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YouTube quietly made some of its web embeds worse, including ours

96 points| Amorymeltzer | 1 year ago |theverge.com | reply

53 comments

order
[+] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
Would it have killed him to put an example YouTube embed in the article so we could see the effect?
[+] codetrotter|1 year ago|reply
Preferably screenshots, since the embedded player could change again or even appear differently for different people.
[+] mrweasel|1 year ago|reply
Where YouTube is making a mistake is in showing ads on embedded videos, for YouTube Premium customers and you can no longer click on the embed to go to YouTube and see the video without the ads.

I'm not sure if this is something each site can control using the embed code, but I noticed more and more that embedded videos will no longer allow you to jump youtube.com.

[+] wruza|1 year ago|reply
You can simply install uBO (and its dependencies) and the question who’s gonna profit from ads will resolve naturally.
[+] Incipient|1 year ago|reply
Isn't all that going to eventually go away with in-stream advertising?
[+] ChrisMarshallNY|1 year ago|reply
Ugh.

Any reason that they couldn't add a basic text link, below the video, with "Open In YouTube" as the text?

[+] mongol|1 year ago|reply
Of course they can. So can every other site that is affected. But seems not optimal.
[+] feraloink|1 year ago|reply
Yes, my thought too, especially since the basic embed allows you to click on the YouTube logo to be able to view the video on the YouTube website.

Unless YouTube is deliberately not allowing high traffic publishing "partners" (?) like the Verge and Vox to get the benefit of their preferred advertising?!

[+] rcarmo|1 year ago|reply
Visual clutter, for starters. And having to then consider the usability implications of having a separate link, how to lay it out across devices, etc. Just having the embed do that saves _a lot_ of hassle in a CMS.
[+] jbaber|1 year ago|reply
This explains a mystery I only recently noticed.

If a site has preferred ads they'd like to show anyway, maybe it's time for them to pay for hosting the video elsewhere.

[+] Hendrikto|1 year ago|reply
There is a revenue share, so they are already paying for the video hosting.
[+] Zealotux|1 year ago|reply
Is anyone else experiencing huge issues with Youtube on Firefox (MacOS) lately? The UI completely hangs for a few seconds, a restart of the browser helps, but I've disabled all extensions and it still hangs. Using the devtools it seems there's a huge GC happening periodically blocking the JS thread, no idea why.
[+] davidivadavid|1 year ago|reply
Was reading the comments to see if anyone experienced just that. Youtube sometimes becomes absolutely unusable with Firefox. Google Flights too. Would hate to switch back to Chrome but I keep having to switch back and forth.
[+] ravenstine|1 year ago|reply
I recently experienced an issue with YouTube + Firefox + macOS where not only did parts of the UI lag bug the queue wouldn't advance at the end of a video unless I refreshed the page. It resolved when I allowed google.com and a few others in NoScript. I wonder why your disabling of extensions didn't resolve your issue. I haven't had any more problems in the last few weeks. Also, I'm on an M3 CPU.
[+] tomatotomato37|1 year ago|reply
That sounds similar to issues I've been having recently with my Firefox uMatrix setup, which only seems to resolve when I blanket-allow everything (which kinda defeats the whole point of having it)
[+] perryizgr8|1 year ago|reply
Just today a video became extremely choppy and then stopped. A refresh fixed it. Same setup as yours.
[+] tushar-r|1 year ago|reply
I'm seeing this suddenly with Firefox on Windows. Persists even after reboots.
[+] encody|1 year ago|reply
Wait, so the Verge is upset that the PfP player removed a link that would take the user to the video on YouTube. But if they use the normal YouTube player that has the link, the Verge gets less ad $. But the users who click the link would be watching on YouTube, where again, the Verge would be earning less ad $.

Am I understanding this correctly? Because it sounds like the Verge is complaining about a change that should net them marginally more(?) ad $ (and is to YouTube's disadvantage) because a few readers complained, and they're just trying to blame YouTube instead.

I'm confused.

[+] ghusto|1 year ago|reply
They're not trying to blame YouTube, they are squarely pointing out the absolute truth that YouTube is to blame.

It's YouTube's choice to do whatever they like with their own product, but the reason what they've chosen to do is problematic is:

1. It's yet another bait'n'switch

2. It is shady as fuck to not only make no announcement about the change, but make it difficult to even figure out what's happened

In short; yes it's Google's prerogative to be a bag of dicks, but let's not pretend that's not exactly what they are (continuing to be)

[+] xethos|1 year ago|reply
I honestly don't understand how you came to that conclusion, considering the following from TFA (emphasis mine):

> Somewhat straightforwardly, YouTube has chosen to degrade the user experience of the embedded player publishers like Vox Media use, and the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player *that pays us less and YouTube more*

YouTube made the B2B product worse, and in order to get that functionality back (for now), the Verge would have to take a pay cut

[+] FollowingTheDao|1 year ago|reply
Monopolistic greed! Thee companies have captured all of us and they have the ability not to not care about customer service anymore! Break them up!
[+] rglullis|1 year ago|reply
> companies have captured all of us

No, they didn't. They baited the large majority with convenience and promises of free services, who got into the trap happily.

Those of us who were warning about the importance of not giving up our self-sovereignty are free. All it requires is just a little bit of effort to self-host things.

Stop being lazy and crying for regulation, when the people themselves can take action.

[+] gruez|1 year ago|reply
How is this "greed"? What does youtube have to gain from removing a link back to them?
[+] NooneAtAll3|1 year ago|reply
even without embeds, youtube keeps loading video but not the rest of UI (or sometimes the opposite) from time to time for me

and simple refresh doesn't help - I have to ctrl+f5 to fix it

[+] Hendrikto|1 year ago|reply
In which browser? I have the feeling that Google degrades the experience in everything but Chrome.
[+] mabedan|1 year ago|reply
Makes sense from YouTube side. Why they would associate themselves with ads that has nothing to do with them?
[+] snowwrestler|1 year ago|reply
YouTube has only the most minimal standards for which ads they won’t run, and those standards apply to PfP as well. “Association” is not the issue.
[+] bspammer|1 year ago|reply
Who is this hypothetical person who gets outraged at YouTube for having one of their videos embedded on a page with objectionable adverts? I’m sorry but their stated reason is crazy, I can put any site in an iframe on my website, that doesn’t mean they’re associated with me.
[+] sunaookami|1 year ago|reply
Come on, the YouTube player is so popular, everyone already knows this is just a YouTube embed.
[+] nonelog|1 year ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] pratnala|1 year ago|reply
That's a terrible suggestion.
[+] Udo|1 year ago|reply
> You may check out Rumble.com as a video player alternative.

Although I'm not familiar with the Rumble player, I assume your advice implies that they'd have to host their videos on Rumble as well. The main issue described in the article is about controlling what gets published on their site and what the user experience is going to be. Hosting their videos on a competitor's service is not the answer to that, as it would simply make them dependent yet on another company.

Media outlets that are large enough to need that kind of control but not large enough to host their own data are in a tough spot there.

[+] wazoox|1 year ago|reply
Rumble is not available in any EU country, nor in Norway, and probably many other places too.
[+] xbmcuser|1 year ago|reply
Is it not normal web etiquette to link back to what you are using. I am not sure YouTube is in the wrong.
[+] croes|1 year ago|reply
Wasn‘t that the case before the change?

You clicked the title and went to YouTube.

[+] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
You can't have it both ways or at least YouTube tried to help publishers out with the special player.

What's the actual problem here: that Verge doesn't like entitled ppl complaining to them about lack of links. Verge is trying to be one of those very publishers going independent etc, so support them, expect to 'stay on site', can't have it both ways. (Unless Verge does the extra work for the users and adds a quick link under every vid)

[+] n144q|1 year ago|reply
Yeah, asking for links is a entitled thing to do.