Technology

A new wave of slowdowns is hitting users, with the only resolutions being disabling the ad blocker or upgrading to premium.

Or just switching to ublock origin.

Or just switching to newpipe.

Or just switching to freetube.

etc

etc

etc

And still, I’m more likely to stop using YouTube than to stop using an ad blocker.

I'll never understand why they spend so much effort pushing ads into people's faces that don't want see them and so little making ads more attractive.

A very large chunk of what people consume these days is effectively already ads. Every Youtuber holding a product into the camera is an ad. And people want to watch that. They want to know what new products are out there. It just has to presented appropriately.

Forced ads with mandatory 5sec isn't making people interested in your product, heck, numerous times I might have been interested in a product, but lost interested since I couldn't rewind the ad or because the ad didn't link to anything that gave me further information. A 15min video from a Youtuber reviewing a product in detail is way more effective than any regular ad I have ever seen, yet there are almost no ads in that style.

I really wish government would just come in already and shatter google into a million pieces with the anti-monopoly hammer already.

Google is far worse than AT&T ever was when it was shattered into the baby bells.

Just gotta learn from AT&T to not let them re-congeal back together like somekind of fucked up liquid metal terminator 20+ years down the line.

Frankly, I'd stop using YouTube entirely before I'd start using it without an adblocker. At least there are no signs of it slowing down for me, yet.

Watching YouTube load slowly is better than watching ads.

I will download videos then. I refuse to not use an adblocker on the modern internet.

"We'll make our service worse, that'll show them!"

Ok google, good luck with that.

I wish we can fast forward to the part where Youtube completely destroys itself and a new platform takes its place so we can enjoy it for 10 years before the enshittification cycle restarts again.

So I have YouTube premium but also have ad-blocker, for the first time yesterday I was noticing absolutely abysmal speeds on YouTube and I suspect this is why. I thought my computer was starting to shit the bed initially it was so brutal.

Oh no (continues to watch on freetube) anyway....

I dusted off an old laptop, put debian on it, put an SSD and now I have my own invidious instance, among other services...

No ads, no throttling, no bullshit. Google is very welcome to suck it. I'd gladly stop using youtube, but there's no competition.

That's why Invidious exists.

I don't have an ad blocker, I just have the standard strict tracking protection enabled in Firefox. What's more, I pay for YouTube Premium. But still they add a five-second delay every time I visit a web page. It's infuriating.

Don't worry, YouTube, I won't be using your website anymore. But my yt-dl will be ripping max quality videos by the hundreds, just for shits and giggles.

YouTube speed has been shit ever since they stopped actually buffering.

Apparently this seems to be mainly affecting Chrome users, lol.

And this is why we use Newpipe

Anything better than listening 3 songs and getting 5 ads.

Stop being trash youtube. Be normal like you once were and i would actually consider a paid subscription IF i get to fully exclude shorts on my side of the platform.

Nationalize YouTube.

Specifically, nationalize the backend, Google can keep their website. And place it in the hands of something like the UN, rather than any specific country. I hardly trust Uncle Sam any more than Google's investors. They've successfully monopolized video hosting, now turn it into a public resource.

And open it up to the world, too. Google might get to keep their website, but everyone else can access the same database, too. May the best front end win.