228 points

It probably saves insane amounts of bandwidth. But at what cost :(

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92 points

The cost of shareholder profits.

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25 points

wait isnt it the other way around, buffering was costing profits for shareholders so they limited it?

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58 points

I’m sure they have a legitimate numerical value for it

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93 points

I dunno, I’ve been in a few meetings where people with deep pockets make critical infrastructure decisions based on extremely limited information. Trusting “them” to have a valid metric is a rookie mistake.

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15 points

The older you get you realize more and more that the people making the decisions are totally clueless.
…Until you become one of the decision makers.

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12 points

Yuuuuuuup.

“How much will option A cost? Dunno.”
“What about option B? Dunno.”
“My gut tells me B is much more expensive than A though.” “Yeah for sure. But I prefer B.”

Wanna waste a hundred grand a year? Go right ahead, who cares. Wanna hire someone? Woah hold your horses there bucko, don’t you know we have budget limitations??

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9 points

Curious as to why that would be the case. Unless people are starting videos, letting them buffer, then reloading and doing it again.

It should be the same amount of bandwidth, otherwise, right?

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74 points

It’s just people not finishing videos. Buffered but never played. In aggregate it adds up to a lot.

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1 point
*
Deleted by creator
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14 points

Yeah i dont use youtube like that either but lots of people open videos and close them without finishing them because loss of interest or attention or whatever.

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11 points

People opening 8 hour long music videos, then pausing them after half an hour and just keeping it open while they do something else.

Then they come back after multiple hours and just close the browser.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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214 points

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68 points

I can’t believe someone put in pictures what I’ve been playing out in my mind all along.

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17 points

You made the comic.

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154 points

Letting the entire video buffer is the same as downloading the entire video which you can still do. My favourite tool is yt-dlp

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34 points

It’s a pretty great tool. Downloaded the entirety of Murder Drones on Saturday to add to my Plex server. Strictly for preservation, going to re-watch on YouTube to support them

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22 points

You can also setup a script to automatically download a channels latest vid so you don’t need to check the website anymore.

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9 points

fun fact: according to sponsorblock, youtube is testing ads that are baked serverside into the video. so one day even downloading might not be ad free

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20 points

They will never be able to block me just using the mouse to skip forward. If its already downloaded theres zero buffer lag.

I will create another step that converts the format to an open one if they somehow block that too.

Its an accessibility thing for me. Ads literally cause me harm. They cannot possibly win me over i’ll just end up doing something productive instead.

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5 points

For now you can use vpns to certain countries that don’t have ads at all, I expect that will still work to avoid server side ads.

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It will be detectable as per US law. Ads must be marked.

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1 point

Download the video twice and only play the common parts.

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6 points
*

Beat me to it (by several hours).

I’m not watching on YouTube. If I want to watch, I’ll download it first. yt-dlp on the desktop, seal (yt-dlp underneath) on android.

Edit: Big finger problems

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2 points

Wow, Seal is very much improved since I last looked at it. It has a million options, and custom commands and everything.

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139 points

In case of YouTube you can actually dump the link into VLC, and it will happily buffer the whole video while paused. This probably works with other sites, but I have only tested YouTube.

Alternatively you can of course just download the video with yt-dlp, and then play it locally

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28 points

And I’ve just learned of another reason why VLC is fucking great.

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4 points

Yet some people on here like shilling mpv. I’ve used both but vlc makes me feel at home.

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6 points

And the developers behind VLC seem like very cool people, too!

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114 points

Also clicking on some previous segment and NOT having the video load again. Idle for too long and the video unloads.

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62 points

And now you get a bonus ad when you skip back too!

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34 points

That shit infuriates me. I sometimes get distracted, skip back like 30 seconds, and get 30 seconds of unskippable ads. Fuck me.

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7 points

You might want to look into Youtube Revanced or Newpipe.

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And clears manuallly set quality settings back to auto.

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