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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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.
  
  I don't think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there, who are just as fed up with ads as the rest of us.
  And at this point, most of the cousins who don't know how to update their adblocker are already there. It's a matter of time. YT won't keep pouring money into this. Just long enough to the "balance the books." When the 'number of viewed ads' start slowing down again and they've hit their max viewership, they'll call off the hounds.
  
  I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there
  you can't imagine how many programmers out there are living their life without adblocks. Even before this last month's shitshow
  
  And I think you are overestimating how many savvy people bother with blocking ads.
  
  I'll make a wild assumption and say that the people that made the adblockers might also be using them.
  
  i'd get premium if they didnt make it artificially more expensive by bundling other stuff with it, so adblock it is
  
  Plus, it's likely to evolve into a "less ads" deal eventually.
  The one constant is that there's never enough money to satisfy corporate needs.
  
  There's a great video on this that was made when YouTube first started rolling this out called The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead, and one of the points mentioned in the video is the rising number of people who use an adblocker, and not specifically mentioned but shown in the video is a graphic from an article from 2015 which shows that just under 43% of people use an adblocker. That number will have obviously changed in the past 7 years, but if we just use 25% of viewers as an estimate, that's 25% of all viewers on YouTube who may turn to more "malicious" forms of adblocking such as things like AdNaseum and ReVanced or sites that host YouTube videos without the ads, and tell others to do the same if they're sick of ads. And even if they do give up and watch the ads, the science says that people who use adblockers are much less likely to click on an ad and make a purchase, which is bad for advertisers since they pay for the number of views an ad gets and their clickthrough rate would go down, making it more expensive and less profitable to do business with YouTube.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIHi9yH6UB0
  
  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.
  
  Pretty sure there are still Methods to get free access to satellite TV channels (the paid encrypted ones, I'm aware that there are Free channels) the methods just changed from how it was done in the old days, nowadays you need internet to download the keys, which kind of defeats the purpose since you could just use a Free IPTV service on that same connection.
  Also Satellite has fallen out of favor these days.
- 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.

124 comments