12mo ago

YouTube is slowing down for users with ad blockers in new wave

9to5google.com YouTube begins new wave of slowdowns for users with ad blockers enabled

YouTube recently started slowing down its entire site whenever ad blockers are used. A new wave of slowdowns is hitting...

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378 comments

I dusted off an old laptop, put debian on it, put an SSD and now I have my own invidious instance, among other services...
No ads, no throttling, no bullshit. Google is very welcome to suck it. I'd gladly stop using youtube, but there's no competition.
- I know it's a pain, but what's to stop us from using download-clis? In theory I could "collect" the urls that are recommended to me from my home page, call the clis, click all the videos to update my recommendations then close the browser.
  
  I know it's a pain, but what's to stop us from using download-clis?
  The answer is right there.
  
  using the browser isn't necessary to keep your watch history up to date.
  yt-dlp can log in as you by reading your cookies from your browser, and, with the optional --mark-watched flag, mark your downloaded videos as watched in your YT account.
  
  TIL. Thank you very much. Looks like I'm going to be using that if YouTube gets even more painful.
- Next step is guaranteed to be limiting the number of views without being logged in.
  
  I have YouTube premium. It still detects the adblocker. It's infuriating.
  
  The more stuff they do to shoot themselves in the foot, the sooner something else comes in to replace youtube
- The no competition in the market, is the issue. Hope the situation improves in near future. With it innovations will gradually increase & the demand within the markets will point the directions.
  
  If everyone keeps expecting everything for free there will never be competition :)
  
  Let me convince you otherwise:
  Who set that expectation in the first place? Don't all cut-throat corps undercut the previous established companies and gained a lot of market share by being "loss leaders"?
  Do you think YouTube would dare to go completely Pay only?
  Lack of competition is not an excuse to double dip on both customer data and advertisements.
  People who say that we need to pay for server costs should consider that streaming services are now asking for money but also introducing adverts. The money is too lucrative for them to leave on the table.
  Everybody is happy to pay when there's 1 service or 2 services that give them everything for a nominal fee. Cases in point: Netflix, Steam.
  A lot of people pay for twitch because it's the only platform they care about. Paying for A platform doesn't mean we will pay for ALL platforms.
  
  Let's not pretend like Google isn't earning any money
  
  Or, there is plenty of competition, but since users are the product, not the customer, the competition isn't what people think it is or should be.
- There is competition when it comes to technology stack. People just don't want to use alternatives because the amount of content/users is less on others.
  Be the pioneer and help others move across.
  
  Care to share any of the recommendations? I don't use YouTube often but would be happy to visit and use an alternative
- Thank you for reminding me to get myself an invidious instance set up. It isn't a huge pain or anything, right?
  
  Not really, they have a docker compose file ready to go, and it works without issue.

378 comments