YT, Firefox, Adblockers and huge lag

[SiliconWizard]

I hadn't been affected by YT's attempts to curb Adblocking so far. Been using Firefox for a long time, and never saw any issue (at least with the setups and Adblockers I use) until very recently. Just the past week or so.
I still do not see any ad and videos are not blocked or suspended, but I noticed the YT web interface has become ultra slow and laggy compared to just a few days earlier still.
YT may possibly deploy various strategies in different parts of the world. Dunno. I've read about that kind of sudden lag due to adblocking in various articles in last december, so I'm not the only one noticing.

Interestingly, I use Opera on mobile devices, with adblockers too, and didn't notice the same issue with this setup.

Anyone else noticed this newfound laggy UI?

[rdl]

They report this on Ars Technica:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/youtube-appears-to-be-reducing-video-and-site-performance-for-ad-block-users/

[srb1954]

Even if you don't have an ad blocker YT seems to delay loading of content immediately after you skip an ad. There is quite often a buffering delay of 3-4 seconds after skipping an ad.

I have noticed this for the last couple of months and don't have any buffering delays with any other YT content.

[SiliconWizard]

Here this is a general lag in the whole YT web interface. It's not even just when you watch a video - actually in my case, once a video starts, it plays normally till the end. But everything is laggy, displaying comments, displaying thumbnails in the YT home page, etc. Noticed that when it lags, it takes CPU. So it must be something nasty in JS code, or they manage to bombard adblockers with stuff to process, making them in turn the source of lag - it's not just "network" delays, the lag definitely comes with extra CPU use.

[AlfBaz]

I believe Louis Rossmann just released a video about it

[BrianHG]

With or without ad blockers, there have been random delays for years now.  (Not counting the proven found deliberate 5-10 seconds delay code introduced for a few months at the end of last year)  The current delays are just random traffic errors or potentially problems with how the AD-Blocker works itself, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to play videos faithfully over the past ~4 months in FireFox.

As for things getting worse, try playing YT videos in a 'Private Window' and see if anything improves.
Note that you will not be able to comment or leave a thumbs up/down.

Also, make sure your AD-blocker is configured to be enabled for private-windows.

[chickenHeadKnob]

Here this is a general lag in the whole YT web interface. It's not even just when you watch a video - actually in my case, once a video starts, it plays normally till the end. But everything is laggy, displaying comments, displaying thumbnails in the YT home page, etc. Noticed that when it lags, it takes CPU. So it must be something nasty in JS code, or they manage to bombard adblockers with stuff to process, making them in turn the source of lag - it's not just "network" delays, the lag definitely comes with extra CPU use.

I noticed exactly this. All interface elements super slow. I run FireFox/linux 121.0.1. I thought it might be some crappy javascript hogging cpu, didn't investigate further and simply reset my machine and the problem cleared. My machine had been up for about two weeks.

[SiliconWizard]

I believe Louis Rossmann just released a video about it

Yes:

[SiliconWizard]

And Louis makes a good point, whatever you think about YT's battle against adblockers, their move to "silently" make it worse for adblock users without even any explicit mention of it on the website is completely dumb. As a "normal" user, you have absolutely no means of knowing for good that actually paying them or watching their stupid ads will get you a better experience. People are just talking about it as a rumor, and them throwing in hints here and there. For all you know, it may just be speculation, a problem with your ISP, a temporary problem with YT, or a problem with your browser. That's just a wicked business move. If they weren't in a situation of near-monopoly, they would never pull off something like that.

But with this, just like with the way they censor videos and comments, it's questionable move after questionable move, with a 100% lack of transparency.

Just put a fricking banner over every YT web page and video if you detect an adblocker, if you have balls.
Then we'll know clearly what it's all about.

[Psi]

yeah, i've noticed this too, extreme lag, mainly when trying to type a comment into Youtube.
but loading pages was also a bit slow.

The annoying thing is that I have Youtube Premium but i guess their adblocker detection doesn't take this into account.
Disabled addblocker and the lag disappeared.

[BrianHG]

YT is now wasting my battery power on my laptop and makes it's CPU fan run at full speed.
No more 9 hour battery life watching Youtube videos as it's power consumption has gone through the roof.
Only a few windows open doing nothing and 2 cores are nailed at 100% usage.
Only around 45 minute battery life with too many windows open without even playing the videos.
Proof Google is against saving the planet's ecology by wasting CPU cycles.

I wonder if mac-book runs firefox and if this will kill their +12hour battery life?

(Note this occasionally happens when Firefox slows down, but once it begins, only closing and reopening firefox fixes the CPU usage issue)

[SiliconWizard]

Having done some more testing on this, I think it definitely comes down to Javascript code (that of course runs locally) which deliberately slows down some operations, wasting CPU cycles along the way (so not even just clean "waits" that would just suspend execution for a little while.) Nice job. The good news with this is that if it's just JS code running locally, then it should not be too hard to find countermeasures. (And this would be explained by the fact that there is actually little they could do on their "end", as we had discussed in an earlier thread, so they basically have to resort to local "measures". At least, that's my conclusion this far.)

Firefox has a profiling feature, you can go to about:processes, and for a given tab, you can have it profile it for 5 s. The profiling is not ultra detailed, but it for sure shows that most of the CPU time is spent on JS execution.
Oh, and the JS scripts appear to be downloadable. I've just had a look at a couple - there is one which is called 'scheduler.js', which seemed promising. The source code of it is of course somewhat "obfuscated", but I'm sure some people will be happy to have a closer look. I'm not sure YT have been that smart with all this. Fun.

[PA0PBZ]

If you are using Adblock (Plus), there's a bug that causes this behavior and is currently being worked on: https://gitlab.com/adblockinc/ext/adblockplus/adblockplusui/-/issues/1576#note_1727415603

It's not YT and it's not just YT: https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919

[tggzzz]

YT is now wasting my battery power on my laptop and makes it's CPU fan run at full speed.
No more 9 hour battery life watching Youtube videos as it's power consumption has gone through the roof.
Only a few windows open doing nothing and 2 cores are nailed at 100% usage.
Only around 45 minute battery life with too many windows open without even playing the videos.
Proof Google is against saving the planet's ecology by wasting CPU cycles.

You should thank gurgle for encouraging you to reclaim your life

No more look-at-me talking-head videos full of ums/ahs etc that take 30mins of your life before you realise you aren't going to learn anything. Much better to only spend 30s speed-reading text before you realise that.

[Psi]

If you are using Adblock (Plus), there's a bug that causes this behavior and is currently being worked on: https://gitlab.com/adblockinc/ext/adblockplus/adblockplusui/-/issues/1576#note_1727415603

It's not YT and it's not just YT: https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1746263759495077919

Hm.. true, i am using plus.
Seems I was too quick to blamed google.

[soldar]

I use Brave browser (per Louis Rossman's advice) and have not noticed anything.

[madires]

No issues with uBlock either. It's just Adblock.

[Karel]

No problems here with Firefox & uBlock Origin on Linux.

[pickle9000]

I have no idea if YT is playing around but if I was going to it would live under the auto streaming speed. The error message has lived there forever and most have seen it.

[nctnico]

Just put a fricking banner over every YT web page and video if you detect an adblocker, if you have balls.

That is exactly what Youtube is showing me.... But I don't care. ABP will find a way around eventually. This is another lost battle from the entertainment industry. I've been on internet for about 30 years and the entertainment industry still hasn't stopped people from sharing music. It must have cost them billions of dollars by now. Likely more than the perceived loss of revenue.

[BrianHG]

YT is now wasting my battery power on my laptop and makes it's CPU fan run at full speed.
No more 9 hour battery life watching Youtube videos as it's power consumption has gone through the roof.
Only a few windows open doing nothing and 2 cores are nailed at 100% usage.
Only around 45 minute battery life with too many windows open without even playing the videos.
Proof Google is against saving the planet's ecology by wasting CPU cycles.

You should thank gurgle for encouraging you to reclaim your life

No more look-at-me talking-head videos full of ums/ahs etc that take 30mins of your life before you realise you aren't going to learn anything. Much better to only spend 30s speed-reading text before you realise that.

  I have an unusual form of mild Dyslexia making my reading 4x slower than the normal populous...
Also, watching talking heads about things you already know means you are very poorly using youtube.

[Veteran68]

The annoying thing is that I have Youtube Premium but i guess their adblocker detection doesn't take this into account.
Disabled addblocker and the lag disappeared.

If you are using Adblock (Plus), there's a bug that causes this behavior and is currently being worked on: https://gitlab.com/adblockinc/ext/adblockplus/adblockplusui/-/issues/1576#note_1727415603

I'm also a YT Premium subscriber and I run ABP as well, but have not really seen any of the issues mentioned. Granted I seldom comment on a video, but I'm on YT literally every single day and it has been performing normally for me. I'm not at home now so can't be sure, but I may have "whitelisted" YT in ABP so it doesn't actually try to block anything there. Maybe that's why?

[SiliconWizard]

This is a constant battle between YT and Adblockers for now.
Yes, Adblock+ was the source of the lag, yes, they released a "fix" that somewhat improved things for a while, but they seem to be back to bad now.
I'm pretty sure my hypothesis was right, YT is just trying to bombard adblockers with stuff to process just to make things go to a crawl. So adblockers have to adapt to prevent that, but it becomes increasingly tough not to have any performance impact.

The most horrific at the moment is the lag while typing comments. It's fun how YT's countermeasures affect commenting. Is it a byproduct of their countermeasures, or explicitely made to annoy users (assuming that not letting them comment would be what they would find most annoying? who knows what's in their twisted minds.)

Anyway, long story short, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, just look at that: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14129599
The statement looks pretty clear. It's not just that YT will make the experience "suboptimal" for users of adblockers - it's that they claim it's a violation of their TOS. This is a pretty strong statement IMHO.

When you block YouTube ads, you violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.

[Karel]

I still don't have any problems watching youtube. No delays, no adds.
But I don't login and I don't comment (I don't even have an account) and
I use Firefox & Ublock Origin & Privacy Badger & Cookie Autodelete on top of GNU/Linux.

[chickenHeadKnob]

Tis is a constant battle between YT and Adblockers for now.

The most horrific at the moment is the lag while typing comments. It's fun how YT's countermeasures affect commenting. Is it a byproduct of their countermeasures, or explicitely made to annoy users (assuming that not letting them comment would be what they would find most annoying? who knows what's in their twisted minds.)

I am convinced that youtube has an "adaptive annoyance" algorithm. That is they monitor keyboard and mousing to look for negative reactive events and specifically how fast they occur.
The  reason I say this is that I have noticed sometimes they ask me to rank "how has your add experience been lately" whilst at the same time filling the add stream with adds they know will annoy me, partly through how fast I am to skip but also they know everyone hates these particular adds. I am taking about interminably long investment, crypto or medical scam adds. You know the type, "try this one weird trick/secret and you will make millions" but they go on and on and never get to what they are selling. For curiosities sake I let one investment scam play and it was still going an hour later! still not finished, still no idea exactly what was going to be pitched at me. I think it was for a mining stock prospectus. Oh and additional add type is for these crappy games. I have an android phone. Google damn well knows I don't play any games and for that matter don't ever download paid apps from the google play store.

Then after about a week to 10 days of annoying me youtube starts to heavily pitch premium at me. A few days later they give up and the add stream goes back to something I might normally go for like pick-up trucks or food items.

This kind of hot-cold good-cop/bad-cop technique  is what narcissists and psychopaths use to manipulate victims.