YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge

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:

I cant scroll down after a second of the page loading.
Autoplay does not work on playlists

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.

Some solutions:

Android
iOS
- Yattee with this guide
- (Adding Piped/Invidious website to Homescreen)
Web
- Piped
- Invidious
- ViewTube
- (Tubo)
Desktop
- FreeTube
- (Using any of the web solutions as PWAs)
TV
- Android TV
  - SmartTubeNext
- Apple TV
  - Yattee with this guide

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

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.

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.

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…

Update, they did it.

Kind of. If anybody signs up for that premium lite they’re fools.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge(gizmodo.com)

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