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.
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 🤔
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.
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.
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
uBlock Origin Lite works just fine.
EDIT: as I wrote here, 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.
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.
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.
Here is my experience with it.
Up until last week I’ve had friends (who also use uBlock Origin, same country) kind of sequentially complaining for about a month about having the videos blocked. For me personally it has been working fine until then, but Friday I got the popup. Today the popup is gone however I get ads but they don’t play video, only sound.
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.
What I see with this is that Google might eventually lose more with this new policies than just leaving things as they were. Lets be real, if this shit show continues and they don’t drop it as it becomes increasingly difficult to watch without ads people will start looking for alternative frontends such as Piped or Invidious and that will hinder their ability to harvest data and force ads. What’s the next step Google? DRM protected media?
People will not leave Youtube. They got too many videos. I believe they will just find some proxy solutions or similar. Using anything else will for the author just result in they get paid less.
Just in case you weren’t aware, updating your block lists in uBlock Origin should fix this problem. It’s worked for me, at any rate.
they could just block the alternative frontends. Then we’d need an alternative platform.
absolutely, the only draw for content creators is the money they can make on youtube, which means people intersted in making money are more likely to use it and their content is obviously biased towards profit building. Any other platform can easily recreate a sane profit sharing program for creators, eventually it might become youtube, but in the meantime we can all enjoy it.
Only about 20% or so of users on YouTube use AdBlock. A frighteningly large percentage of the population is absolutely fine with being bombarded with ads - after all, 80% of the stuff we consume daily is ad financed and that money has to come from somewhere.
I have a friend that just refuses to use anything but chrome, refuses to use any kind of adblock and will only use an iPhone.
I don’t get it. I’ve asked him to explain but he just keeps saying “it’s personal preference” which is such a massive copout.
Maybe I’m looking into this too far, but I think if someone’s happy to have things the way they like them (ads, Chrome, etc.) and clearly doesn’t want to elaborate on it, they have every right to not elaborate further.
Let them find it their own way. Or maybe they won’t, but it’s their choice to make.
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.
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…?
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.
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’d get premium if they didnt make it artificially more expensive by bundling other stuff with it, so adblock it is
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.
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.
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.
