Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers
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So say we all.
So say we all.
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Grayjay
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Why do i feel like this happened a while ago? Like, isn't this old news? Or "olds" as it were?
It was reported a decent amoint of time ago and i thought i felt a difference...turned out my isp was sending air bubbles through the internet cable.
After the internet stabilized i noticed exactly zero, just an occasional "restart browser because video's stopped playing alltogether"
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Grayjay
Bless you.
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Why do i feel like this happened a while ago? Like, isn't this old news? Or "olds" as it were?
It was previously a "thread.sleep(5000)" in the client code IIRC.
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Grayjay
wrote on last edited by [email protected]YT's blocked on it. Fuck you, Google.
https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/issues/2351
If Google's going to be further tightening YT to the degree where they might roll out DRM platform-wide as opposed to just limiting it to movies on the platform, I'm about to seriously start looking for stuff to watch on PeerTube because YT is not long for the world and will probably start pushing away anything that isn't AI slop at some point in terms of content.
UPDATE: A workaround has been released for this issue.
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They cannot kill Adblocks, because if they would — a lot of html5 embedded YouTube videos would be coming worthless and so would youtube (discord for example)
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As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent
Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL
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As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.
I did not always use an ad blocker. Frankly my stance is they've made their bed, now they get to lie down in it. If it wasn't for YouTubes ad quality being so poor I would have never bothered taking the 30 seconds it takes to install an adblock those 10 or so years ago
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"Is your video not loading ? Check out why, you fucking ad dodging commie" is the feeling i got from youtube's newest message while my video was unexpectedly taking 10s to load
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
So here's what happened recently:
- I opened the Google News widget on my Android phone, saw a Sponsored link, and found it interesting
- Clicked on it, the link opened in Chrome, opening the googleadservices redirection thingummy
- Took over 5 seconds to process the redirect
- I exited the browser
Guess who missed ad money?
But of course, maybe they got the ad money and the only losers were:
- me, who didn't get to see the website that might actually have had something I wanted
- the website owner, who not only didn't get my business but also had to pay Google, because Google most probably processed the ad first and didn't care to process the redirect
I feel like I understand why they removed the "Do no evil" sign. Because now, they are messing with both, the product and the customers, only providing as much as is required to take their money, instead of the full, advertised service.
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Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent
Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL
I have ublock, with sponsor block and some others, and don't have any issues on yt as of yet. Just in case though, how do I block an element and spoof a user agent?
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Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent
Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL
Also interested in how you can do this.
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As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.
YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for
That's the really annoying part.
I've been considering swapping to other services for a long time, but to follow the creators I want to follow I'd have to subscribe to Nebula and Floatplane and I'd still miss out on quite a few creators.
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I've started bulk downloading videos with yt-dlp and watching them locally. No ads or throttling to deal with.
DVRs are back in 2025. Who would have thought?
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Oh hey I ran into that issue, fixed it by blocking the element on ublock and spoofing my user agent
Edit: I put more details under nameisnotimportant's comment, I was about to head to bed so I didn't really provide details LOL
wrote on last edited by [email protected]fixed it by blocking the element
Which one? That'd certainly help to know how to do that
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As much as I hate dealing with their shenanigans, I can’t really blame them either. As long as I can get away with using an adblocker, I will - but honestly, YouTube gives me more value for free than a lot of services I actually pay for. I have no moral argument for why YouTube should let me watch videos for free, even though I like free stuff just as much as the next guy.
oh i absolutely can blame them, because they made a choice.
either you take my money and respect my privacy, or you sell all of my data and won’t get my money.
however you can’t sell all of my data and take my money, nono, f u alphabet, that’s not how this works. -
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God damn American companies love fucking up everything for money!
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YT's blocked on it. Fuck you, Google.
https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/issues/2351
If Google's going to be further tightening YT to the degree where they might roll out DRM platform-wide as opposed to just limiting it to movies on the platform, I'm about to seriously start looking for stuff to watch on PeerTube because YT is not long for the world and will probably start pushing away anything that isn't AI slop at some point in terms of content.
UPDATE: A workaround has been released for this issue.
YT's blocked on it.
Just tried it. It works.
