this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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YouTube is now fully blocking ad blockers around the world (9to5google.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 108 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

No it's not, ad blocker is working perfectly... :)

Now even more seriously, the amount of ads and how aggressive they are is what led to people using adblockers. It's ridiculous having to see 2 full 20 sec ads at the beggining and then interrupting as it pleases every 3 or 4 mins. On top of that the ads are all lies or manipulation. Fuck Google and their shitty ads.

YouTube Premium? LMAO! Not worth the price, if they had a simpler cheaper tier, just for no ads, 2€ per month I'd might consider it. 8.50€? Fucking rip off. Again, fuck Google.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, going back to that many ads would annoy me now, but I dealt with it in the day, the thing that finally got me to start adblocking everything were ads that would crash the video players, and ads that would play for like 10 minutes but were skippable after 20 seconds. I play stuff in the background all the time , I shouldn't have to actively monitor an ad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

For me, it's always volume on ads. Ads are usually like 5x louder than what you're watching so it's just an assault on your ears.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Youtube premium really only makes sense if you're going to use youtube music as well, in which case its a decent value. At least here in the states, spotify is $11/month whereas youtube premium is $14/month.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have hated the trend of companies bundling services to charge more instead of separating it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh I'd much rather it be piecemeal with the option of bundling it, don't get me wrong. It's just a bit misleading to try to frame it as only ad free youtube

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

When it comes to these forced bundles if the added service isn't something I'd pay I just price it at what they are asking for, since whether it includes extra doesn't matter when there isn't a choice to separate it. It's just an approach I've taken due to services like PS+ paywalling multiplayer while I didn't care about the "free games".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I have absolutely no interest in music streaming services. I discover the music on Youtube, yes, but if I like the band enough I buy the download. Specially since my music tastes are non mainstream.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Better to donate that $11 or $14 / mo to uBlock Origin - that way you're paying people who are actually providing a service to you. With YouTube (Google) you're not the consumer, you're the product.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

even better deal if you're still grandfathered into the $9.99/mo tier like I am. I know they said they would increase those prices... but so far not

[–] [email protected] 64 points 9 months ago (1 children)

YouTube is increasing Firefox's market share all around the world.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

Chrome is working hard to get that sweet internet explorer status

[–] netchami 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some solutions:

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget you can use the command line tool yt-dlp to download videos from Youtube or Invidious ad free, with subtitles, and even have the sponsor mentions clipped out.

This plus using rss feeds is how I watch youtube without ever visiting the site, subscribing, or liking.

[–] netchami 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, tell me more about your setup. How do you use RSS with yt-dlp?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My setup is somewhat unique. I run Linux and love the command line/terminal emulator. I use newsboat rss reader which reads a text file that has a bunch of YouTube links listed one per line.

These urls were sourced directly from the youtube channels I want to subscribe to. In your browser, Ctrl+u opens up the html. Ctrl+f opens find, search "rss". Adjacent to the first search result is the rss url to be put into the aforementioned file.

In newsboat, i can browse the latest updates to that channel. Hitting "o" opens my browser with the latest video. To boot, I use a redirection extension that takes that url and redirects to an invidious instance. Noscript extension prevents any javascript and I just copy the url {ctrl+L and then ctrl±c)

Finally I use yt-dlp in the terminal, pasting the url as its last argument (ctrl+shift+v in most terminal emulators). An alias wrapper immediately adds flags for medium quality (highest is often massive file size), subtitles, and sponsorblock (cuts out mentions of sponsirs via sponsorblock api). I also have similar aliases for high quality vids if I want them and also just extract audio for music. I watch/listen using mpv.

This is how I generally watch YT vids on my desktop. On mobile I use GrapheneOS and Libretube. Google has to send a CSV of your subs if you request it. Grabbed that a while back, uploaded it to Libretube, and haven't gone directly to youtube cept to grab rss urls since. Btw, you can grab rss from invidious in a similar fashion, but I grab rss directly from youtube in case that invidious instance goes down.

[–] netchami 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the in depth explanation.

I use newsboat rss reader

I use newsboat too, just never considered using it for YouTube

An alias wrapper immediately adds flags for medium quality (highest is often massive file size), subtitles, and sponsorblock (cuts out mentions of sponsirs via sponsorblock api). I also have similar aliases for high quality vids if I want them and also just extract audio for music. I watch/listen using mpv.

I actually do the same thing

On mobile I use GrapheneOS and Libretube

Fucking based, I use the same stuff

I'll try out something similar to your setup, but I will use my self-hosted FreshRSS server that connects to my newsboat as well as my Invidious instance. But keeping my subscriptions in my self-hosted Piped or Invidious is fine as well.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Still wondering how this will play out in the EU.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

It might actually be illegal in the EU for them to run scripts to detect ad blockers without asking permission first.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's why I'm really curious about how this will play out. I just hope that people will be the ones benefiting from this shitshow and not Youtube.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

YouTube is a for-profit service run by a company. If they can't make it profitable due to low premium adoption or regulation there will be less freedom to post/view stuff on there. There will be no upside for users.

Everyone should really reevaluate their stance on premium services and the value they get out of them. The time of free is over - even something like lemmy needs funding.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So then they'll just embed them into the video, refuse to serve the video until the time is up, etc. Running clientside snooping scripts is only one way for them to enforce this. The idea that EU law will somehow force YouTube to just serving you content without ads is entirely copium.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

A black screen is infinitely less annoying than an ad. I don't see google winning this battle.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Yep, been common for sports streams where you get a notification that game is on break or something and play will resume once game starts again. Preferable over ads to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

OK? That's still not Google "losing" some battle. The point was the legality of their current implementation isn't going to change whether they give in and just serve you the content like the OP was claiming

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So? Let them make those changes then. That’s additional complexity and effort. They absolutely scoped that implementation against the one they chose and chose not to do it. Forcing them to spend the effort is still meaningful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

You really dont want them embedding ads into videos like that. There'd be no blocking them and no way to download them without the ads baked right into the video file.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

People will figure out a sponsorblock-esque crowdsourced ad detection that auto skips everything that isn't part of the video.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

SponserBlock provides defenses against that with minor modifications.

It's been suggested that that would be an absolute last ditch effort because it trashes your ability to display targeted ads or update them without absolutely wrecking your CDNs. You also can't have the ad link to anything because that would allow the client to trivially detect and skip it.

Ad Nauseam also provides the nuclear option of downloading the ads, pretending to display them, and even pretending to click them. You might still have to wait out the delay for while the ad should be playing for the first ad, but once you get past that they can't prevent the player skipping ads without also preventing you skipping 30s of boring content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

That’s a significantly less profitable ad model. If they wanna shoot themselves, let them

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My ad blocker is still working :p

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

uBlock contributors were pumping out filter updates like crazy these past few weeks. There was a constant tug of war as Google kept patching YouTube again every time they got adblock working again. Their tracker for YouTube issues has received something like a thousand comments since this all started.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

I'm not going to watch 60 seconds of make-money-online scam ads just to watch some stupid cat video. They're really overestimating the value of Youtube "content." It's mostly frivolous crap. If they cap it to an ad per hour or something maybe. But it's out of control.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Useful links:

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Also useful! Thanks :).

[–] netchami 3 points 9 months ago

+1 for Piped and LibreWolf

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

My ad blocker works wonderfully. Meanwhile, I'm starting to contribute with content on Peertube. It's something at least.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Still working for me with Firefox

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

All ads made me do is use newpipe on Android and Freetube on desktop.

[–] netchami 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Also try LibreTube on Android, it has SponsorBlock and DeArrow built in and the UI looks more modern

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I've got 3 or 4 different ad blockers installed just to cover the gaps in when YouTube finds a way around uBlock Origin for a couple days.

Still doing their job as of now. 🤞

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Seems Satisfactory.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

Who tube? The main way to support the capitalist machine while also wasting your life? No thanks...