https://9to5google.com/2023/10/31/youtube-ad-blockers-launch/
Since May, YouTube has ramped up its block of ad blockers and the company has now fully launched this policy worldwide...
cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/2787773 (!google@lemdro.id)
Some solutions:
How is that different from any of these other apps? It's being actively developed so any update breaking can be patched.
ReVanced doesn't use the YouTube app/website, it modifies the YouTube apk into a completely different thing. The only thing that can break ReVanced is server side changes from YouTube.
And does something make you think that Google isn't capable of doing exactly that?
They're updating server-side rules constantly. And EVERY app update is also accompanied by a server-side update, even if it's small.
Ah but there's the catch, ReVanced just depends on server side YouTube changes.
Meanwhile, GrayJay depends on app-side & server side YouTube, Twitch, etc etc.
Remember people start logging out for these services. Any day they could decided to start terminating accounts if this whole anti Adblocking campaign doesn’t get subscriber numbers up
Tangential question - what is stopping youtube from restricting access to their API for 3rd party apps like Reddit did?
I am aware of this option, but sideloading on iOS currently kinda sucks. You have to use AltStore which sometimes goes unmaintained for a few months, even when it's maintained it's kinda buggy and the Windows version almost never works for me. It's also not available for Linux. And you have to connect your phone to a computer running AltStore every 7 days, otherwise the app will stop functioning. It's just not a great solution and especially bad for less tech-savvy users.
I'm definitely not gonna pay Apple money to use my device that I already paid way too much money for the way I want to. But I just switched to Android (GrapheneOS to be percise) and now I don't have to deal with any of this BS anymore.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-anti-adblock-bypa/gbghmolkliahkeekflofoaiofibligjf could help as well.
Just use a proper ad-blocker like uBlock Origin in combination with a browser like Firefox or LibreWolf that supports proper ad-blocking extension. Fuck this Chromium garbage that deprecated MV2 because Google is scared of adblockers. Don't support Google's monopoly on browser rendering engines and use Firefox or something even better like LibreWolf.
Did you read what the addon is about? It's not an adblocker but is to be used in conjunction with one. All it does is circumventing the adblockerblocker. It specifically recommends being used together with uBlock.
Btw, I use FF with uBlock. But I am not everyone, so when I stumbled across this, I thought it might be helpful for some people.
And I found it ironic, that Googles own extension store contains an extension that circumvents the YouTube adblockerblocker.
I know, but uBlock has built in circumvention features, and you can add custom blocking rules or filterlists to uBO without having to install an additional extension. If the addon becomes outdated, it might start interfering with uBlock Origin. It's best not to combine uBO with any other ad-blocking addons and just use the existing mechanisms like custom rules and filterlists to extend uBO if needed. The uBO team is constantly working on ensuring that the built in circumvention mechanism works, most of the time, the only thing a user needs to do is clear the cache and update the filterlists.
And I found it ironic, that Googles own extension store contains an extension that circumvents the YouTube adblockerblocker.
It will probably be taken down soon lol
Ya know, I've seen a lot of posts regarding Elon Musk spam in this community, and calls to "ban" them, yet every week we get gloom and doom posts like this when some new subset of the world starts seeing this shit. I'd really like to see a pinned message about the fix, which is...
If you visit YouTube and see the pop-up, the page isn't loading the video content, or it just seems to be acting strange, do the following:
I literally have no other installed add-ons for ad blocking, anymore. Only uBlock Origin. Any time I see the message or YouTube starts acting up, I just repeat those 7 steps above for any YouTube tab that was already open, and viola, the video plays. It has simplified so many issues for me and reduced the number of adblock extensions I need to run.
I definitely plan on donating this holiday season to their team, probably the biggest share of the pie between the FOSS apps I enjoy and appreciate. Should uBlock Origin ever fail, I'll just stop going to YouTube.
Intrusive and sneaky ads like the ones on YouTube should be heavily regulated if not illegal.
Edit: especially ads louder than the average content volume, repetitive jingles designed to get stuck in your head, billboards, and ads thrown in the middle of the video you’re watching
"Loud" is unfortunately hard to quantify. There's a lot of psychoacoustics that mean that the number of decidels really doesn't tell you what's loud and what's not.
This is a great demo of how sounds can appear extremely loud without actually being physically very loud: https://youtu.be/tONF9OSUOSw?t=7m16s
Anyway the point is that it's hard to make rules about this kind of thing, because sound is subjective and there are ways to circumvent any restrictions you make.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/tONF9OSUOSw?t=7m16s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I can honestly say, apart from seeing it on on the background when visiting parents or similar, that I haven't watched free to air TV in maybe 15 years. Been streaming or downloading all that time.
I hardly watch it either. Just found it funny all the complaints above could be applied to what free to air tv has been doing for decades.
There have been rules in place for over a decade for OTA broadcasting.
Yet they still get around it through sound mixing. Any regulations against using jingles or having ads interrupt what you're watching?
Free to air is heavily regulated in my country if it had a fraction of the fraudulent grifter ads Google would be shut down
Googles ad platform is utterly full of fraudulent scams and grifters. Bring on regulations and HEAVY fines for Google making profit of fraud and crimes.
It's pretty random whether you get the message or not. Some of my friends, including me, straight up cannot watch youtube on their website half of the time anymore, because it full blocks us. It's not just an annoying message, videos actually just don't play. But I only get it on some days. I think the message only pops up if you've been watching for more than like an hour straight. Then again, some of my friends have never seen the message. Who knows. Just more weird big tech server bullshit. Like how twitter's api works 15% of the time (for me).
Purge cache and refresh does the trick if you have problems with the firefox+ublock combination. Or you have some other active extensions which prevents ublock from doing its thing.
Been watching for 3h straight and still no pop or problem with videos but when time eventually come I'll try to setup UBO filter or using 3rd party frontend
I'm daily using uBlock Origin (with Firefox) on Windows, and ReVanced on Android, and have experienced zero indications that Google is at war with ad blockers. These two are fucking fantastic and highly recommended. I don't expect it to last forever, but bravo to these devs and contributors.
Firefox with Adblocker Ultimate working fine for me as of last night. I'll check again tonight.
A bit unrelated, but do you know if there is a hardened firefox for linux (just like Mull for Android)?
Yeah, all Google accomplished with this bullshit was finally getting me to switch from Chrome to Firefox as my main browser on desktop.
Pretty much, also encouraged me to download uBlock, and now I see how many items it blocks from pages like YouTube. Spoiler: It’s a lot.
Right?
I have two tabs open...one is a site that is overtly and actively promoting products to me, with literal links to retailers where I can buy the stuff they're promoting...the other is YouTube.
The promotional site's uBlock counter is at 4.
YouTube's is at...139.
Leave that YouTube tab open open for a day and see how many thousands of items uBlock has blocked.
It does on mine, sometimes, so I clear cache, update uBlock, restart Firefox. In general it blocks them again
Or mine on Vivaldi. It was showing me the notice the other week, but seems to have stopped now. Either they are now time limiting youtube before the ad blocking thing comes back, or uBlock upped the ante.
Your uBlock probably updated. uBlock has pretty much been able to successfully block YouTube's adblocker block since YouTube started blocking adblockers, so long as you kept the filters updated.
uBlock Origin is reliably blocking the blocker blocker for me at this time, though a few popups got through a couple weeks ago.
Same, uBlock in Firefox is doing it 100% for me. Haven't even seen a youtube ad or a complaint that I should stop blocking ads.
Well if you are using Firefox, you obviously life the easy life. But what about the Edge or Chrome users here? Habe some respect for those poor guys.
Yeah, that suffering is self inflicted if we’re talking about home users. In an enterprise environment you might need to convince your admin to add Firefox to the company portal.
I feel sorry for Chrome/Chromium users who can't even use real ad-blockers because Google is scared of uBlock Origin and deprecated MV2
Brave for iOS (sorry firefox gang I appreciate you guys) is working fine for me. I had some issues with both Firefox/uB and Brave on windows getting the pop-ups.
I got the pop up a couple of times until I manually updated uBlock's filters list. After that, no issues.
I get there's a heap of people on here who've somehow never seen these new anti-popup measures before, but they're definitely becoming more prevalent.
I switched to uBlock and purged the caches and it seems to have fixed the issue (for now anyway)
At some point I'll have to find a more permanent solution like switching browsers but right now things are working
a more permanent solution would be using an alternative front end like piped. there are a lot of public instances available
wait what? piped doesn't use your login in any way tho? you manually import subscriptions from Google checkout and you create a piped specific login for syncing that across devices. at no point will piped ever ask for your Google account
Apparently that's not as common as it used to be - the number of sites that send a warning about "someone has accessed your account from an unknown device" every time you log in from the same computer!
never seen the youtube anti-adblock stuff.
Mullvad vpn + mullvad browser + ublock origin + never logging into google....
Also freetube, also newpipe...
Maybe they don't bother trying to block vpn users?
I saw them, then I purged ublocks cache and updated and they have been gone ever since (also on firefox, because I switched as soon as I read the news that they would pull this stunt on all chromium browsers a year ago).
No change for me, youtube sure is trying but ublock origin keeps fighting the good fight
LibreWolf (Fork of Firefox without the crap like Pocket or Sponsored sites) is great too. It also comes preinstalled with uBlock Origin. It's what I recommend to everyone.
LibreWolf also makes significant privacy and security improvements by applying certain settings from Arkenfox user.js and from the Tor Browser. Sure, I can debloat and harden Firefox myself, but all of that is already done on LibreWolf, so that's what I recommend to new users, as they like to stick to the default settings.
Yeah its fair enough, but it's easier to just use FF for me, I don't care if they want some anonymous usage statistics and trying to be fully private online is a fools errand. Base FF is good enough imo.
It's not just Mozilla telemetry that LibreWolf protects you against, it also prevents random websites from fingerprinting you and the preinstalled uBlock Origin blocks trackers and all of that shit
I'm also on Librewolf, but most people are not all that tech-savvy, so basic Firefox is better for them just because it has auto-update.
It’s also not that difficult to configure hardened Firefox. It takes a minute or two and there are plenty of written and video guides that’ll have even the least tech savvy people up and running quickly. The tech literacy required to reasonably protect your privacy isn’t very high anymore. The biggest hurdle is getting people to care about their privacy in the first place.
Librewolf is a wonderful project but not something I recommend very often in my personal life, if only because most people just don’t need or want that level of protection at the expense of convenience.
You can also use the Firefox profile maker which is basically lets you create a new Firefox profile with the features and hardening you want. The website: https://ffprofile.com/
I keep forgetting that Windows doesn't have a proper package manager. From a software architecture point of view, an application shouldn't be responsible for updates, this should be handled by the operating system or a specific component of it, the package manager (which Windows doesn't have, at least not by default).
Yeah yt-dlp has been my strat this whole time anyway. Also Piped and Invidious get the job done when i'm too lazy to type in one short command for every video I watch.
Also, specifying format with yt-dlp is unnecessary ("-f 22") if you have ffmpeg installed iirc because it automatically selects the highest quality, thus shortening the command even further.
Higher resolution videos actually have better bitrates on youtube. Like if you select 4k even if your monitor is just 1080p, the video will look much better.
All the more reason just to use yt-dlp. I know it takes a tiny bit of time to set up, but it's well worth it. I'm able to download 20-minute videos that would have otherwise buffered in less than a minute. I can simultaneously queue up a bunch of videos, and watch them with zero stuttering.
You can also put "alias y=yt-dlp" in your ~/.bashrc to minimize it to "y". Or set up a keyboard shortcut to a script that executes the command with your clipboard content.
Or do the same with "mpv" instead of "yt-dlp" to watch the video stream directly without downloading.
Open the uBlock Dashboard, then in the Filter Lists tab click the Purge All Caches button (then the Update now button)
For quicker syncing, you can:
Open uBlock Settings -> click Filter Lists tab -> type "quick" into search box -> click clock icon for "uBlock filters – Quick fixes" -> click "Update Now" button up top
That will only clear the cache for the fixes that actually counter the youtube countermeasures. Helpful if it takes a long time to download and refresh when all of the caches are invalidated.
No problems here whatsoever, I don't know what everybody is talking about. Remember to donate some bucks to your favorite open source adblock (or piping app), thank you.
This was annoying me in browsers so i did a bit of reading and found out that not only can I remove their ad block blocker in browser, but my TVs also support ad free YouTube. Thanks Google! Couldn't have done it without you.
Maybe YouTube WebOS ? It has adblock and sponsorblock supports as well. It can be installed from webos homebrew channel. Check https://www.webosbrew.org/ to get started.
Get any stick that runs android tv or fire TV and install freetubenext smarttubenext. Ads gone.
