I think youtube has just started needing way more bandwidth than it used to. A few years ago, 100KB/s would load a videos page almost instantly, comments as well, and smoothly run 360p playback. Now even at 160KB/s I often spend 60+ seconds for parts of the page to even load.
To be honest Youtube has always been slow to me, especially their streams. God, their streams are an absolutely resource hog, I've never seen a chat use up so much CPU power.
I mean, the earlier attempts google/youtube made to block adblockers by putting up a notice to turn it off, etc., were openly stated as being tested only on some users. As expected, only some users experienced that. You're just part of the more fortunate majority that isn't an unwilling guinea pig for google's attempts to force everyone to watch ads or pay premium.
There was a few weeks earlier this year I was getting ads on YouTube even with UBO. But it seems UBO has returned to its rightful place as winners of that arms race again.
While I wouldn't put it past Google/YouTube to do something as shitty as this, I think people are far too quick to assume foul play over the much more likely possibility that the world's largest video platform occasionally shits itself.
Did you have to mess around with it at some point?
I've been Firefox with uBlock Origin for a couple years and haven't ever messed around with the settings other than turning it off for a few select websites. Haven't had any of the issues other people reported with youtube.
At the very beginning I had to switch from ABP to uBO. I actually used ABP specifically because I wanted to allow through some non-obtrusive ads, because I think it's morally right to let companies make a profit if they're not being overly obnoxious about it, and ABP's Acceptable Ads policy is great for that. Unfortunately ABP was slower to implement something to avoid YouTube's fuckery, so I switched to uBO. Google has shot themselves in the foot because now instead of a small number of ads getting through, none do.
At the very beginning of their crackdown I remember I had to update shit a few times to get rid of that 'no adblocker' screen but yeah...its been months now and youtube is perfectly normal.
Anyone who knows Nintendo's history, knows that they go super hard on litigating. Don't let the happy little mascots fool you, they're as aggressive as Disney when they think they can get away with it.
Google, on the other hand, still has some software people in their management structure.
Well they've shut down revanced for good apparently. I can't make it load videos anymore. I used to be able to just reinstall and fix it, but it can't be fixed anymore.
It's been kind of a long time for them to not have covered everyone. I suspect it's just user error, especially considering the source of these articles is always just "some dude on social media saying trust me bro."
How many Youtube employees would be assigned to frontend/adblock sabotage efforts? I'm wondering whether the law of diminishing returns will be observed, or will the company have sufficient resources to maintain the shenanigans indefinitely.
If it's the latter, Youtube can rest assured my resolve will match theirs, until the damned thing gets paywalled...
So long as it's publicly accessible, Youtube has 'plausible credibility' when it talks to advertisers about impression numbers. Remember, we're not the only party YT fucks.