Has YouTube Blocked Your Adblocker Yet??

Honse@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 611 points – Has YouTube Blocked Your Adblocker Yet?? - Online Poll - StrawPoll.com
strawpoll.com

UPDATE 2 It seems that starting today, uBlock Origin is working to combat this Youtube Block. Mine started working again! Lets all thank the devs of UBO for fighting this fight!

UPDATE So as new info comes out, I'll be posting it here. It seems as if this Rollout Has Several Parts.

Part 1

You get a popup message over top of your video, blocking the screen:

  • This is the first sign. If you see this popup AND are logged into a YouTube account, your account has been selected.
  • At this stage you can likely close or block these messages with an adblocker.

Part 2

This message will change, indicating that you have 3 remaining videos to watch without ads.

Will insert photo once one has been found

  • At this stage your adblocker will imminently stop working in 3 videos time.
  • Personally using Firefox + uBlock Origin and tweaking filters and updates does not even fix it.

Part 3

None of the video loads now, everything looks blank.

  • At this stage you must tred new ground to avoid ads. I have posted methods in the comments. If you want to bypass this end page, read down there.

End of Update

YouTube has started rolling out anti-adblock to users inside the United States, which means that they are preparing to roll this out to the entire country. Personally, I have been blocked already. I want to gauge how common this occurrence is.

335

I've got so many layers of adblock it's hard to know which one(s) are responsible for blocking the ads.

Same here. Was just explaining to a coworker who was complaining about YT ads that I "just" use PiHole+Unbound for network blocking, AirVPN with DNS blocking, mullvad Private DNS on Android, and then Libretube to view my self-hosted Piped instance. As I said it I realized how ridiculous it's gotten and how deranged I probably sound.

This all sounds like extremely reasonable to me. Fuck the haters.

Reasonable, yes. Feasible for everyone? Not necessarily. I would like to get at least a pihole going at some point but for now ublock origin and ReVanced have been enough for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of using Piped having a proxy between you and YouTube? Or are you serving your instance to friends/family so that your queries get mixed together?

Yeah that's the point. I do use my instance for links when sharing to people, but the main reason I selfhosted was for control and mostly just fun

Did your coworker know what you were talking about? Also, please explain how AirVPN with DNS blocking works.

Well they were already talking UBO and PiHoles, so I had faith lol AirVPN has the option to add blocklists to its DNS. Obviously with everything else I don't really need it, but it can't hurt.

I'm going to start a discussion in the comments here about methods to bypass the message. I will add suggestions here, so leave comments if you find a method!

Methods to bypass Youtube Anti-Adblock:

  • The easiest method is simply to comply and turn off your adblock extension.

My Method

  • My method, and the one that will likely work universally is as follows:

Install Extension Enhancer for YouTube™

Go to the extensions settings and ensure that under the Ads Management section, "Block Ads" is turned OFF

Now find the Custom Script box at the very bottom and enter the following script. I did not write this code, it comes from egaudette on GitHub

(function() {
    'use strict';
    var clickInterval = setInterval(skipAds, 5);
    var ytpAdModule;
    var miniAdd;
    var skipButton;
    var currentVideo;

    function skipAds() {
        ytpAdModule = document.querySelector('.ytp-ad-module');
        skipButton = document.querySelector('button[class*="ad-skip"]');
        miniAdd = document.querySelector('.ytp-ad-overlay-container');

        if (ytpAdModule !== null && ytpAdModule.innerHTML !== '') {
            ytpAdModule.style.display = 'none';
        }

        if (skipButton !== null) {
            skipButton.click();
            return;
        }

        currentVideo = document.querySelector('video[class*="main-video"]')
        if (currentVideo !== null && currentVideo.duration <= 5) {
            currentVideo.muted = true;
            currentVideo.play();
            currentVideo.currentTime = currentVideo.duration;
        }
    }
})();

Lastly, ensure the "Automatically execute the script when YouTube is loaded in a tab" box is checked, and press Save

I'll add more methods as they are discovered!

Why would this work when others get blocked? Is it a novel way to block YT ads that's not popular? Because I think YT isn't looking for specific extensions but looking for certain kinds of behavior.

This method lets ads load for half a second but then get skipped instantly. i have not personally found a way to 100% block ads once ive gotten their block page.

I use greasemonkey to do a similar trick with the skip and dismiss buttons. But added random delays up to 2 seconds in an attempt to mimic a human clicking the button.

Also instead of an interval running, you can use MutationObserver and a callback to only run the code when the DOM changes and adds the button.

1 more...

Please note that posting the script has html-encoded && <> and similar characters so you'll have to replace those with the correct ones (or just get the script from GitHub)

1 more...

I genuinely think that advertising should be illegal at this point. It's a ridiculous concept.

Based. Absolutely true, there is no good use for advertising.

How do you define "advertising"?

Is it advertising if a community government makes citizens aware that bus service will be changing?

Is it advertising to tell people that there's a suicide hotline available if they need help?

Is it advertising to encourage people to volunteer for a local festival?

What about telling people that the festival exists using a poster? Is that an ad? Does it depend if the festival is free or non-profit?

Advertising is just fundamentally about bringing people's attention to something. The spectrum can range from a municipal government "advertising" its monthly meeting so that local people can participate in their local democracy, to spam emails hyping a pump-and-dump cryptocurrency.

Different people will have different ideas where the cut-off should be. The extreme libertarians will say that nothing should be banned. Others will say that it's ok to ban ads for alcohol and cigarettes but not for makeup or coffee. Even totalitarian states and supposedly communist states where one entity controls all companies have ads. Some of the most striking ads ever made were for Mussolini.

So, the question really isn't about banning ads, it's just where to draw the line.

An increasing number of states are banning billboards along highways. Travelers do need a low tech method for finding certain services though, such as food, lodging, fuel and restrooms. So you'll see those blue signs that says "FOOD NEXT EXIT" with a Waffle House and Burger King logo. In order to put the logo on that sign, the business has to meet certain criteria (which vary from state to state like all highway laws), for example a restaurant must be within 3 miles of the highway, be open for at least 12 hours a day and feature public restrooms and telephones. The sign itself may include a distinctive logo and the name of the business in legible font but no slogans or ad copy. "This burger restaurant is nearby."

This I see as an appropriate amount of advertising.

Paying to tell others that they should buy something they otherwise would not.

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

It is a great example of how an industry can survive with only self-reported effectiveness. I remember a freakonomics episode where it was shown that very infrequently do companies get a positive return on marketing spending. It will be very interesting if that industry ever collapses.

Advertising is about creating trends, and catching some impulse buyers. Effectiveness is likely overstated, but on the other hand it's difficult to quantify the effectiveness of a trend. I don't think it's likely to ever collapse, people will always want to believe they can influence others more than they actually can.

3 more...
4 more...

For those who don't know: VLC also takes a YouTube video address as input (in the menu: Media | Open Network Stream...).

This has not worked for me in a very long time.

Your vlc is probably busted and could use a reinstall. Happened to me once. It still works.

i thought maybe this would work for me: nope. it was awesome when it worked but it's completely broken afaict.

Strange, that doesn't work for me

Update your VLC player if you haven't already.

There is also a way to individually update just the extractor LUA script that VLC uses to play YT videos, but I haven't messed with that in so long I've forgotten how to do it

This is such a better use of their time and dollars versus improving their service to make it more attractive to customers.

If this is the change that really sets them financially straight, then I would say they have a failing business model.

This is such a better use of their time and dollars versus improving their service to make it more attractive to customers.

Making their service more attractive to customers is precicesly what they're trying to do.

It's just that an advertising agency's customers are not the folk who watch, read or hear the ads, it's the folk who pay for the ads.

I am not sure if it will work out like this though. The amount of ads they are forcing down peoples throat is isane. Eventually it will make people consume less videos and with that less ads overall.

I am not sure if it will work out like this though. The amount of ads they are forcing down peoples throat is isane. Eventually it will make people consume less videos and with that less ads overall.

Sure, could be - but keep in mind that they have all the relevant usage data at hand. Any decrease in service popularity among users (or indeed any kind of user behavior) is immediately visible to them. They have the means to know exactly what annoyances the market will bear.

And considering that YouTube still holds a de-facto monopoly on video discoverability within the entire anglophone internet I feel like it's safe to say that the market will likely bear a lot more annoyances :P

You are not the customer. You are the product.

Yes, but if they destroy their products (aka drive users away) their real customers (ad companies) will pull out.

capitalism (or at least the weird version of it used in the tech world) is about short term profit. if they get good numbers from this, they can make future projections of an imaginary increase over the years and make the ad companies happy for a while. they do not care about breaking the product in the long term

I know. This was just the intelligent person view. In reality, as you said, they only care about short term profit, and can you blame them? Things can change overnight in the tech world. Google (as a product) was undisputed until ChatGPT was released and integrated into Bing, now Alphabet is falling vehind and losing its dominance on the market.

Just ask Twitter/X or what's left ot it.

2 more...
2 more...

If premium cost $5per month I'd pay for it, u use YouTube all the time

No way in hell it's worth $15 a month though, their pricing is completely brwindead

I agree. It’s around $22 NZD and that is just too steep. They have a slightly cheaper one but you can’t background play with it. I’m sick of being nickel and dimed at every possible opportunity and then hearing about how these companies are making record profits.

Just make a (digital) trip to India and get family of 5 accounts for about 1$ a month per account. This the way I did it.

I won't give a penny to the evil google.

It's $25/mo for family. I hate that I pay for it, but I use music, and I mostly watch YouTube on a streaming device, so I've never been able to use ad blockers. $15 for the fam felt worth it, but $25 has me rethinking. Maybe I can configure YT-DL to get the shows I care about on my Plex

Any android based streaming device can run SmartTube (formerly SmartTube next). On an Android phone you can patch the YouTube apk with revanced, which also gives you full access to yt music.

So you know that the people watching YouTube aren’t really considered “customers” by google in the traditional sense, right?

3 more...

I'll just stop using YouTube like I've stopped using Reddit.

I'm ready for that. When being a youtuber started looking like a job I think the site lost something.

That is something you just cannot avoid with a new medium. Eventually there will always be professionalization. It just sucks that youtube now just gives us the same shit over and over instead of making it easy to find new creators, like it used to be.

Hell I think you could make a massive improvement to the site if it could realize "Hey, I've been suggesting the same exact video to this user 500 times in a row, and he's never clicked it. Maybe this user likes this creator/series, but not this specific video."

Yeah, YouTube was better when it was a bunch of amateur cat videos.

There was a sweet spot when cat videos went pro. Then the spam killed it.

I'd say just smaller, less scripted content. Maybe that's what tiktok is.

I remember one of the early Youtube sensations was this teen chick's vlog that turned out to be a fictional soap opera basically. Because it hadn't occurred to anyone to do that yet.

This was BACK IN THE DAY, around the same time Boxxy became a sensation, or that one chick who just sat still in front of the camera because the Japanese liked her huge eyes.

lonelygirl15? I remember a friend telling me about that series because she wanted to share a funny video reply (Remember those?) by somebody who managed to find the same animal plushies that the girl carries around; it was a parody episode where the plushies talk about the current situation in the story and suggest that maybe the girl should drop all the teen drama stuff so they can all focus on running for their lives instead.

That's the one, lonelygirl15. What a wild story. My internet destroyed brain immediately jumped to "Wow that was before the Youtube partner program, and it was presented as an authentic teen's vlog at least at first...I wonder what the monetization strategy was?" And it turns out there kinda wasn't one. They went into $50,000 worth of credit card debt to fund the series, according to Wikipedia. Like remember that episode of South Park (remember that show?) where they had the waiting room full of viral video people waiting to get their non-existent internet fame money?

Remember when some people said we're nuts thinking Google will try to ban ad blockers with manifest v3? Yeah.

Google will try everything in their power to stop us from blocking their ads. It's their main source of revenue, you don't have to be a genius to see why they don't like ad blockers

Wouldn't this show that they failed, if they have to recur to site-based adblocker blocking? Clearly v3 hasn't stopped people from using Firefox, yt-dl, or whatever.

The Gecko Engine (Firefox), holds a user share of 4%. When compared to Chromium's (Google Chrome and its clones) whooping 72% (roughly) user share, it's clear that Firefox has limited relevance to their business strategy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-202011-202011-bar.png

(according to latest statistics, Firefox would have an even lower share)

My point is: if v3 were effective at neutralizing ad blockers in 75% of the user base, or even 95% since Safari is supposed to get on board too, why are they developing additional countermeasures?

Or has Safari decided to do like Firefox, and still allow full ad blockers?

I reckon that blocking ad blockers isn't some extra countermeasure here. It's actually right in line with what Manifest V3 and that new environment attestation system are all about. They're basically making sure that if you tinker with crucial bits of the JavaScript -- stuff they see as essential (like anti-adblock) -- you won't make it through the attestation and you'll get blocked.

They don't want to block all modifications because that would be a hindrance to many users, for example the visually impaired. However, anything affecting their bottom line will probably be blocked.

How that will affect Firefox? I don't know, maybe nothing will change for us, or perhaps Google will block Firefox altogether. We certainly know they're capable.

Yes, attestation is in line with V3 changes, just that it makes them irrelevant: YouTube's website could some day ask for environment attestation of "no extension using the intercept hooks", or "only the approved ones", and still have the same effect. The fact that they're implementing a server-side anti-adblock now, while postponing V2 deprecation over and over, makes me think the V3 changes are a flop.

Firefox... would likely require Mozilla to play ball and implement similar attestation in an official binary attestable by the OS. Edge too, just so MS doesn't mess with Chrome's binary attestation on Windows.

Safari already has attestation, without extra parameters, but it could be extended:

https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

Youtube's use of A/B testing is very smart in that it's actually nothing about testing user response and all about limiting the number of people they piss off at once with their god awful changes.

The day I can't block ads on the internet is the day I stop using the internet.

targeted ads have broken the Internet, saturated our subconsciouses, hijacked the attention economy, and continue to erode what's left of our dwindling privacy

advertisers are the de facto gatekeepers of larger and larger swaths of online content.

it wasn't always like this. it's gotten so much worse in recent years.

I always knew that funding the internet using ads wasn't sustainable in the long run.

There’s constant fixes for it btw from the ublockorigin team now! :D

Ads would have happened anyway like it's happening on the streaming services. They've got people paying subscriptions *with *ads. Double the money, double the fun, right?

I wonder if there's actually any benefit to ads. Like if you could magically ban advertising, would people spend any less money?

Banning advertising will cause people to rely on word of mouth.

Now, instead of some nameless entity telling you a product is the greatest thing, you'll be able to hold people accountable for the things they recommend you.

1 more...

It's only going to get worse.

Shoving more ads in people's faces just desensitizes them to it so you can keep adding even more ads into the mix.

"You were okay with 2 ads, why not 3?"

"You were okay with 3 ads, why not 5?"

Repeat until the end of time, or until the masses stop being dumbasses and work together to topple the ruling class.

P.S. I have no respect for anyone in the advertising industry. They are all scum worth less than the gum under my shoe.

Advertising is poison.

The entire concept is intolerable, and it breaks whole industries. We've ruined televisions - not the medium of television, the physical rectangle in your living room - for the sake of cramming ads into the menus. They can show ads over your home movies. Paying for content to avoid ads is impossible because they just add ads. The siren song of slightly more money must not be ignored!

1 more...
1 more...

Here's a rule for uBlock Origin.

Credit: https://lemmy.one/comment/597479 && original link: https://lemmy.nz/comment/446556

! Anti-Youtube Anti-Adblocker https://lemmy.one/comment/597479

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)

youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])

youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)

I feel dumb, do I need to do anything else besides pasting it to my rules > temporary rules > save?

9 more...

I haven't used youtube.com to watch YouTube in years. NewPipe x SponsorBlock (polymorphicshade) on mobile, SmartTubeNext on TV, Invidious, Piped, or FreeTube on desktop.

What happens to me now with Firefox and ublock origin is if i leave a video paused in the background for a long time and then it unloads it and then I click it to continue watching so it loads back up, then it plays an ad. I was legit like cat-confused because I haven't seen an ad on the internet in years.

Yep, same here. Today I've been abruptly reminded how intrusive and obnoxious ads on Youtube are!

Same! I was taken aback and offended all at once then refreshed to get rid of the ad which thankfully still works... But for how long more is the question 😭

I've started to just download videos with yt-dlp after grabbing links via Invidious. Using Invidious itself has become somewhat unreliable lately, and this way I don't have to put up with buffering and can watch in good quality. Cut out the middle men

MPV can directly play yt videos (it uses a built-in copy of yt-dlp afaik), and it's very configurable. I always watch yt videos with it.

Sometimes it would be useful if it could use a proxy like piped or invidious, but those links don't work

Ooh, I should try that! I already use mpv, so that'd streamline things a bit

Consider upping the cache for youtube. By default it is 2 minutes, which is mostly fine, except that if you are speeding through a part with 2x or faster, you may quickly run out of that small cache, because it only loads with the speed of something between 1x and 2x.
And then you may also set up saving the cache to disk instead of RAM, because it may be quite larger. Single config option.
You can make these only apply for youtube videos only with conditional auto profiles. The doc has an example for an automatic youtube profile, it's perfect.

I don't use the main YouTube website at all anymore. A big reason for this is that I spend a lot of time using a really weak laptop that tends to struggle with the JavaScript-laden abomination that is modern corporate web design. Firefox itself struggles as well, so I primarily use Luakit with Invidious, which runs peachy. I also put together a local html page for my bookmarks that is generated from Yaml using a small C application (which is not optimal, I know, but I've been learning C and this was a good opportunity). Whenever something doesn't work in Luakit, I evade to Palemoon. I also tried watching YouTube via mpv earlier, and it's great! It runs infinitely better than any web player at max resolution and buffers the whole video. Never going back.

I meant too increase the cache for yt videos in mpv :)

But you say it buffers the whole video, so maybe already changed something to do that

But yeah, I agree on your other points. If youtube blocks yt-dlp, mpv and proxies, then I'm done with it.

Do you self host Invidious? I have zero issues with it self hosted.

I got it once on Chrome. Haven't used Chrome for YT since. No trouble with FF and UBlock Origin.

Damn, I just recently switched to Ungoogled Chromium, just for YouTube (still use Firefox for everything else.) I did this for HDR and RTX Video Super Resolution, since Firefox supports neither. Looks like I'm going to have to live without now.

No trouble for me using Yandex and AdGuard AdBlocker, either, fwiw.

Same. If I really need the website, I now use https://yewtu.be

Or https:/piped.video

piped has been giving me more issues recently, I think Google's fighting them?

yeah same, only like half of the videos load or play.

Had the same issues, but decided to host my own instance. Not had a single issue since, plus the latency is great 😏

Just a tip for those of you that do cave to pressure and go with the paid premium option. or already have one but dont want to pay for more accounts or a family account.

You can set up channels or brand accounts as sub-accounts on a premium subscription and they will act like separate accounts with the advantages of premium, so if you have a large family and don't want to pay for the full family subscription (which only has 5 slots anyway) you can set up a few sub-accounts that each get their own subscriptions, recommendations, settings and all have the premium features.

So if you want to make a premium account for a parent or child, you can do that with one single subscription if you can take the caveat of them being brand accounts rather than fully their own thing.

This works on things like Android TV or Google TV, but you need to log into the main account then switch to a sub account in the app, however, there is no authentication to switch between channel accounts this way, so it's really only useable for families only. I use this at home to run 4 separate nvidia shield youtube apps with their own subscriptions and recommendations on one single premium payment.

I expect they will change how that works in the future to remove the loophole, probably by charging for channel accounts or having it locked behind some kind of overpriced professional usage tier, but for now, it might be a good option for some.

Many people have also said if you set your location to for example India when signing up for premium you'll get it basically for free compared to what it'll cost in europe and it'll keep working even if your location is elsewhere from there on.

Yes indeed, and google get less money. however there are some signs that companies are starting to crack down on that.

I use Turkey, it's around $2.50 per month for the 6-person plan.

Today I started getting ads with no video just audio. I didn't get the adblocker message yet. Firefox ESR+ublock origin

This came up on reddit and one of the members suggested adding the following filter. I don't know if it works but may as well. (ublock > settings > my filters)

youtube.com,youtubekids.com,youtube-nocookie.com##+js(json-prune, playerResponse.adPlacements playerResponse.playerAds playerResponse.adSlots adPlacements playerAds adSlots, adPlacements.[].adPlacementRenderer.renderer.instreamVideoAdRenderer)

1 more...

Try adding YT enhancer. I've got UBlock Origin and that installed. IDK which one is still blocking ads, but they're still blocked.

I had this issue but refreshed the page and it has gone away since. I'm guessing that didn't help for you?

Works for a few videos and then it shows them again. Seems like the normal YouTube thing where you get ads every few videos

1 more...

It'll be a shame if I have to ditch YouTube. There's only 2 or 3 channels I would even consider paying for and they don't have Patreon or anything. I'm less than interested in giving Google a cut.

Does NewPipe count as an adblocker? Not yet but I fear its days are numbered.

Newpipe is accessing the videos straight from the backend. There is no chance to splice any ads into, unless youtube were to modify the source material, and that's highly inconvenient. And then we'd just use sponsorblock anyway.

They tried to change the code to access the raw video material many times over, but unless they encrypt it and enforce decryption via keys uniquely embedded in the official youtube app while somehow finding a way to prevent a disassembly to use their keys in unofficial apps, I don't see that happening.

They don't need to splice ads in, they could just render NewPipe inoperable. I'm sure it would be fairly trivial to detect which page loads are from NewPipe.

Not trivial at all, else they'd have done that already instead of playing cat & mouse. How would they differentiate whether it's the official app, some mobile browser, or newpipe? Changing the user agent or cloning a fingerprint from a browser is the trivial thing here.

Well if they're detecting active ad blockers then presumably they're running some client side js to decode the url if certain conditions are met.

I don't think think they've been playing cat & mouse with newpipe, they just break it by accident.

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

YouTube algorithm has been garbage for months now. There's literally no good content.

The site has plenty of good content, just no way to find it.

Some youtuber link other channels with similar topic/content. I found few new channels that way.

Sounds like the death knell for YT... what's the point of a centralized platform, if we're back to links to discover content. They could link to PeerTube.

Not from US but my uBlock has a problem with YouTube since yesterday. It blocks the ad video but the sound of it is still audible.

I followed this from Ublock's Reddit page, it's working for now.

Current anti-adblock status: Latest fixed (ID: 462a8d5d)*

Please, remember these 3 steps:

Force update all your filter lists (click uBO icon > ⚙ Dashboard button > Filter lists pane > 🕘 Purge all caches > 🔃 Update now)
Turn off all other extensions AND browser's built-in blockers
Remove all your current custom filters AND custom filter lists that you have enabled / added manually (Adguard lists...)
It might be quicker to make a backup of your config and restore to defaults before proceeding to step 1.

Fixing anti-adblock can cause ads slipped. If you see any ads slipped, please report back the EXACT URL and your country when accessing the URL so volunteers are able to investigate.

The filter lists can be updated multiple times a day, so please always do step 1 before reporting.

  • About the ID above, it's the ID of YouTube's script that's used for anti-adblock, you can monitor it via this link: https://pastefy.app/G1Txv5su/raw (top to bottom is oldest to latest). It means that the current fix is matched with the script with corresponding ID.

If the latest ID (the last line) does not match the current one written above, it means YT has updated the new one and it might cause anti-adblock again. If it matches and you still get anti-adblock, kindly check the 3 steps above. Thank you.

I will definitely try this. Thank you really

Very good. It will be nice to be off YouTube completely.

I use YouTube revanced, and after a quick update a few weeks ago it's working fine again

I too have been using Revanced but I'm not experienced with updating third party apps. How is it done?

I have a script I used to auto download new stuff from my subscriptions using yt-dlp. I never watch videos on youtube anymore because it's just garbage, buffering all the time or just straight up not playing content. The only thing I miss is sponsor block but I don't care that much

here's instructions on setting the script up if you're interested

Mind sharing it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11ualom/auto_download_latest_youtube_videos_from_your/

I'll make an updated lemmy post as well but for now it's an old reddit post of mine. There's also some great alternatives that I think are easier to set up if you don't mind managing a separate subscriptions list - I made this script specifically because none of the options I'd seen were able to take your subscriptions from youtube and check them.

May be worth trying to set up with one of the alternative youtube frontends that have been popping up so you can use those accounts. I think it depends on if yt-dlp allows it as that's what's doing all the work here.

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

Mine is not blocked yet. I am definitely worried about this though. I am in East Asia.

Wonder how much YouTube is going to squeeze out of this ad blocker blocking.

I recommend trying something like AdNauseum or similar. I get the idea they haven't reached us yet, only people reporting this are in the US so far.

Here's hoping YouTube Revanced on Android and Adguard on desktop continues to work, eh...

Tbh, at this point there's no reason in them disabling ad blockers. If you haven't gotten used to this insane amount of ads by experiencing the slow, uphill creep, having to go from seeing no ads to suddenly this, is impossible. I couldn't watch youtube videos in the current state of ads, so I'd just have one less vice.

I had already stopped once, when youtube vanced went offline (until i found revanced) and I will do it again

Firefox has zero issues with adblock on Desktop. On mobile I prefer Newpipe, but hey. Anything goes.

Freaking ironic that I get an ad on strawpoll stopping me from seeing the results.

I didn't get this banner yet maybe because I'm using ublock origin

1 more...

I feel like we can ignore this and it'll mostly be a non-issue. Hopefully I don't have to eat those words later.

YouTube can detect common current adblocking methods, and use this to hinder you now, prompting to comply with them. If you do, they win. You pay for no ads or you have an exception in your adblocker.

As another comment mentioned, it's a cat and mouse game. Adblockers will get ahead of it. So just wait it out.

should I vote if I'm not in the US?

If you have a good party to vote for. I'm in the UK, and I'm not so sure if any party deserves my vote.

You should always vote, if only to not let the worst party get power. Your enemies would rather you didn't vote than vote for their enemy.

Still odd to think of countries where voting is optional. It's compulsory here, adn the only people who can afford to not vote are the rich....

4 more...
10 more...
10 more...

They are rolling this out in stages to users worldwide, It happened to me 3 weeks ago, on Brave, Firefox, and on Chrome. I had to junk Brave, update firefox, flush out my extensions (remove them) and reinstall, and now I run 6 different ad blocking and tracking extensions and its back working again. You should also know that Adblocker Ultimate are also involved and working on blocking their extension from working so they can sell premium app, which is now an app that runs on your computer, not an extension anymore.

6 adblockers?! Have you looked into uBlock origins customisable block lists? You can combine at least 3 blockers with that. Additionally you could add custom block lists.

Edit: clarifications and spelling errors.

8 more...

This is quite concerning. Hopefully the adblocker extension devs are able to bypass this. I expect a cat and mouse game eventually.

It will be a cat and mouse game, which YouTube will loose in the long run. Don't remember the name, but there is a very clever solution: They download all the ads so YT thinks you are watching. However, ads are never shown to you. This is extremely hard to detect and it muddies the data collection of Google since you watch and click everything.

IMO: This is a net loss for YT/Google. Their collection of data looses value. And advertisers wont be willing to pay the same amount for clicks, since a registered click is not necessary someone who watched and the targetting got worse...

Worst case of this solution is you might have to wait before watching your video. It wouldn't be unreasonable for google to refuse to send you the video until $ad_duration has elapsed.

Still beats watching ads though. I could queue up a bunch in a "watch later" playlist and have a program get them all ready for me.

AdNauseam is a browser extension that uses the same idea to obfuscate tracking. I never used it myself, but it seems like a good alternative to blocking ads.

8 more...

I pay for premium.

I spend like 20x time on YouTube compared to other premium streaming services, knowing the money at least partially goes to the creators and that it's usually a much larger source of revenue than the midroll ads (and the fact I spend like 40% of my watch time on an iPad) makes it pretty worth it to me. Other than that I use uBlock on medium/high, but if there was an extention that could skip the sponsor segments inside the videos themselves I'd use it in a heartbeat.

if there was an extention that could skip the sponsor segments inside the videos themselves I’d use it in a heartbeat.

sponsorblock does that. it's crowd sourced, so it doesn't always work with the small channel newest videos, but it's very good at what it does considering.

It's quite amazing how well sponsorblock works really. I spend a shit ton of time on youtube and I almost never have to mark those sections of the video myself because someone else did it already.

If you have access to a VPN you can also buy premium for a much smaller price in another region. I bought a year for 16 USD via India.

1 more...

It's a no-brainer. You get a music service at the same price as everyone else. They just add on ad-free YouTube. I don't get why so many people hate the idea of it.

I've had Google Play Music (and YouTube Premium as a freebie) since it launched at $7.99 per month. Folks like me who were grandfathered in at that price just got an increase to $13.99, which forced me to cancel. I can't afford restaurants or takeout anymore with inflation as bad as it is, and I guess I can't afford YouTube either.

SponsorBlocks does that but it either requires non-webkit Firefox or Revanced, which means you can't get it any way on iOS

2 more...

I load the old 2014-2017 layout locally from my C drive as my localhost and proxy it to load when i type in youtube dot com. avoids ads, increases performance, and looks better as a layout all in one.

I sincerely doubt the 2017 API still works today. Apps like NewPipe have to update every month to keep up with it, and old YouTube mobile app versions don't work anymore.

Until today I haven’t seen an ad on YT, for years. Then I searched for a video, clicked, and got an ad. Clicked off the video, restarted the browser (also updated uBlock’s filters), and that fixed it.

Edit: I wrote this and got another ad. No video, just the audio.

Firefox + UBO and ReVanced still working rn.

I saw two borked up ads that played audio and no video, refreshed my browser and haven't seen them since. I also updated my block list and it's been fine.

If you are on Linux you can just use freetube. Maybe it’s also available on windows but that’s something I don’t know

FreeTube is available on Windows as well.

Thanks for the recommendation. Just downloaded (just in case) and I've gotta say, I might like this enough to switch out even if they don't mess with my browser player.

I have been having this problem 2 days ago, but I have started using NoScript in combination with UBlock Origin yesterday and i didn't see any ads after that.

I only watch Rossmann’s channel anymore so I will probably just quit if they block mine. I use uBlock Origin + Librewolf + VPN + pihole + a random user agent extension. When I set my VPN to USA it still doesn’t say anything.

Not yet, and I'm already prepared to use piped if I can't use youtube itself, and hopefully people will start reuploading content to peertube (wink) if yt just becomes inaccessible.

Youtube has not blocked me with my uBlock but your poll did for being a vpn user.

I know it's an anti-vote-fraud measure but it's still kind of funny.

Voting over VPN not allowed. Might try Cryptpad or I think Framasoft has a voting platform.

For me it's quite strange. This first happened around 2 weeks ago, I was getting ads, however only the audio works as when the ad plays the screen is black.

I'm on Firefox with uBlock. Also I never got this popup, I just started getting ads with a black screen.

Skip in 5 seconds? No. I'll trek 7 deserts, gleefully abandoning everything and everyone I ever knew before you will subject me to this.

Yes. It's hyper super bestest ever effective. There are unfortunately absolutely no way around their rock solid implementation.

Can't you just open a new private tab or window for every video that you watch?

Absolutely you can. There are absolutely no other, easier ways to circumvent it and this is absolutely not a failed attempt at sarcasm at how laughable their malware attempt is.

Even the "endgame" one is laughably easy to circumvent. I'm not giving them any hints though because Fuck Google.