- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Really interesting read about the history of YouTube adblocking, how the new detection works, how uBO is responding, and how not to block the new popups.
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Mine are super inconsistent now. Obviously I have uBO, but I can typically watch like 10-ish videos a day before the popups start, at which point I just turn on libredirect.
Then there are non-tech-savvy users looking at the post and saying, “This is too complex. I give up.”
This is YouTube’s ultimate goal. They don’t need to make it impossible to block ads, just more trouble than it’s worth for most people.
Fine with me, as long as I personally don’t have to look at ads.
It’s 8 o’clock and this website has no dark mode. No thanks.
If you are a firefox user you can press F9 and it opens in the reader view
I’m not at my keyboard
lol I didn’t realize it because my Dark Reader works flawlessly (Firefox, dunno Chrome)
Some solutions:
- Android
- iOS
- Yattee with this guide
- (Adding Piped/Invidious website to Homescreen)
- Web
- Desktop
- FreeTube
- (Using any of the web solutions as PWAs)
- TV
- Android TV
- Apple TV
- Yattee with this guide
Youtube Premium? The creators do get more than the standard ad-supported viewer and you don’t get any ads.
I get that we’re all trying to not see ads without paying money but I do acknowledge their infrasturucture and the feats they have accomplished trying to turn a profit. When youtube vanced was pulled, I did try reVanced for a while but eventually went with Premium.
I’m not saying you should get Premium and give up the fight, I’m aaying consider your usage of Youtube and whether if you can drop it or not. In my case I don’t watch TV or movie streaming platforms (not even on demand) and so Youtube is my primary video consumption platform and it made sense for me to pay.
Whether if I’ll switch to another country’s pricing by using a VPN or not, that’s for me to consider.
I absolutely hate Google and won’t ever give them even a single penny. If there’s a creator I like, I support them through Patreon, Ko-fi, Liberapay or preferably anonymous crypto currency like Monero.
Okay, good on ya. Hate Google on as much as you want.
I don’t have an infinite supply of income to be able to support their lowest monthpy subscription tiers of all my favourite creators, which ends up being the same financial issue with paying for multiple exclusive platforms, but for creators instead.
Even if I do support my most favourite of the most deserving creators, I don’t have the time to reap their benefits (eg. WIPs, streams, etc) as I already am consuming and enjoying their works that they publicly release. The only exception to this is exclusive content that isn’t posted on Youtube.
You could probably take whatever premium costs each month and spread it around different creators you like each month. That may be more effort than is worth it to you but I’d bet they’d get more money from you still.
This is the answer. I use Newpipe on mobile and Invidious on desktop. I dont even know what youtube ads look like. I run it all behind a pihole just to be sure. Works like a dream.
Personally, I prefer LibreTube on my phone and Piped on desktop. I also use NextDNS when I’m on the go and Pi-Hole when I’m at home. I haven’t used an official YouTube app or website for the last 2 years.
Libretube is usually broken in some fashion (often a fatal one, like failing to load video).
LibreTube isn’t broken, it’s the Piped instances that have issues. You just need to switch to another Piped instance in the settings. Click on the three dots, then select settings, go to ‘Instance’ and at the top you can hit ‘Choose…’ to change the Piped instance. I haven’t experienced any issues with adminforge.de. kavin.rocks also seems to work well.
I should have realised it was an instance issue. Thanks!
I use newpipe x sponsorblock, invidious, and pinhole as well, but it’s worth pointing out to those unfamiliar- pihole does nothing for YouTube ads. Pihole is great for sites that add google ads or random junk to their pages, it has no ability to block ads that come from the same domain as a sites content because it is DNS based.
Don’t forget https://revanced.app/ for Android!
The other options (especially LibreTube) are much better for Privacy as they don’t include any Google trackers and LibreTube doesn’t even connect to Google servers. It proxies everything through a Piped server, meaning Google never sees your IP address or any other connection details. It’s basically anonymized YouTube.
And that’s great and all, but some of us really only care about the ads.
Sure, but you don’t really lose anything by using privacy-oriented solutions like LibreTube. It’s just a really nice YouTube client for Android, it also has SponsorBlock and DeArrow integration, a nice and convenient download feature and many other things
I’m losing my tailored recommendations. And yes, I’m compromising my privacy for them, but I find value in that trade. I suppose I could open the official app, scroll my feed, and still open the videos in another front end, but as long as ReVanced exists I’ll take the easier route. And it has sponsorblock and newpipe integration for downloads.
Is there a de facto or generally recognized “best” Invidious instance? Like piped.video is for Piped?
There used to be one, but it was shut down. IMO there shouldn’t be an ‘official’ instance, users should be evenly distributed across instances and everything should be decentralized. The same goes for Mastodon or Lemmy, having most users concentrated on mastodon.social or lemmy.ml is not good. Centralization is pretty much always bad, but it’s the only model of how services on the internet work that new users coming from centralized platforms understand. It’s sad and unfortunate, but we might be able to change that. The more terrible decisions are made by corporations, the more successful will free and open source, decentralized software be. We saw it with Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter, we saw it again with Lemmy when Reddit was fucked by spez.
Could be luck, but of those I only found Viewtube and Freetube to be responsive at this time of day to a live stream (the others either loaded endlessly or said they couldn’t load the page)
That was only of the web/desktop ones.
Freetube seems to support youtube chat as well.
I wasn’t able to get it consistently working so I started using FreeTube instead of a browser, which seems to work without hassle
if theres one thing im determined to do, its to never voluntarily see a youtube ad ever. praise ublock and revanced.
Indeed. The uBO team are saints. Is a shame some are only recognised after leaving
But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones
As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.I don’t know what you do exactly, but I appreciate every single volunteer and the work they put in to make everyone’s life better
heh, youtube could do some fake accounts and spam them with help requests
I’ve moved on from trying to block the ads to using a front-end and a macro to do the annoying part for me. It’s been nice. I hadn’t realized how bad youtube’s UI was until seeing a clean one. I definitely recommend using one of the less notable ones, they seem to be faster.
Which one do you use? I’ve never heard of them until reading this post but you’ve got me interested.
It’s an invidious instance, but I ain’t tellin!
That’s also how I often access YT. Libreddit is already selfhosted in the local network (+ wireguard on clients) and I’ll look into hosting something for YT.
Sadly most people want to keep their recommendations and the UI, so they’ll stay on the official site.
uBO team (2 people) should not be responding to questions on reddit or elsewhere. They should just update the filters and post a “extension updated, should work again now”.
In the end, Youtube will win if they want to win. Google can throw unconscionable amounts of money at their techs to fight the adblockers while the volunteers spend their attention and patience.
The question is ‘Do they want to keep throwing money at techs in the hope of forcing people to watch their ads?’
At best, people will keep finding ways to get around the ads and YT will have wasted a ton of money on nothing.
At worst, a bunch of people will abandon YT all together. And YT will have wasted a ton of money getting rid of them.
Both options seem self-defeating and wasteful.
The point is to make adblocking so tedious that only fairly tech literate people would do it. That cousin whose pc you set up and installed uBO on? They won’t figure out how to update the filters, they will just whitelist (or realistically just turn off uBO) or premium.
Basically nobody will actually abandon YT over this and those who do will be so low in numbers it is ~0 to YT.
I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there, who are just as fed up with ads as the rest of us.
And at this point, most of the cousins who don’t know how to update their adblocker are already there. It’s a matter of time. YT won’t keep pouring money into this. Just long enough to the “balance the books.” When the ‘number of viewed ads’ start slowing down again and they’ve hit their max viewership, they’ll call off the hounds.
And I think you are overestimating how many savvy people bother with blocking ads.
I’ll make a wild assumption and say that the people that made the adblockers might also be using them.
I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there
you can’t imagine how many programmers out there are living their life without adblocks. Even before this last month’s shitshow
There’s a great video on this that was made when YouTube first started rolling this out called The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead, and one of the points mentioned in the video is the rising number of people who use an adblocker, and not specifically mentioned but shown in the video is a graphic from an article from 2015 which shows that just under 43% of people use an adblocker. That number will have obviously changed in the past 7 years, but if we just use 25% of viewers as an estimate, that’s 25% of all viewers on YouTube who may turn to more “malicious” forms of adblocking such as things like AdNaseum and ReVanced or sites that host YouTube videos without the ads, and tell others to do the same if they’re sick of ads. And even if they do give up and watch the ads, the science says that people who use adblockers are much less likely to click on an ad and make a purchase, which is bad for advertisers since they pay for the number of views an ad gets and their clickthrough rate would go down, making it more expensive and less profitable to do business with YouTube.
i’d get premium if they didnt make it artificially more expensive by bundling other stuff with it, so adblock it is
Plus, it’s likely to evolve into a “less ads” deal eventually.
The one constant is that there’s never enough money to satisfy corporate needs.
That is our win condition. To make it so costly for them that they bail on the idea. Because if we don’t, then it’s one step closer to their internet: locked down, hidden charges everywhere and content under their terms.
This isn’t just about ads, it’s about keeping information free.
Well there’s a very realistic 3rd option where people get tired of the cat and mouse game and either suck it up and watch the ads or pony up for YouTube premium…?
Most people do. But it’s not enough.
Even if all their users payed, it wouldn’t be enough.
Only so far, false positives scare potential customers away.
Realistically there is an equation money lost by ad blockers vs money gained by making ad blocking harder (money in - dev cost) unless its about sending a message.
Money or no money, whatever is made can be unmade.
Sure but doesn’t mean it well be. satellite hacking was killed.
Pretty sure there are still Methods to get free access to satellite TV channels (the paid encrypted ones, I’m aware that there are Free channels) the methods just changed from how it was done in the old days, nowadays you need internet to download the keys, which kind of defeats the purpose since you could just use a Free IPTV service on that same connection.
Also Satellite has fallen out of favor these days.
Yeah. I don’t see the moderator leaving as a huge loss or anything because the fight against misinformation and noise in inglorious and full of people who refuse to help themselves. They have a life demanding their concern, and as far as I care, if they finally ripped the bandaid and went and focused on that life of theirs, then the world has become a better place.
We need an economic system change. We should go beyond the data economy and find new sustainable ways to develop software and platforms and social networks. uBO won’t win alone vs Google, unless they stop challenging it over technology
So today, YouTube’s pop-ups rolled down to Views will be limited to one unless you remove your adblocker at which point the pop-ups ceased. (I was intentionally rolling them down). Have: Firefox, DDG Privacy Essentials, NoScript, uBlock Origin
Techs working to give me access: I love you guys! I really appreciate what you’re doing.
Fuck the hurtful comments, and do it to fight capitalism and enshittification.
That said, when I can no longer YouTube without ads, I will no longer YouTube, which also means no engagement on video forums. Useful, interesting rants is what I have to offer.
Nothing like watching everyone freak out while I’m just using invidious
Same, but I’m using Piped
NewPipe and GrayJay (in the future)
Has anybody else not seen an ad yet? I’m wondering if it’s because I’m using Enhancer for youtube which also has an adblocking function 🤔
For a day I got the no video but audio playing ads.
On my Shield where I don’t have uBlock Origin, I get bombarded with ads.
Use smarttube
Did you not read the article?
YouTube isn’t rolling out the anti-adblock to everyone. It seems to depend on things like your account, browser, and IP address. And if you’re not logged in or you’re in a private window, you’re safe. As a result, there are a bunch of people saying, “I use XYZ and I haven’t seen an anti-adblock popup yet,” unknowingly spreading misinformation.
I haven’t yet but I presume that’s because I don’t have an account - which according to the article they’re targeting people by account.
I haven’t seen any anti adblock things on youtube if that’s what you mean
uBlock Origin Lite works just fine.
This is wrong. If it’s working, it may be just because YT hasn’t rolled their adblock defeating code to you just yet. And other extensions may interfere with uBOL and cause it to stop working. Even there aren’t other extensions running, the built-in tracking protection in the browser can sometimes trip YT’s code. The uBO reddit post (written by the author of uBOL) points out that YT changes the relevant scripts twice a day, so even if you have a perfect setup, there are going to be windows of time where it doesn’t work.
IOW, you can’t just install another extension and make the problem go away. Your whole setup matters.
New macOS Sonoma VM, brand new Firefox installation with just uBOL (not uBO). YouTube does not show any ads. ISP dns and no pi-hole or others.
Comments like these is literally the first thing the article warns against.
YouTube is doing this in a staggered and flaky rollout. Seeing the videos fine as an anecdote is no indication of anything. The only people who can claim a method works are those who have gained access to affected accounts, know how they’re affected, and have issued a fix.
I didn’t pay much attention about the warning in the article, you’re right. 😅 I’ll edit the post since I’ve been too concise, and I have a lot of negative downvotes. I am quite confident that my YT account has already been “rolled out” because of the many ads in the last 5–7 days. Before, I had 1 or 2 before some videos; now there are also pop-ups. I have made some experiments with VPNs (Mullvad) and browsers in several fresh VMs. uBOL works differently than the standard uBO and, from what I’ve seen, it seems to work fine. I’ll just stop repeating that.
