YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users

I’ve been using YouTube far more than any of my paid services for years. However I’m ready for a switch. If the YouTubers who I follow switched platforms I’d go with them in a second.

Problem is hosting all the video. You either have one host or many (P2P). Both have issues.

Xhamster

there are a few but they're all filled with right wing nutters and i doubt their ability to scale effectively

It's amusing to see how nobody is able to genuinely answer this question.

yt.whateveritworks.org

But on YouTube you get both. If I could pay and not get in video sponsorship along with no ads, then I might consider it. But I will not pay to be advertised at.

Same. I'm wondering if it's limited to certain markets for the time being.

I am using unlock and Firefox and getting hit by the anti-adblock

I have never gotten a adblock popup using Firefox and ublock origin while my friend has gotten several on Chrome. I wonder if I'm just lucky that I'm not in the adblock block rollout on YouTube or if Firefox+ublock is working

Same Firefox and unlock setup (also sponsorblock) but I got a pop-up about ad blockers the other day and I just closed it and the rest of the site works fine.

Who asked? This comment thread is clearly about alt front ends yet here you are telling us still Firefox works for you. Okay, and????

Also this seems to be the safest way as your account not linked to freetube. Yt looses all data like age, likes and comments. Only the number of views gives them any feedback. This will bring down yt. All we need is time to work out alternatives. Yt censorship and demonetizing rules are killing the platform anyway.

The only issue I have with freetube is that I sometimes like to click on the recommended videos on YouTube's front page. If I switch to freetube entirely, I'll lose that. But if uBlock doesn't continue to work I will make the switch and the YouTubers I wouldn't normally see just won't get my views any longer.

The insinuation that website users somehow have a responsibility to watch ads so that the website's 3rd party content creators can make money reads like a case of Stockholm Syndrome. YouTube are the ones paying the creators, not me, and can change the terms by which they calculate creator payments at any time. If YT decides that now, ads viewed during the hours of 7pm to 10pm result in higher creator payments, where is my role in that? Am I now obligated to prefer viewing ads during that time?

Plenty of content is uploaded to YT by people who don't and never will get creator payments. Do I have to watch those ads?

My contract with YT is that I control what data is downloaded by and presented on my PC, not them. That Silicon Valley has decided that everything is free, but with ads, is unfortunate. If they're unable to fund their business or their content if I use an ad blocker, then it seems to me like they're pretty fucking bad at business.

I'm okay with paying for YouTube but I don't want a Google account. If Google ever reinstates having separate YT accounts then I will consider paying.

Some of us pay for premium but still use Revanced and Freetube because they are simply better youtube clients. Sponsorblock, OLED themes, customizable UI, better performance, etc. The adblocking is just icing on the cake

It could be simply luck because it is a slow rollout, or it could also be that you got the filter updates on the background. In any case, you know what to do if you ever run into it.

Same here. That's not 3 videos per day, but total before it stops playing.

I wonder what tech and it creators say about this change. They will probably see a dip in views, engagement and number of clicks they promised their sponsors.

Are you signed in?

I was in the same boat, but cleaning out my cookies helped.

How exactly "can" they? They've been trying pretty hard for quite a long while now and nothing has ever worked. It's also pretty logical why they can't: they don't control your device, you can do anything with it. Whatever they implement, you can always fake being a normal user. Which is exactly why no one using Firefox + uBlock sees anything of what's mentioned in this article (as long as no other addons/settings trigger the adblock detection).

Only the environment they do control is affected, which is essentially like "controlling your device": Chrome.

Yes, they can, it will probably become a cat and mouse situation. The main idea is to put pressure on people that will not take the time to keep looking for alternatives or new solutions and will simply pay up or watch the ads.

then don't do something for the benefit of humanity if you can't handle not having infinite line-go-up. Numbers aren't easily found but it looks like they generated north of a billion in profit, not revenue, profit.

If a billion, after all bills are paid, is not enough. Give it to someone to whom a billion is enough.

Youtube was doing it for years before Google acquired them.

Breaking up big tech doesn't mean that we all have to host our own YouTube.

They don't have to be dicks about it. Neither do you.

Invidious (and other front ends) wouldn’t be effected by this

This is web and official app

Sponsorblock might be helpful for you on some of that at least.

Does anyone else kinda miss when youtube was more informal, random, less edited, and more janky? Nowadays everybody has a title card, and a two minute intro greeting, high-end camera setup, and tightly rehearsed script. It's like they all decided to just recreate the unnecessary bloat and ceremony from classical television, for the sake of "appearing professional" or something?

For example, a tutorial doesn't need to begin with a "Hey guys, it's your pal ASDFGHJKL. Have you ever got your foreskin trapped in a whatever and yada yada yada? Well today I'm gonna show you how to blah blah blah. Now let's get into the video. But first a word from our sponsor Lockheed Martin..."

What's with the "today"? I'm always watching it "today" by definition. And I wouldn't have clicked it if I wasn't in that particular predicament. Why not just immediately start showing the solution?

I definitely remember those days, a lot of sites were just unusable, and I hear some places like the Fandom wiki are returning to that level.

I believe there is a small amount of ads it's acceptable to live with, I do accept that content needs to be paid for somehow, but corporations can't seem to ever accept a limit for themselves. Even though YouTube is already perfectly profitable and has been for years, it continues to escalate. Not to mention the rampant data-tracking that there is all over the place that people just accept because it's invisible. Or that Google is working to weaken ad blocking and enhance tracking at a browser level.

They definitely do and they did do that for a while, but apparently it changed.

Took me all of 30mins to spin up a local invidious instance. Worth every second

not on my computer at the moment so I don't have a copy of mine to send you but this one looks like a similar premise.

For some reason headlines don't like to use prepositions.

anti-lgbtq headlines smh

not only is this a seemingly random site that needs you to use an account to access part of the information, all you need to do is not look at a random site that pulls stats out of their arse like you say, they dont explain where the data comes from, they dont explain anything.

I dont need to pull random ass data from that sketch site, this small amount of legwork is far more than necessary nor what you deserve for being a dick about it: (lets not forget you just say "elsewhere" without showing us, well, anything)

firefox addon site users:

ublock origin: 6.713.504 adblocker ultimate: 2.286.976 adguard adblocker: 991.481 block site: 518.605 adblock plus: 4.236.338 ghostery: 1.104.375 adblock for firefox: 1.166.799

everything else is too small and inconsequential to mention, same with github, thats a total of 17.018.078, firefox usercount FROM firefox, about 188 million

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

since webstore doesnt use proper numbers we can only assume but:

adblock best adblocker: 10million+ adblock plus: 10million+ adaway: 2million+ ublock origin: 10million+

thats again, only super roughly but 32 million users compared to chromes rough 3.3 BILLION users

both of these may nto be exactly 0.01 % sure, but we are all inconsequential and mean nothing compared to the total count of uers, who barely know what a browser is, let alone what an adblocker is.

When I read something like that, I don't think "hey those are actual stats, wow!". I actually think "hey those are actual stats, whoa!". Kidding.

You're being pedantic for no reason

It's a generalization and their point was not the numbers. It was that in the past people complain about this kind of atuff, Google ignores it and people move on. Google probably even still continues to grow.

However, I think things have been shifting and that may not even end up being the case. Look at Unity.

We’re here, aren’t we?

I left after over a decade. Haven't been back and won't.

I did fucking leave.

Plenty of people actually did leave reddit, myself included. It wasn't the API tax though, that was just the beginning.....

I may check out Peertube again. But it needs to have had a community group effort to crack-down on fascist content before I really adopt it.

Same with Rumble

WoW! I just installed it. It works without any issues. Hope his 1.9m followers move to a different platform like odysee

Exactly, they might get fined $300,000 for making $2,000,000,000 in profit.

They wouldn't dare!

Also completely believable. This is why I never enter payment info on Google software or hardware. Illegal doesn't mean shit to companies this big, ftc/fcc are toothless and we are cattle.

A 6 figure fine for a 12 figure profit sounds accurate to how this would play out.

At least tell him why next time ;)

I personally stopped using brave a while ago, but simply telling someone, in an unrelated thread, not to use brave isn't constructive. Next time lay out the reasons why you believe they shouldn't use brave and let them decide.

Thanks but respectfully I am an adult and can make my own choices. I also use Firefox too by the way. Having said that Brave is open source. They disable a lot of google shit and the built-in protections are pretty good. The BAT ads are opt in and when disabled you dont hear about them.

I was simply making the point that YouTube and Spotify were adless experiences using brave.

This is very possibly a Google employee, every big company in the world now has rooms full of people constantly astroturfing this shit and it works very well. It works so well that this comment will be downvoted to oblivion. It's also virtually guaranteed that it will be responded to with a condescending, paternalistic post about how "lol bruh everybody who thinks different than you do must be a shill" or something similar - also not unlikely to be paid for.

Edit: Predictable, but not entirely unexpected. For anyone reading this, use LibRedirect browser extension to point all your YouTube links to a different front end.

I used to have premium for $9.99/mo until I got an email about them raising their rates come December. No thank you.

I don't, but I'm fine with paying for premium. I hate that a lot of content has sponsored content that your premium subscription doesn't remove. Even if I paid for premium I'd still need to have SponsorBlock to make it watchable.

I pay for premium but I ended up installing revanced on my phone so I could disable shorts and it also skips in-video ads which is really nice. I didn't disable YouTube's ad blocking though because I don't need to.

I'm wondering,.can you use sponsorblock with premium YT?

I mean the free choice argument falls apart a bit when you consider that YouTube is essentially a monopoly.

I think the best way to support them is through donations.

Most have links to them.

Ads are out of hand, that is why many left cable and subscription based platforms are the next thing.

Piracy is growing and that is good, it forces these greedy companies to inovate or to do better.

It is worth it for some.

That's just only for you. :(

Downvoting this guy complaining about complaining about downvoting.

I used to care for about 2 minutes, it's just strange to worry about fake Internet points, but I guess humans like the endorphins or rewards for the brain.

social media got a lot of their ideas from the gambling sector

Its not relevant to this particular commenter, but ive made downvote edits when i get to -5 or -10 but have no replies. Especially when i felt like i had a reasonable take. My edit is usually asking for responses from those who disagree, rather than just a "edit: fuck you haters".

Yes

and I do!