YouTube is loading slower for users with ad blockers yet again(tomsguide.com)
tomsguide.com
YouTube is loading slower for users with ad blockers yet again
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/youtube-is-loading-slower-for-users-with-ad-blockers-yet-again
118 comments
I respect people’s right to use as lockers on their machines, but it bears mentioning that YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet. Paying for premium would go a long way to improving the situation for everybody, and I think it’s one area where if you can afford it, it’s not only right but also good.
> Paying for premium would go a long way to improving the situation for everybody
The recent change to Amazon Prime, where everyone using "Prime Video" was already "paying for prime video", which recently added advertising, with a new $2.99/month no ads option, implies that even if everyone "paid for premium" the siren song of advertising money would be too difficult for Google/YT to ignore, and even premium would then eventually begin to be infested with advertising.
The recent change to Amazon Prime, where everyone using "Prime Video" was already "paying for prime video", which recently added advertising, with a new $2.99/month no ads option, implies that even if everyone "paid for premium" the siren song of advertising money would be too difficult for Google/YT to ignore, and even premium would then eventually begin to be infested with advertising.
I agree, that siren song is toxic. At the same time I'd weigh youtube much more heavily than any common streaming service as it provides a weath of practical instruvtion which is refined via intraplatform competition and user feedback (comments).
From what I understand the people paying to not see ads are the ones that are more attractive to advertise to because of disposable income too. So there's absolutely no good way to guarantee that they won't make a change like this one.
Ok so pay for it until the day you’re imagining happens?
I totally agree with you that YT has enabled a lot of really talented people to be successful and creative in a whole new way, and has opened up opportunities for many people all around the world to live profitable lives, where before TV channels were the gatekeepers of that creativity.
But the ad supported model seems to have slipped past the fair-to-viewers into the completely obnoxious and unbearable to nearly all viewers, so something has to give. Additionally it seems like content producers are getting a smaller amount than they used to get so it's less of an attractive platform, probably more so since the competitors showed up.
But the ad supported model seems to have slipped past the fair-to-viewers into the completely obnoxious and unbearable to nearly all viewers, so something has to give. Additionally it seems like content producers are getting a smaller amount than they used to get so it's less of an attractive platform, probably more so since the competitors showed up.
I heartily agree.
As an apprentice in the trades I was able to zoom forward at an incredible pace by learning from construction youtubers.
I met a guy who came out of poverty initially as a backhoe operator, how did he learn? YT, he literally mimiced fist person video of machine operation.
When I want to buy quality toold, ProjectFarm on youtube (of interest to anyone with even slight interst in tools and machines) provides a more objective and comprehensive analysis than any I've yet to see.
I met a guy who came out of poverty initially as a backhoe operator, how did he learn? YT, he literally mimiced fist person video of machine operation.
When I want to buy quality toold, ProjectFarm on youtube (of interest to anyone with even slight interst in tools and machines) provides a more objective and comprehensive analysis than any I've yet to see.
I've been struggling with this for a while. I object to a lot that google does and have had various problems with their services in the past, enough that I spent a good about of time trying to switch away from their products.
YouTube is the toughest one, since it's the videos created by people that I value and care about, rather than YouTube the product. I don't want people to stop producing good content, but I also don't want to support Google financially.
My compromise has been to use an ad-blocker, and to subscribe to the Patreon (or equivalent) of everyone who I watch regularly. It costs me more than a premium subscription would, but at least I feel my money's going where I want it to.
YouTube is the toughest one, since it's the videos created by people that I value and care about, rather than YouTube the product. I don't want people to stop producing good content, but I also don't want to support Google financially.
My compromise has been to use an ad-blocker, and to subscribe to the Patreon (or equivalent) of everyone who I watch regularly. It costs me more than a premium subscription would, but at least I feel my money's going where I want it to.
>YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet
From where I sit, YT looks like one of the worst inventions humanity has ever created.
From where I sit, YT looks like one of the worst inventions humanity has ever created.
These blanket statements are really not that valuable if you fail to mention by what measure you find it to be such a bad invention.
When I am responding to
> it bears mentioning that YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet
and you fail to comment on that blanket statement, your bias pierces the pretend mantle of objectivity in which you cloak yourself.
> it bears mentioning that YouTube is one of the last driving treasures of the internet
and you fail to comment on that blanket statement, your bias pierces the pretend mantle of objectivity in which you cloak yourself.
I am going to stick with what I said. One person says YouTube is incredibly good, another one that it is incredibly bad. No reasons are given that lead either of you to your assessments. So what insight have we gained?
Somehow both things are true, and I don't know how we disentangle them.
YouTube the site where people can dump videos is incredibly useful because there are visual tutorials for everything.
YouTube the site where people form parasocial relationships with flat-earth-fluencers and break their brains is the worst invention since leaded gasoline.
YouTube the site where people can dump videos is incredibly useful because there are visual tutorials for everything.
YouTube the site where people form parasocial relationships with flat-earth-fluencers and break their brains is the worst invention since leaded gasoline.
Some things cannot be disentangled. This is one of the biggest platforms in the Internet and you have to deal with the varying expectations of an incredibly diverse audience. Having to shape the policies on such platform in order to satisfy your users must be a very hard job as you never actually reach a "goal". All you can do is optimize the site for what you think the majority of users want from it and your own ethics. But tomorrow you might need to change direction entirely.
I am curious to see how this plays out for YouTube and all the social media platforms out there. I am certainly rooting for YouTube to be able to successfully walk that line as it is by far the most valuable platform to me personally.
I am curious to see how this plays out for YouTube and all the social media platforms out there. I am certainly rooting for YouTube to be able to successfully walk that line as it is by far the most valuable platform to me personally.
I couldn't care less if all of Youtube ceased to exist tomorrow.
I think it would be a net gain for the world as people would flock to better platforms with less censorship.
I think it would be a net gain for the world as people would flock to better platforms with less censorship.
What are these better platforms with less censorship that host an unlimited amount of content for free?
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Contemporary videos are like 1% of YouTube's true value. There PBs of footage that no longer exists anywhere but YouTube's servers. It's the modern era's Library of Alexandria.
And you want to burn it down because "censorship"... How revealing.
And you want to burn it down because "censorship"... How revealing.
Typical anarchist ideas.
Nobody would benefit from YouTube going down, only assholes who want to watch things collapse because they have no self worth.
YouTube is one of the biggest pilars of education, entertainment, knowledge and history on the internet. Billions of people have been entertained and educated with this website...
Nobody would benefit from YouTube going down, only assholes who want to watch things collapse because they have no self worth.
YouTube is one of the biggest pilars of education, entertainment, knowledge and history on the internet. Billions of people have been entertained and educated with this website...
I'd pay for YouTube Premium if it was bundled with the old Google Play Music. I can't stand the new YouTube Music so there's no chance of me migrating from Spotify, and I'll stick to adblockers + YouTube Revanced.
I'd pay for YouTube Premium if it was un-bundled from Youtube Music to make it cheaper.
No reason YouTube Premium should be more expensive than Spotify or Netflix.
As an additional note - I have previously subscribed to YouTube premium and constantly had issues with it repeatedly logging me out, and reverting back to showing me ads. Frustrating! Sure it wasn't intentional but felt like double-dipping.
No reason YouTube Premium should be more expensive than Spotify or Netflix.
As an additional note - I have previously subscribed to YouTube premium and constantly had issues with it repeatedly logging me out, and reverting back to showing me ads. Frustrating! Sure it wasn't intentional but felt like double-dipping.
How come you think YouTube Premium would be the same cost as Spotify or Netflix? Spotify in particular only has to store and stream audio, and Netflix has far far less video and audio to store than YouTube - they also both only allow somewhat official content on their platforms (you have to register as an artist to upload to Spotify, and you have to be a registered studio to get onto Netflix). YouTube allows unlimited length, 8K, HDR, 60fps video from anyone who signs up with an email and password. I don't have any actual numbers, but I find it difficult to imagine that YouTube Music (storing one cover image and some audio tracks for a whole album) costs them anything in comparison to the main YouTube service.
Well, I guess I'm really talking about the price of the service rather than the cost to run it really (i.e. what would be a competitive price for the service considering other offerings), but appreciate that the price has to be less than their costs.
Although my assumption (which could be incorrect) is that storage is not the main driver for cost. For Netflix and Spotify I assume their major cost would be licencing, which YouTube mostly gets to forgo. For YouTube, I would assume bandwidth / data transfer is the biggest factor.
Although my assumption (which could be incorrect) is that storage is not the main driver for cost. For Netflix and Spotify I assume their major cost would be licencing, which YouTube mostly gets to forgo. For YouTube, I would assume bandwidth / data transfer is the biggest factor.
I never use youtube music, but i'm still paying for premium, because I use youtube a lot and I don't like seeing ads. Completely worth it if you spend enough time on youtube
Obvious Caveat Emptor: you won't get away from sponsored content or first party segue ads that are baked into videos.
Though in the case of Jay Foremans channel; those can actually be entertaining.
Though in the case of Jay Foremans channel; those can actually be entertaining.
Sponsorblock helps with that.
What scenario(s) would you be willing to pay to cover Google's costs, rather than your viewing being subsidized by other users/visitors who are 1) paying, or 2) watching the ads?
If Google gave a legally binding guarantee that they won't reintroduce advertising to paid tiers later-on.
They launched YouTube Premium Lite in a few specific countries, Denmark being one of them, it was exactly as you describe it, I used it for a while.
However, they've removed that plan again.
However, they've removed that plan again.
Just out of curiosity, what is wrong with YouTube Music?
I don't know about GP, but personally I already have a music streaming subscription so I don't want to pay for yet another one.
Come to think of it, I think I have 2 ATM; Apple Music through my Apple One thing, and through my ISP.
Come to think of it, I think I have 2 ATM; Apple Music through my Apple One thing, and through my ISP.
I wonder if they think antagonizing people that are already fed up enough with ad crap that they install adblock is a good idea.
What do they think is going to happen? We'll just be like 'oh well, sorry, we are going to remove adblock'?
LOL, I'd rather write a bypass myself then do this and give it to all my friends who can't code while I'm at it.
What do they think is going to happen? We'll just be like 'oh well, sorry, we are going to remove adblock'?
LOL, I'd rather write a bypass myself then do this and give it to all my friends who can't code while I'm at it.
tbf, I was spooked by the initial "turn off your adblocker" banner stuff and I signed up for the offered 3-month YT Premium trial because it's linked to my primary Google account.
In the meantime, I set up a throwaway Google and set that YT profile to have the same subscriptions. Will I pay for YT Premium? Unlikely, but they could make me a pricing offer that's tantalizing enough. I've learned more dev stuff from YT that any Udemy-esque learning service out there.
In the meantime, I set up a throwaway Google and set that YT profile to have the same subscriptions. Will I pay for YT Premium? Unlikely, but they could make me a pricing offer that's tantalizing enough. I've learned more dev stuff from YT that any Udemy-esque learning service out there.
Still nothing here. I had the nag-screen when it originally appeared, did the setup for uBo as explained in the reddit thread (without deleting anything, so actually just adding one list), and it’s been no issues whatsoever since.
I am fine with slower load if I dont have to see ads. Can't skip them on TV (yet) and its driving me insane, any short thing I want to show to kids has 20 seconds of detergents or similar stupidities. As a long term PC user with ublock origin getting smart tv with youtube has been a curse.
On Android TV there is SmartTube for example. I am not sure if adguard is doing something as well. But i am still 100% adfree on YouTube.
I know it's extra cost but buying Nvidia Shield TV Pro made things so much easier.
SmartTubeNext works great on Android and you can control it through your phone (Revanced).
I bought LG OLED TV and WebOS had been utter piece of shit so far. Disconnected it from the internet as soon as I got the Shield (I can also use Shield's remote to control the TV itself)
I bought LG OLED TV and WebOS had been utter piece of shit so far. Disconnected it from the internet as soon as I got the Shield (I can also use Shield's remote to control the TV itself)
A bit off topic, but I was interested in Nvidia Shield but I have an (5.1) amplifier hooked on my TV with Optical Cable. As I understood, Shield doesn't have any Optical out. Is it possible to connect Shield to TV and let TV (LG with WebOS) pass audio through optical to the amplifier?
My amplifier is quite old, so it doesn't have HDMI in or something.
My amplifier is quite old, so it doesn't have HDMI in or something.
This is what I'm using, Shield => HDMI => TV => Optical => Soundbar. There are some settings on the TV to enable external speakers over optical, which format is sent (Dolby Digital, etc), and which format is accepted (bitstream) that you may need set. The Shield also has settings for which signal is sends. Works well for me after configuring it and I get Dolby Digital 5.1 (ac3 5.1) from my Shield to my LG C2 to my soundbar over optical.
Raymond Hill (gorhill), the creator of uBlock Origin, has done some investigation and has found that this only affects AdBlock and AdBlock Plus[0]. Both of which are owned by the same people, and share the same ad blocking engine.
uBlock Origin is not affected.
I posted this on HN earlier today[1], but it unfortunately gained no traction. I guess outrage spreads easier. Gorhill explicitly points out some websites that spread the outrage, but not the real diagnosed issue.
[0] https://nitter.net/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38998419
uBlock Origin is not affected.
I posted this on HN earlier today[1], but it unfortunately gained no traction. I guess outrage spreads easier. Gorhill explicitly points out some websites that spread the outrage, but not the real diagnosed issue.
[0] https://nitter.net/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38998419
Except for a pop-up initially I haven't experienced any change using yt with uBlock Origin. If I didn't follow tech news I could easily have overlooked the yt development. Boggles the mind that anyone uses AdBlock & AdBlock Plus. Can't be any other reason than the name squatting.
I have no problems with AdBlock plus on FF currently, but using private browsing on Utube since they started detecting ad-blockers. I also generally use Utube less as well, so not so bothered.
but AdBlock Plus is owned and operated by an ad company and does all the same shady things that you would normally use an adblocker to avoid. why use an inferior tool?
> no problems with AdBlock plus on FF
Because it has not been updated to the problematic version, which is 5.17. In fact AdBlock on AMO is still 5.4.2, i.e. 13 versions behind latest official AdBlock version, it was last updated in Feb. 2023.
Because it has not been updated to the problematic version, which is 5.17. In fact AdBlock on AMO is still 5.4.2, i.e. 13 versions behind latest official AdBlock version, it was last updated in Feb. 2023.
I use ublock origin on Firefox along with a few other privacy extensions. I do not use Adblock. YouTube doesn’t even finish loading the page for me but videos do start playing after 10 seconds or so. I tried without blocking ads but I gave up because the experience was even worse with how many ads there are now.
YouTube is still working fine for me with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
I have privacy badger and DuckDuckGo installed as well. After disabling Both and wiping my cache it still runs slow with just ublock origin.
Exactly my scenario. Firefox and uBlock Origin (with YouTube Premium).
One must be careful with these kinds of posts that imply YouTube is exerting network effect forces on its users as a way to squeeze revenue.
I mean, yeah that scenario is plausible, and the slow performance observation can be construed of such an action; however, one must also be careful and play devil's advocate in these ones, for a balanced debate to happen.
One must be careful with these kinds of posts that imply YouTube is exerting network effect forces on its users as a way to squeeze revenue.
I mean, yeah that scenario is plausible, and the slow performance observation can be construed of such an action; however, one must also be careful and play devil's advocate in these ones, for a balanced debate to happen.
I use ubo, firefox, ddg and a pi-hole, and haven't noticed any issues with youtube.
However I tend to do youtube while signed in, and I also consume youtube on my phone, perhaps they are happy they push enough adverts to my when I use a phone that they ignore the browser use.
However I tend to do youtube while signed in, and I also consume youtube on my phone, perhaps they are happy they push enough adverts to my when I use a phone that they ignore the browser use.
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Adblockers are breaking TOS. It was not a big problem so far, but Google may eventually lock down the platform.
I really hope in some sort of long-term compromise, where adblockers are slightly disadvantaged (slower speed, lower resolution), but can still access YouTube without any login or obstacles.
Look what happened to Facebook, twitter...
I really hope in some sort of long-term compromise, where adblockers are slightly disadvantaged (slower speed, lower resolution), but can still access YouTube without any login or obstacles.
Look what happened to Facebook, twitter...
Can you point to the clause in YouTube's TOS that state this? I've heard people claim this before, but a search in https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms for "block" shows nothing.
It's likely not in the tos, because why would it need to be?
If someone doesn't want you on their site, and you haven't paid, they have zero obligation to let you stay. tos aren't binding, they're just a list of things people think you should know.
If someone doesn't want you on their site, and you haven't paid, they have zero obligation to let you stay. tos aren't binding, they're just a list of things people think you should know.
I suspect
"circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage, or otherwise interfere with the Service"
may apply.
"circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage, or otherwise interfere with the Service"
may apply.
I wish we could prohibit most forms of advertising. I find them quite ableist, and thus discriminatory.
Why don't they just splice the advertisements in with the videos and play that instead? I know that would take a lot of crunching on the servers as different advertisers come and go, but it seems like a simple "fix", at least from a business point-of-view. Maybe they need to be able to align products with individual users.
Contrary to what the sibling posters are saying, they could do this if they wanted to.
Most modern video formats can be sliced and spliced at certain frames without needing to recompress or anything like that. If you operate all your own cache servers (which youtube do, AFAIK) you could splice a different ad into every stream, in real time.
Youtube would have to be careful, as plenty of users are used to being able to refer to timestamps in the video. Right now people are used to telling someone the interesting bit is 2735 seconds into that video lecture, and that's a time without ads counted.
Most modern video formats can be sliced and spliced at certain frames without needing to recompress or anything like that. If you operate all your own cache servers (which youtube do, AFAIK) you could splice a different ad into every stream, in real time.
Youtube would have to be careful, as plenty of users are used to being able to refer to timestamps in the video. Right now people are used to telling someone the interesting bit is 2735 seconds into that video lecture, and that's a time without ads counted.
Eyeballs are auctioned to the highest bidder in real time, as I understand it. And don't forget geo and language ad targeting constraints, no point showing American ads to viewers in Germany, or vice versa.
Even if you splice on a geo & language basis, there are two basic kinds of interest-based audience targeting: content and users.
Putting ads on topic-specific content is OK for brand advertising, but you got to watch out for saturation - you're wasting money if you show the same ads over and over again to the same person. So you want to stop showing a brand ad if someone has seen it too many times already.
Showing ads based on user interests has better performance for action campaigns. It relies on some way of tracking the user and / or their interests, but it leads to better conversion as part of a marketing / sales funnel. So you need to select the ad dynamically based on the interests of the user.
All this adds up to making it hard to avoid dynamically choosing the ads to show. I think it's still probably possible with careful I/O to do the media stream concatenation server-side, and I expect it's probably the direction things will eventually go, as long as latency etc. works out.
Even if you splice on a geo & language basis, there are two basic kinds of interest-based audience targeting: content and users.
Putting ads on topic-specific content is OK for brand advertising, but you got to watch out for saturation - you're wasting money if you show the same ads over and over again to the same person. So you want to stop showing a brand ad if someone has seen it too many times already.
Showing ads based on user interests has better performance for action campaigns. It relies on some way of tracking the user and / or their interests, but it leads to better conversion as part of a marketing / sales funnel. So you need to select the ad dynamically based on the interests of the user.
All this adds up to making it hard to avoid dynamically choosing the ads to show. I think it's still probably possible with careful I/O to do the media stream concatenation server-side, and I expect it's probably the direction things will eventually go, as long as latency etc. works out.
Lets say they have a contract with a company for X months, what would they do after those months? Iterate every video file and remove the old ad? Imagine the scale of this when you have millions of videos and thousands of advertisers
I wouldn't expect to be computationally hard or fundamentally even very difficult to construct the streams on-demand, assuming they would already have the videos encoded with parameters that's compatible with the stream they are pushing out. They are already pushing out videos segment-by-segment and edge-computing is a thing.
Apart from the other comments, this also could be defeated by something like SponsorBlock - tldr it's an addon with crowd sourced data for skipping video segments, e.g. intros, outros etc
I wonder if they QA with different ad blockers. This would be much more interesting if we knew the exact mechanism of the slowdown.
This is a feature. It's gives you more time to close the tab.
The content was a advert anyway
The content was a advert anyway
YouTube has been running completely terrible for me the last couple days and I pay for YouTube premium. Sooo much buffering and I have gigabit. Everything else is working just fine.
I half wonder if they're misapplying whatever filter they have.
I half wonder if they're misapplying whatever filter they have.
> Sooo much buffering
try switching your DNS to the google one. I had some issue with the cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) with youtube, but switching to 8.8.8.8 seems to have fixed it.
Could also be a local DNS cache issue unrelated to the actual DNS, which a switch fixed - i cannot say for sure.
try switching your DNS to the google one. I had some issue with the cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) with youtube, but switching to 8.8.8.8 seems to have fixed it.
Could also be a local DNS cache issue unrelated to the actual DNS, which a switch fixed - i cannot say for sure.
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Same here: premium but terrible slow and unusable. Probably, I'm going to ditch premium.
When adblock extension is disabled for youtube.com domain, the site works well
Welp, I don't go on YouTube when I'm strapped for time anyway :)
thanks, youtube, for introducing enough friction to break my habit of watching youtube.
Same here. YouTube was my TV. But it wasn't the ads (I don't get any and don't get blocked). It's the trashy content it pushes me which I don't even watch. So my startpage is full of garbage that doesn't inspire me. Thanks Google!
Killing recommendations goes 99% of the way there. There's a nice plugin for your favorite browser that does this.
Alls hands meeting called to brainstorm ways to recoupe the $0 in revenue they’re losing.
Why can’t YouTube just decide to host all the ads exactly like actual videos be hosted, making it impossible to block the domains that ads seem to come from?
They could, but things like sponsor block already exist, and if they disallow slipping ads, you can still have an extension that blacks them out and mutes them until they are over.
But even then it goes indefinitely deep: How about a video player that skips ahead once the buffer has enough frames and then plays the ad in the background while showing the caches video? So you need to disable seeking entirely. But what about an extension that preloads videos in your timeline to a buffer of the average ad length and then play from cache and put the ad in the background. So you have to introduce DRM, but I can do the thing above from outside the browser...
I suppose you'd either need to lock down the entire system, have crasy detection algorithms or make the bar just high enough that most people won't bother.
But even then it goes indefinitely deep: How about a video player that skips ahead once the buffer has enough frames and then plays the ad in the background while showing the caches video? So you need to disable seeking entirely. But what about an extension that preloads videos in your timeline to a buffer of the average ad length and then play from cache and put the ad in the background. So you have to introduce DRM, but I can do the thing above from outside the browser...
I suppose you'd either need to lock down the entire system, have crasy detection algorithms or make the bar just high enough that most people won't bother.
I’m hoping that, at some point, someone at YouTube will ask a User experience researcher to look into users’ motivation to block ads and realize that there are glaring issues with their model.
What has been happening to me is that, for the last decade or so, I only see ads in languages that I don’t speak or understand. I wrote about it—a lot. Nothing. A friend worked as the head of Analytics for that part of YouTube and he told me, “They don’t care.” I pointed out that it’s so common that Antonio Garcia Martinez wrote about it in his book _Chaos Monkeys_ (in 2012) and estimated that, at the time, it costs Facebook 4% of their ad revenue. I can confirm because I raised that point internally not once (in 2016 and it was fixed) but twice (the fix was overruled and I saw it again in 2020). In 2024, they are still wasting their time and energy, and 4% of Meta’s revenues isn’t chump change.
That’s not counting on pervasive ads for alcohol (illegal where I am), gambling (having an opt-out is mandatory in most jurisdictions), tax evading services (also illegal where I am), and specifically on Threads and Twitter, literal prostitution, and/or romance scams (I didn’t investigate which, tried to report, but was told that’s fine by their community guidelines).
I’m not a security researcher, and I refuse to investigate further than strictly necessary for my sanity (I expect deserved judgment from this community for that) however, in spite of that, I know ads are a constant vector for malware. Not much is done to address basic vectors, like not running any executable code in ads.
The only reason why enormous waste at scale, rampant illegal activity, and gaping security holes aren’t the only topics of conversation online is that everyone who can explain what’s happening has opted out. Forcing them back in isn’t the solution.
What has been happening to me is that, for the last decade or so, I only see ads in languages that I don’t speak or understand. I wrote about it—a lot. Nothing. A friend worked as the head of Analytics for that part of YouTube and he told me, “They don’t care.” I pointed out that it’s so common that Antonio Garcia Martinez wrote about it in his book _Chaos Monkeys_ (in 2012) and estimated that, at the time, it costs Facebook 4% of their ad revenue. I can confirm because I raised that point internally not once (in 2016 and it was fixed) but twice (the fix was overruled and I saw it again in 2020). In 2024, they are still wasting their time and energy, and 4% of Meta’s revenues isn’t chump change.
That’s not counting on pervasive ads for alcohol (illegal where I am), gambling (having an opt-out is mandatory in most jurisdictions), tax evading services (also illegal where I am), and specifically on Threads and Twitter, literal prostitution, and/or romance scams (I didn’t investigate which, tried to report, but was told that’s fine by their community guidelines).
I’m not a security researcher, and I refuse to investigate further than strictly necessary for my sanity (I expect deserved judgment from this community for that) however, in spite of that, I know ads are a constant vector for malware. Not much is done to address basic vectors, like not running any executable code in ads.
The only reason why enormous waste at scale, rampant illegal activity, and gaping security holes aren’t the only topics of conversation online is that everyone who can explain what’s happening has opted out. Forcing them back in isn’t the solution.
If anyone is curious whether I’m exaggerating, I had to check a vendor presentation for work. The video is on YouTube, and the first ad I saw reads:
> Beauties From Eastern Europe > Chat and meet real Slavic women > Sponsored > love-stories
with a photo (presumably AI-generated) where to be completely honest, I could see that she was wearing red lacey underwear and had had a full bikini wax.
Do you know what kind of question I want to have from my boss when discussing a vendor? NOT WHY DOES GOOGLE THINK I WOULD FINANCIALLY SUPPORT LITERAL HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
So guess what I’m activating on my browser to NOT GET FIRED.
> Beauties From Eastern Europe > Chat and meet real Slavic women > Sponsored > love-stories
with a photo (presumably AI-generated) where to be completely honest, I could see that she was wearing red lacey underwear and had had a full bikini wax.
Do you know what kind of question I want to have from my boss when discussing a vendor? NOT WHY DOES GOOGLE THINK I WOULD FINANCIALLY SUPPORT LITERAL HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
So guess what I’m activating on my browser to NOT GET FIRED.
I'm a homosexual. Youtube ads have been showing me ads for soft porn depicting underaged anime girls, explicit porn barely covering the girls' sexual parts, and dating apps for dating mature women for several years now.
A brain the size of a planet, and Google still can't figure out this is the last thing I would click on?
A brain the size of a planet, and Google still can't figure out this is the last thing I would click on?
Have you ever looked at the interface for buying ads on Google/Facebook/other? They don't use an algorithm to decide who to show ads to. The ad buyer decides who they want to show the ad to.
I click systematically, and it almost always says they picked a broad category, like “Men between 25 and 75 in [country].” There’s usually some phrasing that is meant to be ambiguous or unclear but that I have to interpret as “based on your other behavior.” I can only assume neither I nor the gay commentator earlier have ever done anything that expressed an interest in either underage pornography or AI-generated female honeypots, and so that “smart” implicit targeting really needs some serious scrutiny.
I get the joke that it reveals what I do in private. I’ve made it myself when people are complaining about Twitter—usually after confirming the rest of their activity matches the prejudice that I’m lobbing at them. What I can assure you is not happening, in public or in private, is me speaking Finnish or Cantonese.
I get the joke that it reveals what I do in private. I’ve made it myself when people are complaining about Twitter—usually after confirming the rest of their activity matches the prejudice that I’m lobbing at them. What I can assure you is not happening, in public or in private, is me speaking Finnish or Cantonese.
Yes, and that's why I conclude that Google must have terrible targeting and wastes advertisers money.
Some years ago i was listening to Viktor Tsoi / KINO music on YT. KINO was a russian band that disbanded in the 90ies.
So several times a week, i got YT Ads in russian. I did not understand a word.
So several times a week, i got YT Ads in russian. I did not understand a word.
> they are still wasting their time and energy
Perhaps I misunderstand how their models work, but aren't they wasting only their customers' time and energy (and money)?
Perhaps I misunderstand how their models work, but aren't they wasting only their customers' time and energy (and money)?
Technically (and by that, I mean if you get into multivariate, intertemporal, multi-product auction theory, so very technical), “customers,” i.e., users seeing irrelevant ads, means they don’t get to see relevant ones, don’t click. Those customers would waste their bandwidth and scrolling time, but they rarely pay per Mb and scroll fast. They might fat-finger an ad (that happens surprisingly often when you start looking into it) and waste both their time closing windows and tabbing back to where they were.
Most Meta’s “customers,” the advertisers, see a higher number of ads shown per client acquired. That doesn’t really change their decision to advertise, and their budget as long as the cost per client (click to the site or converted client, depending) is the same.
Therefore, I’d argue users aren’t that impacted (unless you count not seeing a relevant ad as a bad thing, which I would, but that’s controversial); advertisers have less impact than they could, but it’s not that it costs them, as much they don’t pay for something they didn’t get. Meta is the one loosing 4% of their potential revenues.
But admittedly, it’s a wider, complex, integrated system. I’d rather not feel like an increasingly large chunk of it is gambling, tax evasion, and human trafficking.
Most Meta’s “customers,” the advertisers, see a higher number of ads shown per client acquired. That doesn’t really change their decision to advertise, and their budget as long as the cost per client (click to the site or converted client, depending) is the same.
Therefore, I’d argue users aren’t that impacted (unless you count not seeing a relevant ad as a bad thing, which I would, but that’s controversial); advertisers have less impact than they could, but it’s not that it costs them, as much they don’t pay for something they didn’t get. Meta is the one loosing 4% of their potential revenues.
But admittedly, it’s a wider, complex, integrated system. I’d rather not feel like an increasingly large chunk of it is gambling, tax evasion, and human trafficking.
Not sure why we'd need a Scientism priest to validate the fact that people don't want to watch fucking ads.
There are some Ads I'm keen to watch: I just clicked on an ad for Netflix telling me about a new movie that came out. I probably shouldn’t watch movies in the middle of the day, but that was relevant, well targeted, and will lead to measurable gain for Netflix (assuming they have the data stack to tell them that an extra view from an existing user is good).
I like seeing ads for conferences (assuming my boss will grant me the budget to go and not assume I’m supporting human trafficking). And, as I mentioned, I’m comparing vendors, so seeing ads for competitors of what I’m searching now would be great (relevant ones comparing their offers, not funneling to pointless sales calls with people who couldn’t get out of Vim if they ever figure out how to start a computer).
I like seeing ads for conferences (assuming my boss will grant me the budget to go and not assume I’m supporting human trafficking). And, as I mentioned, I’m comparing vendors, so seeing ads for competitors of what I’m searching now would be great (relevant ones comparing their offers, not funneling to pointless sales calls with people who couldn’t get out of Vim if they ever figure out how to start a computer).
That book is garbage. Having been employed at FB, I worked with plenty of OG FB people who poked holes in all his claims. I even recall getting into an argument with the guy on an ex employee FB group about his upcoming book. Don’t take that book at its face value.
Friendly reminder to stand up an Invidious instance or use one from this list: https://docs.invidious.io/instances/
Why doesn't Youtube follow the Netflix/Disney+ model? I'd gladly throw a few months of $$$ if I can watch some classic movies. I guess it's copyright?
At one point, they produced a series of 'Youtube Original' content [1] available only to Youtube Red/Premium subscribers.
It ran from 2016 to 2023, they tried celebs like Will Smith and youtubers like PewDiePie, a variety of episode lengths and formats, and even some content in different languages.
They don't produce it any more; I suspect it was not a commercial success.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTube_Premium_origin...
It ran from 2016 to 2023, they tried celebs like Will Smith and youtubers like PewDiePie, a variety of episode lengths and formats, and even some content in different languages.
They don't produce it any more; I suspect it was not a commercial success.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTube_Premium_origin...
Because it would be the regular themtube and not YouTube.
OK that's sad. They have so many movies.
If I can chose between a 1 minute commercial and a 2 minute pause, I'll have the pause, please.
interesting. i was actually yesterday pondering whether youtube gave up on this since i have not had issues for months now. before i had to scrape all cache and logout. usually once a week. but then it stopped and all went back to normal. i am using ubo, still.
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Not sure if coincidental, but YT has been slower for the last few days. But I do have Premium + uBlock Origin running in Firefox (I don’t want ads + all the other crap YT has on their page).
I don’t understand why this is a controversy when frequent users of YouTube can pay for an ad-free version.
Sorry for repeating myself across a few threads on the YT ads issue the past days, I posted here[1] and here[2] the reasoning I'm pasting below, I will repeat it because I believe it's a core issue on how YT is treating their customers even when they were willing to pay:
I was willing to pay for "no ads", YouTube had the perfect product for me, Premium Lite, which I gladly paid for 2 years until I got an email in October:
> Subject: Your Premium Lite membership will be discontinued
> Thank you for being one of our first Premium Lite members.
> We’re writing to let you know that after October 25, 2023, we will no longer offer your version of Premium Lite. While we understand this may be disappointing news, we continue to work on different versions of Premium Lite as we incorporate feedback from our users, creators, and partners. [emphasis mine on the bullshit]
> To show our appreciation, we’re offering a 1 - month trial of Premium (even if you’ve had a trial before). With Premium, you can watch videos ad - free, offline, and in the background. Plus, stream music ad - free in the YouTube Music app.
I don't need nor want the other features, just no ads, and paid for it for 2 years. Then YouTube decided to fuck me over and force me into a more expensive subscription tier, fuck them, I'll use ad blockers for as long as they work.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38989006
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38966790
I was willing to pay for "no ads", YouTube had the perfect product for me, Premium Lite, which I gladly paid for 2 years until I got an email in October:
> Subject: Your Premium Lite membership will be discontinued
> Thank you for being one of our first Premium Lite members.
> We’re writing to let you know that after October 25, 2023, we will no longer offer your version of Premium Lite. While we understand this may be disappointing news, we continue to work on different versions of Premium Lite as we incorporate feedback from our users, creators, and partners. [emphasis mine on the bullshit]
> To show our appreciation, we’re offering a 1 - month trial of Premium (even if you’ve had a trial before). With Premium, you can watch videos ad - free, offline, and in the background. Plus, stream music ad - free in the YouTube Music app.
I don't need nor want the other features, just no ads, and paid for it for 2 years. Then YouTube decided to fuck me over and force me into a more expensive subscription tier, fuck them, I'll use ad blockers for as long as they work.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38989006
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38966790
Because that subscription doesn't stop google tracking those users.
Agreed. Isn't this what we want, a paid ad-free version and an ad supported version?
One thing I don't understand is how Twitch solved this problem by (presumably) embedding the ads in the content stream itself. Is this not possible for YT? Do they not have the technical knowledge to do this?
It seems like a lazy effort and one they can spin into advocating for legislation against ad-blockers. There is an argument from some that ad-blockers are piracy tools which is asinine but could easily be sold to older legislators.
It seems like a lazy effort and one they can spin into advocating for legislation against ad-blockers. There is an argument from some that ad-blockers are piracy tools which is asinine but could easily be sold to older legislators.
There are user scripts that get around twitch ads, although you only get 480p video while the ad is running.
All advertising is spam.
Anybody got a good experience with blocking youtube adds on ios? :D
Maybe I'm being idealistic, but wouldn't it be nice if YT tried to engage with users of ad blockers in some way to see if a middle ground could be found?
I'm sure Google considers itself all-powerful, but in this case they cannot win. They should look at what happened with the music industry and attempt to engage instead of punish.
I'm sure Google considers itself all-powerful, but in this case they cannot win. They should look at what happened with the music industry and attempt to engage instead of punish.
The middle ground is YouTube Premium, and a zillion other attempts to make it easy for people to pay to remove ads either via subscription or micropayments.
Stop tracking me and I will pay for it.
What does "tracking you" mean in this context? Storing youtube watch history?
Cross-Site web wide google tracking based on my interests and usage patterns of YouTube.
Basically Mass surveillance, stop tracking me and I will pay, which is what meta was forced to offer in the EU ( that is also reportedly Not enough, as you can't lock public rights behind a pay wall. )
Basically Mass surveillance, stop tracking me and I will pay, which is what meta was forced to offer in the EU ( that is also reportedly Not enough, as you can't lock public rights behind a pay wall. )
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Use a Youtube proxy like Invidious [1], problem solved and you get to subscribe to channels without telling the Beast about your interests. Add Sponsorblock (which supports Invidious) to get rid of any in-stream advertising which remains and you'll be transported back to those hallowed times of yore when men were men, women were women and advertising was something you found in newspapers. Youtube will try to make this harder just like Xitter is trying to make it harder to use proxies like Nitter [2].
[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
[2] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
[2] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter