For people who only go off headlines and comments and don’t read the article, here’s the important bits:
This only affects some users, not everyone
The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty
The issue goes away with a refresh, you don’t need to turn off the adblocker, though you’ll have to refresh every video
It affects all videos
The link to adblockers is due to everyone who is reporting the issue being a user of an adblocker, and turning it off fixing the issue permanently until it’s turned on again
There’s no specific browser or adblocker mentioned in the article
It affects Premium users too
edit: added “the article” after “don’t read” to clarify
Comment sections removed ? That should be a feature !
I had an extension that removed those, amongst other things, but that part broke. Most video comments on YouTube are incredibly stupid, I’d rather just not have to see them.
Not just the premium part, but also it affecting descriptions makes me think this is some kind of bug. At least partially. There’s not really any point to disabling descriptions specifically, most people don’t read them anyway.
“there’s currently no way around it”
“The issue goes away with a refresh”
The way I understand it, the issue only resolves if you refresh while on the video you want to watch. Navigating to another video would unfix it again. So it’s not really a real fix the way most people expect a fix to look like. They want something they can apply and then they don’t have to deal with the problem anymore. Which, based on this article, only disabling your adblocker achieves.
I’ve expressed this a few times already on Lemmy to little fanfare to say the least, but I use YouTube a lot. I use it a lot on my phone. I’d use it offline on planes. I want to pay for it. But I’m a yucky VPN user and I’m not even allowed to pay a blanket inflated price for it.
The algorithm is still absolutely amazing for music discovery. I already have channels I automatically yank things via YT-DLG from, but like using the service normally is nice too. I don’t see ads on my computer, but I suspect they might be feeding me extra ads on the phone to compensate. Because if this is the standard ad density for phone users it is vomitingly absurd.
Theoretically the folks you watch get paid from the fee. I don’t hate that system. I’m willing to pay, my payment is ready, I’m willing to pay 5 or 20 or however many bucks for it. But using a VPN to watch YouTube on a paid account can get your account banned. Incredible stuff. This is just about the only media subscription I can see myself using. And they’re cutting off all VPN users like that.
I’ll never get it because first-party ads are only a small part of the problem. Shitty rec algos, Shorts absolutely rammed the fuck down your throat, third-party ads, dislike counters, gaslighting you about the resolution, clickbait blockers, cross platform feed, etc. These are all solved with third party clients.
There have been some users reporting they get ads despite being Premium users, especially in regards to Youtube’s efforts to bypass adblockers (even if they weren’t using one). I always assumed that’s because their measures were misidentifying the lack of ads as using an ad blocker, even if that lack was due to using premium.
Just wanted to give an actual explanation. I’m not qualified to actually confirm or deny whether those user reports were factual or made up. But people usually consider them factual because of herd mentality.
Same here, been using premium since it was bundled with google music when that was a thing. Aside from the creators sponsors, I never received a single ad as long as I was signed in properly to my account.
I had it for more than 5 years before abandoning it. I still got ads. I’d complain and YouTube would tell me it was a rare bug, or my browser, or the phase of the moon. They’d promise it’d never happen again and it still kept happening. I suspect it was a test to see what they could get away with.
I… Honestly don’t even think about my adblocker enough to even think to disable certain websites in it. Generally if I like a site enough to disable ads, I’ll also generally like them enough to pay them more money than they would have gotten from me turning ads off for a year
there’s no point. I tried the free trial of youtube premium cause i’m on Qutebrowser and the adblocking isn’t the greatest. even with Premium i’d still randomly get ads every now and then. IF i were paying for it I’d be pissed.
Now I circumvent this by just opening all the videos in MPV.
With respect, I don’t believe you. I paid for Premium for half a decade and never saw a single ad. I stopped my sub and will advise people against it going forward, but your claim is highly suspect to me.
I didn’t say it was constant. I only said every now and again on the free trial I’d get an ad. Maybe it’s because I only used it with Qutebrowser. I don’t know. but I know that sometimes I would get an ad on a video.
These kinds of things are often A B testing to see what they can get away with - especially in countries like the US where consumer protection laws basically don’t matter. It’s kinda like when they raise subscription prices in one country but not another, but with showing some people in that country a certain amount of ads per watch time vs another group with a different amount of ads. They see how much they can get away with before people start complaining, and then what they can get away with before people start cancelling.
I watched a video just this morning talking about how YouTube has built-in systems for similar A B testing with video thumbnails to tell creators which gets more watch time. You give it 2 thumbnails and it randomizes which one people see, and then tracks click-through rates and watch time percentages before giving you a result of which one performs better.
Imagine being a paying Premium member and still get caught by this… That said, the YouTube comments are worth shit, so not much is lost there. The descriptions can be quite annoying when missing.
I really should start looking into yt-dlp or something. Anybody know if that’s still working fine these days?
One thing is certain: Your distro’s repository’s version of yt-dlp - even on bleeding edge distros - is likely out of date, and you’ll have to find and run the appimage version from the devs.
All those issues have existed for a while now in non-Chromium based browsers; hell I get them using the app on my smart TV and that doesn’t even block ads. Especially with YouTube Shorts. I don’t think it has anything to do with blocking ads. It’s just youtube being shit in general.
Wouldn‘t be surprised if this was an accident. Wouldn‘t be the first time something gets messed up after a Youtube update where Youtube simply changed how some things work for functionality. These things can make Adblockers act up in a weird way.
I for example noticed last week the first video of a session starts at an automatic resolution of 360p. I have to manually change it to 1080p. Then it remembers this and keeps it for a while. I could blame Youtube for this but I bet it has something to do with the fact I‘m skipping ads and Youtube suddenly doesn‘t know anymore in what resolution the video should be served. Perhaps it‘s getting an error and thinks I have a worse connection than I do and tries it‘s best to load the video anyway.
What I‘m trying to say is: We don‘t know why exactly Youtube acts up. Could just be a bad interaction from an update that is purely unintentional. Either way Adblocker devs will find a fix for it quickly like they always do.
For people who only go off headlines and comments and don’t read the article, here’s the important bits:
edit: added “the article” after “don’t read” to clarify
Comment sections removed ? That should be a feature !
I had an extension that removed those, amongst other things, but that part broke. Most video comments on YouTube are incredibly stupid, I’d rather just not have to see them.
“there’s currently no way around it”
“The issue goes away with a refresh”
lol. sounds more like a bug if it’s also affecting Premium users though
Not just the premium part, but also it affecting descriptions makes me think this is some kind of bug. At least partially. There’s not really any point to disabling descriptions specifically, most people don’t read them anyway.
The way I understand it, the issue only resolves if you refresh while on the video you want to watch. Navigating to another video would unfix it again. So it’s not really a real fix the way most people expect a fix to look like. They want something they can apply and then they don’t have to deal with the problem anymore. Which, based on this article, only disabling your adblocker achieves.
YouTube premium membership, for when you like paying to be fucked over.
This is why I will never get premium. You pay the motherfuckers money and still have to take it up the ass.
I’ve expressed this a few times already on Lemmy to little fanfare to say the least, but I use YouTube a lot. I use it a lot on my phone. I’d use it offline on planes. I want to pay for it. But I’m a yucky VPN user and I’m not even allowed to pay a blanket inflated price for it.
The algorithm is still absolutely amazing for music discovery. I already have channels I automatically yank things via YT-DLG from, but like using the service normally is nice too. I don’t see ads on my computer, but I suspect they might be feeding me extra ads on the phone to compensate. Because if this is the standard ad density for phone users it is vomitingly absurd.
Theoretically the folks you watch get paid from the fee. I don’t hate that system. I’m willing to pay, my payment is ready, I’m willing to pay 5 or 20 or however many bucks for it. But using a VPN to watch YouTube on a paid account can get your account banned. Incredible stuff. This is just about the only media subscription I can see myself using. And they’re cutting off all VPN users like that.
I’ll never get it because first-party ads are only a small part of the problem. Shitty rec algos, Shorts absolutely rammed the fuck down your throat, third-party ads, dislike counters, gaslighting you about the resolution, clickbait blockers, cross platform feed, etc. These are all solved with third party clients.
Yeah but if you were a YouTube Premium subscriber surely you’d disable the adblocker on youtube.com so you never get this issue.
Why? So they can serve you ads on top of something you’re already paying money for?
But… you do not get ads if you have Premium, that’s the point.
Counterpoint, it doesn’t make your experience ad free as many YouTubers have sponsored content.
Then why would it fucking matter if you have an adblock on? Google shouldn’t give a fuck at that point.
There have been some users reporting they get ads despite being Premium users, especially in regards to Youtube’s efforts to bypass adblockers (even if they weren’t using one). I always assumed that’s because their measures were misidentifying the lack of ads as using an ad blocker, even if that lack was due to using premium.
Just wanted to give an actual explanation. I’m not qualified to actually confirm or deny whether those user reports were factual or made up. But people usually consider them factual because of herd mentality.
You occasionally still get ads, even with premium.
I’ve had premium for a couple years now, no idea what you’re talking about
Same here, been using premium since it was bundled with google music when that was a thing. Aside from the creators sponsors, I never received a single ad as long as I was signed in properly to my account.
Google Music was so good
I had it for more than 5 years before abandoning it. I still got ads. I’d complain and YouTube would tell me it was a rare bug, or my browser, or the phase of the moon. They’d promise it’d never happen again and it still kept happening. I suspect it was a test to see what they could get away with.
Others in the comments have similar stories.
I… Honestly don’t even think about my adblocker enough to even think to disable certain websites in it. Generally if I like a site enough to disable ads, I’ll also generally like them enough to pay them more money than they would have gotten from me turning ads off for a year
there’s no point. I tried the free trial of youtube premium cause i’m on Qutebrowser and the adblocking isn’t the greatest. even with Premium i’d still randomly get ads every now and then. IF i were paying for it I’d be pissed.
Now I circumvent this by just opening all the videos in MPV.
I’ve never gotten an ad with premium. Been subscribed for about 5 years.
With respect, I don’t believe you. I paid for Premium for half a decade and never saw a single ad. I stopped my sub and will advise people against it going forward, but your claim is highly suspect to me.
I didn’t say it was constant. I only said every now and again on the free trial I’d get an ad. Maybe it’s because I only used it with Qutebrowser. I don’t know. but I know that sometimes I would get an ad on a video.
These kinds of things are often A B testing to see what they can get away with - especially in countries like the US where consumer protection laws basically don’t matter. It’s kinda like when they raise subscription prices in one country but not another, but with showing some people in that country a certain amount of ads per watch time vs another group with a different amount of ads. They see how much they can get away with before people start complaining, and then what they can get away with before people start cancelling.
I watched a video just this morning talking about how YouTube has built-in systems for similar A B testing with video thumbnails to tell creators which gets more watch time. You give it 2 thumbnails and it randomizes which one people see, and then tracks click-through rates and watch time percentages before giving you a result of which one performs better.
So it makes the page even better?
Right. That isn’t a problem at all. The only times I use either is when I’m looking for time stamps, but I can live without that.
Imagine being a paying Premium member and still get caught by this… That said, the YouTube comments are worth shit, so not much is lost there. The descriptions can be quite annoying when missing.
I really should start looking into yt-dlp or something. Anybody know if that’s still working fine these days?
“Who’s still watching in 2026”
first
Praise Jesus
One thing is certain: Your distro’s repository’s version of yt-dlp - even on bleeding edge distros - is likely out of date, and you’ll have to find and run the appimage version from the devs.
You can just pass the
--updateflag when invoking yt-dlp. I don’t think the package itself needs to be up to date in order to work reliably.All those issues have existed for a while now in non-Chromium based browsers; hell I get them using the app on my smart TV and that doesn’t even block ads. Especially with YouTube Shorts. I don’t think it has anything to do with blocking ads. It’s just youtube being shit in general.
Wouldn‘t be surprised if this was an accident. Wouldn‘t be the first time something gets messed up after a Youtube update where Youtube simply changed how some things work for functionality. These things can make Adblockers act up in a weird way.
I for example noticed last week the first video of a session starts at an automatic resolution of 360p. I have to manually change it to 1080p. Then it remembers this and keeps it for a while. I could blame Youtube for this but I bet it has something to do with the fact I‘m skipping ads and Youtube suddenly doesn‘t know anymore in what resolution the video should be served. Perhaps it‘s getting an error and thinks I have a worse connection than I do and tries it‘s best to load the video anyway.
What I‘m trying to say is: We don‘t know why exactly Youtube acts up. Could just be a bad interaction from an update that is purely unintentional. Either way Adblocker devs will find a fix for it quickly like they always do.
Doing the lord’s work 🙏