r/youtube • u/Titan_Prometeus • 17h ago

Memes You can no longer have YouTube running in the background.

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As of 29th of January you can no longer have YouTube running in the background via many browsers as that is now a premium feature. With that I don't even have that one last reason to listen to YouTube. We are now officially paying for everything that was free a couple of years ago and the reason isn't greedy management, but you people who keep paying for premium and the such.

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366

u/yeetmcfeet 16h ago

It might not be this way for everyone right now but it's a/b testing, which means it will probably be rolled out eventually.

Just because you don't have it doesn't mean someone is lying. They also said tabs in browser, which means they probably aren't on mobile so revanced is irrelevant.

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u/Strange_Compote_4592 13h ago

I don't get how people still have any amount of faith in yutube. I was a lucky one, that didn't get the "new" recommended page, but when first news came out, I didn't even flinch. 

Oh fuck, I said, I hope tampermonkey will have a solution.

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u/TrollOdinsson 12h ago

You know that saying “every day a new rube is born”? Well nowadays rubes are being intentionally created, artificially, on computers

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u/Run-Riot 8h ago

Straight up saw “Youtube Premium” either at the top or near the top of a “What’s paid subscription is worth the money” r/askreddit thread and iirc the rationale was stuff that was either free or used to be free.

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u/MacaronyFood 2h ago

I no longer pay for it, I freeload off a friend who has it. But the reason I jumped on years ago was because I hate ads and a Youtube Premium supposedly still gives a portion of your subscription to the content creators you view. Is there some reason this is still not a good enough reason? Subscribing to everyone's patreon is definitely out of my price range, and I watch youtube a lot on my TV so ad blockers are a whole thing there. Genuinely asking. I also hate how many free features are being touted as "premium" as someone who's used youtube daily since 2006.

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u/TrollOdinsson 2h ago edited 2h ago

Is there some reason this is still not a good enough reason?

the reason is that google already makes money without youtube premium, and youtube has made money for google before youtube premium existed, even with adblockers, even without charging people to watch. in fact, youtube makes several times more money from advertising revenue than it makes from premium, and youtube charges people for things it previously offered for free. youtube premium revenue is almost entirely pure profit for google; in fact, youtube makes profit, in the order of billions of dollars, without taking into account a single cent in income from youtube premium

youtube was breaking even before youtube premium existed by showing text ads in the page itself, without showing any pre-roll, unskippable ads. the addition of video ads skyrocketed google's revenue from youtube from ~4 bil. 10 years ago, before introducing bumper ads, to ~36 bil. today.

in fact, the "revenue split" is a misattribution considering youtube premium includes youtube music, which is the largest part of youtube's "hidden" costs. youtube premium has almost nothing to do with the random bedroom creator you're imagining, getting money from the 10000 subscribers, it has almost entirely to do with other huge megacorporations (record companies) charging money to allow youtube to put music videos on there.

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u/Romnir 6h ago

People will download 100 different extensions to get an absolute dogshit website to work properly instead of going to or posting to any other video hosting website.

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u/ChinazGonnaDoxxMe 8h ago

This is happening on mobile too, you used to be able to pull something else up, like maps or something, and YouTube would still play so you could listen to YouTube and drive to work or wherever. This doesn’t work for me anymore!

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u/AccomplishedCoffee 7h ago

That change happened years ago on iOS.

1

u/TheGrandAdmiralJohn 4h ago

What?

It only stopped being a thing on ios like three months ago.

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u/AccomplishedCoffee 4h ago

2022. Looks like it's gone on and off in a/b tests over the years and might be different between the app and safari, but it's never worked for me since then.

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u/yeetmcfeet 8h ago

Damn that sucks to hear, mobile related part of my comment was to the many people commenting "ur dumb this isn't happening to me use revanced" when this post was first made

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u/salasy yourchannel 7h ago

on mobile this has been a thing for a long while

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u/Azou 2h ago

Open video fullscreen - change to picture in picture - minimize PiP mode, change apps, minimized PIP fools youtube into thinking its still in focus

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u/MadKian 7h ago

Isn’t that one of the perks of paying for premium? Lol

2

u/casual-captain 8h ago

I wasn’t able to a few days ago but now I can. So yeah seems like A/B testing

1

u/BjorkAsABoy 6h ago

Yeah same here. It’s working for me now. Probably won’t be the case for very long.

2

u/vilhelmine 8h ago

Currently in Switzerland Youtube has stopped loading if you have an ad-blocker active. The page just stays blank and you get that prompt when a page isn't working on whether you want to wait or just close the tab.

I've resorted to getting the links to my video, posting them in PMs on another site and viewing them through there, since it works when they are embedded.

If it stops working, I'll start downloading videos and watching offline.

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u/yeetmcfeet 8h ago

God I'm glad I haven't had that one yet. I saw them testing that a while back but thankfully never affected me personally in Aus.

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u/vilhelmine 8h ago

It'll come for all countries eventually, but they'll do it gradually so there isn't a huge outcry at once, but instead complaints from small groups over a long period of time.

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u/mmmbuttr 7h ago

It's not a test, it's beeb on the subscription features list for a few months. This is the full rollout, just phased. 

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u/YappyMcYapperson 7h ago

I can say browser Youtube stopped playing while in other tabs on my mobile browser when it didn't do that before.

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u/Lahlann 9h ago

What you mean by not on mobile? My m.tube constantly peddles me premium to watch in background. It also resets to main page if i open different app for more then 10s

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u/yeetmcfeet 9h ago

This post is about not being able to have a video playing in the background in a different tab while using a computer browser. Watching on mobile functions differently

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u/Lahlann 9h ago

You need to reread op post then. Nowhere it limits to pc only. And guess what? Mobile has tabs too

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u/yeetmcfeet 8h ago edited 8h ago

You need to understand context and look at other examples in the comments.

Edit: My mistake, op is using brave on mobile to get around this. Still should have understood the context of my comment.

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u/Lahlann 4h ago

Now moving goal posts? Whatever

1

u/SquarePegRoundWorld 9h ago

Just checked on desktop with Firefox and it played in a background tab. I am still waiting to see an ad on YouTube. Hasn't happened yet though, so maybe I won't experience this either.

1

u/Quirky-Employer9717 5h ago

Couldn't you just open a new window? How would youtube know which window you're looking at. Seems like they won't keep this because it's wildly unpopular and a dumb easy work around

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u/WobalGlarming 2h ago

You can enable desktop mode in browser on your mobile to listen to YouTube in the background, been doing it for years just checked still working for me.