Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1y ago

Youtube’s Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin

andadinosaur.com Youtube’s Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin - And a Dinosaur

Recently, YouTube has been ramping up its anti-adblock effort, and I’ve been watching this closely due to personal interest. This blog post is where I write down what I know. Some Background Here’s...

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.

Technology @lemmy.world

Youtube’s Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin

andadinosaur.com /youtube-s-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin

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124 comments

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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- Realistically there is an equation money lost by ad blockers vs money gained by making ad blocking harder (money in - dev cost) unless its about sending a message.
- Only so far, false positives scare potential customers away.
- Money or no money, whatever is made can be unmade.
  
  Sure but doesn't mean it well be. satellite hacking was killed.
- 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.

Some solutions:
Android
LibreTube
NewPipe
NewPipe x SponsorBlock
BraveNewPipe

Grayjay

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
- This is the answer. I use Newpipe on mobile and Invidious on desktop. I dont even know what youtube ads look like. I run it all behind a pihole just to be sure. Works like a dream.
  
  Personally, I prefer LibreTube on my phone and Piped on desktop. I also use NextDNS when I'm on the go and Pi-Hole when I'm at home. I haven't used an official YouTube app or website for the last 2 years.
  
  I use newpipe x sponsorblock, invidious, and pinhole as well, but it's worth pointing out to those unfamiliar- pihole does nothing for YouTube ads. Pihole is great for sites that add google ads or random junk to their pages, it has no ability to block ads that come from the same domain as a sites content because it is DNS based.
- Also want to submit for Android: just using YouTube in Firefox with uBO extension
  
  I want to avoid solutions that involve using the YouTube app/website (including modded YouTube apps like Revanced or browser addons to use on the website)
- Could be luck, but of those I only found Viewtube and Freetube to be responsive at this time of day to a live stream (the others either loaded endlessly or said they couldn't load the page)
  That was only of the web/desktop ones.
  Freetube seems to support youtube chat as well, which the others don't.
  
  Smart tube next has always worked on TV with live and live chat. Usually newpipe works with live just hard to find the videos, usually end up pasting YT links.
- iOS Vinegar Tube Cleaner
- Is there a de facto or generally recognized "best" Invidious instance? Like piped.video is for Piped?
  
  There used to be one, but it was shut down. IMO there shouldn't be an 'official' instance, users should be evenly distributed across instances and everything should be decentralized. The same goes for Mastodon or Lemmy, having most users concentrated on mastodon.social or lemmy.ml is not good. Centralization is pretty much always bad, but it's the only model of how services on the internet work that new users coming from centralized platforms understand. It's sad and unfortunate, but we might be able to change that. The more terrible decisions are made by corporations, the more successful will free and open source, decentralized software be. We saw it with Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter, we saw it again with Lemmy when Reddit was fucked by spez.
  
  Host your own it takes a minute to do with docker compose.
- Don't forget https://revanced.app/ for Android!
  
  The other options (especially LibreTube) are much better for Privacy as they don't include any Google trackers and LibreTube doesn't even connect to Google servers. It proxies everything through a Piped server, meaning Google never sees your IP address or any other connection details. It's basically anonymized YouTube.
- Youtube Premium? The creators do get more than the standard ad-supported viewer and you don't get any ads.
  I get that we're all trying to not see ads without paying money but I do acknowledge their infrasturucture and the feats they have accomplished trying to turn a profit. When youtube vanced was pulled, I did try reVanced for a while but eventually went with Premium.
  I'm not saying you should get Premium and give up the fight, I'm aaying consider your usage of Youtube and whether if you can drop it or not. In my case I don't watch TV or movie streaming platforms (not even on demand) and so Youtube is my primary video consumption platform and it made sense for me to pay.
  Whether if I'll switch to another country's pricing by using a VPN or not, that's for me to consider.
  
  I absolutely hate Google and won't ever give them even a single penny. If there's a creator I like, I support them through Patreon, Ko-fi, Liberapay or preferably anonymous crypto currency like Monero.

if theres one thing im determined to do, its to never voluntarily see a youtube ad ever. praise ublock and revanced.
- Indeed. The uBO team are saints. Is a shame some are only recognised after leaving
- Wait you got revanced working again? I couldn't get it to work for my android phone since the last purge less than a year ago.
  
  Are you thinking of Vanced? Revanced has been steady ever since I switched almost a year ago.
  
  Revanced has never stopped working for me. Make sure you update your app.
  
  Last time it stopped working for me I just needed to update revanced manager, make sure the patches were updated on the main screen, and re patch the recommended APK version which had increased. They've done a pretty good job at keeping up
  
  You can also get grayjay, which will also condense twitch, nebula, youtube, etc into one consistent feed without trackers or ads. Also it supports the down vote plug-in and 3rd party comment solutions so you can get even more from the app then you can with say revanced which is just the regular old YouTube app with patches.

Then there are non-tech-savvy users looking at the post and saying, “This is too complex. I give up.”
This is YouTube's ultimate goal. They don't need to make it impossible to block ads, just more trouble than it's worth for most people.
- Fine with me, as long as I personally don't have to look at ads.

But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones
As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.
- Thank you for the charity work you do. I appreciate it.
- I don't know what you do exactly, but I appreciate every single volunteer and the work they put in to make everyone's life better

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?
- 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.
- 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.
  
  That's what I did today, popup is gone however I get ads but they don’t play video, only sound.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  that's exactly what he just said.
  
  people will start looking for alternative frontends such as Piped or Invidious

This was really interesting. I’ve been looking for a slightly more technical explanation for how this arms race works under the hood.

I wasn't able to get it consistently working so I started using FreeTube instead of a browser, which seems to work without hassle
- I tried it, I agree it works fine. I only stopped using it because it doesn't let me go back in live streams.
  
  I mostly only use youtube for music, so my only complaint is that it's some extra clicks to get a url in my clipboard I can use with my yt-dl script

Nothing like watching everyone freak out while I'm just using invidious
- NewPipe and GrayJay (in the future)
- Same, but I'm using Piped

So today, YouTube's pop-ups rolled down to Views will be limited to one unless you remove your adblocker at which point the pop-ups ceased. (I was intentionally rolling them down). Have: Firefox, DDG Privacy Essentials, NoScript, uBlock Origin
Techs working to give me access: I love you guys! I really appreciate what you're doing.
Fuck the hurtful comments, and do it to fight capitalism and enshittification.
That said, when I can no longer YouTube without ads, I will no longer YouTube, which also means no engagement on video forums. Useful, interesting rants is what I have to offer.

I've moved on from trying to block the ads to using a front-end and a macro to do the annoying part for me. It's been nice. I hadn't realized how bad youtube's UI was until seeing a clean one. I definitely recommend using one of the less notable ones, they seem to be faster.
- That's also how I often access YT. Libreddit is already selfhosted in the local network (+ wireguard on clients) and I'll look into hosting something for YT.
  Sadly most people want to keep their recommendations and the UI, so they'll stay on the official site.
- Which one do you use? I've never heard of them until reading this post but you've got me interested.
  
  It's an invidious instance, but I ain't tellin!

Mine are super inconsistent now. Obviously I have uBO, but I can typically watch like 10-ish videos a day before the popups start, at which point I just turn on libredirect.

does this affect the ip range blockers. I thought about getting one of those, but youtube will probably find a way to cook ads into regular content, but we have AI now.....
- YouTube for many years serves ads through the same domain and IP as the actual content.
- Like pihole? I recently set it up and it is not blocking YouTube ads (as other commenters have also pointed out).
- Most of the streaming sites are serving ads from the same subdomain these days. I think Paramount might still be separate? But causes issues when you try to log in as well, so have to pause Pihole to log in. Then ads are (sometimes) blocked :)

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.
- I haven't seen any anti adblock things on youtube if that's what you mean
- 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.
  
  Use smarttube
- I haven't yet but I presume that's because I don't have an account - which according to the article they're targeting people by account.
- With uBlock Origin I'm not getting anything, but the Ghostery plugin with "adblocking enabled" set to on actually now returns a blank youtube site. As soon as I switch it off (so blocking trackers only) it works perfectly fine and with zero ads.

We need an economic system change. We should go beyond the data economy and find new sustainable ways to develop software and platforms and social networks. uBO won't win alone vs Google, unless they stop challenging it over technology

When the time comes that YouTube wins. It is also the time they loose. Personally i wouldnt use Youtube at all without adblock.

heh, youtube could do some fake accounts and spam them with help requests

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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  New macOS Sonoma VM, brand new Firefox installation with just uBOL (not uBO). YouTube does not show any ads. ISP dns and no pi-hole or others.

STOP BLOCKING SPONSORS. LET THE SMALL CREATOR EARN THE LITTLE THAT THEY DO FROM AD REVENUE YOU THIEVES. FUCK THE PIRATES WITH A FLAMETHROWER UP THE ASS.
- no, I don't think I will. Sponsor block is a must.
  
  NO
- Ignoring content I don't want to consume is not piracy. What shit logic led you to believe that?
  
  YOU ARE STEALING THEIR AD REVENUE
- My guy... You need to take a break from the internet
- Has being angry gotten you the outcomes you wanted?
  If you want to help people, give them better default options
- They get ad revenue from the majority, and we still give them algorithm. I'm not taking time out of my day to tip someone for a service I haven't even received yet.
- You reek of failure and ignorance

124 comments