Google know who they’re streaming videos to. They know this from the back-end. They absolutely do not require a script running in the browser to phone home about it in order to count “views”. All the telemetry they need they can get from existing traffic; the additional telemetry supplied by scripts is mostly just for Bad Reasons and it’s morally fine to block it.
I don’t use ad blockers, just normal YouTube. One thing I noticed about a month ago is that when I’m watching some silly video a 55 second ad will come on with about three minutes left to view on the video. It’s at that point I usually just back out and look for other videos to watch. My grandson told me it seems odd because YouTube monetization requires the whole video to be viewed before they’ll pay. Does this make sense? I don’t know much about “monetization” I just watch silly videos.
At least we know one thing that didn’t cause it.
Thanks for that hint on decoding your shitty blackbox google.
adblockers cause views to drop
Nothing causes me to drop a video like an ad I can’t put up with, like a political ad. This is some BULLSHIT.
It’s true. Having to constantly update some adblockers and ways to evade ads in youtube made me realize shitty youtube videos are not worth the effort and I barely use it nowadays.
For many years biggest online threats were criminals and malware. Today the biggest threats are big companies, especially Google. Everyday we have to “fight” against it because it tries to steal all our data and even more.
Lemme try and feel sorry for my cartoonishly rich tech overlords real quick…
If the Google war on ad blocking meant the ad blockers accidently blocked something everyone wants its still Google fault.
Everything was fine until Google decided to change how everything works over and over again to get people to watch the awful ads they let on their platform.
I’m sure that the number of times I’ve decided “nah I don’t need to see that” after being told an ad blocker violated YouTube’s terms of service has absolutely nothing to do with it either.
Even on a computer without ad blocker (work laptop, chrome browser)
the number of times i say “nah i don’t need to see that” as soon as thes annoying ads comes up before the video…
The decline probably has very little to do with ad blockers.
Exactly.
If I am forced to see ads, especially intrusive or page filling ones, I will not continue.
I watched lots of YouTube in the past.
When they started inserting ads into the videos (not channel sponsored stuff), the camel started getting weak.
When they started requiring sign-ins or blocking access when using a proxy that was the straw.
I don’t use YouTube anymore.
The decline was very sudden, almost instantaneous, and can be traced back to the exact date a block list, used by most major desktop ad blockers, added the YouTube View Counter API endpoint to their list.
But sure… nothing to do with ad blockers.
For those curious what “adblockers said really happened”:
[AdGuard] suggested that the issue may have been linked to popular community-maintained filter lists like EasyList and uBlock’s Quick Fixes.
A new filter rule added to EasyList on August 11, 2025 targeted telemetry requests thought to be tied to YouTube’s view attribution and analytics.
That rule remained in place until September 10, when it was temporarily disabled.
A similar change was added to uBlock’s Quick Fixes on September 10 and removed on September 17.
OK. I mean Fuck Alphabet anyhow, but this means a youtuber who relies on view counts for monetary income (I guess) would actually have reason to worry about adblockers?
Again, I’m not saying I’m against adblockers or even this particular feature. And I very well see what Google is doing here, trying to get their creators up in arms against adblocking. I just want to know if this is debunkable or if youtubers would have a genuine argument here.
I did not really understand above explanation. I guess I need it ELI5.
Basically Youtube instead of counting views via actual requests for the videos instead uses a separate call that essentially says “hey, someone watched this video”. All the ad blockers rather than use a hard coded list of URLs to block which would quickly go stale instead use one of a couple different 3rd party lists the most popular of which is EasyList. EasyList decided to block the URL that youtube uses to register views on the principal that it was a privacy violation because it not only registers “hey someone watched this” but also captures exactly who watched it which allows Google to track your viewing habits.
It wouldn’t matter whether it was intentional or not. Put simply, Google can continue indirectly punishing creators for tolerating adblockers then redirect blame, even though they could have easily separated the metrics from the advertising and telemetry endpoints that blockers filtered. This way they get their money either from unblocked ads or from creator’s reduced view counts, win-win for Google.
As an added bonus for Google, by ensuring view metrics get fucked up, it double punishes creators featuring sponsored content that rely on those metrics to determine how much the sponsor should pay them. Meanwhile Google could, in theory, sell ad placements attached to their own internal metrics that differ from the affected ones publicly visible.
So you’re saying Google packaged the viewcount that’s relevant to monetization into a 3rd party js data request instead of just counting the actual video’s views, and so manages to play content creators against privacy-conscious users?
Worthy of a Roman Emperor, that.
See that’s the fun part. Google is the ad company so it’s all 1st party data. Google can package the Trojan horse however they please, which why it’s such a fine line for the blockers to walk.
I kept up with the drama until about a week ago so what I’m saying here is the status from back then. Someone please add any new context if I’m missing any new developments:
From what it appeared, view counts dropped but ad revenue stayed the same. Even before this whole thing, YouTube pays out for ads watched (and clicked). Pay out was not dependent on raw view count for a long time, if ever.
This suspicious behavior of view count dropping but ad revenue staying the same is actually what tipped people off that the issue was adblock related. The fact that channels with a larger focus on a younger audience seeing less of a drop also helped.
Now those view counts dropping could still have an indirect, negative effect on ad revenue, if it, e.g. automatically leads to YouTube recommending their videos less prominently.
Reported view counts are also important for sponsorships as sponsored video payouts are often tied to hitting specific view counts, and even getting sponsorships and their rates are also typically conditional on view counts. So yes, even though it doesn’t directly impact ad revenue it still directly impacts total channel revenue for anyone that accepts sponsorships.
All that said, Google caused this entire mess by bundling their view counting in with their telemetry. If they just reported the raw download stats for the streams instead of trying to determine every last detail of who is watching the video (for all that juicy advertising data) this problem wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
I have a few YouTubers I like to support with views of all of their content. Because I want them to get the support, I watch their content on YouTube with no ad blockers.
Louis Rossmann says if you donate 1 dollar direct to the YouTuber you give them more support than a couple of years of watching ads. Keep using a adblocker and buy some merch for support.
I have bought merch, but not everyone has merch for sale. Also I don’t have much extra cash, and they definitely get money from views too, it’s why I advocate other people giving them views also. Also, one of the biggest income drivers for them are sponsorships, and you have to have high view counts to attract sponsors.
Tldr: youtube forced ai into video monitoring and it keeps killing videos it shouldn’t, so instead of saying Ai is bad they’re blaming af blockers because why not lie when there’s no repercussions?
YouTube views are dropping because they are using AI to vet and cull age innappropriate content from minors. the problem is the ai is very bad at its job and marks way too many videos as not advertiser friendly, which effectively kills YouTube promoting that video in feeds. this is the default view for new accounts, so you have to specifically turn off parental controls to see a normal feed. this started happening about 4 months ago. a number of channels I watch have made comments about this, including Redlettermedia
youtube forced ai into video monitoring and it keeps killing videos it shouldn’t
That explains why sometimes the video stops and I get error message. I thought it may have to do with switching the script blockers on or off.
Pinch flat. GitHub. Go.
This is hearsay from victims looking for a reason of their suffering.
Source: my ass
This is not at all what happened. Maybe try reading the article next time.
Not saying I don’t believe that’s what’s happening, but the article mentions nothing about any sort of YouTube AI interference.
Because the AI integration is a recent change unrelated to this data. The commenter is pulling it out of their ass.
If we’re just throwing out theories, I’d propose it was the dramatic increase in ads with a decrease in quality of content being served by the algorithm. The only thing that gets front page access is clickbait.
I don’t understand:
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What is ‘AI in video monitoring?’
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The article mentions literally nothing about this, so where did that come from?
the article provides one “official” explanation for views dropping, and i am citing an alternative explanation from the perspective of creators themselves who see the analytical data and the judgments being past on their videos.
Ok, but that’s not a TLDR of the article.
the tldr was for my wordy comment not the article. why would i summarize the article?
Because when you comment, “TLDR” under an article, it’s assumed to be a “TLDR” of the article. It also doesn’t make sense to say TLDR was a summary of your long comment because you didn’t make a long comment to summarize, you just jumped right in with TLDR.
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frustrated by ads that feel irrelevant
What?
Do they think we have a friend-or-foe system that only shoots down advertisements from adversaries?
An ad is an ad, and should be terminated on sight.
I used to prefer personalized ads over the insanity that was 90-00s “random” ads experience. But, since ads became a risk vector, I agree with a block by default approach, and I’ll find alternate ways to support sites I visit frequently rather than allowlist ads.
Blocking ads for decades everywhere, life is sooo goood without that cancer.
P.S. The only place were ads should appear are “yellow pages” thing, for example messenger channels just for that, where you intentionally join to look for local deals, discounts, contractors etc, especially to support local economy and not some megacorp. And ofc current google spying is not helping, block the ads, block trackers, it ruins the “steal the data” model.
Didn’t age verification - also recently implemented - cause youtube views to drop?
Here’s a case of it very well explained.
No. It’s false news. Just someone panicked looking for a cheap reason.
It was the first thing most people assumed was the culprit, as it silently enabled Restricted Mode, but since the biggest difference came from Computer views, despite the age verification happening on all platforms, that is strong evidence against that having any impact
Not to mention most didn’t see a corresponding drop in revenue from views.
It’s gotten to the point where I have to re-load each YT tab three times before the video ever starts playing - only because I use uBlock.
Still better than watching ads, but it is getting annoying.
I have a theory that YT deliberately makes you wait the length an ad would have been if you have uBlock Origin installed. Ive just let it “buffer” for 30 seconds or so and it will eventually load the video.
I’d rather watch nothing than an ad trying to sell me something.
Still better tbh
I have no problems with ublock on Firefox or Librewolf, unless I try to skip past what the video already loaded, then it’s a dice roll whether it’ll work or not
I have the same problem, and after you start clicking play, often you can wait it out and the video will eventually play on its own after 10-15 seconds
This mostly happens when you use youtube while being logged into a google account.
I fixed this by using firefox containers + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/switch-container/- logout from google / clear cookies.
- switch to a new “google” container and login to see your subscrpitions
- if a video doesn’t load switch to decontained
also has the nice benefit of not messing up your reccomendations when clicking on random yt-links from other sites
This does not work on phone OSes
I use Grayjay on Android, and it tends to do a good job. I can have subscriptions w/o being logged in to my YT account, and videos load after 5 secs or so every time.
Thank you. You are the best
It is like they know you’re using adblocks, so instead of trying to force ads down your throat, they try making your experience miserable by breaking their own viewer or whatever. It is absolutely petty of them.
Leave a video sitting there in idle for too long, come back, it plays for 10 seconds then has to reload itself. Sometimes, it doesn’t do this, so it requires a complete refresh.
They can do this bullshit all they want but I am not letting up on blocking ads.
For me, it works without reloading… After a 15 second load and an insufferably laggy UI despite having no identifiable system bottleneck.
Yeah yt is basically unusable on Firefox with a blocker and it’s 100% by design. Yt even gives a helpful pop-up offering to tell me why it’s running so slow.
I switched from Chrome to MS Edge and don’t have that YouTube ad-blocking issue with uBlock anymore. Other than that, MS Edge works exactly like Chrome.
MS Edge is Chrome, with a slight MS reskin.
MS Edge allows extensions that Chrome does not. It still fully supports uBlock Origin.
I did not know that - but surely since it’s based on Chrome, that means they’re going to have to follow suit at some point?
