new tab and test again.

Google lived long enough to become the villain.
- Old news, they've been the villain for much longer than you think
  
  ~~Don't be evil~~
  
  When they were allowed to buy YouTube because their Google Video couldn't compete was the turning point.

5 seconds of silence vs 30+ seconds of ads. Tough choice Google, tough choice.

Freetube, Newpipe, Indivious. All great.
- peertube
  
  I like it, but the stuff I want to see is not on there.
- I'm nervous about how long it'll be until those stop working
  
  That might be hard unless they start requiring logins.

Trying to monetise the fraction of a percent of users who actively avoid your advertising and wouldn't engage with it or purchase products from the advertisers even if forced to watch them is the epitome of corporate greed. Pathetic, money grubbing billionaire corporations deserve to burn to the ground rather than be supported by the societies they leech off like the cancer they are.
- There ! I have nothing to add
- Trying to monetise the fraction of a percent of users who actively avoid your advertising and wouldn’t engage with it or purchase products from the advertisers even if forced to watch them is the epitome of corporate greed
  That's like saying Walmart trying to stop the small percentage of people who shoplift is the epitome of corporate greed. YouTube is a paid service. It costs money to run, regardless of how much you hate them. You pay either with money, or with ads. I could get the anger towards them blocking ad blockers if they did not have a way to remove them. But they literally have an option to legitimately remove them, and it also directly supports the creates you watch a lot more than ad revenue.
  Am I defending Google? No. I am doing everything in my power to get away from Big Brother being ever present and seeing everything. But I am also not blind to reality. I also use ad blockers on any website I go on. But if any service denies me entry for using one, that's their right. I shouldn't get to consume whatever content I want for free while they take the financial hit.
  
  That’s like saying Walmart trying to stop the small percentage of people who shoplift is the epitome of corporate greed. YouTube is a paid service. It costs money to run
  They make a profit, operating costs are covered. You do know that right? Profit is surplus? You're not so poorly educated to not understand the most basic principal of capitalism?
  Am I defending Google?
  Yes.

Okay. Yeah. Sure.

I feel like the explanation follows a thread of believability, but even then, this feature was terribly coded if it was circumvented via User Agent string manipulation.
- I don't believe that ad blockers modify the user agent, so if you can modify the user agent of FF to emulate Chrome and solve the issue, then that means Chrome users that use ad blockers don't have to deal with the delay and therefore their claim that they aren't punishing FF users his utter horse shit.
  
  I was under the impression Chrome doesn't let you use ad blockers anymore? idk I use ~~arch~~ firefox btw

I wish I could make YouTube "experience suboptimal revenue" in retaliation, but sadly I can't block more than 100% of ads.
- You can use Adnauseum, silently/invisibly clicks on every ad as well as hiding them so that the ads get worthless data, your info is drowned out with false stuff (there's a term but I blanked on it), hurts ads
  Edit: Will disclose I don't use it as though it's based on uBO it's worse and on the libgen.li book piracy websites uBO lets me actually download a book while Adnauseum doesn't let me

lol, I take back the snark I gave in another thread the other day about Google doing this to fuck with people now. Egg on my face for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
They can't honestly think this will have the desired effect. I also bet the poor sod that had to implement it "strongly advised not to do it". But was over ruled by some know it all shit head MBA.

Can you say "anti-trust"

they're so shockingly inept, i can't believe it anymore
- I don't believe this instance of anticompetitive behavior was an accident either. They just thought while doing it for ad blockers, might as through in the competition in the net too. They just got caught. Now they can plausible claim it was an accident.
  Like much of big tech, they are too big. This makes also being anticompetitive just too easy to resist.

This is hillarious! I didn't even notice that. YT always delayed video loading a little. Is this really a change?
- Yeah it really just looked like the normal shitty youtube connection you get when their servers get a wee bit overloaded.
- I haven't noticed any delay in Firefox. I have noticed that the ui fails to load sometimes. Video works just fine, but there's nothing else on the page. So hey, Google, if you could keep that up that'd be great.
  
  from what i've understood, they are selectively pushing it out, like they did with the adblock blocking shit.
  So not everyone is getting hit by it.

Punish?
- 👉👈🥺
  
  You know you like it.
  
  Are you popping a zit ?

make people who use adblockers “experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”
The sad thing is, I consider this an upgrade. I'll take a moment to breathe and maybe break out of the negative spiral that is modern internet use.
- Five seconds of loading is an upgrade over five consecutive ads
  
  That's a fact!
  (In Scooby-Doo theme song style)

Huh, I just thought youtube was running slow. Still better than ads.
- Extensions like "agent spoofer" allow you to customize the details of what your browser reports to the web page.
  Personally on my home pc, I'm using a galaxy s21 with the netscape browser
  
  I find the use of having Firefox pretending to be Netscape like using your parent's ID to buy liquor underage. Too funny!
  
  I love netscape the best browser to ever exist(ed)
  except firefox

I don't understand why companies still place ads on youtube. I've never ever bought a product or visited a company's website which was advertised on youtube.
Are there really people who listen to youtube ads?
- Absolutely. I've participated in several campaigns that resulted in ~20% increases in sales for targeted ads. It makes a difference.
  Sadly.
  
  Companies wouldn't spend the money if it wasn't worth their time.
- Yes, it's the same people that don't install ad blockers.
- To my surprise it actually works.
  It's kind of tactic of mass promotion and is expected that hundreds of folks will not give a damn but one in many will click on the ad.
  Also companies (at least i did when i had to use it) often only pay for clicks or even for successful install of their apps so it's much cheaper than e.g. classic tv spots where they have to pay for a time regardless ofeffectiveness.

Active enshitification.

It's like when a teacher can't target the bad kid so they punish the whole class instead.

Ads are sub suboptimal viewing.

GrayJay is still working pretty good. I cannot use the YouTube app, or mobile browsers because most of the content I'm interested in isn't highly visual so I like to turn my screen off and listen. I am ok with a reasonable amount of ads but the anti-feature of background play disabled without premium is just stupid.
- You need YouTube ReVanced.

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