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YouTube Begins New Wave of Slowdowns For Users With Ad Blockers Enabled (9to5google.com) 307

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: YouTube recently started slowing down its entire site whenever ad blockers are used. A new wave of slowdowns is hitting users, with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium. To combat the increasing frequency of ads on YouTube, people have employed the use of ad blockers for years. According to YouTube, that method of avoiding ads is deemed a violation of the terms of service. Of course, pre-video ads are a huge source of income for the service, and the only way to avoid them without the use of a third-party application is to pay YouTube directly for premium.

YouTube has since started discouraging the use of ad blockers in a couple of ways. The first is with a pop-up message that reads, "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Term of Service." The message then suggests you turn off your ad blocker. The user is not allowed to continue watching without doing so. The second method is one that's now starting to roll out to more users. YouTube has recently started slowing the entire site when an ad blocker is being used, referring to it as "suboptimal viewing." According to a post on Reddit, multiple users have noted that YouTube has become laggy and unresponsive, seemingly all of a sudden. It was quickly discovered that disabling whichever ad blocker is being used immediately revitalizes the site.
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YouTube Begins New Wave of Slowdowns For Users With Ad Blockers Enabled More

YouTube Begins New Wave of Slowdowns For Users With Ad Blockers Enabled

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  • So they want to get less viewers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:09PM (#64161299)

    Let's be real here. The greedy assholes at YouTube may think people cannot live without their service, but that is, obviously, not true. So all they will do is reduce viewership.

    • Re:So they want to get less viewers? (Score:4, Informative)

      by bruce_the_moose ( 621423 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:19PM (#64161343)

      The enshittification continues. When I got the full block, I logged out and deleted cookies and continue ad-free unabated. Their recommendations had gotten worse and worse, so nothing of value was lost. The near daily updates to Adblock Pro that I get suggest there's a vigorous war going on in the background.

      • Re:So they want to get less viewers? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:36PM (#64161437)
        I do not have an adblocker but the experience is getting terrible. I was watching a clip when an ad appeared. I skipped it when the option was available. Not 10 seconds later, another series of ads started that were not skippable. The clip was only 5 mins long but had nearly 1 min of ads.

      • Don't blame YouTube... blame creators who use mid-roll ads in their monetized videos.

        None of my videos have mid-roll ads so you can watch 20-30 minutes of content with only 2 pre-roll ads and, if you hang around, 2 post-roll ads.

        I believe in a fair "value exchange" between myself and those who watch my videos and that means I can't justify including mid-rolls.

        For the time being, the choice of whether to litter a video with mid-roll ads remains with the creator if their channel is monetized -- so don't go bl

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Sun ( 104778 )

          I'm a creator [youtube.com]. I'm not eligible for monetization. Whenever I watch my own videos without an ad blocker, the ads are just terrible.

          Since I'm not eligible for monetization, this is all on YouTube. I have zero say in the matter. I believe, though not sure, that my longer videos even have mid-video ads.

      • The enshittification continues. When I got the full block, I logged out and deleted cookies and continue ad-free unabated. Their recommendations had gotten worse and worse, so nothing of value was lost. The near daily updates to Adblock Pro that I get suggest there's a vigorous war going on in the background.

        I never log in to YT, yet when the first wave of anti-adblock spam messages started, I also found that nuking the cookies fixed the broken behaviour. (In fact, deleting cookies another piece of Google misbehaviour: the "prove you're human" bullshit they try to enforce when I keep refining search queries to get around their search engine's dumbing-down.

        Interestingly, I haven't noticed any slowdowns while using yt-dlp, which I do fairly often. In a similar vein, I wonder how their new tactics will affect serv

    • That's right. They give an option to remove all advertisements and if it's not worth that money to you or the content is not worth sitting through the advertising then it's not worth watching obviously.

      Plenty of creators also have Patreons and platforms like Nebula exist as well so there are alternatives.

      • Plenty have Patreon, AND have ad revenue turned on, AND DON'T use another service.

        If I want to see content from some of favourite creators, they are forcing me to use YouTube.

        It's a viscous cycle.

        • And if I want to watch shows on Netflix I have to pay for Netflix, like we used to have to pay HBO to watch things on their network. Is the content worth the price they are asking or not is really the question

          • I'm assuming the people who produce the content for Netflix are fairly well compensated for their labor. At least if I subscribed to Netflix I'd know that my subscription is at least in part going towards providing a good living for the people who are producing the content I'm enjoying.

            YouTube's business model is a bit more sketchy. The vast majority of YouTube content creators are doing so as a hobby. The top content creators who are actually making a living from the site? Well, it's obvious some folks

        • Re: So they want to get less viewers? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Hecatonchires ( 231908 ) on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @01:34AM (#64162373) Homepage

          It's a viscous cycle.

          It's a thick, liquid cycle?

    • Is there a way to detect the slowness, to at least tell the users this is happening to them? Can ad blockers add something that tells me this?

    • Let's be real here. People absolutely cannot live without their service which is why they keep jumping through hoops to try to block the ads. They *really do* want to watch Youtube. Youtube isn't going to lose the battle over freeeloaders.

      • I watch youtube for entertainment; youtube with ads is not entertainment.

        Thus the only reasonable options are to quit youtube, to pay them not to deliver ads, or to let them deliver ads and have my computer which I control display it as I choose (ad free). They really have no way to force ads into my eyeballs nor detect their failure to do so, even if they make the most convenient way to watch their content free to download the video instead of streaming it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      The greedy assholes at YouTube may think people cannot live without their service, but that is, obviously, not true.

      Is it? Based on the effort people put into blocking ads on Youtube vs just not using it, it would seem quite a few cannot get by without it, or just don't want to.

      • The greedy assholes at YouTube may think people cannot live without their service, but that is, obviously, not true.

        Is it? Based on the effort people put into blocking ads on Youtube vs just not using it, it would seem quite a few cannot get by without it, or just don't want to.

        It's a cat and mouse game. I do watch a lot of Youtube, but I can find other things to do if it becomes not worth the hassle.

    • So all they will do is reduce viewership.

      That's almost guaranteed with this strategy. If you block the video and tell people why then they at least know why they can't watch the video and they at least consider the possibility of either watching the ads or paying for premium, even if most just upgrade their ad blocker (assuming they know how).

      If you just make your site perform badly people will assume that your site is overloaded and can't handle the load. That's a much worse outcome because it kills your reputation while, at the same time, ma

  • yt-dlp (Score:4, Informative)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:12PM (#64161311) Homepage

    yt-dlp still works. And when that stops working, bye YouTube!

  • ToS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:15PM (#64161319)
    According to YouTube, that method of avoiding ads is deemed a violation of the terms of service

    I don't recall ever agreeing to that.
    • I never agreed to not wear a mask in a bank, but here we are.

      • Actually... I did. According to our law here, I cannot wear a mask in certain situations.

        Try a different analogue because that one doesn't hit the mark.

        • A law existing doesn't mean you personally agreed to it. Plenty of people disagree with a plethora of laws. Doesn't mean that's a defense though.

    • Re:ToS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:38PM (#64161451)

      Drive-by-contracts are part of the new reality. First it was shrink-wrap contracts, but now simply visiting a site may result in you being held to their ToS. Until the courts stop agreeing that signature free mostly unread one sided documents that require a legal degree to understand can be considered a legally binding contract, we are just stuck this way.

      What I'd like to see is some malicious folks start adding first-born clauses to their web sites to highlight just how insidious and ridiculous all of this is.

    • Do you have an account? If you aren't logged in then yeah you didn't agree to it but they can choose to give you a shitty experience anyways. If you do have an account then you likely did agree to it.

  • I'll never understand the advertisement industry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:21PM (#64161363)

    Of course, pre-video ads are a huge source of income for the service

    How is that even possible?

    Advertisement is almost universally despised. How would Youtube users who massively choose to block ads, when forced to watch the damn things, generate any revenues at all? How likely are people who are forced to watch something they don't want to watch to click on the ad and purchase whatever is being advertised?

    I for one vow never to buy anything from any company that force-feeds me advertisement: I might be interested in their products in they don't, but I'll go out of my way to buy from their competitors if they do.

    If I was an advertiser, I wouldn't feel great paying Google to be Clockwork-Oranging my ads to unwilling users. So I don't even understand how Google can command more money from advertisers when they do that.

    • The old expression was "I know I am wasting half of my advertising dollars, I just don't know which half."

      A few years ago there was a wave of companies who stopped or scaled back a lot of their banner ad sales, and other web based ads with claims of zero impact to their sales. That noise dissipated and advertising has barreled forward at full speed. Somehow companies have evidence ads are ineffective, yet they just keep pouring ad dollars in. It boggles the mind.

    • Youtube gets paid per ad that gets crammed down your throat, not by how often you actually buy junk hawked there.

      And Youtube couldn't give less of a fuck whether you actually buy any of that shit.

      • Youtube gets paid per ad that gets crammed down your throat, not by how often you actually buy junk hawked there.

        Yeah I get that.

        What I don't get is why advertisers pay Google to cram their ads down people's throats. Surely even they realize it's counterproductive to piss off potential customers.

        • Because of the old saying "50% of your advertising money is wasted. Problem is, nobody knows which 50%".

          That way they can get a lot closer to that elusive information. At least they know a portion of the money that is wasted.

        • It's not though. Advertising still works. This notion that people are going to boycott Youtube advertisers en masse because they were forced to watch ads just isn't reality.
      • Savvy advertisers track how the the ads they are paying for impact sales and adjust their ad spends accordingly. There is still a hole in their ability to attribute but it's way better for advertisers in the digital space than it used to be in the legacy systems. They can get clickthrough and conversion data now.

      • Nah, Google gets paid for generating sales, not for some sort of digital circlejerk. Otherwise they would have already "accidentally" gotten server farms to download ads by the billion. Various companies measure the short-term effectiveness of their ad campaigns, and if they notice a 90% drop in sales per ad they will be asking for a 90% drop in cost per ad, or cancelling their business with Google.

        Google's thing was high-effectiveness targeted ads, so either they're sacrificing their $/ad for short term ga

    • Wait, you are trying to dispute that ads are a major source of revenue for YouTube? That's an insane take. The vast majority of users actually don't have an ad blocker installed. Around 85% watch the ads. They want the remainder to do so as well for an easy bump in revenue. It's that simple.

      Your notion that YouTube users massively don't get served ads is false. Your boycott of everything is silly, not buying something you want because a company uses standard advertising practices will not change an
    • You're just costing the money. You don't provide any value anymore by word of mouth they have long since got to dominant position in the market and with a complete lack of antitrust law enforcement there is zero chance of any credible competitor existing in their space and surviving. So what they're doing now is chasing off anyone who isn't profitable and to be honest that's probably you.

      I mentioned this on another thread but we're going to see more and more of this across the entire economy. It's not s

    • The only advertising that I'll admit has worked on me are the ones for food. I don't need your VPN service, overpriced luxury EV I'll never be able to afford, dating site, insurance (yeah, I've seen a million ads with that damned gecko, I still use a different company), or male enhancement pills, but if you show me a picture of a delicious looking lobster roll, I'm hopping in my car and getting to your restaurant as fast as the traffic laws allow.

  • New, smarter, ad-blockers will be released in the next few hours...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by upuv ( 1201447 )

      Actually it'll be an evolution in ad blocking technology.

      Gen 1 ad blockers are those that redirect whole ad serving sites to nothing.
      Gen 2 ad blockers looked at url patterns and cookie patterns. And effectively blocked the requests.
      Gen 3 ad blockers will take a deeper look at the page and artefact contents to rewrite code in the browser.

      We are entering into the Gen 3 era. These ones will be outright blocked from the browser as addons. As the game of whack a mole will be rapid. As new ad blockers pop up i

  • evidence of monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:28PM (#64161389)

    the only way this could ever work is with a monopoly, ie, if there were reasonable options, this would only serve to drive customers to those options

    and should a viable competitor ever show up, watch YT start to play nice again

    greedy bastards can't help but eviscerate their golden goose

    • We spent the last 40 years (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:02PM (#64161767)
      Attacking and gutting every single potential enforcement mechanism in the name of cutting red tape and bureaucracy. It really doesn't matter if they are a monopoly there's absolutely nothing in place to enforce those laws and with the Microsoft activation merger it's stupidly obvious that our courts are going side with large companies over consumers every single time. That's not an accident the Koch brothers have been packing the courts with pro corporate judges with the help of the heritage foundation since Reagan got elected. They're basically done with their plan and they've moved on to something called project 2025 which is a plan to dismantle the bureaucratic system that prevents presidents from declaring themselves King.

      Stopping all of this would require a drastic sea change in politics where people put aside nonsensical culture War issues to focus on economics and I just don't see that happening in the current climate. It is way too easy to push people's buttons with just a little bit of propaganda and there is so much more than a little bit of propaganda out there. I mean I literally just saw a video from some wackadoodle railing against vitamin k shots given to babies to prevent them from dying of vitamin k deficiency related bleeding. That's the level we're at right now. So I think we can safely say we've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting antitrust law enforcement through

  • has been long long forgotten!

  • "... with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium." I choose the fourth alternative. I deleted dozens of my YouTube videos and stopped watching YouTube. I'm not providing them content so they can waste my time with stupid ads. If I'm forced to look something up, I use FreeTube. It was fun while it lasted but now I've moved-on. There's an infinite world of other content besides Google.

  • Ads suck (Score:3)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:34PM (#64161427)
    The companies who are advertising to you, and you, are being stolen from, and fleeced by, the online ad "services". If you are a developer who works for these companies, it is your moral duty to sabotage online advertisements, especially the ones which are collecting vast amounts of user information. If you are not ethical in your programming you are merely an automaton, and will get replaced by AI.

    You are simply a cog in the machine.

  • This affects much more than YT (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:34PM (#64161429)

    Millions of sites include inline videos linked back to Youtube. The average user will wait no more than 5 seconds during a buffering and consider the video pooched and move onto the next site. It won't be long until other major sites start complaining to Google about their fuckery.

    • Millions of sites include inline videos linked back to Youtube. The average user will wait no more than 5 seconds during a buffering and consider the video pooched and move onto the next site. It won't be long until other major sites start complaining to Google about their fuckery.

      The average user probably doesn''t use an ad blocker either...

  • Instead of loading one video after another, people will open multiple tabs to preload as many videos as possible. Whether they eventually watch those videos or not.

    Yeah, smart move, Google...

  • Hmmm, wait an extra 5 seconds for a webpage to load, or watch multiple 15+ second advertisements in a video?
    Which will I choose...

  • 101 (Score:3)

    by jythie ( 914043 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @06:49PM (#64161505)
    I am really wondering if the people who came up with this policy actually know their own industry. Intentionally degrading your service is a TERRIBLE idea... you get blamed even if it is the customer's fault and they know it, and your reputation takes a hit. Which suggests whoever is behind this idea is more concerned with their personal brand than what is good for their company... since this is a real bone headed move.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      they are probably betting on the fact that they have no real competition. yet. and not for lack of trying.

      the whole thing is indeed a bit fishy, but remember users are not the customers, advertisers are. i figure they have a strong incentive to assure them that they care about those ads actually reaching a target.

  • I use Youtube fairly often but I neither see ads nor any nagging that I should do so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      I do use very frequently too and only very occasionally get bugged by their anti-adblocker antics. When I do they're trivially easy to circumvent with incognito mode, but it's rare. I'm guessing they do that in batches or waves and it probably depends on variables like region, type of content, and probably user profiling. They probably know already I'm not interested in any stupid crap they might want to offer.

      I would actually pay if they asked for a reasonable fee, just like I regularly donate to the Inter

  • Than they removed the Skip ad button, than they Stared removing it on Political ads than they remove it on everything the final straw was when they stated to inssert 5 minute long movie trailers. So I activated adlock on youtube. Google's Problems are completly of there own creation. Just like the Problems of every other ad provider is of there own creaton. Content Providers If you did not flood pages so 90% of it is distracting bullshit people might not block your ads! Ad providers if you did not loose a

  • Meanwhile, CISA and the NSA recommend ad-blockers. (Score:5, Informative)

    by AgTiger ( 458268 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @07:03PM (#64161571) Homepage

    Meanwhile, CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) specifically recommends the use of Ad-Block technology to prevent system infection via malvertising (links to a PDF file):
    CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT GUIDE - Securing Web Browsers and Defending Against Malvertising for Federal Agencies [cisa.gov]

    Note the target audience for CISA here: Federal Agencies. Their focus is in protecting those (including themselves) so I'm willing to put a little more weight behind their recommendation.

    • And with good reason, malvertisment is a considerable source of malware. If advertisers would vet their customers better, we could ponder allowing them in, but unfortunately, a nontrivial portion of them is simply and plainly crooks.

      And I'm not even talking about normal marketing people here.

  • I've been experiencing the slowdown and refusing to disable my ad blocker. The extra 5 - 10 seconds it takes to load a video is still less than being forced to watch multiple ads. I have noticed though that embedded videos hosted by Youtube on third party websites do not seem to be affected by the slowdown.

  • I have youtube premium (Score:3)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:24PM (#64161827)

    I have noticed slowing as well, even after paying

  • No ad blocker (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:47PM (#64161883)

    But I do have strict tracking protection turned on. That seems to be what the ad supported sites bitch about.

    Yes, you can show me some ads. No, you cannot commoditize my browsing history.

  • History repeating itself (Score:3)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:57PM (#64161907)
    There is nothing worse than being engaged in z show only to be cut mid sentence by an obnoxious ad trying to sell you something you dont want like the days of network tv. You pay and theyre still going to find a way to shove ads down your throat just like cable tv. Amazon, Netflix, Paramount are all trying it- subscription +ads and that a strong hell no. If they force it, cut the cord because ads diminish quality.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      No, no, no. Network TV understood ads, and structured their shows to have ad breaks. Sometimes, they'd even go to commercial at a dramatic moment.

      Youtube? You will watch ads when I SAY you will watch ads. Even if it's mid *WORD*.

      You would think a company like Google could use some form of, I don't know... machine learning.... to determine a reasonable place

      Would you like to buy a car? Do you need healthcare? Is your vagina Itching?

      to put a fucking ad, but no.

  • Still no match against uBlock Origin. (Score:3)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Monday January 15, 2024 @11:31PM (#64162187)

    The latest update to uBlock Origin, Version 1.54, is not really affected by this change. And the Open Source developers behind uBlock Origin are updating the filters constantly as I type this to thwart YouTube's latest efforts.

  • Wait a second ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @01:40AM (#64162383)

    According to Bleeping computer it was a bug cause by the Adblocker itself, not YT.

    Afterall, it only affected Adblock and Adblock Plus which have the same product base.

  • Overheating (Score:3)

    by Chrontius ( 654879 ) on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @03:52AM (#64162533)

    It was quickly discovered that disabling whichever ad blocker is being used immediately revitalizes the site

    As it turns out, this is so bad on my MacBookPro from 2019 that simply having a YouTube tab loaded -- at all -- will frequently result in a runaway process in Safari and overheat the laptop, while precipitously draining the battery. And it gets hot. Not like a little toasty, we're talking full-on "Penis Panini" mode over here!

    So. Guess YouTube is serving malware now. Time to up my blocking game or ditch them entirely.

  • If a user has gone out of their way to install and use an adblocker and you force then to turn it off you're just going to make them angry.
    These users are absolutely not going to start buying any products they see advertised in this way, they're more likely to actively boycott the brands they see, so the net outcome from all this is going to be negative.

    I know that for me, the more obnoxious and forced the advertisement is the less likely i am to buy the product. Even if the product seems useful, i will actively look for a competing supplier if i remember especially obnoxious advertising.

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