YouTube did not slow down adblock users. Adblock devs admit to problem(neowin.net)
neowin.net
YouTube did not slow down adblock users. Adblock devs admit to problem
https://www.neowin.net/news/adblock-google-did-not-slow-down-and-lag-youtube-performance-with-ad-blocker-on/
40 comments
1% of 1% of their monthly users taking the worst interpretation and running with it is hundreds of thousands of people. I think it just particularly happens to be the doubters are comprised primarily of us tech focused population so we see it strongly. How much of a problem it is I'm not as sure. Does the average consumer (not the people on HN or the ones we hang out with) actually have a particularly weaker view of Google than they did e.g. 10-15 years ago or is it just us techies who used to consider them the greatest thing since sliced bread and now often see them as an enemy? One is disappointing for us, the other is a long term problem for Google.
I'd argue that widespread distrust amongst "techies" is a bigger problem than it might otherwise appear because of how disproportionate an influence we have both at work and with people who know and trust our opinion.
It's not one big cut but it's a death by a thousand cuts situation, I've never owned an iphone (beyond test devices issued by work) but it's likely my next device will be an iphone and I've been Android all the way back to the HTC Droid, when people ask me for a recommendation these days for their next phone I say iphone, that's three direct sales for Apple I can account for (parents and family) and 3 lost sales for Android/Google.
It's not one big cut but it's a death by a thousand cuts situation, I've never owned an iphone (beyond test devices issued by work) but it's likely my next device will be an iphone and I've been Android all the way back to the HTC Droid, when people ask me for a recommendation these days for their next phone I say iphone, that's three direct sales for Apple I can account for (parents and family) and 3 lost sales for Android/Google.
Why such a rosey view of Apple compared to Google? If you have been an Android user you might be surprised by what restrictions exist in the Apple world. It's annoying to have to side load app in Android but impossible with Apple unless running in debug mode with a cord attached to a real computer.
I will never use a phone operating system made by an advertising company. I don't know how much longer Apple can resist becoming one and then I don't know what i'll do
Apple is an advertising company where every decision is trying to get you to buy more apple products
Yes, we can always expand definitions to where everything means everything but why?
> distrust amongst "techies" is a bigger problem than it might otherwise appear because of how disproportionate an influence we have
If this was true, everyone would be using linux. The "techy" market is completely different from the consumer market and also much less lucrative. Google might as well allow adblockers, since the techies wouldn't click on ads anyways.
If this was true, everyone would be using linux. The "techy" market is completely different from the consumer market and also much less lucrative. Google might as well allow adblockers, since the techies wouldn't click on ads anyways.
> HTC Droid
Huh...I was about to post "Droid was from Motorola" but I checked myself first, and yeah...HTC had a few models they called Droid, though they all had a suffix, ie, Droid Incredible or Droid Eris.
Personally, I'll never buy Apple just because I absolutely hate their walled garden approach to your device.
Huh...I was about to post "Droid was from Motorola" but I checked myself first, and yeah...HTC had a few models they called Droid, though they all had a suffix, ie, Droid Incredible or Droid Eris.
Personally, I'll never buy Apple just because I absolutely hate their walled garden approach to your device.
The absolute distain for YouTube has bothered me for a long time as a YouTube creator of many years myself. The platform is the most fair by far to creators and viewers. Amazing how little hate TikTok gets.
*disdain [0][1] (perhaps unless you're writing historical fiction or fantasy)
0: https://grammarist.com/spelling/disdain-or-distain/
1: The only known use of the noun distain is in the late 1500s. OED's only evidence for distain is from 1581, in the writing of Barnaby Rich, soldier and author. It is also recorded as a verb from the Middle English period (1150—1500).
0: https://grammarist.com/spelling/disdain-or-distain/
1: The only known use of the noun distain is in the late 1500s. OED's only evidence for distain is from 1581, in the writing of Barnaby Rich, soldier and author. It is also recorded as a verb from the Middle English period (1150—1500).
I don't think TikTok and Instagram got that many users on HN compared to YT?
Youtube gets hate literally because they have tolerated ad-block for so many years. People are pissed that YouTube is getting sick of serving them free content.
I would be more than happy to pay YouTube or watch ads, but they need to ban sponsored ads in their videos.
If I don't use adblock, I get served an ad by google, then a 1-3 minute sponsored segment by the creator.
I'm not paying for this.
If I don't use adblock, I get served an ad by google, then a 1-3 minute sponsored segment by the creator.
I'm not paying for this.
While this doesn't completely solve the problem, SponsorBlock [0] makes it much more tolerable when watching videos in your browser.
[0]: https://sponsor.ajay.app
[0]: https://sponsor.ajay.app
Isn't that what SponsorBlock is for? I don't think you want YouTube censoring videos on this basis.
You know you can just fast-forward through those, right?
I mean, sure, that's still a minor annoyance, but not every channel has them, and many of them put them at the end anyways.
I mean, sure, that's still a minor annoyance, but not every channel has them, and many of them put them at the end anyways.
Yeah, sorry, this feels like a strawman. The adblock issue is only the most recent and exciting of the multitudinous pile of suck Youtube has been generating the last 5 years or so.
The content discovery genuinely sucks. Being forcefed tiktok cancer content (shorts) and needing to install plugins to remove that shit from /my/ browsing experience is asinine. I just checked Blocktube, too: I have 1012 blocked channels, and the list constantly grows, because their "algorithm" is less competent than their search function somehow, and I'm constantly shown bullshit I'm not interested in. If blocktube couldn't programmatically block all videos with <1k views or <120 seconds of content, that blocklist would be at least twice as large.
So what is this delightful, friendly, relaxing experience worth to me?
Zero. $0. Nil. Nul. Null. 0. False.
I will pay them nothing and continue using their resources to the detriment of the multinational megacorp until it becomes more difficult than `yt-dlp $url`, after which I will replace their valueless time-wasting experience with something else.
Because their product (trying to recreate cable television) has no value beyond wasting my time.
And to head off the "But muh creators" argument:
I don't care. Between having to install plugins to remove ads AND being forced to constantly watched 2+minute inline sponsorship ads (which I tolerate a single time, after which they're skipped; I already know about the product and I'm not interested), I just don't care anymore. I will not be advertised to constantly. I will not comply. I haven't watched cable TV since 2006, and I'm not about to start now.
The content discovery genuinely sucks. Being forcefed tiktok cancer content (shorts) and needing to install plugins to remove that shit from /my/ browsing experience is asinine. I just checked Blocktube, too: I have 1012 blocked channels, and the list constantly grows, because their "algorithm" is less competent than their search function somehow, and I'm constantly shown bullshit I'm not interested in. If blocktube couldn't programmatically block all videos with <1k views or <120 seconds of content, that blocklist would be at least twice as large.
So what is this delightful, friendly, relaxing experience worth to me?
Zero. $0. Nil. Nul. Null. 0. False.
I will pay them nothing and continue using their resources to the detriment of the multinational megacorp until it becomes more difficult than `yt-dlp $url`, after which I will replace their valueless time-wasting experience with something else.
Because their product (trying to recreate cable television) has no value beyond wasting my time.
And to head off the "But muh creators" argument:
I don't care. Between having to install plugins to remove ads AND being forced to constantly watched 2+minute inline sponsorship ads (which I tolerate a single time, after which they're skipped; I already know about the product and I'm not interested), I just don't care anymore. I will not be advertised to constantly. I will not comply. I haven't watched cable TV since 2006, and I'm not about to start now.
Agreed
I think those companies and people generally underestimate the bad blood that lives with users of those ad-supported websites that don't respect users' privacy. The majority of people will keep on using Youtube even if you show them the same dumb mentally degrading commercial every few minutes hundreds of times, but any goodwill or sympathy for your brand is pretty much non-existing. People are held hostage by these platforms because they have the content or people users care about, but I don't think anybody really thinks Google or Facebook are their friend. Having the same ads following you around the web ad infinitum et ad nauseam without recourse almost constitutes a form of bullying or stalking.
Ads based on your interests are a form of bullying and must be stopped?
People are held hostage by these platforms because they have free content you want to watch?
You have control over your choices. No one is bullying you or holding you hostage. Control your desire for free content if you feel the trade off of a 30 second ad once in while is mentally degrading.
People are held hostage by these platforms because they have free content you want to watch?
You have control over your choices. No one is bullying you or holding you hostage. Control your desire for free content if you feel the trade off of a 30 second ad once in while is mentally degrading.
> Ads based on your interests are a form of bullying and must be stopped?
These aren't your granddaddy's ads that were printed on the back of a newspaper or on the place mat in the diner. They are the product of invasive surveillance foisted upon the user through dark patters and deception, so I would argue the answer is a definitive "yes".
These aren't your granddaddy's ads that were printed on the back of a newspaper or on the place mat in the diner. They are the product of invasive surveillance foisted upon the user through dark patters and deception, so I would argue the answer is a definitive "yes".
But those ads kept following me around and bullying whenever I got a paper. Dark patterns existed before like having a doctor recommend cigarettes for weight loss. That's more bullying and pressure compared to an ad beside an article you are reading.
Those ads in the paper weren't directly targeted at you, an individual. For the paper ads to be an analog to what we have on the internet today the advertising company of the past would have had to hire a guy in a hat and trench coat to follow you around with a notebook keeping track of every place you walked into, every book you read, every item you purchased, and everyone you interacted with.
Would it _technically_ have been legal for them to do so? Probably in most jurisdictions as long as you were in public. Was it practical? No.
We are living now in the digital age where a few pieces of code can replace the guy in the hat with his notebook for fractions of a penny, except worse, because now all the corporate merchants are willingly selling my purchasing data to brokers.
Would it _technically_ have been legal for them to do so? Probably in most jurisdictions as long as you were in public. Was it practical? No.
We are living now in the digital age where a few pieces of code can replace the guy in the hat with his notebook for fractions of a penny, except worse, because now all the corporate merchants are willingly selling my purchasing data to brokers.
It's like direct mail advertising of the past. They send personalized groups ads/flyers/mail based on past behaviour and info they collected (did you give to animal rescue center, did you vote: for who).
soulofmischief's rule: Never take arbitrary heuristics or razors as fact.
It's easy in hindsight to validate when the heuristic was correct, but Hanlan's razor specifically was meant to be tongue in cheek. Understand the context behind something before you apply it to your daily life.
> An interesting example of how little faith people have in Google as an organisation
Well deserved. Google traded credibility and trust for ad money for too many years, and have left a graveyard behind them. Everything they do should be suspect.
It's easy in hindsight to validate when the heuristic was correct, but Hanlan's razor specifically was meant to be tongue in cheek. Understand the context behind something before you apply it to your daily life.
> An interesting example of how little faith people have in Google as an organisation
Well deserved. Google traded credibility and trust for ad money for too many years, and have left a graveyard behind them. Everything they do should be suspect.
I would argue the more appropriate quote here is “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
Wizard’s first rule: people are stupid. They will believe a lie because they are afraid it might be true, or because they wish it was true.
It's good old hysteria.
If someone is your opponent, assuming stupidity is the same as letting your guard down.
I don’t think that people being sceptic about $1.8T corporation that controls large part of internet and will fire large part of its workforce to make numbers look better is necessarily a problem.
Being skeptical is good.
Jumping to conclusions because it validates feelings without any care to validate the facts is not.
Jumping to conclusions because it validates feelings without any care to validate the facts is not.
Just use uBlock Origin and keep blocklists as small as possible.
False positives break so many websites.
False positives break so many websites.
A friend of mine can't access anything, period, without ten minutes of debugging to find what he's blocking
Sounds like he's using one of those extensions that blocks all JavaScript. I tried once, and gave up after 2 days. I hated having to whitelist everything.
I use uBlock Origin on my desktop, and uBlock Origin + PiHole on my phone, and there are only a couple websites that refuse to work, and so I just don't use those sites.
I use uBlock Origin on my desktop, and uBlock Origin + PiHole on my phone, and there are only a couple websites that refuse to work, and so I just don't use those sites.
[dupe]
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38987489
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38987489
Not a dupe.
Your link is people claiming that Youtube was deliberately slowing down the site for people using adblockers. The current article claims that was not the case, and was just a poor adblock implementation.
Your link is people claiming that Youtube was deliberately slowing down the site for people using adblockers. The current article claims that was not the case, and was just a poor adblock implementation.
Point is, discussion over there. Don't need ten threads.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999987
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39001686
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999987
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39001686
the discussion over there isn't necessarily aware of this new information
> {1} with the corollary "don't rule out malice"
(Note: not saying adblock devs are stupid, bugs happen).
An interesting example of how little faith people have in Google as an organisation is that so many people jumped to the worst interpretation of what was happening.
Apparently a lot of people now give zero benefit of the doubt when it comes to Google and that's a long term problem for them.