YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it
Annoying.
YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it::undefined
I'd give up YouTube before ad blockers.
True, holy shit if they wouldn't completely bomb you with ads everywhere it might change something, but I accidentally used the official app on my smartphone and I can't even make out content between the ads in the UI.
Not to speak of the 50s ads for a 20s video, nah won't ever go back to the official experience.
It reminds me back when ad blockers came around, nobody cared for the one banner or some pictures on the site, but they ripped your arm out and cried when there were finally solutions for solving that harassment.
Revanced stonks
I used the official app up until we got two ads before every video and the first one is always unstoppable. Now it's unbearable to use so I use an adblock.
I'm considering giving up Youtube right now with how many times it tries to fuck up my recommendations by sneaking far right BS into my watch history. Especially you, shorts.
Try using third party clients like newpipe or piped
YouTube is WHY I have adblockers to this day. I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.
Their greed is why they make $0 from me many years later.
I think it’s rich they aren’t happy with people using them when they’re the ones that made the standard viewing experience awful in the first place.
i remember when ads started rolling out when I was much younger and i was like this is odd but ok then they became longer than skippable then an ad played in the middle of my video and i was like must be a glitch haha.
i cannot even look at youtube without an ad blocker i feel like 13 viruses would be downloaded at a glance
The only device I use for YouTube is my android phone, because it runs Firefox and ublock origin. For this exact reason.
Google's clever though, they broke full screen video in Firefox in Android 13. Now I have to restart Firefox after putting the first video in full screen, after that the videos still play.
You can use:
Revanced
This patches the official YouTube app with a lot of different options including removing those ads.
NewPipe
This scrapes the website, and is my preferred YouTube app. You cannot log into an account though, which isn't an issue for me. You can also import/export your subscriptions. They are still working on getting comment replies into the app though.
LibreTube
This uses Piped API, and you can choose with instances you want to use. This has comment replies in the app.
Try ReVanced: https://github.com/j-hc/revanced-magisk-module/releases
Have you tried ReVanced? Works great for me.
What sucks is that my kitten sleeps on my desk and every single time one of their ear-blasting ads comes on he flicks his ears in discomfort. It's not even that the ads themselves are loud (they are, very very loud) it's that every syllable and sound effect has the Attack turned up to 11. Sometimes i'll be in the other room it will sneak an ad on me and all i'll hear is TKnn TKmm TKTKmm TKTKTKmm mm TKTK mm mm
Standup comedy is the most painful on YouTube. Ads just get thrown in the middle of everything.
I was Ok with the ads at the beginning and end. When they started cramming 2-3 ads in the middle of a 10 minute video, that’s when I started looking for a solution.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=vxPbpYR_RKY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I really don’t give a fuck what Youtube is happy about
WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE TRILLION DOLLAR SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM APPARATUS !?!
THE DYSTOPIAN 1984 OCEANIA SUPPRESSION SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS THE TRUTH ALONGSIDE THE BIG BROTHER HAS FEELINGS TOO, YOU KNOW ?!?!?
undefined
! 2023-10-06 https://www.youtube.com www.youtube.com##tp-yt-paper-dialog.ytd-popup-container.style-scope
Oh no, anyway.
The day I can't get around youtube ads is the day I stop using youtube. I already refuse to use it on my mobile device or my TV, due to the ads.
YouTube ReVanced gets you completely adfree, configurably de-shittified Youtube with sponsorblock on your phone. (And Youtube Music ReVanced is premium YT music, for free, of course also without ads.)
And Smarttube Next does the same thing on Android TVs, FireTV, and probably some others I haven't used.
My guy there are like 34 different ways to get around YT ads on mobile and TV.
On Android the Firefox app allows the use of extensions including all the adblock options you would find on PC. Works great and for YouTube as well.
Ironically unreadable article, littered with ads.
I don't know what you mean, I'm blocking all of them.
My pihole prevents me from knowing what you're talking about.
Considering how prevalent scams and actively malicious content posing as ads are across ad services in general, having an ad blocker is just basic online safety at this point.
I still see fake download button ads distributed via Google's own ad infrastructure to this day. I even reported a few that were taken down.
For all the AI prowess Google likes to brag about, why can't they make a simple "does this look like a download button?" detector? The scams are not that clever, most of them follow one of a small number of specific patterns.
Malicious ad money is ad money
It's not that they can't, its that they won't.
Why would they? They would lose money if they did that
What's worse is when corporations try to be funny put a fake download button and the entire ad is like "Wow can't wait to click this skip button" and they don't realize that sometimes youtube randomly makes those unskippable so it's just awkward dead air for 30 seconds.
The thing is YouTube just can't be nice about it. It just cannot. In times that it was adblocker resistant, they'd add more and longer and worse ads until they pissed off enough engineers who collectively declared it a crisis and built the many anti-YouTube-ad solutions we have, from alternative YouTube mirrors to the Firefox packages.
We've seen this play out in the tech industry multiple times, and always the public wins thanks, largely to programmers who just get ticked off and spend a weekend on pizza to create a bypass.
The executives at Alphabet know all they have to do is allow concessions to be only mildly annoying and leave them. Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content? That might be fair so long as it's pizza ads and not Jesus ministries telling us how sinful the LGBT+ are or Matt Walsh suggesting we make it illegal for some folk to vote.
But they can't do that. Shareholder Primacy means Alphabet must push for record profits, even if it means enshittifying all their services, including YouTube, and that means a 1/4 ad to content ratio and increasing that until it's intolerable and ad-based profit numbers go down due to failing viewership.
Five minutes of commercials for fifty minutes of content?
Yeah, and besides, that shit barely functions on TV/streaming because someone paid to have quality content created. When you're clicking around yt and you don't know if a video is decent or dogshit, why should you have to sit through long ads just so you can watch a minute before you decide the content sucks?
This is frequently brought up as a problem for twitch as well. On the rare times someone decides to check out a new streamer without many viewers they get ads before the stream and most people aren't going to sit through that for a streamer of unknown quality so it makes it even harder for new streamers to get discovered.
How do you guarantee pizza ads if the jesus ministries are pushing that sweet money around, too?
Hell, no! The world is happier without the ad industry. The Internet was run basically on pure voluntary effort, and it was great. The ads didn't make it viable, it always was.
What is even more infuriating, I'm from one of the countries that had YouTube Premium Lite available. €6,99 for adfree YouTube with none of the 'offline' or YouTube Music nonsense that I wouldn't be using anyway.
My wife and myself have been subscribed for about 6 months now, totally seeing the value of it. Literally one month after signing my mum also onto it, she gets an email telling her that her subscription will end in a month from now.
Fuck that shit.
YouTube Premium Lite was perfect, affordable and removed exactly the main issue with YouTube: ads. Endless stupid amounts of ads.
I'll go back to Firefox with any amount of extensions that block ads and block the ad-block blockers. Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.
Google would have to burn the browser market to the ground before I'll consider subscribing again.
They're sure as fuck trying.
The irony in this? They have just announced this very subscription plan in Germany. Not even a week after axing the plan in some neighbouring countries.
To be fair, this is the most sane take I've seen about this from the pro adblock side. That's actually fucked up if they killed it out of nowhere but also sounds like Google.
I won't ever sub. I'll find a different hobby/time sink. I won't ever have to worry about it though, the high seas are always more inventive so there will always be content to watch.
I recommend going to India (VPN) in order to buy premium Together with the family option, you can get to about 1$ a month
with you all the way, brother.
I'm torn because fuck ads, but also YouTube is probably the most expensive website on earth to run (just the website itself, obviously a shipping company with a website will cost more.) Video is just obscenely expensive to store and they let free accounts upload 4k and keep it private.
I honestly don't know the solution here because YouTube being free is amazing, but they've literally never made money. I think a business model like nebula is more sustainable, but it sucks for those that can't afford it.
(To head off any arguments, I'm pro piracy, I just can't blame YouTube to trying to stop people)
If the ads weren't so intrusive I wouldn't mind nearly as much. As it is, if you don't block them, you're watching ads as much as you're watching content. In-line ads would be better I think, but forcing an ad before the video is annoying as hell.
It feels like we should have solved this issue a decade ago with bittorrent.
A website is just a frontend for a fileserver, so why are we not distributing these files across the globe, where we all volunteer a bit of storage and bandwidth to services we want to use.
Websites really need be nothing more than indexes and trackers which serve up a list of peers who are hosting the files we want.
I doubt a p2p network would be able to match YouTube:s current performance.
How would the content creators get rewarded in that system? Some of the YouTube ad money goes to the channel the ad is shown on.
Because have you ever stumbled upon dead torrents? I see this more as a backup method to relieve the load rather than the only one.
(Wish I had a perma-online SBC to seed my torrents btw)
Another sane take. Seriously, a breath of fresh air after seeing people on both Reddit and Lemmy talking about this with the entitlement of the average r/ChoosingBeggars post
Meh, YouTube has been profitable for years now despite all the people using adblockers. They aren't hurting for money anymore. I pay for it but I wish they'd separate out YouTube music from the sub because YTM sucks ass.
So if they stop people from skipping ads and the people then stop watching altogether, what's the difference? They'd save on some bandwidth but look less inviting to advertisers since they have less viewers.
We need a new internet, one free from corporations.
I understand that hosting video and streaming it is an expensive business that has to be paid, even if we ignore all the income Google has racked up by profiling people and (ab)using that to show ads. That said, I wouldn't mind if they had more taste which ads play, in what number and fucking when. Most annoying thing is when the play 3 minute ads on 6 minute video. Not even shittiest TV network does that. And also unskipable ads. These days I skip all, self-promotion and in-video sponsors included.
Yeah, my experience with youtube ads
Buy a Chromebook
PragerU
Right wing Youtubers
Don't vote to make abortion a protected right by the state constitution
Buy a ford
Here's a pornographic/semi pornographic anime game we are paid to show you
BUY A CHROME BOOK!
Hey, check out this person's scam! They paid us to force this scam on you!
Look at these cable news channels' youtube channels
Listen to this mom who is totally concerned about some bill that will kill or save all the children
BUY
A
CHROMEBOOK!
buy a jeep
Listen to this prepper try to hock you "survival" gear and shelf stable food
Don't you remember when families did things? wasn't that fun? Families, doing things?
Soon it will also be flooded with THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!
I am interested in none of these things
This exactly!
That thing, you know that thing that you already buy? Here's an ad for it! Now we get to lie and say we were the reason you bought it!
It's so fucking weird how I got way more ads for runescape when I played runescape, and it's not like I watch less runescape content today. They also seem to think I'm a girl because whenever I do get something unique it's always for purses, make up, fashion and hygiene products; all of which I have a below-zero chance of ever buying.
These days I skip all, self-promotion and in-video sponsors included.
Sounds like you probably use it but if not, get the SponsorBlock extension to do exactly this.
I am. Thanks for linking to it.
They show those 3 minute ads because they get paid a lot for them. My favorite are the 30 minute documentary ads.
Too fuckin bad for YouTube. I won’t change my behavior, I’ll just not use YouTube.
Fuck em
Many literally fucked them. This hack was working for a day
I don't give a single fuck what they are Happy about.
Me, using Piped: what?
Or Revanced, or SmartTube or NewPipe etc etc. Fortunately and thanks to some great devs out there, we're still able to give Google the big middle finger.
I've found revanced to stop playing the video after a minute or two unless you frequently update it (which is a manual process)... I no longer listen to lectures while I run errands, because there's now no convenient way to do it. Ads are out of the question, and finding a video I want to watch only to have it cut out as I get on the road has killed the experience for me
I'm on Android, and open to suggestions
Noob question: do I have to run my own piped server to use it?
You can, but you can also use one of the many public instances like piped.video, piped.yt and many more
No, you don't have to. They have a list of public instances.
Okay. Explain something to me. I’ve tried to use piped, but it’s just so dogshit slow. Unusably so.
What am I doing wrong?
I am not sure… are you using a shared instance or self-hosting? I self-host my own instance and have no issue since my deployment
Nothing. It's dogshit.
uBlock Origin for the win.
Yeah I blocked the little message with the dropper tool and the stupid clear background thing it makes too.
Make sure you clear all caches and update the filters in uBO, that's the recommended way to prevent the message from popping up
stupid clear background thing
In web design that's called a modal.
If people don't want to engage with your business, maybe you need a better business
What is it with the number of people "happy" to pay for Youtube Premium? Like "why yes, I'm glad I can give a company that spies on me day and night for the privilege!"
What kinda bothers me is that I recognize that something like YouTube is expensive to run and just switching to an alternative isn't super feasible. I would be more than happy to pay for a service like YouTube that I use everyday. HOWEVER, not with their bullshit double dipping. If I am paying a company like Google to use their services, I don't think it's unreasonable that their should be an expectation or mechanism where that means I am not just no longer served ads, but that all tracking and data collection about my account(s) are stopped.
That's never going to happen though :/
That's a fair criticism. I personally don't care about it because I gave up on the idea of having any privacy ages ago but I get that people may not be happy with that.
If I were to play devil's advocate, I can say that the data they collect is important for serving you the right videos but let's be real here, Google definitely uses it to serve you ads everywhere else
Because their "spying" doesn't really seem to have any down sides for me, and I get better, more useful, products from it. I don't really care if they know what woodworking videos my boring ass watches.
They don't just keep track of what videos you watch, they also keep track of what parts of those videos, as well as everything you search for and everything you begin to search for but never actually do. They also keep track of where you are when you watch the video and what device you are watching it on.
I keep seeing these headlines, but my ad blockers all still work just fine. So, good job Google and YouTube lol
This is a naive take TMHO.
Youtube has been rolling this out, phased, slowly, for the last few months. Judging peoples reactions and engagement levels.
They are only mildly foolish and know that ad block users are some of their most engaged and tech savvy. Just like ad block users generally know that youtube can't exist without ad, and if everyone used them, we might all be worse off.
Roll it out quickly, and you create awareness and ignite the fuckery out of the arms race, do it slowly, watch the engagement, and try to find the best messaging to bring "us" "back on side", and maybe they stand a chance to shift the needle.
(Firefox nightly + ublock origin for the record, had ad block messages on/off from Youtube for about a week)
I feel like their A/B testing also takes into account an individual user's propensity to leave their service permanently.
Roll it out quickly, and you create awareness and ignite the fuckery out of the arms race, do it slowly, watch the engagement, and try to find the best messaging to bring “us” “back on side”, and maybe they stand a chance to shift the needle.
I think they are too naive then... I mean, how do they plan to win back people that use adblocker blocking the adblocker ? Forcing them to disable the adblockers ? It is clear that this action will start an armed race (not that it was never an armed race in this situation).
It's an arms race. They block adblockers, adblockers block the anti-adblocks. It breaks for maybe like a few hours before it's circumvented.
I think that just means you weren't part of the test group.
I was part of it. It's not that ad blockers don't work - they still work fine. YouTube just doesn't load the content; it's a full screen modal telling you to disable it.
When it happened to me, I was able to just open the link in a private window and it loaded fine - ive_never_seen_this_man_before_in_my_life.jpg - but that may have just been because it was a test; if they roll this out to everyone everywhere I'm guessing that wouldn't work.
The other thing that worked was yt-dlp ... Hopefully that won't be impacted by the adblock prohibition... That also gets around workplace filters (at my work anyway).
YouTube, I've been using ad-blockers since the advent of pop-up ads in the late 90s. You've never been able to stop this, and you aren't going to now.
I don't use the YouTube app or watch your videos on my browser. I use FreeTube on desktop, LibreTube and GrayJay on mobile and FCast on TV so 🖕
Thanks for mentioning LibreTube! I've installed it.
You're welcome. I recommend disabling the Piped API as it will cause constant connectivity issues, and you don't need it if you have a VPN.
Can you tell me more about fcast? I'm looking to get away from ads and app limitations on Chromecast but I need the same phone-based UX
we are not happy to endure 4minutes of ads for product we don't care about, each time we play a video.
Fuck you YouTube/Google I'm gonna use an Firefox + ublock origin till death do us apart. If there's no adblocker I'll just quit the internet.
YouTube can get bent with its biased algorithm pushing alt-right conservative crap to the masses.
Maybe I'll disable AdBlock if you get rid of unskippable ads. What's that, you're not gonna? Then I'm not gonna.
Users are not happy with the amount of ads on YouTube and are doing something about it. What YouTube does not seem to recognize is that if you take their ads, plus the sponsored videos on the platform, it is all WAY too much. Like way way way too much and thus they are fighting a loosing battle here.
The core issue here is that there are many players involved in a video that all need to get paid. You have the YouTuber, YouTube, and most of all, shareholders who legally demand a return on their investment and will squeeze every last cent they can, even if it kills the company which seems to be the path we are on.
There are decentralized alternatives for video like Lemmy is for discourse, but like Lemmy, most rather use a big, “safe”, corporate service so here we are. How far will we have by to fall before we recognize that centralized services with shareholders are a dead end? Based on the stagnant price of Bitcoin for the past year or so, it seems we prefer falling and being exploited. Not the smart people here though as we are not seeing any ads on Lemmy. Decentralization is the solution, but far too many are spending time installing and maintaining ad blockers versus just leaving for less exploitative decentralized alternatives.
Oh well. Human gonna human and YouTube is gonna be a corporation to ensure shareholders get their return as they have no choice. Like literally they have no choice as directors legally need to do everything they can to drive shareholder value, not customer value.
That felt good to write. Rant complete I guess.
Yeah I agree. Although decentralized servers also cost money so I make sure to pay the admins. I don't mind paying for things that I use, but I just don't think Youtube premium is a good deal :(
YouTube premium is the worst streaming deal I've found. Yesterday I cleaned up all my streaming services and my wife was interested in adding YouTube premium. It's $23/mth for absolutely no features that are worth it. I pay less for the D+/hulu bundle. I have no idea why anyone pays for it. It's cheaper to buy a media PC every year to use ublock in a browser than pay for YouTube premium.
YouTube Premium should be tiered. First tier as it is now, but cheaper because it's not good enough (I would pay maybe $8). And a higher tier with the current price that has actual offline capability, etc.
Like literally they have no choice as directors legally need to do everything they can to drive shareholder value, not customer value.
This is not accurate. While there are laws protecting shareholders from malfeasance like deliberately reducing share value, it is not meant to mean (nor have there ever been cases brought) by shareholders for companies not doing enough to drive shares.
I'm not happy about YouTube and I'm doing something about it too.
What about android apps like "revanced" which allow you to have all the premium features and ad blocking without having to pay premium. It is legal as well.
All a person has to do is google search for it and download a proper version YouTube apk and then patch it and they are off to the races!
I used to pay for YouTube family for years, but they got greedy and raised prices. Now after about 30 mins of getting it set up once I never have to pay again.
i run the mobile firefox app with virtually the same add-ons as i do on pc. it's not quite as snappy as a native app on a mobile device, but it works well. you can even turn the screen off and the videos continue to play (music/podcasts/etc) as they did in the vanced app.
I could never figure it out. I did it once with vanced then could never figure out revanved.
Download the Revanced Manager. Tap on the 'Patcher' tab at the bottom. Tap on 'Select an Application'. Look for YouTube. If it's not there at the top then search for it. That box that showed YouTube will also show what version of the YouTube app you have installed and what version they recommend you install so you can patch it. This is where it gets complicated.
Go to your web browser and search for 'YouTube apk'. I usually use apkmirror for my downloads but if anyone has another suggestion that's better, go for it. Tap on the link to go to the YouTube apk page on apkmirror and scroll down the page until you find the version number that matches the one listed in Revanced Manager. Tap on the downward-facing arrow icon and it will take you to the page for that version of YouTube. Scroll down and it will show you the different variants available for that version. Tap the download icon next to the variant that says 'no-dpi' and it will take you to that variant's download page. Scroll down and tap on the download button; this button will also display the size of the apk which should be around the 120-ish MB range. When the download is finished a little window should popup asking if you would like to open the file. DO NOT open the app yet. At this point you are going to switch back to Revanced Manager.
Hopefully you're still on the Select an application screen. If not then follow the instructions in the first paragraph until you are. At this point the installed and recommended version of YouTube should match. If it doesn't, that's okay. Tap on YouTube and a window might pop up asking to select the apk file. Find the file you downloaded if you need to. Then tap the 'Patch' button and let it run. It will take a few minutes and it will look like it's stalled out at times but it's not. Just let it go until it's done. Tap 'Install'. If it asks if you want to upgrade YouTube then tap 'Upgrade'.
Once that's done you're good to go.
Make sure you're patching the correct version of the YouTube app, revanced manager will tell you what the current best one is.
TL,DR:
YouTube is going to kill your grandma on Christmas Eve unless you disable as blockers AND send all the money you have to them in an unmarked envelope. No cops...
s/grandma/Google account/
I heard about their plans maybe a month ago and i deleted all my stuff there and left youtube forever. I also already had deleted my gmail before that. I now use freetube on my pc and libretube on my phone.
It's tiring to have to take measures to make sure you can use the internet as it used to be, though. I feel like i have a digital armor with ghostery, encrypted email, foss software, etc, etc...
Greedy companies like youtube thinking tracking people is fine don't need my money. I won't end using adblockers.
Youtube can go fuck itself. I was one of the few people who was committed to not using an adblocker - corporate assholes or not, I recognized that advertising was why Youtube exists for free.
3 unskippable ads on every fucking video broke me. Youtube can burn, I'm just burning bandwidth until it does.
You're really sticking it to them. Keep up the good work solider.
*Laughs in nebula
You're paying for Nebula. If you don't want ads in YouTube, you can pay for Premium.
I read that 2% uses adblocks...
I already only use FOSS front ends to access YouTube. If content existed elsewhere like Peertube or Odysee I wouldn't be using YouTube at all.
Revanced also appears to be awesome, I've just started using it.
Better than piped.video from what I can tell.
Don't worry, I did something about youtube. That being uninstalled and only go there if I absolutely have to.
Ok. So why aren't we all using peertube?
If more content creators moved to it, more viewers would switch to it to follow the content. The fact it's barely got anything on it is why most people, who only view the videos and not make them or post them, do not use it. Which the creators will turn around and say is the reason they don't use it as well; the viewers aren't there. Stupid perpetuating cycles of fuckery. 😩
In highschool, my friend group of maybe a dozen had an sms group chat. I spent months suggesting that we switch to signal, but to no avail. Eventually, I convinced one person to join, which made it a bit more convincing for another, and then a few more, and so on. Signal is now the primary means of communication for this friend group, showing that change is indeed possible. Keep fighting the good fight until the rise of these alternative platforms becomes inevitable.
Am I out of touch?
No. It's other peoples fault.
Between uYouPlus on my Apple devices and SmartTubeNext on my Android devices, I’ve almost never seen an ad on YouTube. I’d just stop using the service if I started to see them in any real number.
Speaking in general, and not about you specifically..
but I've seen so many people scream "if company does X, I'm not buying/using their product anymore!"
And company does X
And they scream about it for.. a week, then go back to using it, and buying the next version, and singing its praises after the controversy passes.
So I have no faith that the general consumer has the willpower or the give a fuck to stop using these things.
and individuals like you and me, who do actually stop using them, are so rare as to not actually matter.
You're absolutely not wrong. I have the luxury of just using YouTube to watch golf videos and some niche hobby stuff; I clock in at less than a few hours a week. So, I could easily use that time on the treadmill or riding in a car to read, watch scripted media, or write my DND modules. My consumption of YT is far below most, so I'm certainly an outlier.
I'd be down to pay YouTube to watch 2k - 4k videos, I'm shocked they allow people to upload videos on that resolution to begin with.
Now, if they start intentionally blocking adblockers, or have a way to force around them (like Twitch) I'd immediately stop using it (like Twitch)
Too bad. If we can't block these ads, everyone will go elsewhere
I wish that were true.
Well you could download the videos instead of streaming, that would get rid of ads too.
Oh? Totally explains why Vimeo is on track to control the space. Wait..........
I read that as "Venmo" the first time and was so confused.
Go where exactly?
laughs in DNS ad blocker
chortles in SponsorBlock
guffaws in AdNauseam
In this case DNS blocking is useless tho
I do find it a bit funny that their adblock-block is to my knowledge just client side JavaScript. Ya' know, the kinda stuff adblock is built to cutout.
Unless they're going to be splicing up videos to put the ads into the same file (which would be astronomically resource intensive) or only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers it'll be impossible prevent a device from running or not running code as the user see's fit.
only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers
This is exactly what they want. Remember their github with the OS integrity authentication service? They're already there with phones and Chromebooks,, now they have to control PCs.
This is correct, and uBlock Origin has already received an update that works around the popup.
This is a game of cat and mouse that Google simply can't win. I'm fairly certain they'll add native code in Chrome for detecting ad blockers within the next 12 months.
I can also see a world in which they eventually block third party browsers from accessing it too. Even then there will still always be ways of working around it like revanced, custom chromium builds and so on.
native code in Chrome for detecting ad blockers within the next 12 months.
Just a new header for whether the site allows extensions that are not Google Web Protect certified.
Well, we got to the point where it's too much so....
anyone have a good chrome extension that blocks youtube ads? The one I was using was just flagged for malware
UBlock Origin
why even use chrome? firefox with add-ons is the way to go. eventually google will break any plugin preventing ads and privacy
Yeah. Don’t use chrome and use Firefox. Then install the Adblock extension on Firefox.
Stop supporting google by using their browser.
The problem here is Chrome - guess what, the company that brought you YT also makes the Browser that prevents ad blocking by simply calling ad blocking software "rogue".
Firefox and ublock origin
I've been using this one and its been working well so far
I had a good YouTube binge last night, and my ublocker worked fine. Google didn't do anything
They are only rolling this out to a subset of people.
A wild Peertube appears
Somewhat related, how has people's experience been with Viewtube?
Oh no!
Anyway.
I'm pretty happy paying for YouTube Premium; it seems like a fair deal given how much my family uses YouTube. But I'm worried that sooner or later YouTube Premium is gonna get Google Graveyarded, or they're going to insert ads anyway.
Youtube premium is a very short sighted band-aid solution. Because the more people sign up for it early, the more expensive and/or less convenient it will become later when the 'market is saturated' (meaning there's no one left who wants to sign up for it). When they can't grow their income through more users, they'll ramp up prices and shave off services. It's happening everywhere already and in the end you'll wish everyone advocated for adblockers a little more because by the time you're fed up with their pricing, it might already be too late to go back.
This is the real insidious thing about internet enshittification. It's run by publicly traded corporations so it's not enough just to squeeze every possible dollar out of your customers, you have to keep ramping up the squeeze. Even once you're bringing in billions and billions of pure profit with a product that everyone loves, you have an actual legal duty to your shareholders to make it worse in an effort to try to grow the profit even more
Guaranteed they’d find a way to double dip. Price gouging, restricting content behind further paywalls, adding ads anyway… absolutely they’ve investigated all those and undoubtedly more.
Switch to Firefox, Chrome is their biggest lever to force this kind of stuff onto people. While Firefox exists and it remains uncool for them to block it they’ll have to compete against piracy and adblockers which will limit their ability to aggressively monetise.
Switch to firefox!
Just look at where Netflix and Amazon Prime are going.
The days of YouTube premium being ad free are numbered. I suspect 2-3 years before it's announced, rolled back, and then a stealth rollout is done.
YT isn't going to drop premium any time soon. Subscriptions are astronomically more revenue generating then ads, and given YT was always operating at a loss until they stopped reporting revenue altogether premium will probably be the only route to scrape by.
Not to say they can't enshittify it by raising prices and adding restrictions, but I can't see them doing anything but trying to force more people to it.
I paid for it for a bit a while back, and it was decent. Of course free tools give considerably better features (adblock, sponsor block, DRM free downloads, better privacy). That and personally not wanting to financially support YT for a variety of reasons has kept me away from it for a long time.
The main reason I never went for premium is that they basically do what the writers strike in Hollywood recently had to deal with: YT keeps pretty much all of the money from subscriptions and creators get almost nothing. Many saw huge drops in revenue after the program went live.
To show just how exploitative their system is: subscribing to a channel (supporting them directly) still has you seeing ads. Even white supremacist "cracker is a slur" Twitch realized the importance of not playing advertisements on the channels you sub to.
Twitch ads are worse
Twitch is worse, in general.
At least youtube tends to crack down on the pornography on their site, while twitch features it on the front page and actively advertises it
Literally some almost completely naked OnlyFans reject on the front page, right now, doing jumping jacks to make her tits flop about.
True that but I was talking about how youtube allows you to skip ad after 10-20 seconds while twitch has 5 mins unskipable ads. Youtube streaming is better (you can skip and rewind any time) and pays streamers more too. Their ads are both repeatitive cancer though