What an amazing turn of events though... RU-vid gets blames for choppy playback for people using adblockers to subvert their monetization scheme, but it was actually the people facilitating the subverting being inept all along. Freeriders unwittingly angered by their own incompetence and then misdirecting their rage at their intended victim...
Get an extension that adblocks specifically youtube. There are already ones that get around it. Combine with regular adblock. Boom, ez pz. I use "Adblock for RU-vid" @ Chrome + Regular Adblock we all know and love. Regular adblock is disabled for youtube, and I rely on that extension instead. No buffer slows.
As a tech-savvy, I literally had frustrations with buffering lately, that explains it all. I think we're reaching a point where RU-vid needs more competitors.
I'm a premium user, but as soon as I noticed it happening I figured it was cause of my adblock. What's insane is that a product I PAY FOR is fucked up because of Google attacking anyone who uses an adblocker. It's insane. I don't even see ads because I pay not to, yet I still get punished because I enjoy blocking ads on other sites.
Rumble, Odyssey, Vimeo, Dailymotion. We do need them to build better UI though or need someone else to come in and take the reigns. YT has failed though, it's a wreck and not worth using anymore.
You can always whitelist RU-vid in your adblocker, see if that stops the attacks against you. And you should still get no ads with Premium, except of course they decide to spam you with NFL ads on the mobile app anyway (which is what they did to me and why I unsubscribed from Premium)
this reminds me of the old starforce copy protection that would prevent games from running if you had a program for virtual cd drives installed (while also adding a rootkit and creating system vulnerabilities).
Whatever they're doing is hurting premium users too. The app's battery usage has skyrocketed, and quality is regularly being lowered to 480p despite quality selection.
Lately I have videos starting at 144p on RU-vid for Android. Yes, 144p. Wifi is strong, everything else is super fast, but on my phone, 144p, and it's in "Automatic" for the quality, and there is no ad blocker on my phone.
In browser RU-vid premium also slows down when you have an adblocker, the funny thing is because premium blocks ads anyway, it took me a good hour of trying to find the problem before I thought that it could be my adblocker blocking nonexistent ads.
@@OlivierCaronI've seen that happen but only for certain channels and only on mobile. Usually if I just rewind it back to the start it fixes it and puts it back into HD.
Best post ever! ITA. Especially media websites. You can't even read a news article without tons of ads interfering and then it comes time to boot out of the website out of frustration. I realize the media sites want us to join and pay. I won't do it.
@@mantasr There's a difference between a few ads on a page and a page that constantly loads ads in your face and video ads that keep playing while you scroll down a page. It makes browsing a lot of pages completely unbearable.
@@jefferyjones8399 There is a reason you get so many ads... But you do know the number of ads are finite. If everyone actually turned on ads the ads companies would not have the money to continue funding ads reducing ads for everyone. There is only so much of a budget. RU-vid wont show them for free.
@@mantasr Not our problem. The internet was great before the normies descended on it and corporations decided to capture them normie dollars. I say bring back the days of rinky-dink websites on Geocities and backyard servers. Things were more fun then anyway.
My biggest problem is not that they have ads. It's that the ads are often inappropriate or just scams. Why is Google not held accountable for that? I assume some law that makes sense to others but it's quite annoying
yeah I got pretty tired of reporting the same scams over and over again. Out of ten reports, maybe one leads to an Ad being taken offline. And of course, it's always some far-east company that hasn't confirmed their identity yet...
Because the advertisers are willing to pay, and make YT far more money than users are willing to. Hence why the "ad apocalypse" was such a big deal for YT, because it was the opposite problem.
I was not using ad blockers on RU-vid until I saw way too many ads that were obvious scams. Also, watching a single ad I can skip was fine, especially when some ads were like 30 minutes long so we need to skip them. Now I have to sit through 2 unskippable ads. That's just annoying.
I sat at a computer that didn't have an ad blocker and Google was pushing scams and shady deals non stop. Some of the ads were on the edge of being disgusting and worse than what they often demonetize.
My work computer doesn't have adblock and is locked down so I can't install one. It's appalling how many ads websites have, and I'm only on tech websites at work. Installing adblockers on my personal computers is one of the best things I ever did to my computers.
They have AI putting words in someone's mouth now. A "commercial" that shows reputable people saying things they personally would never say. Offering unbelievable deals that they would never offer. This gets people to click on links and provide info that drains their wallet. RU-vid just lets this happen. The scams steadily get worse.
Try following a few financial channels... I literally get ads about planting money trees and winning big bucks with multi layer marketing. The ads are so shady and obvious scams at this point I fear that they may be close to embedding straight troyans and viruses in their ads, just to see if enough people complain or they can sell ad space to ransomware groups.
I love that not only am I not seeing ads because of a free ad blocker, but also that RU-vid is spending millions trying to stop it. I'll pay for a subscription when they pay me for selling my data.
Well said. I used to pay, and then found other ways to get the same experience, if not better. I'll consider it again when they stop trying to nickel-and-dime subscribers.
Ive been using the brave browser for a couple of years now and ddint even realizw the browser stops ads in youtube until google atarted fighting it. Then I realized i had never watched an ad when on my desktop, lol. Brave almost always defeats the anti-ad block measuee within a day if not hours. So they can try whatever they want, ad-blockers will probably continue to defeat them. Im not very worried.
@@spacemansquid Yeah, i disabled premium just to find out, that the experience is exactly the same. I was already slowed down because of my adblock even with premium, and other futures are useless. No one listens to youtube music, and you wouldn't download anything, because you can't transfer it at all, or play it offline after clearing cookies. The "resume on other device" would have been somewhat useful, but it never worked properly, it was off with minimum 3, maximum 40 minutes, it was better to just navigate to it by hand. A small player isn't a premium only future anymore(it only worked occasionally 1-2 times / month; i can't even tell if its in or not without premium, because it was that unreliable to began with) soo... They offer nothing you can or should use.
Yep. This totally happened to me. It was very noticeable. Still worth having ad block to me. I have repeatedly told youtube what would make me resubscribe to premium.... bring back dislike button... and stop demonetizing creators for absolutely silly things. its SOOOOO silly to make your product worse and think "yeah... this will make people start paying for it"
@@MrPondo17serious question, why does it matter? My life hasn't been made any worse by not seeing lightsabers every day. Also, The dislike *button* is still there.
As a RU-vid Premium family subscriber, I can tell you that paying them doesn't matter. I noticed yesterday that my videos were not buffering with Ad-block enabled. Once I turned off Ad-block the videos worked fine.
@@ze0r59b9 I have adblocker on and have a premium account. Yes you can whitelist RU-vid, but you will get the same result. It seems like just having it active at all on your browser, even if you whitelist it to be disabled on RU-vid still causes buffering issues. I keep my ad blocker on for other sites I'm using while having a music playlist from youtube playing in the background tab. I'm not shutting off my adblocker for the entire internet just for RU-vid.
very true.. they spend so much effort keeping you watching more and more. That this move makes you actually break that cycle and leave the platform.. I mean, kinda a good thing for your productivity
Interesting my post keeps getting removed. Let me try to fix this. We call that the Red dit approach in my house. ~Hi my name is .... and I am a recovering Red dit do om scroller. It has been a little over 6 months since I spent 5+ hours a day on Red dit.
It's not too uncommon. Most platforms will self destruct at a certain size. Twitch is even a current example. Dropping off even without a real competitor, just because they come up with nonsensical rules they revert a week later.
google needs a new ceo that has a brain, google's actions will make them lose more money than any adblocker ever will, i miss the old google that used to think outside the box and actually evolved, google hasn't evolved in over 15 years
I used to avoid adblockers because I felt like the creators I watched would get ad revenue. So I left ads up as courtesy. THEN RU-vid cut out the ad revenue of half the guys I watch and throttled them. If you want a cooperative consumer base, don't treat them like the enemy.
I've now setup accounts on the L and the R site, and moved my subs over to the no-tracking or ads desktop client 'Free-T' viewer. I wouldn't have without their encouragement. Now this place is the last instead of 1st.
You're not wrong, If a website or a video loads slow, I close it and do something else. Not even thinking about paying a single dollar to be able to watch a video smoothly. Cheers and keep up with a good job Louis.
I realised that i keep watching Louis´ videos not just for valuable informations, but for the warm feeling inside knowing that there are still genuine sane human beings sharing this rock with me.
That's why I started watching Fandom Menace videos. Knowing that I wasn't the only one who thought movies and TV shows were utter political shite even though the mainstream media kept saying it was the bestest evah! Knowing that you are not alone, that there are some sane people left in the world, it does help.
I'm here for the cursing. He's a real person. We live in a world of pussies these days. Louis is not one of them. Not giving a single fuck is as free as anyone will ever be.
I had a feeling this was the case as soon as I noticed the pages were taking forever to load, the video player is incredibly unresponsive and even loading comments is a chore. I’m still not disabling Adblock, so good luck YT
I'm typing this comment without seeing it being written, guess I'll h vahe to wait about ten seconds until that what I wrote appears LoL and all the other websites are working fine, just yt not. I'm on chrome and without adblockers, I cleared all kinds of caches. Help, I really don't see what I write, only half the comment or so is on screen LoL
Yes, when trying to comment takes forever I started editing outside of this entry field and pasting it in all at once. Good to know it's not just me. ALSO... closing all browser windows and restarting gives you a bit more speed for awhile.
@@manuel8123Be careful, I have Firefox and the issues have just started showing up for me, after I stopped clearing the browser cache everytime it closes.
I don't see an edit or recent comment saying this, so just an FYI for people; *this* time it wasn't YT. Apparently it was some old code in Adblock, it's why other blockers not based in Adblock (like uBlock Origin) weren't affected. Other than that, I believe here in the EU that if it was YT that it actually was illegal and Louis' notion that you'd just go somewhere else won't always hold true. For instance, about a month back I accompanied a friend to the hospital, he was picking up some 'diagnose at home' stuff: it came with instructions on YT. Even the manufacturers website has links to YT videos. Two weeks ago when I joined him again to pick up some actual medical equipment for home use; instructions on YT. Same with the manufacturer's website. Which, incidentally, is the reason why I will never feel guilty about not paying YT. Because this is exactly what they wanted; to be so ingrained in our society that they can't be ignored. Well if they could burn billions for years getting in this position, they can burn billions remaining in this position.
Literally all they need to do is to ban those annoying scam ads. We use adblockers because the ads aren't remotely relevant and just straight up annoying inappropriate content
Not just scam ads, though these are truly annoying. I literally never buy something because I saw an ad. But back in the day, when ads were skippable - I was not resorting to adblocker.
Honestly, if they went back to banner ads that were actually related to my interests, rather than insisting on interrupting the video I watch with an obnoxious ad for a product I’m never going to buy anyway I never would have thought about blocking ads, lol.
To somewhat rephrase something I said earlier in regard to the adblock war: It’s awfully brave of RU-vid to assume I don’t have anything better to do than sit here and watch videos on RU-vid.
The people who do watch RU-vid religiously such as myself are also likely the kind of tech savvy person who will find a way around it, like I did. Everyone else will just abandon the platform
that's what they want, einstein. the fewer freeloaders there are on the platform the better it is for RU-vid. They WANT you (a freeloader) to not be using the fcking site. That's literally the point.
@@t-alkemy Download & erase after watching , or save if you like & got storage space. Sometimes, I interact, thinkng it'll cost the company money for empty conversions (don't know if it does). For years, I'll start a vid then backout when the ad starts, then repeat until the vid plays. They kept me out of their "experiments " once I started doimg that. Even still works for that 5sec BS.
"This service is shit, I will avoid giving them money" is my train of thought, directly followed by "This service has become worse, I will refuse to give them money."
There`s a reason I unsubscribed from amazon, crunchyroll, dnd beyond, etc. The effort to circumvent YTs obstructions is just not at the point where I would leave yet.
you never would have given them money no matter what, so as long as they can stop you from syphoning their server/bandwidth resources for free then that's all that matters.
One of the things that really annoys me is not only are we being FORCED to watch ads, but we also have to listen to sponsoring that the creators themselves are doing.
This reminded me many years ago in early 2006 of what made RU-vid amazing. It was one of the few video sites that when playing a video didn't stall, buffer or fall over. Back when RU-vid was full of random good stuff, no ad's and 24/7 fun. My God look at the shit fight of greed, paid placement and ad's getting jammed down your throat it is now.
You gotta search specifically for anything worthwhile. Either way, no ad revenue from me! This started about a week ago for me with adblock. At the very least, the ads need to be curated properly. If you are going to break in with an insurance commercial during a meditation track, you get nothing from me!
@@PazLeBon that's definitely not true, google doesn't care what kind of ads they push, which often results in shady stuff with no selection or moderation. Creators that push garbage are gradually ignored by free market democratisation.
I’ll never stop using adblock. Internet usage without ad block is intrusive to a ridiculous point. I join one website and 12 different ads are on one page - it’s unmanageable. RU-vid is not going to be a special exception for me and them trying to stop me just fills me with spite.
'member the Microsoft anti trust lawsuits? the shenanigans were hilarious (and a sad reflection of the state of affairs n things) .. yet now we still ended up with Microsoft365 panopticon corporatism :')
for what? there are alternatives for everything google offers. Like 10 other video websites that do it better now. Many email services. Many doc services. Bing search is superior to google in my opinion. Etc. As a side note, if you still use google instead of bing, shame on you.
No one would need adblockers if YT and others kept the ads in the MARGINS and SILENT. It'd be win/win for everyone. But nope...They insist on making ads as invasive as possible.
For sure, I'm okay with none intrusive ads on the side, I hate the sound of them and the fact they waste time. Its like they do this purely to piss people off.
In the MARGINS, SILENT and *NOT ANIMATED* is another important thing. I can't focus on reading a text, when there's something flashing, moving and changing colors in my peripheral vision. ADHD doesn't allow me to ignore that commotion and I suppose it's difficult for neurotypical people too, else they wouldn't bother making GIFs for their ads, right?
You know I never really thought about that. When ads were like that I'd occasionally read them, but since they become so intrusive and began stopping you from whatever you were doing that's when it went from "Huh, that looks interesting I'll check it out." to "Get the hell out of my face forever." and then instead of creating any interest in whatever it is they're advertising they actually have done the opposite and swapped potential interest with spiteful avoidance.
Majority of the ads I get on RU-vid are legit scam ads, AI voice generation over video of celebrities supposedly pushing scam offerings claiming the government is behind it. There is no way they don’t know this. Yet they demonetize people for less.
Funny how RU-vid somehow can’t comprehend that the more you try and force something onto users the more it will make them dig their heels in (make ad block stronger in this case)
Like crazy activists who block traffic and climb on cars that try to get through safely. You're not convincing people to get on your side. You're pissing them off ... which has resulted in drivers just driving through road blocks.
And for me (and quite a few others i believe), RU-vid is entertainment, nothing more, they push too much i'm just not going to use it anymore, already did with Twitch and it's 10-15 ADS in a row, RU-vid might be next. Have plenty other ways to entertain myself that don't revolve around watching AD's 50% of the time (gaming, books, Reddit, touching grass, etc). At least for now, gaming is one that's may be plagued with this shit in the future.
I would be very willing to watch ads if RU-vid was smart enough to target me properly... yet instead it's almost always for some car brand I'd never EVER consider buying (Buick is for old men who can't get wood, even with blue pills; and so tacky inside as to be almost a joke)... yet what does RU-vid try to show me over and over? Ads for shit I'd NEVER buy... so I do use an ad blocker. Not my fault... all on them for trying to sell me a car instead of showing me some new gadget, which I may consider buying.
There's so many things about this website that frustrates me, I can't even begin to imagine giving them my money. Video recommendations bleeding into search results, the inability to disable shorts, the removal of the dislike button, acting like publishers despite being classified as a platform and of course the war on ad blockers. But hey at least the like button glows when someone says "hit that like button" in a video!
Ditto on the shorts, can't F'n stand them, it's the TikTok of RU-vid and they all suck and I want them blocked. I use Blocktube and it has a feature that blocks all videos under a certain time, so that helps.
Yeah same. I would have absolutely no problem paying for YT as a service in general. The problem is that they're not meeting conditions that would be critical for me to do so: - Actually pay the creators a fair share from what I'm paying the platform for watching their content. From what it seems, they get some few cents at best, IF they don't get their videos demonetized for reasons that the ads YT shows for some reason do NOT have to follow. I actually don't even know if they're taking premium viewers into account for what creators get or if they just get a "flat rate" share of premium in general. Or even anything at all. - Don't squeeze everything possible out about me just to sell that data to someone else. Either I'm PAYING you for your service and you leave my personal life alone, OR you get to try to squeeze out as much as you want and can from me, but I won't pay JACKSHIT at that point. And given what Google does "for a living", paying is basically out of the question, because there's no trust that they're NOT double dipping by me paying them AND them squeezing me out. Honestly, if those two conditions were met, I'd happily pay for YT Premium. But with the effort Google put into ruining their trustworthyness, this ain't gonna happen in this timeline.
I love when successful business owners preach about fair pricing. Overhead is one thing, but sometimes businesses go hardcore on maximizing profits at any cost. Thanks for continuing to do what you do.
This actually goes so much farther than the video buffering slower. I ran into this issue a few days ago. As a paying customer of RU-vid Premium, I still just leave adblock on as a default. A few days ago RU-vid, out of nowhere started all together started barely functioning. I'm not talking just buffering issues. The main page would load fine, but once I clicked a video, the page itself would take around a full minute to load the format and recommended video thumbnails. The video would buffer incredibly slow even on 144p, but not only that, full screening the video would take around 5 seconds, when moving my mouse over the video, the play/pause bar just wouldn't come up, clicking the video wouldn't pause the video for at least 5 seconds. Even if the pause symbol would flash, the audio would keep playing until the 5 seconds were up and it would then pause. The itself becomes completely unusable. Now as you pointed out, I had ZERO indication this was because of my adblock. Nothing pops up anywhere to tell you that so I just kept leaving the site or reloading, checking my Internet speed. It took finding one reddit post after 30 minutes over several days of searching to find someone suggesting it was an adblock thing that RU-vid was purposefully imposing. I turned off our adblock on RU-vid and it instantly functioned normally. The amount of greed RU-vid is displaying here is agregious. I agree they deserve to make money, but the thing is they ARE making money. Loads of it. They're just just trying to squeeze more out to continue the capitalist illusion of ever growing profits. To do it this way is already bs enough, but to leave everyone in the dark as to why the site isn't functioning is full blown moronic and has us second guessing our already pricey subscription that they JUST raised the price of not long ago.
I had a similar experience. I've been backing up my computer the past few days and thought that was causing the sluggishness, but then found out it was just RU-vid killing itself because of adblock. I wish they would let people know. Imagine how many boomers who's kids installed adblock on their computers are having their days ruined trying to watch this gimped youtube service on already outdated tech
Same. It's not only slow buffer (could live with that to a point) but in fact it's the entire interaction with video controls that is laggy, stuttery and barely usable. Initially, I was quick to blame my parents upper low end PC that I build few years ago and which I also use when on holiday at theirs (the PC was actually very good at media consumption until last few days). A bit of digging and surprise, disabling adblock makes this PC not obsolete anymore. I refuse to watch scam ads and will never consider not using adblocker. I will just wait till it gets solved.
Same! I noticed it with the responsiveness of the player, but especially with the comments section. Sometimes I type 5 words and then need to wait for them actually appering in the textbox. Checked all system ressources and nothing is loaded, and every other website loads in the blink of an eye.
Just to add a note to this, I've noticed the same problems. Very currently my type is lagging tragically bad. And, all the other youtube tabs in the background have crashed simultaneously. Error Code: Satus_Accss_Violation
I have the same issue and its acvtually happening right now, the typing on this comment is so laggy its making me not be able tot ype properly (as you can tell), besides that, I've noticed scrolling after using youtube for a few hours will slow down immensely, to the point I literally just close the browser and re-open. I was so confused until I saw this vid because I had just gotten a new PC that was much better than my old one that didnt have this issue. Regardless of all this fuckery, I will not let youtube win, and my adblocker will be staying on until they remove it from my PC themselves.
This is getting close to youtube doing a denial of service attack if it detects an adblock. I don't have the data compiled but I've noted that when youtube is doing it's de-buffer attack, that my overall net connection appears to slow heavily as well. Normally you'd think they would do a server connection time-out redirect to a slower server. But I don't think that's what is going on here. There is a metric ton of packet spam that occurs along with this event. Which is pushing the bounds of legality. You don't get to spam someone's connection with random shit because you don't like them using an ad-blocker. Even the detection methodology is kissing legal limitations.
I've been dealing with seemingly random denials from RU-vid for months now, but yesterday had the situation you describe where my internet speed slowed to a crawl. I had to reboot the router to get the speed back to normal. I've been through Adblock Plus which was OK for a long time, then uBlock origin which was OK until last week. Now I'm using Ghostery BUT with RU-vid checked as "trusted"!!. Strangely this works great, at least for the past couple of days.
Some happened to me. I thought I was having some issue with my desktop. Then to start reading these stories. I knew something was off when only site that was acting extremely slow was RU-vid.
The buffer was never an issue for me but the overall slowing down of the website is insane. Feels like I have dial up connection when hovering over a RU-vid video, trying to pause it or change the volume.
Yes so annoying! I find I have to restart my entire browser to have it get be back to speed but eventually Google catches back up and it takes like 5 seconds to recognize I clicked the pause button. This is with a $2000 desktop BTW.
I believe it's possible to compensate for the buffer with a browser extension. Essentially, you can just put your own buffer on top of the youtube video download to prevent the video from playing until the total media buffer is at a certain ratio. I'm working on the code for it right now. I think most people would prefer to just wait a few seconds before the video starts, rather than have intermittent delays.
@@daedalus6433 Honestly I'm not sure if uBlock O does or Enhancer for YT nailed it for me, but *something* is making my buffering take acceptable time. (Unsure if Enhancer forcing the older player to load instead of the HTML5 garbage has anything to do with it, but I use that because it stops causing huge CPU usage hogging.)
The final straw for me was when they changed the "Skip Ad" to "Next Ad"... I don't care how much buffering or freezing I experience anymore, I just changed to a different browser to stop dealing with the stupid ads
They made some changes on the content creator side of things, as well. For example, content creators don't have the option to turn off unskippable ads anymore. We can only turn off the mid-roll ads, or demonetize the video entirely. RU-vid justifies it by claiming the increased ad revenue will offset the number of people who get fed up and click away. So they're tacitly admitting this stuff annoys viewers enough to make them rage-quit. But they don't care.
I never worried too much about the ads when they were 5 seconds... What sent me looking for a way to block RU-vid ads was when I got, for the 3rd time in a week, an unskippable ad that was longer than the video I was playing. It shouldn't have been happening, but somehow I was getting ads that ran for 10+ minutes, that I couldn't skip. I wasn't necessarily looking for a way to block the ads either... Just to find out WTF was going on and fix it. Ended up finding the app that got banned and gaining not only the ability to not have 10 minutes of ads for a 5 minute video, but screen off playback (important for mowing lawns while listening to tech news) and the ability to remove all the useless crap they try to shove into the app interface - at the time, just the record button, but now also shorts and several interface items I just don't want.
"They're a legacy broadcaster. They can't help themselves. They don't know how the internet works." This made me genuinely laugh out loud and is spot on.
I've noticed that many of those news sites like to play ads before the short copy of the television show will play. The delay may be caused by a failure to connect to the ads.
fun fact: i took journalism in uni and they gave us a course on IT specifically because of this. the finals was to make a working website (that we've been working on all semester) that has a text article, photos, and a working video. the prof basically told us that yeah, this is necessary because the news media needs ways for audience to get their news in a more engaging ways through websites so they're not just seeing a wall of text, and the journalists have no idea how to make and maintain a website, and while they can hire IT people to handle that it's a lot easier if they also know the basics.
Just an FYI, it turned out to be the adblock software itself (the engine it, and many other adblockers, use) and not actually RU-vid. ...This time, anyway. It was slowing down all sites and not just YT. Might explain why, or at least lend validity to Louis thinking that this didn't make any sense from a business angle. Doesn't make any of what Louis said about this invalid. Just wanted to let others know.
Yeah I've seen others point out the same thing. It's honestly kind of impressive that everyone is SO ready to assume it's RU-vid being annoying shits. Really shows just how hostile they have managed to make themselves look.
TIP: If you have an ad blocker installed and you open a RU-vid video via an incognito window or tab, the video plays normally without ads. This basically means that RU-vid is targeting the user, not the browser.
It could also be caused by an AB test - if they enable the "feature" on e.g. 50% of devices, and you get a different ID for your browser in incognito mode, it might let you play. Or, vice versa, you could be included in the AB test of the feature only with incognito mode.
The thing that bugs me the most about the 'adblocker' war is that RU-vid *already* makes money off of us. We all knw they collect our data and sell it and use it as a product. They've done this since the start. And most of us were ok with it, as long as it's RU-vid watch videos. Then they added ads, and it was minor, but not too bad. And they were targeted and sensible, so it wasn't too bad. Then they push more, and we find out they aren't paying their content creators nearly what we thought, and they're playing politics with monetizing videos but still pushing ads on 'non-monetizable' videos, plus the BS copyright protection system that is openly and heavily abused with little real recourse, and to top it all off, their ads aren't even particularly relevant to our interests any more. They seem to be pushing ideology through their ads as well, every now and then. Yeah, I'll block that shit and deny you your money as much as I can at that point.
this is technically correct, but the amount of value they get by selling metrics and aggregated data is not that much. Google is first and foremost an ads company, the data collection is only an addon to that
While they make money off us, they've never been profitable. The point of youtube isn't to make money, it's to control what we see and hear, thus controlling how we think and act.
@@marcogenovesi8570 yeah, people are mislead about that. Sure I don't like my data sold, but companies aren't making money off me anyways so my data might as well be worthless
@@shreyasgavhalkar57 I guess RU-vid will now hide the playback/buffering timeline because showing it is a threat to their democracy. Same as the down vote button.
@@shreyasgavhalkar57 Or you could use the same combination of browser and adblocking on mobile, works for me, no need for apps. Just saying tho, not saying that those vanced or revanced is a bad choice, just trying to advocate people that you don't need ton of apps for different sites since the browser does the same thing.
I appriticate that you gave us a few seconds before your commercial at the end. Because you did this, I was more willing to support you by listing to your ad!
My first assumption was "RU-vid is just slow and buggy today. Maybe something is wrong with the servers." My next assumption was "RU-vid must be screwing with Adblock users again so I'm going to go find out what the deal is." All this achieved was pipelining users to communities that provide useful solutions like what adblockers are currently working and which ones are being triggers. Anyone searching around for a solution to the problem is just going to be led directly to adblocking communities.
Yes, but did you notice that many people have many different issues now? It is not only about removing the adblock lockout anymore so it will be harder to work out one solution in a community to solve it all
Yes it's awesome, I first started using adblockers purely because they made everything run faster because a huge amount of the scripts for ads and various invasive or useless features; not only slow down my PC but consume net bandwidth I PAID FOR! Nowadays with invasive ads being mostly for abhorrent scams and YT becoming desperate, underhanded and trixxy, I know I can seek solutions and it's worth the small amount of effort to defeat everything they try. I would have never imagined 20 years ago I'd be using developer panel to find and kill actual web scripts thanks to adblock forums, I'm still dancing on the moon from when I found how to remove in 3-4 clicks, the script that generates that infuriating in-chat emoji fountain menu they foisted on us in livestream chats lol.
@@andrew-vl7gu Sure, but now instead of just pissing on one anthill they are effectively pissing in every anthill all at once. That's going to result in a lot of pissed off ants.
Louis Rossmann explaining how buffering works made me feel 1000 years old. I remember when download speeds and servers were so slow that EVERYTHING you watched would be trapped in a buffering loop. It's amazing that there have been so many years without that being the norm.
Yeah, I remember dial-up where downloading a jpeg meant go have coffee and a snack and then hope it's done. I lived in Austin, TX back then, so that was a kick-ass place to do anything computer related. I wonder how many people here know the difference between a private vs a party phone line? Eavesdropping on neighbors phone calls was fun. Unless they did it to me. Of course they did.
Blame the lack of a content delivery network. I don't think there was anything wrong with the websites or apps, but man it's hard to shop for a stick of gum if you have to make a 350-mile round trip for it instead of picking it up at the 7-11
This has been driving me crazy over the weekend. I thought for sure there was something going on with my pc and I’m actually ashamed at myself for not thinking it had anything to do with their hate boner for ad blockers. I even have a RU-vid premium subscription that I will not be getting again when it runs out in March. So thank you Google for helping to curb my RU-vid addiction a little earlier than planned!
I've been getting this (and the video automatically lowering video quality... which for some magical reason also doesn't help the buffering at all?) for the past month, figured it was them attacking addblock, guess I was right lol
Same, took me half a day to realize after scan and everything. Then notice my brother's PC don't have it turn on for months since he rarely watch YT on his PC.
@@johnwong5317I was doing the same thing. I was running virus scans. Doing a SFC. I even scanned the drives for bad sectors. This whole time is was greedy ass RU-vid.
This even happens with the browser in-built adblockers! I wondered why my YT was slow when I had premium, then I realized my browser Opera GX had some adblocker thing in the background, and when I added youtube in the exceptions list, it instantly went back to smooth like it was a few days ago!
The funniest thing about YT's ad-block war is how much better it has allowed the ad-blockers to be in general, thanks in part to all the new users it has sent their way through the heightened awareness. Could be coincidence, but I haven't seen a prompt to disable blocking in awhile now, even from sites that were previously very quick to flag it.
@@LunaticTheCat There is a GitHub project out there that keeps uBlock updated once YT makes a change. They have pretty must lost the war at this point.
Especially if you use uBlock Origin. Because uBlock Origin is a true Open Source project, the contributors are often several steps ahead of RU-vid engineers.
Definitely replicated this. And what extra sucks is that I pay for premium, but didn't realize I hadn't turned off adblocking for YT, and was STILL getting buffering hardstops. This tells me you're still being forced the ad data despite paying into premium, and the system detects it being blocked and tells it to stop working as intended.
The whole website was lagging hard for me. Going fullscreen takes a few seconds, Scrolling down, clicking on anything. everything was slow. Turns out it's the adblockers. Once i turned it off it runs buttery smooth. I have premium as well btw
@@deadsec3554I use Firefox and the RU-vid website runs like shit for me even without Adblock. Has pushed at least 50% of my watch time off the platform already, and it wears me down more every day
Rather than making things worse for people who don't pay, it would actually help them to make things better for people who do. They initially did this to some extent, but now it seems they're hyper-focused on making things worse for people with ad blocker.
This was always the big killer for me. I've always thought I might buy premium if there was a meaningful value add, imean ffs I pay for Discord Nitro for literal memes, but everything I could get for premium is something I could get a better version of for free. Add to that that premium features have trended worse over time, why should I bother?
The premium feature of letting paying customers buffer subscribed videos ahead of time lasted what, two weeks? I now expect them to continue worsening their services.
@@Shaojeemy You should be able to change the defaults in your RU-vid settings from your app? I know I can. I don't use iPhones. That said, my phone has 4K resolution and, when it comes to videos, turning the resolution above 720p hardly matters at all, and not just for RU-vid. Your eyes can't benefit that much from such a small screen.
@@RasmusSommerNielsen when I kept getting held up with Chrome on youtube I went to Firefox just for youtube and used the uBlock blocker and the problem seems to have gone away. I suspect that Google will start targeting uBlock soon....
The last few days I noticed that youtube was doing crazy stuff. Way beyond just slow. Clicking the volume button would take about 3 seconds, sometimes the cursor would disappear, scrolling was barely working. Typing this reply would be nearly impossible. Clearing chromes cache helped for one video and then it was back. Then I saw your video and turned off ad block. Everything instantly worked fine. For me, they are doing a lot more than just slowing down buffering. It's affecting my entire browser.
Wow. I'm glad my desktop is a threadripper pro build... The browser (presumably RU-vid) is jamming about 6 of my 32 cores and 16 of my 512 GB of RAM... Lol, they're gonna have to shut you all completely down to slow my computer.
Louis, this was a bug in apps like ABP and their very cringe imitates. It was confirmed by them. With uBlock Origin there never was a problem like that and, while RU-vid isn't at their best (since years, lol) they, at least it seems like, did no intentional manipulation here. If you don't correct that in the Video, at least have the decency to add that Information to your pinned comment. Thank you.
What RU-vid doesn't understand is that we are not trying to choose between YT with ads and YT with adblocker. We are choosing between YT with adblocker and somebody else with adblocker. Edit: I watched your whole ad just to spite YT. Well played.
@@gadi70 it is flagged as unpaid/self promotion, sadly - even if it wasnt part of the content, it would still be better than most ads as he was being nice about it lol
The thing that frustrates me about this the most is that I **DO** pay for RU-vid Premium and they STILL inflicted this on me. It wasn't until I saw the reddit thread that I realized there was something I could do client-side to fix it. I respect the adblock blocker a good deal more because it was something they were explicit about and gave me the choice to take action on.
Same here....YT running like crap two days ago, check internet speed, ask Googel....is YT site down, all good. Until i saw Reditt post on the Adblock. Premium user as well....what a bulls**t move from their side....
So let's say that this really is a fine by YT to penalize those using adblock, why does Google care about subscribers with Premium where it is not relevant anyway?
Yea I thought it was my internet but that was fine, then checked down detector, but then I remembered hearing about RU-vid purposely slowing down people using as blockers but I thought no way they'd do that for yt premium users, but I stood corrected
If you go to a coffee shop and get slow service, you aren't going to think "Oh, I should tip them more!" you're just going to go to another place next time you want a coffee.
Louis, I think that YT know exactly what the consequences of their actions are. They want to the people that block ads to leave the site, but without saying this out loud cause it may cause too much negative sentiment in the public space or even a backlash.
Lower usage leads to less ad revenue, so that's not what they want... they want money. They're trying to annoy you sufficiently to cause you to fork over a monthly payment, but not so much that you leave the site.
5:40 While the buffer of old RU-vid was awful, you could pause the video and it would eventually buffer to 100% of the video, allowing to play while it was around 75% and have it play seamlessly almost every time.
Not best way, taking in account there are 10h+ videos that exist, or whole 1.5 hour films. Buffer will take quite a bit of space and it must be kept somewhere
I have never and will never buy something that has been intrusively advertised to me. Infact, I have previously wanted something an ad kept trying to push on me, and just changed my mind and didn't buy it because ads just piss me off that much. I'm using RU-vid less and less these days.
RU-vid is creating the perfect circumstances to make people think "RU-vid is broken, I'll watch Netflix instead or get a Nebula subscription so I can see good RU-vid creator's stuff there."
Yeah every time my Adblock fails and I get blocked, or RU-vid is frustratingly slow, I open Nebula. Gets me to use my Nebula sub more often! Thing is, I don’t mind paying for Nebula even when I don’t use it because I know the subscription money goes directly to the people who actually make the content I like instead of a bunch of already-rich suits…
you think adblock users on youtube that refuse to pay for premium are also the same people willing to pay for netflix or nebula? LOL. those people aren't paying anyone for anything.
Same here, they think we're that addicted where we will just accept the ads, nope. I've seen RU-vid without an ad blocker and it's horrible. I gave up cable TV in the early 00s because of ads, I'll just download everything and watch movies ad free like the old days.
Pretty much. When RU-vid started pestering me with anti-adblock stuff and I hadn't figured that I needed to manually refresh filters to fix it, I unsubbed a bunch of stuff to reduce the number of things I may be tempted to click on or open in a private browser window where adblock still worked.
@@neoasura Same here also, get all my tv and movies ad free and can watch when I want. I never understood how cable cost money yet still saw ads, ditched them 30 years ago. Wasn't the whole point of paying for TV to get rid of ads? Nope, they just lie to everyone that the cost is so high, they have to get revenue from ads or your cable bill will triple. I'm still waiting for Internet providers to start placing ads themselves.
What im doing is to upload videos from RU-vid to telegram with a bot and watch them whenever im traveling.The only downside is that it cant download anything that last 30+ mins but I think you can pay for that limiter to be removed
@@Koda.R that sounds like a nice solution for when I'm traveling. Would you mind telling me how you do it? (Not a software developer) so hopefully relatively straight forward).
When people don't know why this is happening they begin to think youtube is trash. They are harming their own brand. I have adblocker but also youtube premium! RU-vid was pulling this crap on me with PREMIUM.
Just yesterday I whitelisted youtube in Adblock. I hadn't done this yet because i also have premium so I never thought about it. But for the past week or so youtube has started getting extremely slow. Not just slow buffering videos, but loading the pages, and trying to type a comment. Trying to type out one sentence would be so slow i would have to stop and wait for my text to catch up for like 7 seconds. My computer is pretty good. Definitely good enough for that this shouldn't be an issue (and never was before). I'm still not 100% sure adblock was the cause. The only other extension I have is malwarebytes browser guard which might be doing it. Or it might be something not related to an extension, but so far since whitelisting youtube it has been performing just fine.
It’s definitely an issue and RU-vid is up to something. RU-vid all of a sudden feels absolutely horrible over the past week for me… videos take noticeably longer to buffer/load and the website is just unresponsive. It feels like my computer has a memory leak, but only within RU-vid.
watching streams on my older laptop consumes half of my ram and every character that I type in the chat has massive 5-second delay, even refreshing doesn't help, it's incredible
Every place that I've installed an ad blocker, the PC user has been amazed of how fast the internet had become. And I do the same thing, if your video doesn't load on whatever website, I don't go back. NBC ads are terribly implemented anyways and the video being broken is a result of the ad not being able to run. When you click play, you are playing the ad and then the video.
I don't go back to sites that won't let me use an adblocker, I'm already at their site trying to buy something or providing their site with some traffic, why should I watch a ton of crappy ads?
Even without the ad blockers. Most sites suck at loading ads. They make the decision of what ad after play has been selected. In the best cases it causes several round trips before getting the first frame of the ad. Then that has to buffer a bit before playing. If it is a short ad, a lot of times it won't start playing unless 100% is buffered. If more than one ad, repeat. Lastly, the video, the reason you are on the page only starts buffering after all the ads have finished playing. Oh and due to poor handling of those ads, it is far more likely there will be an error. Now it needs to try again and take longer. Or, it might just lock up and require a page reload.
That's what I have done... since RU-vid decided to SCAN my computer, illegally for blocking software, I have moved on and rarely use RU-vid as a learning platform anymore... I only used RU-vid as a learning platform. Thank you for your value Louis!
@@theinfidel4979 He may be watching on a rooted android phone with xposed framework installed, at which case he would not ever see a single youtube ad.
@@theinfidel4979 Because rarely does not mean never........ Notice how the words are spelled different? Yeah, that's because they're different words...
Update about some stuff that came out recently: It happened to be a few specific adblockers that were at fault due to a bug, not RU-vid. ...This time. Admittedly I too thought it was RU-vid as their "reputation" precedes them.
@@weseehowcommiegoogleis3770 You could look into it for yourself rather than assume. Check out the article at Android Authority titled "Google says RU-vid's latest slowdown isn't linked to ad blockers (Updated: AdBlock statement)". It said that Eyeo, the one behind Adblock and Adblock Plus, noted the bug affected RU-vid and other websites and it has been fixed in ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1.
@@weseehowcommiegoogleis3770 RU-vid seems to keep blocking my comment. But oh look, PkGam was right. Next time do some research before blindly calling someone a liar.
It's not at all like they are implying, that it only affects your video playback and page content you are on. They are literally slowing your PC to a crawl when you use an adblocker with Chrome on RU-vid. Report them to your local consumer affairs and with any luck they will bring it before the EU.
It turned out it was actually the adblock software and I was wrong in my assumption. It shows how little faith people have in Google and RU-vid when they instinctively don't belive a word of what they say.
YT's fight is a sad one. It would almost certainly cost them less time, and less resources, simply to address the most egregious problems -- scams, mature content, phishing -- than it would to continue this war on adblock. I'm not saying those are *easy* to deal with, I don't know the full extent of what filters or moderation would need to be put in place, but they would be *better* than them actively trying to worsen these issues, as they are now. Now, them fixing it won't make the thousands, millions of people that have picked up an adblock, *stop* using that adblock, but it will likely mean that less people feel like it is a necessary thing for online security. They do not want their users to be safe. They do not want their users to have a good experience.
>They do not want their users to be safe. They do not want their users to have a good experience. You could say the same thing about almost any smartphone interface, really. The only thing that's easy is to make calls, text or make transactions (the first one not working well, and the latter being very telling).
But get this: scams depend on advertising, and thus will pay multitudes more than legitimate ads. Cracking down on scams will directly hurt their wallets, whereas this only indirectly hurts their wallets. Follow the money.
Instead of giving customers an incentive to invest in RU-vid by offering an ever-expanding menu of good options, they instead give customers an incentive to never invest in YT by punishing them for not investing in YT for a mediocre menu of weak options.
Love your work Louis, but this was a premature call. FYI it turned out that the slow loading/not loading was part of Adblockers newest update. Had nothing to do with RU-vid.
To add to this calamity I saw an article where a reddit user had found out that watching RU-vid videos with an ad blocker active would consistently increase CPU usage by 17% on average. Not enough to seriously affect a computer, but enough to cause issues on older/lower end hardware. They were going back and forth a bit about whether it was intentional or a screw up, since it would affect YT premium members who had an active ad blocker as well. With that said I noticed this as well, since I'm on vacation and only have my decade old laptop for any web surfing I want to do, and watching YT videos would spike CPU usage enough to cause constant stuttering. And like Louis talked about, my first thought was that I had borked something, since I had recently moved from my very outdated Windows 7 install to Linux. My next thought was that Linux was somehow poorly optimized for YT playback or that I was missing an update or a codec or something, which led to hours of trawling various forums and trying all possible solutions. The possibility that the website I was on might be shafting me wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years, and it appears I'm not alone. Like Louis mentioned I'm not sure this will turn out the way YT think it will. Time will tell, I guess.
I've had high gpu usage going up to 100%, some dropped frames, and ~45w of power instead of ~15w. Rebooting brings it back to normal but after a couple of hours it happens again
This isn’t RU-vid’s doing, though. AdBlock’s extension engine had a performance regression (see issue #532 on their GitLab repo), which has since been fixed (see issue #536).
You know what? You're right! I have adblock on and I noticed it takes an unusually long time to load up youtube videos that I'm watching from one youtube video to another and not just that but loading up the comments section and typing up this comment too. It's slowing down and it takes a while. I thought it was just my laptop having problems. For an experiment: Just go to incognito mode. Open up the incognito tab and compare your RU-vid activity from the window with adblock on versus the incognito window with no adblock on it. The difference is very surprising! It really shows how RU-vid is dying and that it's desperate to force viewers to watch ads for revenue. If I go onto alt-tech websites this doesn't happen.
The biggest problem with youtube's "anti-ad" policy is they incorrectly target programs that are not anti-ad programs. For example, I have a program that counts the number of ads I see daily. I see hundreds of ads daily. RU-vid doesn't like this program. I've been trained to auto ignore ads. I honestly couldn't tell you any of the last 100 ads I've seen. (except for the one you played at the end of the video)
@@sbalogh53 147 ads blocked and I've only watched 8 videos. And as of finishing writing this comment the count is at 153. This is why I am using an ad block saves a lot on my mobile data plan.
I noticed the issue a few days ago and I originally thought RU-vid was just having service issues, but then it kept happening and I knew RU-vid has always been fighting against adblock so I tried disabling adblock to find out if that was the problem. Turned out it was the reason every single page was slow, not just the buffering. I didn't realize how annoying youtube ads have become until now, with them inline with video recommendations. RU-vid is probably the only website I'd make this assumption about.
I'd noticed this issue with RU-vid, and I've changed adblockers to a different extension that works. You've mentioned it before, but making the user experience worse for the user is a terrible incentive to make someone want to give you their money. Like you, I am an adult and I pay for things I find worthwhile. I am a patreon member for a multitude of creators, I pay for Nebula and I have in the past paid for other streaming services (until they started demanding more money for poorer service). I don't mind paying when I know my money goes to supporting creators. Making a free experience worse will not coerce money out of me. I'll find other platforms and I'll touch grass (highly recommended). If you want my money, offer me a better experience than purposely making your platform more annoying. If I hadn't had an incling that it probably had to do with the adblockers, and subsequently changed mine, I would have stopped using RU-vid. If the site keeps updating to exclude more and more adblockers and continuously makes the site more annoying to be on, I'll stop using it all together.
This is also the exact reason I refuse to subscribe to Spotify. Crippling the mobile experience and demanding my money is exactly how you don't get my money.
I have noticed issues with uBlock Origin that lasted for roughly half a day lately. Once it was that I had to click a YT video twice before it started playing and once where I couldn't scroll down. But other than that I haven't had any issues. On the topic of streaming services: When pirate streaming services offer a better collection and user experience than the paid ones, then there's something seriously wrong. I'm so glad that downloading pirated content for your own consuption is legal in Switzerland. Uploading is illegal however. I mean you already PAY a tax for copying copyright stuff with each writable data storage you buy (at least in Switzerland, I guess it's the same everywhere else).
@ironeleven yes exactly the unpaid mobile version of spotify is awful so I stopped using it all together. I tried to talk to to my friends about it and they just said "the paid experience is fine" but I'm not going to give spotify money for terrible business practices (you can't even loop songs or have it continue to play when you switch tabs on mobile which are both features soundcloud gives for free)
I honestly considered getting youtube premium before they started rallying against adblockers, but at this point I've decided to not ever give RU-vid a single cent simply because of how awfully they're handling it. "defeating" your customers won't make them want to pay you money. I'd stop using the site all together rather than give up. And they almost got me to subscribe lol, fkn idiots.
Thank you for that video, i knew something must have been wrong, although it was different for me. I use chrome, and one day youtube tab started using wayy to much RAM (which i could detect with chrome's task manager). At first i thought the tab was just old (too much history that it needed to use memory for), and i tried reloading the page, but only when i changed adblock for a different one did it stop
This video beautifully highlights a potent issue that most of us have been experiencing on RU-vid. The undermining of Adblock function and the consequent disruptions indeed create a frustrating experience. Valid points raised, let's hope for fair practices and a better internet experience moving forward.
Basically every time they've updated to block ad block I just avoid YT in all for that day until I can use them again. Force me to have to watch or sit through ads. No thanks.
What this video instead beautifully highlights is the potent issue, that we currently are way too quick to judge and blame and are taking unverified info at face value. RU-vid was never at fault here, but rather a combination of a faulty update to adblock, the redditor even using multiple adblockers (which made it even worse) and the news just jumping on the bandwagon to blame RU-vid, because it generates clicks. Sadly, Louis fell for it, too.
@@Sebaran_ .... while watching this video with 2 AdBlockers active, I was constantly getting about 90-98 seconds buffering. No slowdown at all. (Firefox browser with AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin)
In my country, we call that "creating difficulties to sell amenities". Louis is spot on: although there is sometimes some return for a short time when you do that, in the long run good services / products sell better.
In my country (greetings from Germany, João:) ), spying on my computer (with or without any consent) is a criminal act. RU-vid does this. It is not their business to check out, evaluate (and PUNISH) what software I installed on MY PROPERTY! I guess there is a billion dollar fine (the next one) incoming for google?!:)))
@@dieSpinnt The terms clearly state that RU-vid and all content served to youtube in europe is based in Dublin, Ireland - that is your service provider in Germany. If German law attempts to find irregularities in how this product handles conduct then it's up to Google's discretion to wall off their content to make the terms and jurisdiction a legal prerequisite. But even to a non logged in user, as far as I know, for years now a pop-up has been alerting of the terms and that usage of the platform requires agreement. So politicians that cite this and that privacy law would need to test the enforcement on international courts first even before any penalty would be issued to Google and in such a case they may decide to limit the usage of their platform through Geofencing just like Facebook has done in the past and then force a change in law before reverting the ban.
I got notice that if I didn't disable my Ad blocker, RU-vid would block me from watching videos. So.....I hit skip as soon as it's available, and for the long, "non-skippable" ads, I turn off the sound. RU-vid, I'M NOT WATCHING THE ADS!!!
I think the conclusion RU-vid intended for them to draw is: "my (dodgy?) third party ad-blocker is slowing down my browser". I have noticed it's not just limited to buffering, typed-text seems to lag occasionally, on RU-vid only. This is an especially goofy addition beause my internet is pretty quick, feels like a throwback to early noughties broadband.
I noticed last night RU-vid (using Firefox with adblocker) was loading like crap. I don’t just mean the player I mean the entire site. It was almost laggy, when I clicked pause it would take seconds to pause, scrubbing is almost impossible, and some videos looked like they were running at 4 fps. I have a 12900k and a 4090 with 64gb of ram it’s not a hardware issue and I opened a new tab and other websites were responsive. Googled and found other users with the same issue and suggested disabling ad block (I pay for premium anyway I know it’s overpriced) so I disable ad block and reload the webpage…. RU-vid as a whole is now responsive and the player isn’t lagging and acting slow. So yeah RU-vid is clearly doing something
Something was going on last night, I also have the same specs as you, 64gb 4090 and 12900k, the exact specs, even a 100mb connection, and I had to reset my router thinking there was an issue with my internet.
And yet you are still paying for premium. You are like the people who still pay for disney plus and use it to babysit their kids even though we know the company is run by and full of pedophiles.
Even if you knew (from being told) that this problem only exists with adblock, it's still more convenient than sitting through tons of ads. So even then, this doesn't make sense.
Except it isn't only affecting those who use adblock software. It is affecting *EVERYONE*. I use the app in my phone or the app on my Switch. The quality of service has dropped like a stone through the sky.
Ah yes, as an old, I remember Ye Olden Days of RU-vid, when it had the 5 star video rating system, and you could directly respond to a video with your own video, and Macromedia/Adobe Flash Player enabled you to view non-HD videos that were limited to 10 minutes in length. Good times.
It never ceases to amaze me how these companies have people making the worst business decisions they possibly can, and then have the audacity to blame their customers for it. These people do not understand business, it's that simple.
Yes, I'm sure your alternative model of "letting people take your service without paying for it" is much savvier than anything these MBAs can come up with. Why don't they understand that it's their fault you steal from them? You referring to yourself as a "customer" is pretty funny though.
@@Pushing_Pixels it's not that simple though. They made their ads abnoxiously long, occuring too often, allowed to advertise literal scams and did not give users any options to opt out of seeing certain ads. They did all that in the first place. If they were more selective in what kinds of ads they allow and gave users an option to opt out of seeing some of them, it would not be that bad. There were SO MANY times I wanted to ban the ad about the war in Ukraine, and it just kept showing to me. So I installed an ad block in the end. Because I could not handle seeing stuff that grim when I'm trying to have a good time. If they gave me an option to opt out of that particular advertiser, I would probably still watch RU-vid without an adblock.
@@Pushing_Pixels If I could just interrupt your executive boot-licking session for a second to point out that the content creators will sorely miss the likes and clicks...and good luck to youtbue getting by without them. Ok...you can go back to it now...i'm sure the executives at youtube have trodden in something by now that you're dying to get your tongue around.
@@Pushing_Pixels engagement, likes, clicks, patreon, a ton of youtubers would disappear if adblock users disappeared. Ads or not, youtubers need an audience to bother making videos at all. And youtube has nothing without all these creators making videos for essentially free. If youtube ever ends up actually winning the war against adblock, there will immediately pop up alternative hosting sites and a huge crowd will disappear. That's not a win for google at all.
@@Pushing_Pixels When the ads are full of Hostile Scams, links to Channels with stolen content from real creators to support scams, and pornography games on a site that children have access too. It's not a "Good Ad space". RU-vid makes plenty of money through LEGITIMATE ads. They then decided to get into politics and ideology, and banned a large majority of businesses who would pay them to post real ads. So instead it's become full of chinese gacha games, hentai, and scams, and puts unskippable ads, 5 times in a 2 minute video. Since you are speaking about stealing. We pay for data. Each video we play or download, costs us Data. Which costs us money. So everytime RU-vid fires up unskippable ads, or force plays a video or ad while you are scrolling, they are stealing your Data stream, and thus money from you. Works both ways champ.
Just to bring some more validity to this, I noticed that recently ADs would start loading a little bit and then get cut off by AD blocker. Once this started happening the slowdowns began. I've also noticed the entire site seems to run like crap. As I am typing this comment the text wont show up until like 10 seconds after I typed this. it all started a few days ago and goes away when I remove AD blocker. I think the funny thing about this is that I don't actually use AD blocker for RU-vid. I use it on other websites with annoying and intrusive ADs. RU-vid was just a side effect. Now I am deffinitely not removing AD blocker from RU-vid and I am just going to watch videos one at a time. They seem to work somewhat better that way.
Funny enough disabling the ad blocker doesnt fix the slow text speed, slow video player UI but it does load the ads I mean video quicker. The other issues just seem to be because im not using chrome
Or switch to another chromium based browser that has no ties to google. Such as thorium or Vivaldi (: no ads and no slowdowns. I have noticed my entire browsing experience being slower not just RU-vid
If some ads start and then get cut off you are using an outdated adblocker. Just switch to ublock origin and purge/update it regularly. There are hundreds of devs working round the clock on this - if a website comes up with new anti adblock or adblock detecting methods their lists will patch it out within minutes after being reported
This was so bad for me. Before I did some digging around to find out that it was YT's fault I almost reinstalled my entire OS because of it, not only was it making YT slow for me but any other tab that I had open as well, I was dumbfounded, taught I got a virus or corrupted systems files, did uninstall and then reinstalls of numerous programs, nothing worked, only to then find out from reddit after tirelessly searching for a solution that youtube was causing the problem. It was so bad at times my system temps were spiking really high and my fans were going crazy, I swear youtube probably almost had a massive lawsuit on their hands if it continued for any longer and people systems got damaged.
You are completely correct. People will assume it is RU-vid/Browser/ISP that is the issue. I believed this until yesterday until I saw a headline of a news article stating that RU-vid is throttling users who use ad blockers. Rather than pay RU-vid money for premium, I went and downloaded an ad blocker that is harder for RU-vid/websites to detect. Problem solved, as RU-vid now believes I don't have an ad blocker enabled. The only problem about users thinking RU-vid is the issue and going elsewhere, is that there is really nowhere else to go that measures up. Sure, there are other video websites, but I don't really think any of them compare. If I'm wrong, please let me know. I'd be interested in checking them out.
@@Metalders uBlock Origin works beautifully for me in Firefox. Adblock Plus works in Chrome but video ads will sometimes flash up for half a second before they're removed.
@@Metalders I'm using AdBlock Plus, and haven't had any issues so far. No anti-adblocker popups, and I haven't noticed any significant change in performance.
There's another issue with RU-vid you may not be aware of, I discovered it myself a few years ago, and it's still there. Their videos always default to auto mode for resolution, but watch how slow the buffer fills. Now switch it to a specific resolution, even the same one it was already showing, and watch what happens to the buffer. It suddenly jumps to warp speed and loads much more quickly, up to the buffering limit, which is usually a couple minutes out but if you want to you can keep skipping the video ahead and forcing the buffer to go further, it's still caps out at about 14 minutes. Sometimes the buffer will disappear and refill when you do this, it was switching resolution without even changing the setting so you didn't know what happened, and had to reload. I think what's happening is that their tool which checks your bandwidth slows down the buffer as it's checking constantly, setting a specific resolution disables the tool. I sent a feedback about it long ago, but they likely never even read it.
That is not an issue. It's bandwidth management. Defaulting to Auto and not buffering too much of the video allows RU-vid to incur lower egress bandwidth on their servers, at the scale RU-vid is at today they do VOD very well because of things like this. Your video loads instantly even on less than ideal connections because of this. It takes the viewport of the browser in mind when determining the Auto resolution as well - with the assumption that a basic user needs "just enough quality" for the random video they've clicked on. If the user requests higher quality then it rebuffers the video as you describe.
@@VarianteMobile It goes to auto on every video change even after you set it. I've built my own PCs and networks since the 90s and used to work on fiber networks, I know how the tech works and I know how to troubleshoot. The only midwit here... is you. But have a nice day, kid
@@shaawin you obviously didn't read all of what I said. Try again and don't assume the person you're talking to knows less about the tech than you do... there's a chance they know more than you ever will. Have a nice day. 😎
The moment I got adblock It was a point of no return Nothing is going to convince me to turn it off If youtube makes my experience worse, I simply stop using it (I haven't faced this issue, but if I do, I sure as hell ain't turning off adblock, and get inappropriate/scam ads shoved in my face)
yea I am at the point I want to get ad blocker on my phone but have no clue how. the youtube app with ads is getting the point I don't want to watch on the app.
RU-vid has a monopoly on this type of content, so good luck with that. Where are you going to watch your videos on? Dailymotion, tiktok, X? Be real lmao. RU-vid can afford to mess around because there is no alternative.
Disabled ad block and I noticed that now RU-vid punishes the creators by no playing any commercial on the videos I watch, but they show some commercials on the main page Just found it interesting
I had guessed this was their play. That being said you're 100% right that this is a... strange move. You can't really influence behavior if you don't tell people what you're doing.
@@q.daniel7704They hate people who don’t financially support them, but consume resources as if they do. It’s actually quite clever, because the AdBlockers provide no income for RU-vid, so they have no incentive to provide them a superior service. The days of having X number of people on a platform as a metric are long behind us, what matters is how many eyes see ads. In other words, using AdBlockers makes you a non-entity. Demanding that RU-vid expend the same resources on your experience as a “paying” customer is quite the hubris.
You know what i hate more? Buffers and Caching. If you leave a video paused, it will stop buffering instead of buffering till the end. And if you somehow manage to get it to buffer till the end in the background, if you decide to start playing it from the beginning it will clear everything and start buffering again.
The funniest thing is that I tried RU-vid premium for one month and it was worse experience than using adblocker. I constantly had to change video quality, videos not buffering or downloading slowly. Canceling subscription wasn’t that easy as on the other websites. Frustrating. I hate it that even when you pay you have shitty experience. It was first and last time with RU-vid premium. Ads full of scams etc. I consider quitting RU-vid completely. It getting worse and worse.
I would highly recommend getting a pre-paid non-google play card for your subscriptions. When they start making it impossible to cancel, just stop putting $$ on the card.
hope this gets updated so that it shows that it was AdBlock's fault in the end and not you tube. I get people have many reasons to hate YT, but at least keep the facts straight.
I actually loved RU-vid back before Google bought them. I remember being able to open 50 tabs to watch 50 episodes of dragon Ball, waited for them all to buffer, and then I was able to go to a location that was offline, and be able to watch the buffered videos. It was peak RU-vid
