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Ask HN: How broken is YouTube these days?

8 points by martin_a ↗ HN
I've been sick two weeks ago and had lots of time to spare while laying on the couch. I used that for viewing too much stuff on YouTube.

Here are some findings (German user) and I'd like your experience on this. Maybe it's anecdotal but I've got the feeling YouTube is really going down the drain.

- _lots of_ ads everywhere

- I got unskippable 15 second pre-roll ads on 17 second videos

- I got three pre-roll ads regularly, even on short videos and smaller channels

- I got lots of post-roll ads, too

- I've got lots of video ads where pharmaceutical companies are promoting to "talk to your doctor about the vaccine for XY" - wtf, is this even legal?

- Ads load better than the video

- In-App ads are directly from the shady/scummy section: "get rich quick"-schemes/courses, cartoonish erotic apps, phone optimizer apps, "lose 30 pounds in 30 days"-fitness apps, "free" book downloads with signup pages from hell, probably fake IPO signups, crypto investment apps... the list goes on...

- after reporting too many of those ads, I've lost the function to report any ad at all. I'm not kidding, the menu item is just gone.

- recommendations are showing me lots of videos I've watched before OR are totally unrelated to what I'm interested in

- recommendations are often filled with videos from 6 to 10 years ago

All in all YouTube seems to be a total shitshow and it feels like they don't care anything at all about the user experience.

With all those scummy ads I felt like 15 years ago on some crazy "free movie downloadz"-website but not on THE biggest video platform of the world.

Does Google/YT care so little? Have they automated and laid off everybody who could veto against all those "create your sexy arabian princess and play with her"-apps or all the "phone optimizers" who are going to do god knows what with your phone?

What's your experience on YT these days? Is it similar to mine or totally different?

I really like lots of the content, but the surroundings...

21 comments

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indispuesto
I paid YouTube membership and is a lot different for me, from Mexico.
martin_a
What is that like? No ads at all? In the app and the videos?
tiew9Vii
No ads at all.

Most of my media is consumed through YouTube. If you watch YouTube frequently I highly recommend paying for YouTube premium. If you sign up over VPN via Argentina it's also extremely cheap (Google search will guide you).

thagerty
Maybe you aren't from the U.S., where it is legal for big pharma to flood media with ads. It has been going on so long here that older people think it is normal. I think since people have become aware that it is not accepted practice everywhere, they try to escape it, so the commercial entities take advantage of whatever media they can.
nathanaldensr
Pi-hole, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Enhancer for YouTube will solve your problems really quickly.
shitlord
Sponsor Block is another good one.
bil7
great little extension, apparently it's skipped over 10 hours of ads for me!
martin_a
That toolchain works fine on my laptop, but I used Google TV to stream the content to my TV so you have to use the YT app. That works different, although there's a Pi-hole running in my network.
slightwinder
> _lots of_ ads everywhere

Be fair and buy Youtube Premium, or use a better Adblocker?

> Ads load better than the video

Maybe because they are shorter and there are less of them, so proxys can better cache them.

> after reporting too many of those ads, I've lost the function to report any ad at all. I'm not kidding, the menu item is just gone.

Makes sense if you are spamming the system and they considered them false flag.

> recommendations are showing me lots of videos I've watched before

Maybe you want to rewatch them or add a comment. That's not that unusual.

> OR are totally unrelated to what I'm interested in

Not YET.

> recommendations are often filled with videos from 6 to 10 years ago

Nothing wrong with old videos. There is many cool old stuff on Youtube. 6 or 10 Years is not that much. Unless you are only in gossip and news?

> All in all YouTube seems to be a total shitshow and it feels like they don't care anything at all about the user experience.

It might not be your perfect experience, but considering their size and broad audience, it's pretty hard to serve everyone equal good. And recommendations are generally a hard problem. Getting even a low number of successes is quite good.

> What's your experience on YT these days? Is it similar to mine or totally different?

I'm curious whether the ads are related to the content you watch. Maybe you are mostly watching hard to monetize videos, where only the wild ads which are not that picky with their customers are shown.

mda
Youtube premium, the best few bucks I spent.
JacobAldridge
If you're using a free service, expect to be the product.

If you don't want to be the product, with YouTube you can pay to be the customer instead.

wnkrshm
Have no illusion, you're still the product - only if no data collection was part of the contract, you'd be a real customer. Youtube Premium users are also premium ad targets because they obviously have disposable income.
toast0
> - I've got lots of video ads where pharmaceutical companies are promoting to "talk to your doctor about the vaccine for XY" - wtf, is this even legal?

It is here in the US. This style where you're prompted to ask about a treatment for a condition (or a vaccine for a disease) without naming the drug or the manufacturer was the beginning of drug ads here. Only much later did they start being able to tell us the name, but then only if they also told us in a very fast voice about all the terrible side effect symptoms reported in trials (or after general availability). I wouldn't know if this is legal in Germany, but it's worth talking to your doctor about ;)

brtkdotse
YouTube is perfectly fine and one of the few places on the internet where personalization actually works. Don't want ads? Fine, pay up for premium.
EUV071STR48
Generally speaking, you're right. Nothing is free - esp not for YT to host the data. But I think it's fair to complain about the scope. OP mentioned unskippable 15 sec ads before a 17 sec video. That's bullshit. I've seen it. It's not just on the 4th short video. It's on every video. Sure, you can go elsewhere anytime - nevertheless it's frustrating.
EUV071STR48
The best experience is to close the app/ site as soon as the first ad shows before a video. Not sure if it was actually the case, but after strictly following this, I thought I had trained the algo to not show me ads for a while.
yesenadam
My experience is totally different, I never see ads. (mac, firefox, uBlock Origin)
gaws
I have ad blocking everywhere except for YouTube on Roku, which, ironically, is the app I use the most to watch videos. No blocker means I get hit with ads before every video and, in some, right in the middle.