1y ago

Coming to you soon...

Technology @lemmy.world

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134 comments

The enshittification continues until profits increase!
(Btw I still haven't seen those yet. In USA and I'm using uBlock Origin on Firefox)
- Got it in the Netherlands a few days ago. With ublock origin on Firefox. So I switched to freetube with the subscriptions I actually watch.
  
  I am also in the Netherlands using uBlock Origin and Firefox and am not getting it. So my best guess is they're doing A/B testing and people are being randomly selected to see how they'll respond to something like this.
  
  I've been using free tube but lately it's been running pretty poorly. Which insidious instance do you use?
  
  Haven't seen it here yet, same country, Vivaldi and uBlock.
- Browser and plugins don’t matter, this is being rolled out in waves. People are getting this on all browsers, with or without ad blockers
  
  So this is how the internet dies? With ads, paywalls, and DRMs?
  🥲
- Same , but not in the USA , I havent seen them yet

i'd rather not use youtube than watch ads.
- Thankfully that isn’t a choice you have to make, and thanks to open source, you will ever need to make.
  The only trick Google has up their sleeve is their web integrity work. Even then, there will be workarounds.

I'm not sure if this works anymore but I saved this message a while back. If you get this pop-up then put this into your adblock custom rules and it should sort it out:
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
- You're an angel. This is for ublock origin?
  
  I believe it should work with any adblocker that lets you set custom rules but since adblocking still works for me I haven't tried this myself. Saved it from reddit like 3 months ago so I hope it's still relevant

I have been adblocking on YouTube for as long as I remember. Personally I think it's unusable without an adblocker. What's the alternative? Because I am not suddenly going to pay for a platform that keeps getting worse all the time.
- When ever I see someone using YouTube without an adblocker it looks like some cheap chinese knock-off or something. As someone who sees less ads than 99% of people I've genuinely became a bit oversensitive to them. Podcasts are the only thing I keep paying attention to despite them having ads which even then I always skip over. Other than that every online platform I use is ad-free and I don't watch TV or listen to radio either.
  
  I like to listen to podcasts in the gym and I will interrupt my set to skip sponsors and ads. The enshittification on Spotify is particularly bad as they now play ads in addition to sponsorings for premium listeners.
  
  bilibili, an actual chinese knockoff has less ads
  
  Same for me, I wish there was something like sponsorblock for podcasts.
- And unfortunately IDK of any alternatives to YouTube. A big part of the problem is that some of my favorite creators only upload to YouTube. I don't want to switch to an alternative and lose a large percentage of the content that I like to watch, that would be pretty shitty.
- There is peertube. I'm not familiar with its limitations. Technically it is possible for someone to try and track your activity because it's P2P.
  The content is currently lacking. I'm kind of wondering what limitations are in place for each user to upload video. Can someone make a bot to start reuploading content from their favorite streamers?

This message is displayed in the browser because Google asked your browser to do it, and your browser got the message and put it there.
When displaying ads, the end user experience is 100% client-side. You are using your screen and speakers to observe it. You can turn off your speakers and screen if you want, which will effectively "block" the ad.
But that is silly. Not only do you own your screen and speakers, but you have control of what you're browser is doing, too (if you use a respectable browser). When HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other content is downloaded, just that happened: file downloads. After it has been downloaded, your browser then consumes it.
When it is consumed, a lot happens, but ultimately, the code in the browser displays content. Your (respectable) browser does all of this, and will change the look depending on local fonts, accessibility options, etc. With an ad block add-on, it will also remove these ads.
However, when ads are removed, the DOM is mutated with deleted or replaced content. It is possible for a website to then write ad block detection scripts to see if the ad contents have been removed or not. There are many ways to do this, and this screenshot is the result of one way of doing it.
However, enter the cat-and-mouse-chase of ad block block blocks. You can block your ads, then block the ad block block like this screenshot. These types of ad block rules are less common, but many public ones are available. Check the uBlock Origin lists in the setting page. By default, only about a third of the lists are enabled, and these extra blocks are in there.
Another avenue of determining that ads were not loaded is for the server to inspect if client-side (you) requests were made to fetch the ads. Even if this is in place, the server cannot determine if you have actually watched the ad or not. It could try to do more client-side attempts at validating that you somehow displayed it, but again, that's client-side.
Imagine if you were sent a letter and a pamphlet in the mail. Imagine if the letter said that you could mail them back for a free sample of their product, but only if you read the pamphlet. They would have to trust that you read it, because you are reading your mail in the privacy of your own home. However, you could opt to toss the pamphlet (like an ad blocker) and never read it. It's your mail, your home, and your choice.
- Really well explained. Thanks

It will be yet another endless cat and mouse game
There are smart people out there that will always find ways around this
- At this point I feel like Google wants to Intentionally kill off YouTube so they don't have to bear the cost anymore. Just another one for the Google graveyard.
- I would love to know what the benefit is. I would think that a very minimal amount of users use adblockers. Maybe I'm wrong but their investment into these things must be substantial.
  
  The answer is always money
  How much money? Yes

Is "allowlist" the new word for whitelist?
- Not really new, it's been around for about a decade. Otherwise: yes.
- Some people mistakenly think that the “black” in “blacklist” is a reference to skin color, so they demand it to be changed.
  
  "Excuse me, it's 'list of color'."
- I'm honestly glad we're getting rid of white/black list. I personally couldn't give a shit the racial element (which wasn't what they ever meant anyway), but I never have to stop and think about it for a half second to figure out which I need. Allow/deny list are just outright better names.
  
  Blacklist and whitelist are intuitive to me. It's the black/red/white -pill stuff I never even try to remember

I don’t need no stinky ad blocker! With a custom user stylesheet is enough.., that is, if you’re using something other than Chrome, because Chrome removed user stylesheets for “reasons”.
- Reasons of adware
- Reasons: "we don't like it when you try to slightly moderate our torrents of spam"

Seems like it's controlled test in different countries and segments. I (Europe) get this popup in Firefox, I also use pi-hole DNS and ublock origin.
- Also Europe here, using ublock and firefox, and I don't get that popup.
- Dies your PiHole block Youtube ads?
  
  It doesn't because it can't the ads and videos are on the same domain now
  
  It does not. It can only block domains. Youtube ads use same domain as actual videos.

I'll fucking use Vimeo if I have to.

Which adblocker are you using? I am using Ublock Origins, Sponsorblock, RYD and Enhancer for YouTube. I will check later if I get the same message or not.

Id rather die than to use the internet without protective services.

As long as we have the physical capability of pointing a camera at a display, people will control what they see. Worst case scenario in these browser wars, you run Chrome on a Google certified device then stream the output of that device to the computer you're actually using, using various filters and vision recognition removing the advertisement from your video stream.
This is extreme, it's a little crazy, but I think everyone can agree it's technically feasible. This means we will always have the edge in the browser wars. If we control the display, we control the flow.
Everything else is just an optimization
- It's fundamentally impossible to grant read access without copy. And you can always do whatever you want to your copy.
  Otherwise, piracy wouldn't be a thing.
  
  Im skipping a few steps. Down then road when they have WEI or something like it, they will only show videos in a secure environment... i.e. where the entire hardware chain has key attestation it hasn't been modified. In that dark future, we can still do everything through optics.
  I agree with you, if they send you data, no matter how its wrapped, its your data to do with as you wish.
  
  At some point in the chain it has to be uncompressed, and even though they have teams at Google try to get that down to the last step, someone is always going to figure out how to step in between and grab that stream
- I ain’t doing all that for a video. Better option would be to ditch YT or get governments and regulators to step in and put a stop to this predator nonsense.
  Sorry tech companies, you have no right to control such things. I’ll be damned if a company can tell me what application I can and cannot use. Let alone what browser I can ingest the internet with.
  This is no different than the browser wars of 2000.

I never got this pop up (i use Firefox + Ublock)
- It's not fully rolled out yet.
  
  Does that mean Firefox + Ublock Origin is blocked too?

What country are you in? I wonder if they're rolling it out to smaller markets to see how much backlash they get.
Time to get a federated video hosting service scaled up ASAP. But who could afford the bandwidth and storage? We need a stable torrent-based streaming solution I suppose.
- It really isn’t. I can get a gigabit pipe and all the storage i can cram into a 4U for a few hundred a month. That is enough to serve several dozen users. Add on a CDN and now you can serve thousands or more. I can probably find 10 or 100 gigabit offerings for not much more.
  The bigger issue is copyright. A site that gains traction in the video space by ripping youtube videos would get sued into oblivion.

Is NewPipe app users safe
- If Google doesn't find a way to end it, they continue to break third party frontends in waves but the community will certainly fight them as long as possible so I doubt that it's going to happen soon, Nitter is back online too and Libreddit is on it's way to be so it's not that easy!
- I've been using it for awhile and love it! Highly recommended!

Is this real? The post title seems to imply it's something that might happen in the future?
- look into Web Environment Integrity. This particular screenshot is probably fake, but it's coming very soon.
  
  No, the screenshot is real, they've been testing it in selected regions for a little bit
  
  This has nothing to do with WEI. Google can do more than one shitty thing at once you know.

Looks like I'm about to switch fully to YT-DL/Plex for the subscriptions I care about. Should be good until they start embedding ads into the video files anyway.

Have you notice that lately if you're the history feature disabled it will refuse to show suggested videos? In the past you would still get suggested videos even with the view history disabled.
- Same with google maps. With no 'web and search history' enabled the local searches I did on my local device won't be remembered. So every time you'd need to fill in the entire address. That's just bullying you into accepting their tracking.
  
  Yes, makes me remember when they wouldn't allow you to save locations on the map without logging in.
- How would it be suggesting videos for you if it didn't know what you were warching? It probably still recorded your history then even if you requested that it didn't.
  
  Yes but they did it in the past. So... they actually always knew / recorded your history.

Invidious / piped.video is the way (as long as it continues to work)!

Can you filter pick it out? Like using the eye dropper thingy?

How does YouTube know whether I'm blocking or not if it all happens at the client side?
- They make a test request from the client and check it's received on the server end and returns what they expect on the client end at a guess. Basically they try to load an ad and if they don't see the request on the server, or the client doesn't get the sort of data it expects, it assumes you're ad blocking.
  
  What if we allow the request but then just discard the response?
- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
  
  Put a few blocks of information encoded in the video of the ad itself. Require that block of information as a key to watch the next video on Youtube.
  Interesting. But it probably only takes less than a few seconds for a program to scan a 30s video file and extract that bit of information.

Using ublock to block these notifications is a great feeling
- Enjoy it then because ublock does nothing against this at the moment. If you don’t have it it’s because you’re not in the first waves.
  
  Why does this sound like a threat