Firefox users are reporting an ‘artificial’ load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it’s part of a plan to make people who use adblockers “experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”
The degree in which corporations engage in psychological warfare against customers is astounding. Not surprising, just outrageous. Don’t want notifications on? We’re going to ask you to turn on notifications in the the program every single day until you do it. Don’t want to watch ads because our infinite greed has destroyed what used to be a good platform with a reasonable number of ads before we bought it? Then we’ll make the experience less pleasant until you comply. They already make multiple parts of YouTube disagree with ad blockers on purpose to break the sites features. Not that I use anything other than NewPipe and Piped anymore anyway. I’m just sick of shitty corporations acting like we’re children who can be punished.
We are in a war indeed.
I think it’s a new trend with CEOs and investors. They want infinite growth so the strategy is aquire / create, grow, squeeze, throw away, while creating new products to migrate fed up customers. Rinse and repeat.
Investors goal: maximize ROI this year.
CEO goal: infinite growth and/or increase share price to keep funds flowing.
I believe the current economic behavior isn’t sustainable. Some day things will go south.
The idea that the only real duty of corporate leadership is to drive shareholder profit is apocalyptically naive and ultimately nihilistic, and it has been since the words dribbled from Milton Friedman into the NYT magazine back in 1970.
short term. The problem is driving short term profit. In the short term, you profit by abusing your customers. If you considered long term profit, you need to also consider customer satisfaction
No, I stand by what I said.
If you build something well, it will sell itself. You won’t need financial gymnastics to make your company or the product look good.
Stupid financial tactics like stock buybacks (which, as a result of how the stock market works, have a direct positive impact on stock price) should be illegal.
The problem is the focus on profit over and above the focus on literally anything else. That’s what modern corporate leadership has come to understand as the true meaning behind Friedman’s words. And it’s killing our society, our environment, and in many cases, the companies themselves (because the tactics are obviously unsustainable).
5 seconds of silence vs 30+ seconds of ads. Tough choice Google, tough choice.
“They’re the same picture.”
Also, that does not explain why:
- Chrome users who use an adblocker don’t get the issue
- Firefox users who do not use an adblocker get the issue
- FIrefox users who use an adblocker, but change User Agent to Chrome, don’t get the issue
Now, if only we knew who made Chrome and YouTube… The mind boggles.
The last scenario is clearly a breach of anti-trust laws. It is time for alphabet to be broken up. Their monopoly is way worse than AT&T every was.
Alphabet’s monopoly is bad, make no mistake.
But they aren’t controlling all electronic means of communication for 90% of the continental United States, as AT&T did in the ma’ bell and pa’ bell days.
Uh… Gmail, Ad sense, search?
They’ve got like a dozen duopolies going on, they have far more control and ability to leverage it than Bell ever did
I know several websites consider firefox’s built-in privacy settings an adblocker in certain configurations. I get notices on many sites and use no adblocker. Not sure if it’s the case here.
Given that Google’s been talking about switching Chrome to a new plugin format that would limit the ability of adblockers to function on Chrome, and given that Google owns Youtube and profits from the ads Youtube displays…
Nope, I’m not connecting the dots. Not sure why Google would be wanting people switch from Firefox to Chrome at this time.
What really pisses me off is that mv3 is becoming a standard that Vivaldi, Firefox, Opera, Edge, etc. will use.
Mind you that Firefox will adjust it to be able to fully support ad blocker.
Freetube, Newpipe, Indivious. All great.
I’m nervous about how long it’ll be until those stop working
That might be hard unless they start requiring logins.
Twitter has already moved in that direction.
Bro my position is very clear. I’d rather forget about YouTube entirely than let ads back into my life
While I think Google is a monster that needs to be destroyed, it’s silly to me that your two options are either block ads or leave. The third option would be pay for the service. If your only problem is the ads and not the tracking (which probably isn’t true, but it’s the only complaint you made in the comment), then paying for it is a valid solution. It shouldn’t be controversial to say video hosting costs money to run, which obviously includes YouTube. So giving it out for free is simply not a realistic option. You’re free to leave, but you won’t have anywhere else to go that meets the “free and no ads” requirement. If you realistically don’t want ads, you will have to pay. And if you’re fine with paying, YouTube is currently the platform with the most content to offer.
Honestly, I’m thankful paying is an option. I wish Google would offer a paid package overall to stop the tracking/data collection. I would literally just give them my money for actual privacy with their services.
I would pay for the service if it weren’t an absolutely ridiculous price.
$14 a month is bonkers.
I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.
I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.
There you have it. If the cost of the service is not worth it, then users won’t buy it. Either enough users will pay for it that the service will stay as it is for the price it is, they will decrease the cost of the service, or improve the service they are offering. Or, given Google’s track record, just kill of the service entirely.
I will also point out that many users pay for Spotify for $11 USD a month. YouTube premium includes YT Music, which is a direct competitor to Spotify. So for users who pay for Spotify, it would be virtually $3 for ad-free YouTube. Of course this doesn’t work if you don’t pay for a music streaming service, but as far as services go it certainly isn’t unreasonably priced. Sure, it may be unfair that they don’t offer just a YT ad-free package, perhaps with all this backlash they will. Or perhaps not. It’s Google, they’ll do whatever they fuck they want.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17tm9rp/comment/k9i62zu/ for a working fix
For those that don’t want to click on a reddit link:
Credit to u/paintboth1234
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)For those that had no clue where to put this:
Click on uBO icon > ⚙ Dashboard button > Add the filter(s) in “My filters” pane > ✓ Apply changes > Open new tab and test again.
5 second ad delay in blessed silence
5 seconds of someone screaming into my ear “BUY! BUY! BUY!”
Oh, no! Better disable my ad blocker quick!
