YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge
gizmodo.com
YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge::The video platform now requires users to disable their ad blockers with an immovable pop-up.
YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge::The video platform now requires users to disable their ad blockers with an immovable pop-up.
Currently without issue using Firefox and uBlock Origin. No complaints from YouTube nor ads.
I'm certain that by "users" what they really mean is "people still using Chrome."
I've been having intermittent problems while using Firefox. Of course, all I need to do is clear the Ublock's filters and re-load them.
Oddly, my brother who uses the same ad-blocker as me and Chrome hasn't gotten a anti-AdBlock nag screen for months. No idea why.
That's the majority of people?? Looks like the most recent number is 64% of people with 20% on Safari and the remaining ~17% split among the rest with Firefox (3%) not even beating Edge (5%)
Honestly the process to get ublock origin working is identical between the two of them, so being a chrome user doesn't really make it any harder. Obviously still a better idea to switch, but for that specific problem, its the same.
It's being rolled out in waves. Seems like you haven't been hit yet.
No as ublock has stated you are using other extensions that are tripping detection, ffs 😑
Nope, that's not what uBlock is saying. YouTube rolls out new adblock detection several times a day. uBlock can't stop it instantly, it takes time for the devs to adjust their code. So for a few hours, YouTube's detection works. If you haven't been caught yet, then it means you've been lucky to get the rollout after uBlock already had a fix. Some of us aren't that lucky. Last week, I got an early rollout several hours before uBlock had a patch. Turned off all my extensions, used default uBlock settings, all their suggestions, had no effect. A few hours later, uBlock had a fix and I didn't see YouTube's block anymore.
No, not at all correct. uBlock has stated publicly, on multiple channels, that YT is updating its detection script several times a day while they are racing to patch in a fix.
I had been using Ghostery Dawn for ages. Got the pop-ups. Couldn't get around them. Switched to just firefox with ublock, no more ads. Can confirm it does work.
I've been hearing that for a while
I was having issues requiring cache dump/updates daily both on a Windows 10 machine with FF/UO and on an ipad with Brave and Orion (which can use UO) including total cookie wipes. Win 11 machines never blinked.
The last couple days or so, I've not seen the block message anywhere. Fun stuff.
it's a matter of time don't worry
if it does happen, just use freetube
it's a matter of time for that one too
Same here, chrome and ublock origin.. did nothing special at all, never seen any of these popups.
I assume it's a slow rollout and we've both been lucky.
I had to use element picker mode to select the popup to make it go away, but now i have two issues:
Unless you're doing something unusual, it's probably because you're browsing youtube without being logged in.
uBlock Origin is from chromium
uBlock Origin is very much available for Firefox.
It was first released in June 2014 as a chrome and opera extension. That’s what I meant. However I did say chromium which would be technically incorrect.
Your original post is absolute nonsense and reads like someone correcting / saying it doesn't exist in Firefox at all.
Op said "I use firefox with uBlock" and you went "ublock is from chromium" - which in the context you explained above is totally useless to the discussion - who cares where it is from?
Firefox also has it
Some solutions:
Vinegar on iOS is also still working perfectly
Can’t say that’s it’s been working perfectly both on my iPhone and on my iPad, but it’s certainly helped a lot.
Nice, this is one of the primary reasons I haven't used Safari in my Apple noobness, relying on Brave and another browser for YT ad blocking. Going to give this a try too.
ReVanced still and option for Android, though I have to recommend NewPipe and sponsor block
Grayjay gang :D
I don't actually use it, I tried it out but I still prefer LibreTube. Just included it because it might be useful for others.
I switched to it from NewPipe w SponsorBlock (fork) when it went public for testing. For a prerelease it does everything I need, except SB functionality. Hoping that is in the pipeline.
Subscription feed works for you? When I imported my subs it said the subscription feed is disabled to due to issues with YouTube API limits. Getting nebula in my home feed is nice though. Mostly still on NP+SB in the meantime.
It does, yep - I just opened it and it already had a video posted just 11 minutes ago. There have been a couple bugs I've found and reported but it's all small, out-of-the-way stuff. I have around 65 yt channels I follow.
Going to try Yattee tonight, thank you!
when following the guide for Yattee, does it serve as a drop-in replacement for the Youtube app, i.e. does it open Youtube links from other apps and everything? I don't use iOS, but I'd like to know how viable it would be as a recommendations for my friend who do.
I don't use iOS anymore and I don't exactly remember how Yattee behaves. Just recommend them to try it out, they can always look for another solution if this doesn't work.
It really isnt getting harder to dodge past the initial recent push. "Go to settings, purge cache, refresh list, refresh youtube" is just as many steps today as it was when this recent push started
I've still yet to see it.. not even had to do any of those things. Something about my setup I guess neutralises it.
Me neither.
Windows
PiHole (AWS Lightsail instance)
Edge
TubeBlock extension
Waiting for the hammer to drop. OTOH, I don't watch much Tube.
I was, but they stopped appearing once I completely cleared browsing history and cookies. I also did another purge and update for good measure.
The only pain in the ass was that I ended up changing the username of some of my accounts but forgot to update them in my account manager, so it took a bit to find and log into them. But that was completely on me and won't happen if you're not being an idiot like I was.
Big thing that helps is switching off of Chrome. I've been seeing a lot of people say that we should stop using Chrome and I just hadn't gotten around to it. Once the YouTube adblocker started picking up Ublock Origin even after clearing the cache I hard switched to Fire Fox and installed Ublock Origin.
I have not cleared my cache once and I haven't seen a single ad.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + PiHole = I'm wondering what all the fuss is about. I haven't seen a single adblocker warning on YouTube yet.
Stop using browsers based on Chromium people, it's not that hard.
YouTube thinks I'm using an outdated version of Chrome running in Windows 7
This. I've gotten this popup about four times since this happened, telling me the video player was blocked because I had an adblocker still. Each time, I purged cache and updated and it went away.
Fuck YouTube
YouTube had a good humble beginning before monetization fucked everything up. It was a bad idea to begin with. For now, best stick with piped and all the apps that use piped as backend. NewPipe and LibreTube. Want to support a creator? Go buy merch or something. Dont give Google a second of your time.
I mean it’s a fine idea it’s just been capitalismed to death
I read this as monetization being the bad idea, and that is basically the same thing as being capitalismed to death.
So the amount of up front investment required for something on an infrastructure level is massive. It’s the type of thing that really needs to be centralized, because it isn’t just storage. It’s massive amounts of bandwidth, a distributed content distribution network close to your end users(which is even harder on a global scale).
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think the purely profit driven nature of YouTube is healthy at all. It’s an active detriment. But it’s hard to think of another practical way that isn’t hellaciously expensive.
Introducing.. PeerTube. Bandwidth is not a problem because if a video gets popular people will be watching it and therefore sharing it to their peers Infrastructure costs don't matter because channels would be on small instances That would not cost much to run, etc. A single company need not pay millions of dollars to host something like this when each individual who wants to be a content creator can put up a few dollars a month like maybe four or five and do it. That way the cost is distributed and not a burden on one entity.
The issue with PeerTube, is monetization.
You need to be able to tell anchors that draw people in and make their living from YouTube like LinusTechTips, Phillip DeFranco, and MrBeast why PeerTube is the platform for them... and losing all the money YouTube gives them is a big problem in any argument (as much as they might not like some of YouTube's policies themselves).
Also, storage costs are going to explode if PeerTube gets popular and maintains the "anyone can upload in 4k" that YouTube allows. Linus did a video about how expensive 4k video is compared to the 1080p videos that have been dominate in the platform for most of the platform's life, and how that increased cost has contributed to discussions of changes (at the time) which have evidently manifested as adblocking and promoting premium (speculatively, this is in part because Google feels regulars are going to hurt its advertising business badly and they need to get subscribers that could keep the platform afloat -- going back to "old models" before the Google advertising money machine made the Internet "free").
I totally get that they had to find some way to financially support the massive infrastructure that was necessary to do what YouTube does.
I was fine with an ad every now and then.
I was fine with an ad at the start and end of a long video.
Ads on a 30s video? Ads on an Ad? Multiple ads at the start, multiple ads in-between and at the end? Jesus h. Christ. Removing the dislike button?
That was when I switched to ReVanced.
Wasn't YouTube unrelated to Google at first?
Yes, they bought it (in 2006). However, it wasn't what it is today, and IIRC it was "in the red" (losing money). It was in the red for years after Google bought it as well. There's not a lot of good information on this unfortunately with regard to the current state. The last update we had was in 2015 that YouTube wasn't making money https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-for-youtube-1424897967
That's 9 years of operating at a loss, and probably the 9 years people think of most fondly... We were getting the service at a loss to Google.
It wouldn't shock me if they removed ublock origin from the chrome store
Just use Firefox. It's better as a browser, anyway.
I switched back to ff in 2018 but then switched back to chrome after it deleted my bookmarks sporadically for the 5th time. I've logged bugs about it too.
Cool story
I will when they finally fix dragging tabs between windows
Edit: I'm not saying the operation isn't functional, I'm saying it lacks certain small visual feedback aspects like popping a tab out into a new window while dragging. This in and of itself isn't breaking, but Firefox had a lot of rough edges like that every time I used it, and I'm using this specific one as a benchmark to judge if I should give the browser a shot again
Huh, what is the issue? Been working fine for me for years.
Classic layer 8 problem
PEBCAK baby!
Popping out a tab doesn't turn it into a draggable window, but just into cursor basic cursor held object. This gives no visual feedback on what is actually happening and makes the whole operation much less visually clear
It's a small thing, but in the times I tried Firefox, I noticed a lot of these rough edges to the point that it became frustrating to use. I'm using this specific one as a benchmark for when I'm willing to give it a shot again
Fuck's sake, what a stupid thing to get hung up over.
You're all getting quite hung up about someone voicing that they're not ready to switch to your preferred browser tbh
Like, it's not that you are negatively affected by me having UX preferences
Could you find a smaller potato?
Is that a typo, or a saying I'm not familiar with?
It’s a small potatoes means that’s it’s extremely inexpensive and misses the big bag of perfectly good, if not above average potatoes
Thank you
You’re welcome 😊
It never bothered me. You can just stop dragging anywhere and it will turn into a window.
I'd rather have messy Mac and cheese than pretty pile of shit please.
Strangely nit-picky. The reason this matters to you is because you are used to it. It's so small an aspect of the browser though that you would forget about it quickly. Imo of course. I never even noticed this when I changed and I use the function many times a day.
Correct, it matters to me
So, as long as Firefox doesn't really offer something that in my opinion outways all it's UX issues, I am not inclined to switch
Looking at my score, appearantly that is offensive though
Try Floorp?
Apparently lol, can't be different!
I do that all the time with ff?
I give it a year, tops, before they start serving ads in premium too.
But that's the only benefit of premium (on YouTube itself). I guess there are still YouTube originals but that kind of died as far as I can tell.
Yes. And? You think they care? Premium isn't there to benefit you, it's there to benefit Google. As soon as the money stops coming in, they'll look for other ways to squeeze it. We're already seeing it with streaming providers shoehorning ads into their paid services. It's not that much of a stretch.
The only benefit now, but what if they start to serve 30 non-skippable ads without premium and ONLY 5 with premium, what a deal! Right? If you hate ads you can just buy higher tier for ONLY $5 more.
Let's just keep fingers crossed for ublock...
They'll introduce premium platinum for 2x the price, and then normal premium will be changed to YouTube supporter class, with select advertisements
But they'll do this very quietly, and everyone will get grandfathered into YouTube supporter if they don't do anything. So in public they'll still say YouTube premium has no advertisements, even though they've moved the goal posts
This is scarily believable.
But on the good side, they offer 3 months of "reduced" cost ( but still more than old premium cost) for those that upgrade now
More realistically they'll bump up the price of premium a bit more and then have a reduced ads tier for like $6-7. But, I also have my doubts about that. The business model is significantly different than other "streaming services".
So they are cracking down on Adblockers and increasing the price of Premium as well.
I wish there was an alt platform that we could use, because even the FBI recommends using an Adblockers (and TBH what sane person would roll without one?)
I recommend Invidious.
Peertube, odysee
YouTube do not care if you buy the products or not, they care that they can tell the customer that you have seen it.
This made me think!
Would someone who was enjoying Internet services all the way from infancy (with no ad-blocking devices/apps), think that the amount of ads we have nowadays was the norm and that there was nothing weird or absurd about it?
I think they would be disgusted with it. I personally remember the Internet from the Dual Up days, and the amount of ads now is absolutely egregious.
https://grayjay.app/
The FBI does not recommend using adblockers so that you can avoid ads on YouTube. That's just 🤦♂️ worthy.
Every adblocker I know of can be disabled on specific sites.
I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but Google is within their rights to show ads or make you pay. It costs more than it probably should, and they serve more ads than they should, but their platform is unique and expensive to run; most uploads do not make them money.
More like just get off my lawn. Constant bitching and moaning about completely optional services and spending a few dollars to use them is getting to me.
Yes, Lemmy is free, yes the Internet is historically free (because of ad driven content), but Christ things actually do cost money folks and services have a right to charge what people are willing to pay.
If you don't like it... Don't use YouTube, seek out an alternative, build an alternative, tell your creators you'll only watch them on PeerTube (which probably won't work because they want to make money) or floatplane or whatever.
This isn't some crusade for Google. I'm just sick of this crap being in my feed and all these comments. This isn't "technology", it's one service charging money 🙄
That's not how I intended the phrasing here.
No one doubts Google is not entitled to money. The level of ads is excessive, and to be fair, we are served too many ads in our daily lives as-is, constantly, billboards, radio, Cable TV (to which you pay for the priviledge of watching ads), Gas Pumps, ect. It's everywhere and nauseating, and I'm starting to personally doubt the efficacy of them. People have become numb to them.
But they go on a crusade against Adblockers since the amount / type of ads is excessive, and then raise premium pricing : "The Solution".
It's almost like they have a monopoly and the moves as of recent are anti-consumer.
The FBI recommends an ad-blocker actually because of malicious.... Google Search, yes that same pesky Google, not filtering out dangerous websites in their search results under the "Suggested" part of the search (these sites spoof their web addresses and hope you click on them to deliver a malware payload on your system.)
That one drives me especially crazy. I just want to pump my gas in peace.
I mean they do in a sense... But also complaining as a non-paying customer that you should have to pay is going to get you nowhere.
(Edit: I'm going to leave this part in, you were just asking for an alternative. My memory has blended other comments and a general "ugh" feeling in all these threads. So, this really isn't aimed at you)
If you really want to make a change, stop using YouTube, create content elsewhere, try and convince the creators you watch to upload elsewhere. The thing is, most creators that are big enough for the average person to be watching are doing it because it makes them money, and Google is the best place to get that check. You could try floatplane, but my guess is it's going to be more (not less) expensive than Google and/or might not have people you want to watch on it.
Google considered making 4k premium only because it's so expensive. Linus tech tips did a nice video showing how 4k disrupts YouTube's business model and imposes much higher costs. Instead of doing that, they're raising prices and blocking ads. A more altruistic Google could reduce the ads once the adblockers are working, I kinda doubt they will, but it's still a possibility.
The days of "free YouTube" (like so many other free Internet things) are over, it was a great deal. It's not as great of a deal now. Maybe someone can actually afford to put up a fight now that it's actually got to make money, maybe not. It's still (IMO) a pretty dang good deal for all the content you get, and premium helps support the creators you're watching (at least according to Linus) by a "significant" amount vs ad supported views.
Yeah you're right on this one. I actually misremembered the reason, so I'll take the facepalm for myself. Still, I haven't used YouTube with ads in a while, but I remember YouTube ads being more like TV ads/a bit more reliable (and a bit too repetitive).
Fine but enforce some monopoly undercut pricing on YouTube.
I'm not sure what you're advocating for here. Government regulation to cap the price?
Switched to Freetube and convinced my dad too as well. No ads, no algorithms, no shit yt search that never works. We're chilling.
Probably jinxing myself here, but I have yet to have a single problem. Linux, Firefox, ublock origin.
I'm using Invidious on desktop and Revanced on my android. No ads so far...
Are ads really that useful when the users subjected to them hate ads from the start?
Not to the advertiser, but to the one getting money for the ad.
How do they get money for an ad about a product I will never give a chance to?
Product pays Google to show you the ad
Ah gotcha. Ty
Cost Per Impression
μBlock Origin works for me still (Firefox), but I had to remove my custom filter to remove Shorts from the Subscription page - seems like they can detect it if I have any YT-specific rules.
I've got FreeTube set up as a backup in case μBlock does ever fail - but its lack of tabs really make me not want to use it as my primary access yet. I think they could benefit a lot from creating a browser-based UI, kind of like what Plex has.
Freetube for the win. Built in sponsor block.
I’ve just installed Yattee for IOS. It works great. There was a post for this a day ago? Also for other platforms. Fuck YouTube.
Maybe I didn’t do it right. Nothing loads. Do I need to copy and paste each YT link to see something?
https://r.yattee.stream/manifest-invidious-piped.json
Settings——> locations manifest and add the above link. Restart the app and you are good to go.
** https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629/) with this guide - (Adding Piped/Invidious website to Homescreen)
Original part of og post.
Thanks your link worked. This is awesome!
Works for me if set to US location, does not work for some others i tried
Stop using butt adblockers. There's a reason why UBO has the highest amount of downloads, is a recommended extension, and is the highest rated extension on both chromium and firefox.
Weird. I've been running AdBlock and AdGuard for years and nary an issue with youtube. I just never see ads there.
FWIW it was only when I added a vpn to my mix that I started being made to submit to captchas whenever I do anything like search
I use a whitelist firewall. It is like a lock on my front door. I don't use an adblocker. I manually add only websites I wish to visit. Extorting me for only visiting websites I trust and wish to visit is criminal. I am the reason Ad Blocks are a thing. They are the lazy person's mostly effective whitelist firewall.
All ads are are serving you another website you didn't ask to visit and with unknown bad actors that are not effectively vetted. Ads are like a house party in your home where one of your guests opens a window in your bathroom and let's a dozen random people into your home without your knowledge. The person that let them in sneaks around the hidden guests while trying to prevent you from noticing. It is criminal behavior. This is privateering, aka pirates that have a legal charter from a criminal government.
Well, if you visit Youtube to watch a video, it will serve both the video and the ads from the same website. Ads are not necessarily being loaded from another website. If they were, we could just DNS-block YouTube ads, and they would be gone in your entire home network, for instance.
I've already switched to Freetube on my PC, and New.piped on my phone.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After beginning to roll out a healthy nudge to turn off ad blockers or subscribe to the platform’s ad-free Premium offering, YouTube is now forcing users’ hands.
As users continue to trawl the depths of YouTube, they will now be greeted with a pop-up warning them to disable their ad blocker saying “video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled.” This notification began popping up for users across the platform earlier this month, but it was as simple as shrugging it off by closing out the message.
Shortly thereafter, YouTube forced users to acknowledge the message but still allowed them to exit out of it after a brief timer elapsed.
YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton told The Verge Tuesday that using an ad blocker is actually against the platform’s terms of service.
He also told the outlet that “ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube.”
Around the same time, the company reported its third straight quarterly decline in ad revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The original article contains 320 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 43%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Looks like YouTube is the next tower to fall.
If they really stop people from watching it will just force people to straight up pirate their content.
They won't ever win this battle.
Youtube fell a long time ago. It's in ruins as we speak.
Im using Yattee on iOS with no issue. From the damn App Store, don’t think they’re cracking down very well.
That's because they're targeting Desktop users only, I think and I hate to say it, we'll inevitably face 3 choices in the future
A. Watch YT with all it's ads B. Quit using YT C. Pay for premium
All these awesome privacy frontends that we use will be killed, just like Libreddit & Teddit, and ads on YT will be unbearable, long, repetitive, that even non techies will start thinking of ways to avoid them..
The only effective solution I see, is that content creators have the balls to selfhost their content using Peertube, or migrate to Rumble or odysee..
Many content creators like LTT straight out refused to offer another way to view their content, there is no reason why anyone wouldn't want to Sync their content to other platform, unless they care that much about that ad revenue, which shows they support this business model
sorry about the grammar, slept for 2 hours..
LTT is happy to let you pay for their mediocre content plus mediocre extra behind the scenes special boi crap on Floatplane
They charge for FP ??! So these people on the podcast are paying to comment ! I didn't know that...
hmmm, that's fine I'm not against content creators creating ways to monetize, I'm against supporting the ad business model and gaslighting people into believing "it's working"..
As for the content quality, I only watch LTT to see what crazy ideas and experiments they come up with, I never learned anything tho, because they don't show you how they did it, Linus just says we're going to build a server, and boom, it's already done... ( they do it off camera ), I mean like details, installing the distro, and how to navigate it... Etc ( his team does it for him )
You are looking for niche content. The last place to search for that would be a big YT channel since their videos are tailored for the general audience. I don't know what you expected lol
Well, don't you think skipping major steps ( mind you ) renders the entire process irreproducible, or prone to error and failure ?
a Blog post would be appreciated, say : hey we skipped this ( very technical and confusing ) step, here's the boring blog, enjoy...
I'm just saying, their content is mostly entertaining, not educational, that's how I find it personally.
Libreddit was killed? How am I still using it?
From their Github
⚠️Why do I get TOO MANY REQUESTS errors? ⚠️ As of July 12th, 2023, Libreddit is currently not operational as Reddit's API changes, that were designed to kill third-party apps and content scrapers who don't pay large fees, went into effect. Read the full announcement here. One of the project maintainers is working towards keeping this project alive to some extent: #836
Some instances might still be operational, but limited..
I deleted my Reddit accounts, once Infinity stopped working, and I open reddit links in Tor ( same with Tiktok and others ), they're not gonna have it their way
Hmm, well my personal instance works fine and has for months, no limitations that I've encountered. Guess I'm just lucky
Yea you're, I tried some instances they work for a while and then they give that message : too many requests
what happened to Reddit is just disgusting, they broke the law and they're roaming free..
I wonder if it impacts public instances because it's rate-limiting the requests, where it's just me on my private instance so it's not hitting the limit.
If so then it's pretty easy to spin one up in docker and get around the issue.
Of course leaving reddit entirely is always better.
Also I'm not tuned in -- what laws did they break?
Maybe, but I don't wanna try anymore, you could patch Infinity with Revanced patches and keep using it too, but I dont wanna do that either...
Yeah, I gave up..
I think it's called CCPA ( a US data law ), Reddit violated that law, when they restored users' content, im guessing this law guarantees the right to be erased... ( US data laws sound good on paper, but they never work in reality 😂 )
Also they can't just go to their terms of service and change stuff based on the situation, they even tried to stretch the meaning of some clauses in their TOS just so they can cover it up, it's all in r/announcements, just scroll back to June 2023
It's all about how many people these platforms have to convince them to stop using youtube I guess...
I don't understand why YouTube doesn't just put the video ads in-stream, just seems stupid for stupid's sake at this point.
Maybe this is some weird way of testing the waters. If they just solved the problem outright, users who wouldn’t put up with ads would just leave. This way they can see how many users will just tolerate the change without really committing.
That certainly seems like a possibility >_>
Gotta bleed them pennies dry.
Using AdGuard on macOS and iOS. Works fine
Just stop using YouTube?
If content providers notice their viewership going down they'll surely raise a stink to YouTube once it starts to affect their income.
Adblock detector blocker ftw!