1y ago

YouTube is blaming that Firefox delay people been talking about on adblockers.

www.androidauthority.com YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, and it has nothing to do with your browser

YouTube has clarified in a statement that users who use ad blockers will have a suboptimal experience regardless of their browser.

This delay isn't exclusive to Firefox, it's in any browser where a user has enabled adblockers including in Chrome. Disable the adblocker and this delay magically go away. This was done on purpose.

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1y ago

YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, and it has nothing to do with your browser

www.androidauthority.com /youtube-blames-ad-blockers-slow-load-times-3387523/

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1y ago

YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, and it has nothing to do with your browser | The delay is intentional, but targeting users who continue using ad blockers, and not tied to any browse...

www.androidauthority.com /youtube-blames-ad-blockers-slow-load-times-3387523/

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1y ago

YouTube blames ad blockers for slow load times, not the browser

www.androidauthority.com /youtube-blames-ad-blockers-slow-load-times-3387523/

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46 comments

To say the quiet part out loud: Bullshit
Google may find that their only option is to paywall YouTube. Too many of us will prefer to pay creators directly rather than letting Google take a cut. And YouTube is not the only game in town.
I admit that I’m pretty much done with YouTube anyway. Their unskippable mid roll ads that interrupt videos mid-word have become obnoxious enough that many creators I follow are jumping ship and advising their viewers where to find them.
- Google may find that their only option is to paywall YouTube.
  They already have Youtube premium. But $14/month is an insane price. I refuse to believe that is anywhere near the typical ad revenue they get from people. That is more than many streaming services.
  
  Not that I support anything their doing, but managing YouTube has to be an order of magnitude more expensive to operate than a streaming service. I actually think they could get some sympathy if they took more of a Wikipedia approach and we're more open about the costs to operate YouTube. However much we might hate Google, YouTube is practically a public good in the way it operates and the world relies on it.
  
  It's not, because it's a lot easier to get someone willing to pay anything in the first place to pay more than it is to convert a free user into a paying one. So as long as a yearly rise doesn't lose them more in profit they'll keep increasing the price it until it does.
  Though I really doubt that on a platform as huge as YouTube halving the cost to $7 wouldn't get them twice the paying customers almost instantly, because $14/month is simply ridiculously expensive.
  
  I'd love to see a plan where you just pay to rid of the ads, but YouTube is past YouTube, they would rather everyone pay YouTube premium as is.
- Where are they going? Most of the ones I follow are along the “this sucks, but it’s the only real game in town”, so I’d be interested to check alternatives and see what’s there.
  The big problem with any social or content centric platform is that new ones are only useful for consumers if there are creators and only useful for creators if there are consumers.
  
  Most are headed to Patreon and Vimeo. A few seem likely to try out PeerTube.

“We had to fuck over the people who aren’t in our monopoly, because we absolutely fucking love money!!!! Omg, money is the only thing we care about!!”
“Ok, public relations guys, do your best.”
Result ^

For anyone confused with the title:
YouTube is blaming the 'Firefox delay', that people been talking about, on adblockers.
Maybe it's just me.. English is not my first language so that might be it. I really struggled to understand what it said.
- To make it more clear use "have been" instead of just "been"
  
  Thank you. I missed that part, figured someone would correct me before I finished editing so I left it as is. Took longer than expected!
- Thank you. The title was absolute gore
- Thank you. I happened to be smelling something toast like at the same time I tried to read that and had to check the comments. Turns out it was a heater that hadn’t been on in a while.
- It is my first, and I definitely had to read it twice to make sure that I understood. It is definitely not you, but the awkward way they worded the title.
  Yours is much clearer, in my opinion.
- Weird, I use Firefox and ad blockers. I never get ads or delays when watching YouTube videos.

Okay? But when my Firefox uses Chrome's useragent string, the delay also disappears.
- I would guess that Google uses a randomised rollout system to make changes affect a tiny % of users while they test it (common in big software companies). Changing your useragent might make you appear as a different client that's not affected (yet). Source: I work in software and can guess.
  
  Wouldn't it be easier to start with their own browser?

The original video showed that just changing the Agent string fixed the "problem", so it has nothing to do with ad blocking.
- Was any else able to verify the claim in the original video? I couldn't.

Lol, my internet is shit and I often have to wait a few seconds for it to buffer anyway, so I won't see much difference.

In tandem with my current settings. Adding a Firefox add on to spoof my user agent worked for me. I set it to random and disabled all the Firefox user agents.
- Part of me wonders if the reverse holds - if spoofing one's user-agent on Chrome to look like Firefox could cause the delay to occur.

A few months back I had this issue on Chrome, but my ad blocker updated and it went away.
- Interesting. Did any change since then? Regarding it going away.
  Also unrelated, your user name reminds of a Youtuber I use to watch.
  
  After the update it's been working as intended.

I am ready to jump ship to Newpipe only (or newpipe and invidious) when I get the popup. And when these services are inevitably killed off, I will use a list that is currently WIP to help me find as many creators as possible via alternative methods (their own websites, podcasts, or them being on services like Odyssey or Peertube)

Hmm. Is this supposed to be affecting everyone using Firefox with adblockers? I just played a video on FF with uBO. Worked fine for me with no delays. Maybe because I searched for the video using DDG and watched it via DDG (meaning I did not click through and watch it on YT)?
- Same here. I tried on 2 computers and no delay so far.
- Could be an A/B test and you're lucky to be in the control group.

Just to put this out there for those who probally didn't read the article. YouTube does this 5 second delay thing, on purpose only if it detects a user using an adblocker if you don't use the adblocker then Youtube will work as it normally would on that browser.
Whether it's still a clunky experienceor the browser crashes really Is dependant on that browser and if it's a good alternative browser.
In other words, 'fix he delay by disabling the adblocker', coming from Youtube themselves.
- Silly. This wouldn't explain why people still get the delay in a "clean" version of firefox, or why the delay disappears when the only thing changed is spoofing that your browser is chrome instead.
  
  Did this happen to anyone other than the one guy who made the video about it? I couldn't replicate it.
  
  I get that. I'm just spreading what google's official response was.
  
  Because the delay is part of adblocker detection on non Chrome based browsers.
- So I can either wait 5 seconds in silence, or have to watch a 5 second (possibly longer) ad? I know which one I’ll choose.
- Man, I already had a hard time justifying my YouTube Premium subscription. I literally only have it for putting on stuff to sleep to on my TV without some ad telling me Mr. Beast wants to give me $10,000 if i click.
  But the worse this gets, the more I feel like an asshole for giving them a dime.
  
  I put newpipe on my TV for this exact reason

46 comments