I use the same and got the popup yesterday

Same, but I figured out that on Plasma X11 they won't show up while on Plasma Wayland they do... (was it random?)

In my experience the popup comes up if and only if you have any custom blocking list enabled. Default uBlock filter lists are fine

When? I'm one video away from being blocked and I manually updated my ublock stuff like a week ago.

Same here, but Netflix is going to increase prices again, so that might be the final straw to ditch them for me

Spotify has been harassing me to get whatever the heck the duo crap is...literally only me uses it but I'm on the verge of cancelling from their full screen garbage

While they can track your IP for all sorts of nefarious purposes, they can't and won't associate it to use of an ad blocker if the ad blocker has successfully blocked their ads because they, by definition, don't know that you've blocked them. If they did they would show the popup.

Yikes lol

I think a VPN will then help with this.

Because their algorithm is pretty damn good at recommending relevant stuff. For example, titanfall 2 got revived and I found a lot of small youtubers (<20k subs) making some incredibly good content through it. The secret is to click "not interested" on all the clickbait crap often enough and at some point it'll learn.

Though I do use

I kind of like the recommendations that populate aligned with my sub interests, basically

Only thing I can think of is getting notified for new videos from youtubers you’re subscribed to and the convenience of saving the play position when you don’t finish a video

Like most things, it's their recommendation engine that is actually pretty good. For as much as people complain about "the algorithm", it's useful enough that it surfaces unknown people constantly for me, and suggests things that I am interested in watching (metalworking videos, welding, machining, 3d printing, godot programming, etc.) Without an account you just get... normie bullshit clickbait.

For “favorites” I just use my browsers bookmarks

They don't work over multiple devices though, unless you have an account for your browser I guess.

Front-ends and streaming platforms are several outsite, but Google also is blocking those, its not a solution for a long term. I was recently using FreeTube as a desktop client, but it has become unusable. I recently replaced VLC with SMPlayer, MMplayer like VLC but way better, also FOSS, this allows me to watch, among others, streaming videos from different sites, among others also from YT so far without problems. I also use an extension (FOSS) that allows me to record the audio of the active tab and save it as mp3, that is, with this it does not matter whether it is a music video from YT or from other sources and with this outside of Google's control.

A good option is also IMDB, or better its online service, Odysee, which allows you to import subscriptions and playlists from YT, it is somewhat complicated to do, but it is guided. Odysee is not related to Google, it has a UI similar to YT and a good number of videos of all kinds, many have already moved to this platform. In my opinion it is the best direct alternative to YT.

In any case, at least so far, this userscript works wonderfully and I think it will continue to work, since it prevents YT from discovering that you use an adblocker, not like other anti adblock killers whose script I also have in the Vivaldi blocker list, since these do block the YT detector, which naturally has already been discovered, however this script does not block the YT detector, but surrounds it by putting a "mask" over the video, with which the detector passes underneath without discovering anything.

The risk that YT discovers it and blocks me? Yes it does anyway if I continue using an adblocker and I prefer to suck my elbow before deactivating the ad- and all the other blockers on YT and swallowing all the garbage of ads, clickbaits and the other shit that YT is full of (a single music video, blocked 12 ads and more than 20 trackers and without the Clickbait Remover, YT completely changes the thumbnails it shows, which mostly have nothing to do with the content). No, thanks

Google's desperation to show tracked ads is but one vector in the equation which determines longterm viability for watching Youtube ad-free for free. There are also other vectors to consider like the level of obtrusion required to actually effectively adblock-block, and its related effect on the userbase. And also just the level of inconvenience presented by ads, determined by their length, skippability etc.

The proportion of the userbase blocking ads is still relatively negligible, and this is an outcome manufactured by Google toeing the line between too obtrusive and too ineffective. Any measure I can imagine which would actually capture a significant portion of users blocking ads would also significantly skew the balance in favour of obtrusivity, which they would pay for in lost users.

As long as many users are happy to continue being vigilant in blocking ads, IMO this balance will ensure blocking ads will remain feasible.

So does this cause advertisers to lose money since their ads are being clicked but never viewed by human eyes? Because if so, I'll install ad nauseum asap

I use pihole. Pihole does not work for sites that serve ads from the same domain, like YouTube

This is so inherently detectable, though, I'm amazed it worked for so long and that it's still working now. Likely a consequence of offloading as much of YT onto the client side as possible, because if you're doing anything server side how hard is it to require that the ad has at least downloaded before streaming the video?

The Spotify ripper "zotify" has an undetectable "realtime" mode that does basically what OP suggested. Instead of downloading every track as fast as possible, it pretends that it's actually streaming and listening to them. Obviously it takes a lot longer to rip a whole album, but it's a good idea.

I think Spotify ripping isn't big enough that it's actually needed at this point, but it's good that they considered the potential for it.

Which Invidio.us instance would you recommend? I'm looking for one that's the most stable and relatively fast compared to other instances. Also, I believe it's also geography dependent because instances don't have CDNs?

PeerTube has some pretty good lofi streams. I use it for that and not YouTube anymore.

Nebula.tv is a good paid streaming service if you like science goodness.

What others are there? 🤔

Brilliant idea for a universal front end. If the user experience is seamless so that the hosting service doesn't matter that would be such a good way to transition to freer platforms

I'm going to Odysee, it's the best alternative to YT i know and it isn't related to Google.

You are being unlucky is what you are doing wrong. The changes on YT are not being rolled out to all users at the same time. You could just be in a location or in a part of the network where changes are applied first. Nothing you can do to change that, just wait for the filter lists to catch up. Or migrate to piped or Invidious.

This whole "Firefox, Firefox, Firefox" chanting as if it prevents the ad block detection is ridiculous. The reason why FF users got spared for longer is because the marketshare of FF is so low, that it took longer until most of them were affected purely based on random chance.

I use Chrome on my work laptop and FF on my PC and I either get the detection message on both or I don't get it on either device.

When docker get their shit together and work on freebsd? Sure

start using alternatives like lbry and/or peertube

Sure. But actively using YT without paying for Premium and blocking all the ads will affect them more, and if enough people do it, might actually catalyze it to go Twixxer levels of enshittification, which would be just as beneficial for growing the userbase of those alternatives with the side benefit of getting rid of one of the gatekeepers. Fediverse saw a huge growth in popularity following the recent enshittification of Reddit, after all. "Build it and they will come" has a corollary that goes "Destroy it and they'll go elsewhere" :)

It's not that creators won't upload because there are no viewers. It's because on other platforms there is no way to earn money. "Because there are no viewers" doesn't make sense, because it costs a creator literally nothing to upload a video multiple times, to more platforms, instead of only once, which would theoretically only increase their reach in total. However, creators want their viewers to watch on YouTube because that's where the money is earned.

You're part of the problem.

Dude just watch the ads so people get paid…

I don't care. Hypothetical incomes of other people are not my problem or obligation. Next you'll be saying I must eat at restaurants at least three days a week and attend all concerts and drama plays in my town because otherwise people don't get paid.

You’re not automatically entitled to free content

Correct. First I need to manually set up my tools, and then these tools get me free content automatically. But I don't care about entitlement; it's a spook. It's all down to risk-benefit. The risk of blocking youtube ads is basically nil, but I benefit by wasting less time and not having loud, imbecile and completely irrelevant audio-visual crap annoying me. I also pirate all my music, movies and shows. Because I don't care. I like free stuff. Copyright is a spook, anyway.

I go out of my way to be advertised to as physically little as possible. If someone can't offer content without, then death to 'em; and no pissy little youtuber is worth turning off my ad-block.

https://mpv.io/

That's a good work around. You can also right click and "open in private window" and it will work just fine.

There are userscripts that'll open your videos in Piped for you.

You might like the libredirect addon, then. Also, you can have an account on Piped, so your subriptions are with you on any device

Very much so. Should also be deleting cookies after every session, and probably never logging in.

Yes, just allow ytimg and youtube and it works. Though I also have Enhancer for Youtube and Unhook installed, but I doubt those have any impact.

Fair enough, giving money to that corporation just feels very wrong to me. But I have to be fair here, the services Google offers are actually useful.

Not like some other mega-brands that just dick around and do fuck all

I don't host anything myself, a local Piped instance on the Desktop and Newpipe on Android serve me splendidly

I can only monetarily support so many tech habits!

I really feel you on that one though

What about FreeTube? Revanced? Grayjay? You don't need to host it yourself!

If you also use "Enhancer for YouTube" try disabling its adblocker.

The good news is it probably costs Google 1000x in resources to come up with a solution than uBlock to get around it. Its a war they cannot truly win.

Not with that attitude anyhow

Why wouldn't they offer free services for you like YouTube premium (whatever it's called) since you already buy in to their service?

Do you have anything better to contribute to solve the YT problem than what I have contributed in this thread?

Our servers are secured with SHA-384 Signature Algorithm; meaning we cant see the videos you watching, things you search, or things you do We migth use third party services on PokeTube, but third party request on PokeTube is proxied by default. no third party can see wat the hell ru doing on PokeTube. We do this by proxying the requests via a whole diffrent server, so no third party can see you.

Source code https://codeberg.org/ashley/poketube/

https://poketube.fun/privacy

Yes, it's pretty new. Seen in New Apps in AlternativeTo.