Youtube's new anti adblock war means nuking quality?

[venomtail]

Noticed today that from time to time my YT looks like it's straight out of Roblox or one of those community servers where people watch a video all together, bitrate being really low and super blocky. Tried on a non adblock brower, yep! All the videos are pristine quality.

 

Haven't noticed this before and not seeing too many results on search engines about this. Is this something new YT is trying? Or is this some bug that just so happened to appear today?

Video I recorded for reference, both clips inside YT have been set to 1080p, well "standard" unless I want to pay for a better bitrate. Or is this how they're enforcing the new bitrate premium? This bad quality is inconsistent. Channels from millions of subs to less than 10 range have this sort of quality like on a dice roll.

 

 

 

[BoomerDutch]

Its possible you can try changing agent if that doesn't work then try Freetube.

And watch videos directly.

 

And its kinda old news since Firefox thing slowed down on YouTube.

[venomtail]

6 hours ago, BoomerDutch said:

Its possible you can try changing agent if that doesn't work then try Freetube.

And watch videos directly.

 

And its kinda old news since Firefox thing slowed down on YouTube.

Pretty sure the news about slowdown was actually a bug in one of the popular adblocks, a false red flag. I wonder how this will evolve.

[BoomerDutch]

45 minutes ago, venomtail said:

Pretty sure the news about slowdown was actually a bug in one of the popular adblocks, a false red flag. I wonder how this will evolve.

No if you install Firefox it still slow load. chrome loads faster because its same company so it has better patches and fixes.

[venomtail]

1 minute ago, BoomerDutch said:

No if you install Firefox it still slow load. chrome loads faster because its same company so it has better patches and fixes.

I am on Firefox. Between yesterday trying the two I didn't notice too big of a difference in load times. They were the same for me. Maybe there's technically there is but I don't feel it anymore.

[BoomerDutch]

7 hours ago, venomtail said:

I am on Firefox. Between yesterday trying the two I didn't notice too big of a difference in load times. They were the same for me. Maybe there's technically there is but I don't feel it anymore.

That's fair, honestly I've forgotten how web youtube looked for while it has changed lots though.

 

Might be not for everyone but I'm simply using Freetube on any desktops except phones/tablet. I'd use app for it. (Yes with ads but I'm so used to it and i never remember what ad was before.)

 

altho i hate it so much that X marker is same as install button makes me so wary of it.

and that makes me hate ads even more deeply than ever.

[Mark Kaine]

On 3/7/2024 at 5:39 PM, BoomerDutch said:

That's fair, honestly I've forgotten how web youtube looked for while it has changed lots though.

 

Might be not for everyone but I'm simply using Freetube on any desktops except phones/tablet. I'd use app for it. (Yes with ads but I'm so used to it and i never remember what ad was before.)

 

altho i hate it so much that X marker is same as install button makes me so wary of it.

and that makes me hate ads even more deeply than ever.

wait, let me get it straight... you're using an app that shows you ads,  instead of using a browser that doesn't show you ads (with extensions)? 

[BoomerDutch]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

wait, let me get it straight... you're using an app that shows you ads,  instead of using a browser that doesn't show you ads (with extensions)? 

Yes on andriod because its optimised and made for it and works best without issues well except ads tho.

Oh i wasn't clear enough.

I meant YouTube app.

 

On desktop I'd using freetube it has no ads and sponsors block so...

Oh yeah it uses local subscriptions without google.

[venomtail]

2 hours ago, BoomerDutch said:

Yes on andriod because its optimised and made for it and works best without issues well except ads tho.

Oh i wasn't clear enough.

I meant YouTube app.

 

On desktop I'd using freetube it has no ads and sponsors block so...

Oh yeah it uses local subscriptions without google.

Just use the high seas youtube on android.

[venomtail]

Dunno what's happened but the YT messing around has devolved into standart slowing down my video loading speed as well as random skips. Quality is back and is always constant now. However, pages now take a minute to load in a page whilst does it instantly on Chrome and now has this weird 5-10 skip it does every now and again, mostly when starting or resuming a video. Also layout is broken. In places where ads would be instead of a video, I just have a nothing, an empty square.

I ain't going back to Chrome. I'll just figure out how to find a better adblock.