YouTube did not slow down adblock users. Adblock devs admit to problem

https://www.neowin.net/news/adblock-google-did-not-slow-down-and-lag-youtube-performance-with-ad-blocker-on/

by TechSquidTV • 3 years ago

72 39 3 years ago

noir_lord2• 3 years ago

Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity{1}
{1} with the corollary "don't rule out malice"

(Note: not saying adblock devs are stupid, bugs happen).

An interesting example of how little faith people have in Google as an organisation is that so many people jumped to the worst interpretation of what was happening.

Apparently a lot of people now give zero benefit of the doubt when it comes to Google and that's a long term problem for them.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

I don’t think that people being sceptic about $1.8T corporation that controls large part of internet and will fire large part of its workforce to make numbers look better is necessarily a problem.

redserk• 3 years ago

Being skeptical is good.

Jumping to conclusions because it validates feelings without any care to validate the facts is not.

zamadatix• 3 years ago

1% of 1% of their monthly users taking the worst interpretation and running with it is hundreds of thousands of people. I think it just particularly happens to be the doubters are comprised primarily of us tech focused population so we see it strongly. How much of a problem it is I'm not as sure. Does the average consumer (not the people on HN or the ones we hang out with) actually have a particularly weaker view of Google than they did e.g. 10-15 years ago or is it just us techies who used to consider them the greatest thing since sliced bread and now often see them as an enemy? One is disappointing for us, the other is a long term problem for Google.

noir_lord2• 3 years ago

I'd argue that widespread distrust amongst "techies" is a bigger problem than it might otherwise appear because of how disproportionate an influence we have both at work and with people who know and trust our opinion.

It's not one big cut but it's a death by a thousand cuts situation, I've never owned an iphone (beyond test devices issued by work) but it's likely my next device will be an iphone and I've been Android all the way back to the HTC Droid, when people ask me for a recommendation these days for their next phone I say iphone, that's three direct sales for Apple I can account for (parents and family) and 3 lost sales for Android/Google.

TechSquidTV3• 3 years ago

The absolute distain for YouTube has bothered me for a long time as a YouTube creator of many years myself. The platform is the most fair by far to creators and viewers. Amazing how little hate TikTok gets.

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

Youtube gets hate literally because they have tolerated ad-block for so many years. People are pissed that YouTube is getting sick of serving them free content.

rightbyte• 3 years ago

I don't think TikTok and Instagram got that many users on HN compared to YT?

reaperman• 3 years ago

*disdain [0][1] (perhaps unless you're writing historical fiction or fantasy)

0: https://grammarist.com/spelling/disdain-or-distain/

1: The only known use of the noun distain is in the late 1500s. OED's only evidence for distain is from 1581, in the writing of Barnaby Rich, soldier and author. It is also recorded as a verb from the Middle English period (1150—1500).

voiceblue• 3 years ago

I would argue the more appropriate quote here is “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

tekla• 3 years ago

It's good old hysteria.

mathgradthrow• 3 years ago

If someone is your opponent, assuming stupidity is the same as letting your guard down.

wvh• 3 years ago

I think those companies and people generally underestimate the bad blood that lives with users of those ad-supported websites that don't respect users' privacy. The majority of people will keep on using Youtube even if you show them the same dumb mentally degrading commercial every few minutes hundreds of times, but any goodwill or sympathy for your brand is pretty much non-existing. People are held hostage by these platforms because they have the content or people users care about, but I don't think anybody really thinks Google or Facebook are their friend. Having the same ads following you around the web ad infinitum et ad nauseam without recourse almost constitutes a form of bullying or stalking.

ipaddr5• 3 years ago

Ads based on your interests are a form of bullying and must be stopped?

People are held hostage by these platforms because they have free content you want to watch?

You have control over your choices. No one is bullying you or holding you hostage. Control your desire for free content if you feel the trade off of a 30 second ad once in while is mentally degrading.

soulofmischief• 3 years ago

soulofmischief's rule: Never take arbitrary heuristics or razors as fact.

It's easy in hindsight to validate when the heuristic was correct, but Hanlan's razor specifically was meant to be tongue in cheek. Understand the context behind something before you apply it to your daily life.

An interesting example of how little faith people have in Google as an organisation

Well deserved. Google traded credibility and trust for ad money for too many years, and have left a graveyard behind them. Everything they do should be suspect.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Wizard’s first rule: people are stupid. They will believe a lie because they are afraid it might be true, or because they wish it was true.

sccxy• 3 years ago

Just use uBlock Origin and keep blocklists as small as possible.

False positives break so many websites.

TechSquidTV3• 3 years ago

A friend of mine can't access anything, period, without ten minutes of debugging to find what he's blocking

Sohcahtoa823• 3 years ago

Sounds like he's using one of those extensions that blocks all JavaScript. I tried once, and gave up after 2 days. I hated having to whitelist everything.

I use uBlock Origin on my desktop, and uBlock Origin + PiHole on my phone, and there are only a couple websites that refuse to work, and so I just don't use those sites.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38987489

tredre3• 3 years ago

Not a dupe.

Your link is people claiming that Youtube was deliberately slowing down the site for people using adblockers. The current article claims that was not the case, and was just a poor adblock implementation.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

Point is, discussion over there. Don't need ten threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999987

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39001686

YouTube did not slow down adblock users. Adblock devs admit to problem

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