Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers
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My ip was blocked a LONG time ago by google for using yt-dlp. Works with VPN but nothing else. Fun times. I think I only pulled a couple of videos off for archival services. On my own channel non-the-less.
I'd just hop a vps around to different countries.
...I'd never do it here, admins, honest lol
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Ive been commenting on creators videos asking them to upload elsewhere as well. I doubt it will work, but we could try
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Like it or not, YouTube still has a fuckton of good, informative tutorials and advice on how to fix things or make things made by individuals with a phone camera and no script, who make them not for money but for the pride in sharing their knowledge. I shared some fix it videos for my van and a very obscure phone, and consumed a lot of fix it videos for washing machines, motorbikes and furniture.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This. YouTube is extremely helpful for anyone who can't afford to take their stuff to a repair service or hire someone to fix something at their home. Just a few months ago, I thought my washer was done for, but it turned out to be a super simple fix that no website mentioned except for a super obscure YouTube video with only a couple hundred views. Saved me hundreds of dollars. There's countless other anecdotes like that over the years.
This is what sucks so much about Google's monopoly. I truly wish a cooperative of governments and/or academia created a publicly funded alternative as well as hosting an archive of YouTube on it. It would of course need to be administered by a non-partisan committee made up of representatives from multiple countries that had numerous safeguards against governmental political censorship. Hoping for a grassroots alternative is a lost cause, as the hosting and administrative expenses are just way too cost prohibitive, so publicly funded is the only solution I can see as being plausible
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If you use Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-video-quality/
I'm don't having a functioning computer right now because i can't afford even a used one. I'm just using the YouTube app on ny phone or tv
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HA! Jokes on them! I'm running a budget dell PC from 10 years ago! The PC itself is slower than any delays they cause! I'm talkin' 3-5 minutes to load each video. Sometimes the whole PC freezes, and you need to unplug it. Sometimes the browser crashes right at the end, so you gotta relaunch the browser, and then wait 20 minutes for all the tabs to populate. Then you gotta end task on all the individual windows. Then you gotta reload just the tab you're looking at, and THEN you can wait 5 minutes again.
You think I'm even going to notice your 10 second delay?
I know times are hard, but you could build/find a PC for <$300 that doesn't run that badly. Hell, even a ~$150-200 tablet would be way better than that.
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Virtual desktop program that watches videos and uses sponsorblock and adblock after the fact to pick it clean and re-encode it.
I'm that level of anal
I'm not really following video DRM, but my understanding is that Widevine won't run in a VM with a virtualized video card like that.
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Note that subtitles doesn't include automatic subtitles. For that you have to do --write-auto-subs in conjunction
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Thanks.
EDIT: There isn't an
--embed-auto-subs, but there is a--write-auto-subs. -
Ublock origin (if your using it) "fixed" the issue shortly after. Im convinced someone at google works on adblock lol. Probably not true but the timing was really fast.
Spy vs spy
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I'd sooner spend five minutes waiting for the video to buffer than five seconds watching an ad
Too true
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Ive been commenting on creators videos asking them to upload elsewhere as well. I doubt it will work, but we could try
Great idea. Eventually, and if enough ask, it could be a thing.
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We can live without YouTube, they can’t live without us.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is their way to try and get you into their money making fold.
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I had to allow a bunch of stuff in pihole because I wasn't able to use Google flights or Google News and some functions in Gmail, the sites never finished loading
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I'm don't having a functioning computer right now because i can't afford even a used one. I'm just using the YouTube app on ny phone or tv
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If your phone is Android, NewPipe is an open-source, third-party client that permits setting quality. It's on F-Droid (the big open-source app repository) if you use that, and probably on Google Store as well.
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I'm don't having a functioning computer right now because i can't afford even a used one. I'm just using the YouTube app on ny phone or tv
If you're on Android, get pipepipe from f-droid.
Not only is it a way better and more functional YouTube app, it doesn't do ads.
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I also think they slowed it down for firefox users.
If you get a user agent switcher and change your user agent for youtube to chrome then that slowing down goes away.
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I've been seeing this for a couple weeks now along with a popup telling me "ad blockers aren't allowed" at work where I'm forced to use Chrome. I have UBlock Lite installed. Typically a refresh takes care of the popup and a 10 second delay later, the video loads.
I run portable Firefox on my work PC. I refuse to use chrome. some of our apps require Edge, but outside of that, I don't touch chrome.
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Wish they could use Gemini to generate ad clicks instead.
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Ok so im not crazy. I was wondering why videos kept buffering every minute this past week.
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I've started bulk downloading videos with yt-dlp and watching them locally. No ads or throttling to deal with.
This is the way.
When YouTube wanted to throw me some entertainment and a couple ads, very conveniently, I was down for that.
Now that it's an all out technology knowledge battle - well, I'm quite good at that.
So I spend the time I would have laughed at their ad instead working around their bullshit.
I haven't seen an ad in years, but I still enjoy the same content.
️To me, it seems like they're working really hard, just to fail to serve me ads.
