YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers
AnonymousLlama@kbin.social to 
Technology@kbin.social – 82 points – androidpolice.com
It looks like Google are pushing pretty hard on AdBlockers now. Looks like a pretty aggressive new UI from them.
I'm finding revanced for Android is still working well, but I've got no idea when that'll become less reliable
just use firefox
This is the way.
Never had a problem with Firefox. Chromium forks however...
For now until they start ruining that too somehow. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see browser based throttling.
Or pull a reddit and try to force app usage
Ngl would like to see the browser vs. app usage statistics for YouTube. They've been moving into shorts hard so I'm thinking that desktop users are becoming a minority on the platform.
How will that help if they block you server side?
drm does not work
Sure it does. Technically, it's perfectly feasible to put up an ad-wall.
show me one example that DRM ever worked for streaming services and wasn't immediately cracked
I get the feeling we are now talking about two different things. If by "cracked" you mean that someone can rip and redistribute the content once they get access to it, sure, it's very hard to protect against that.
What I mean is: it's possible to restrict access to the service so that you cannot watch a video unless you've played the ad first or you are a paying customer. As an example: Netflix or any of the movie streaming platforms. There's no add-on or special browser that allows you to use Netflix without being a paying customer, and if YouTube implements their plan, they can make it so you won't be able to circumvent it just by using Firefox, like you claimed.
I‘m the type of determined contrarian who even pays for AdBlockers to support them in this arms race, so if they want that sweet subscription cash to keep coming they‘ll defeat whatever bullshit Youtube comes up with. Worth every cent, for a less ad infested world.
You, sir, have my respect!
There's an unwritten deal, you know. Youtube lets us block and in return, we allow Youtube to know we block. Because if we take that away from Youtube, Youtube no longer has reliable viewer statistics and the price of their ads will go down.
Now it seems Youtube wants to break the deal (and they can, unless we start pirating Youtube content, they can at the very least make us sit through a minute of black screen before each video). They probably think the damage that will be done is less than the additional income that the subscriptions generate.
it's just the same old story. Grow, grow, grow, wait until you've got a monopoly, now squeeeeeeeeze the profit.
Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.
And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.
That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.
I had no clue of the existence of the Ad Nauseam browser extension. I use Firefox and I just added it to my browser.
I read that it's built off of uBlock Origin, which I already trust because of the open source nature of it, so that was a huge plus for me.
It may not necessarily have been your intention to inform people of Ad Nauseam, but I definitely thank you for bringing it up in the first place!
Do you know if it interferes with unlock origin?
It does yes. It also interferes with other privacy related extensions like privacy badger. I have disabled both Ublock Orgin and Privacy Badger in favor of AdNauseam and have been pleased. After using it for about a week, it says I've "clicked" on about $150 worth of ads.
The main thing to note is if you're on a site, and you see ads, you can always flip AdNauseam into "strict" mode. In strict mode, it is less effective at clicking on ads, but better at making sure nothing pops up. There's only one site that I've had to use strict mode on so far. Attached image is of my "ad vault" (the ads that have been clicked). I did hide the NSFW ads:
One thing that worries me about this approach is that it's still generating ad revenue. Sure you don't actually see the ads but it's still an incentive for companies to continue running more and more ads.
From the persepctive of the host site, maybe. But for the advertisers, AdNauseam punishes them pretty badly. The idea is to destroy the relationship between the "click through rate" and "conversion rate" of offending sites/ads.
The linked article discusses the phenomena in more detail, but the bottom line is that advertisers want sales. If their ads don't get sales on a certain platform, they will no longer advertise on said platform.
I've also attached a screenshot of the relevant part of the article.
https://www.wordstream.com/average-ctr
That's without even considering how this screws up the data that organizations like Google are trying to track. That data is worth something to them, and this obfuscates it.
Ah, I didn't think of this part. I was going of off click through rate but didn't think about it destroying the conversion rate
But they’re not making the company paying for the ads any profit. It’s a money sink for them. But you’re correct in that whoever is hosting the ads will make their coin.
Just to clarify, AdNauseam doesn't click on every ad. Certainly not by default. I've noticed that while it does hide ads embedded in YouTube videos, it doesn't seem to click them often. (Though, it does still click on image based ads on YouTube).
Additionally, by default AdNauseam does not click on ads that are "do not track" (DNT) compliant, an emerging standard set by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'll link to the GitHub FAQ post the devs made regarding why they, by default, don't click DNT compliant ads.
https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-and-why-does-adnauseam-make-exceptions-for-non-tracking-ads
That's how end of Web 2.0 looks like. It really lived a long life, maybe even too long.
Oh, no no no no no. I'm not going to sit through ANOTHER year of election commercials with you-know-who and other assorted fear-mongering fascist freaks. As what remains of my sanity is my witness, I will slay every ad they send my way!
I don't mind having to watch an ad every now and then, a couple of years ago the ads were still acceptable, watch 30s, one ad, the video starts and enjoy. Now it is two or three ads and the start, which can be longer than the video itself, and you can have ads in the middle of the video. It just becomes very annoying, very quickly. Hence, I started blocking these ads more and more.
Yeah that's the thing. I'm happy to watch reasonable ads but the concept of reasonable seems to continuously shift. I was happy with a single 15s ad occasionally but it's:
Like the pattern and the frequency are all over the place and it feels like I'm constantly watching ads.
I get that need to pay for traffic / usage, but I'm watching 720p / 1080p at compressed quality. How much do they truly need
And don't forget that even after that you still have to watch baked-in "This video is sponsored by <insert shady company here>" adds since the actual revenue that gets passed to creators from youtube is so low that to keep the ship afloat they have to look for additional revenue streams.
That's what Sponsorblock is for.
I imagine they will eventually simply splice ads into the videos themselves. But even for that there is already a solution with sponsorblock.
Sponsorblock is the reason I'm confident that no matter what they try people can and will find ways to overcome it.
Out of all things I enjoy sponsorblock the most. Such a great QOL improvement, amazed I lived without it for so long
Shit if I have to I'll download every single YT video I wanna watch with yt-dlp and watch em in VLC/MPC/Plex/any other video player in the world lol. My eyeballs see advertisements when I choose for them too.
I suspect that all of the AI these companies think will solve all their problems (and add profits), will actually be a tool for us to use to skip and block ads.
Someone will learn how to use AI against them.
[evil laugh heard in the background]
SponsorBlock is such a godsend for (live) music videos as well, especially with Eurovision VODs will all those intros and endscreens
There is "anti adblock" blockers, mine work on even the most aggressively advertising sites and i don't think the adblock developers will stand still either.
Do you have any recommendations?
uBlock Origin on Firefox is best, enable all the filter lists (except the regional language ones). Not to be confused with uBlock, they are not the same.
Yes this would be mine as well, ghostery and privacy possum might help as well.
Is that different then PrivacyBadger?
I won't stand any ads on youtube. Getting blasted with 5 times the same ad at 300% loudness. And premium does not really get rid of it as well, they would have to forbid sponsored content. Every time ads start to slip through adblock I will happily spend hours trying to block them instead of watching a single one. If they don't want me to watch the videos for free they can easily put them behind a paywall. Or do some reasonable pricing if they need infrastucture costs covered.
However I don't mind sending a couple of bucks towards content creators that I watch regularly. That will easily be worth more to them than watching ads even for the rest of my life.
Rather than doing this, they should work on the reasons WHY people are using adblockers. Some totally unrelated to ads, like those huge end-cards that block the video that you're still trying to watch. I use adblockers to remove those.
You used to be able to turn their predecessors off, but the new ones? I haven't found a way to turn them off without using ad-blockers. Even with Youtube Premium (which gets rid of the ads) I STILL have ot use U-block origin to get rid of those damned end-cards.
They know why and don't care because it makes them money.
I thought that there was a setting to remove these info cards. I'm pretty sure I saw it a few months back when I was looking for a way to disable them.
For me it's completely because of the tracking/privacy issues. If YouTube wants to serve ads that's fine by me, I just block tracking and as a result I never see an ad.
If Premium was a third of the price it is now, I would pay the monthly fee.
But the price they want for it is ridiculous, so it is not happening.
Honestly if I had to sit thru ads to watch youtube videos I'd stop watching. I have 300+ subscriptions and after 15 years, can barely stand to watch more than a couple of them anymore. It's just not that interesting anymore.
The day I am unable to block YouTube ads is the day that I stop using YouTube.
and the ppl at ublock will find a way around it in approximately 3 hours lol
Given the image I wonder if it's a server-side thing (at least if you're logged in). Though if the 3 videos thing is actually enforced I could see people playing long UHD+ videos (even on 1080p screens) or even keeping one video and re-watching (or scrubbing backwards, changing res down then back up etc) in protest.
Also really giving a reason to hoard content.
There are plenty of tools to get around news sites with "article limits", so I have some faith that someone will find a way around any kind of video limit as well.
Happily watching no ads with premium. Sure the sponsor spots are still there, but they pay the creator and I can skip them, so I dont mind... Propably not a popular opinion, but I do think YouTube/Google should get money by hosting the video content...
I would (and do) pay for similar services but I'm not giving google a cent.
Yeah I agree with this, unrealistic to expect it to be free w no ads. YTP comes with music too and its a good enough deal to me..
My issue with premium is that it doesn't fix so much of the other shit that revanced fixes for me on the mobile app (I don't want shorts, community posts, I want my dislike button etc) that I'd be using revanced anyway. And at that point I can just also block ads. If piracy gets you a better experience than that of paying customers, then you have an issue with your product.
I tend to use
yt-dlpto just download video and watch it locally, which provides for better processing and control over the video than browsers do.It also doesn't have ads, though YouTube could probably theoretically embed the ads in the video itself.
This. I have always wondered why they don't just do that. If you wanna serve ads so hard, just make them technically indistinguishable from the actual content. (Please don't.)
My assumption is that they don't want the ad to be fast-forwardable -- their own client restricts that -- but I'd think that having fast-forwardable ads would be preferable to no ads at all via a given distribution mechanism.
The ads are per-user and the video can be static, but I'd think that they could put together a piece of software that reasonably-efficiently splices per-user data into an existing video file.
I think its because, if you put it in the video itself, you will have old ads in old videos. And the companys wouldnt pay for ads for a product wich isnt made anymore.
They can merge it at the time you download it. Would need to to do targeted ads.
They could also just not let you have the video until you've watched the ad.
Props to the article writer for not drawing Google's attention to the fact that Vanced was immediately replaced.
I'm not sure if it's related but I've been having a hard time playing videos through NewPipe lately. They just load very slow.
Ive also noticed this too. Some videos essentially never load on new pipe. Freetube still works great tho 🤷♂️
I noticed the YouTube Addon for Kodi has started throwing errors about age restricted videos not being available outside of official YouTube apps or the site itself.
I've had that problem with revanced and vanced, never could fix it. Newpipe works great for me.
But youtube will eventualy try to slow it or block it.
Just use Invidious instead, its better than the official website
If you don't mind getting your hands a little dirty with self hosting...
I recommend using ytdl-sub with jellyfin ( or plex etc).
You download the video and person locally, so no ads, but you can also use sponsorblock.
It also has useful retention options, so I have some channels archive indefinitely and others delete week old or watched videos.
The downside is no gui, so lots of reading the docs to set up properly .
If I have to start torrenting YouTube videos to avoid ads, I will. Glad Firefox is still going strong for now.
I just wished more YouTubers would jump onto peertube. Their sponsors still pay them for the views and it would just be so mich better...
They only pay them for establish views. They're not going to pay them for videos on peertube until they establish the same level of audience there.
you mean the amount of money they get from sponsors is coupled to the views they have at the time of signing the contract?
And they could just additionally upload to peertube. They dont have to stop uploading on YT...
They won't pay them for uploading to peertube or anything they get there. Sponsorships are for where they have established audiences.
I've seen people bring up Youtube blocking adblockers a few times now, but I have yet to see anything myself despite using Youtube daily with an adblocker. What adblocker are you using?
It sounds like YouTube is running experiments with small groups of users. You may not see anything until it's rolled out to everyone.
Oh, I hate Youtube ads with passion.
On iOS I use an app called Video Lite, I hope it won't get affected by this.
OMG I didn’t know this existed. Love you for that
Glad to help!
I'm pretty close to avoiding Youtube altogether. This might be the thing that makes me block it.
right there with you. i’ve cut facebook, twitter, reddit, and many physical things out of my life, and i gladly welcome youtube to join that cold shoulder list
Just stop using YouTube.
Did you know the software will only display none or at most a single 4-second skipable ad if you watch less than 15 minutes of youtube a month? I hear people complain about 5-15+ minute youtube commercials and laugh because I've never dealt with that.
The secret is to literally just stop watching youtube (and television in general). The content you find on Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, etc is all going down hill quickly.
If I used a 3rd party client for a month would this still apply for the browser?
No clue tbh how they track it - neither my partner nor I watch youtube much, so they don't see much traffic from our network. Don't know if they track usage by user, ip, cookies, etc
This might be very well related to Google's Manifest V3.. Google is NOT your friend. They pushed Manifest v3.. hard!! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
Invidious, either with Pale Moon or Tor Browser. Keep uBO on, have anti-anti-AdBlock userscripts up, block as many known malicious ad or tracking domains in HOSTS. Solved.
Once revanced goes I'll use NewPipe, once NewPipe goes I guess I'll go to the library for my useless knowledge.
The moment I get blocked I'm going to Freetube for my pc and Newpipe for my phone, then to import all of my user data. (hopefully Newpipe gets a pc version as well because Freetube is a bit clunky). Maybe delete my youtube account too.
Pound that "report issue" button & feed them garbage.
We use STube; its bloody magic.. Not sure what wizzardry goes on in the background as not only does it block youtube ads it also blocks the add that the content creators put in the middle of their vids.. No more NordVpn / Squarespace or clash of twats add...
It has the SponsorBlock addon built in. You can get it for your browser too.