this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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It looks like Google are pushing pretty hard on AdBlockers now. Looks like a pretty aggressive new UI from them.

I'm finding revanced for Android is still working well, but I've got no idea when that'll become less reliable

adblock

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[–] [email protected] 101 points 1 year ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Never had a problem with Firefox. Chromium forks however...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For now until they start ruining that too somehow. I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see browser based throttling.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Or pull a reddit and try to force app usage

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I‘m the type of determined contrarian who even pays for AdBlockers to support them in this arms race, so if they want that sweet subscription cash to keep coming they‘ll defeat whatever bullshit Youtube comes up with. Worth every cent, for a less ad infested world.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

You, sir, have my respect!

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago

Oh, no no no no no. I'm not going to sit through ANOTHER year of election commercials with you-know-who and other assorted fear-mongering fascist freaks. As what remains of my sanity is my witness, I will slay every ad they send my way!

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's an unwritten deal, you know. Youtube lets us block and in return, we allow Youtube to know we block. Because if we take that away from Youtube, Youtube no longer has reliable viewer statistics and the price of their ads will go down.

Now it seems Youtube wants to break the deal (and they can, unless we start pirating Youtube content, they can at the very least make us sit through a minute of black screen before each video). They probably think the damage that will be done is less than the additional income that the subscriptions generate.

it's just the same old story. Grow, grow, grow, wait until you've got a monopoly, now squeeeeeeeeze the profit.

Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.

That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I had no clue of the existence of the Ad Nauseam browser extension. I use Firefox and I just added it to my browser.

I read that it's built off of uBlock Origin, which I already trust because of the open source nature of it, so that was a huge plus for me.

It may not necessarily have been your intention to inform people of Ad Nauseam, but I definitely thank you for bringing it up in the first place!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just to clarify, AdNauseam doesn't click on every ad. Certainly not by default. I've noticed that while it does hide ads embedded in YouTube videos, it doesn't seem to click them often. (Though, it does still click on image based ads on YouTube).

Additionally, by default AdNauseam does not click on ads that are "do not track" (DNT) compliant, an emerging standard set by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'll link to the GitHub FAQ post the devs made regarding why they, by default, don't click DNT compliant ads.

https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-and-why-does-adnauseam-make-exceptions-for-non-tracking-ads

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.

That's how end of Web 2.0 looks like. It really lived a long life, maybe even too long.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't mind having to watch an ad every now and then, a couple of years ago the ads were still acceptable, watch 30s, one ad, the video starts and enjoy. Now it is two or three ads and the start, which can be longer than the video itself, and you can have ads in the middle of the video. It just becomes very annoying, very quickly. Hence, I started blocking these ads more and more.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that's the thing. I'm happy to watch reasonable ads but the concept of reasonable seems to continuously shift. I was happy with a single 15s ad occasionally but it's:

  • 2x 10s ads
  • 1x 15s ad and 1x 10s ad (with a skip at 5s in)
  • 1x 15s as (with maybe a skip at 5s)

Like the pattern and the frequency are all over the place and it feels like I'm constantly watching ads.

I get that need to pay for traffic / usage, but I'm watching 720p / 1080p at compressed quality. How much do they truly need

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And don't forget that even after that you still have to watch baked-in "This video is sponsored by <insert shady company here>" adds since the actual revenue that gets passed to creators from youtube is so low that to keep the ship afloat they have to look for additional revenue streams.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That's what Sponsorblock is for.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is "anti adblock" blockers, mine work on even the most aggressively advertising sites and i don't think the adblock developers will stand still either.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have any recommendations?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

uBlock Origin on Firefox is best, enable all the filter lists (except the regional language ones). Not to be confused with uBlock, they are not the same.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I imagine they will eventually simply splice ads into the videos themselves. But even for that there is already a solution with sponsorblock.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sponsorblock is the reason I'm confident that no matter what they try people can and will find ways to overcome it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Out of all things I enjoy sponsorblock the most. Such a great QOL improvement, amazed I lived without it for so long

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Shit if I have to I'll download every single YT video I wanna watch with yt-dlp and watch em in VLC/MPC/Plex/any other video player in the world lol. My eyeballs see advertisements when I choose for them too.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

SponsorBlock is such a godsend for (live) music videos as well, especially with Eurovision VODs will all those intros and endscreens

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

and the ppl at ublock will find a way around it in approximately 3 hours lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Given the image I wonder if it's a server-side thing (at least if you're logged in). Though if the 3 videos thing is actually enforced I could see people playing long UHD+ videos (even on 1080p screens) or even keeping one video and re-watching (or scrubbing backwards, changing res down then back up etc) in protest.

Also really giving a reason to hoard content.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Rather than doing this, they should work on the reasons WHY people are using adblockers. Some totally unrelated to ads, like those huge end-cards that block the video that you're still trying to watch. I use adblockers to remove those.

You used to be able to turn their predecessors off, but the new ones? I haven't found a way to turn them off without using ad-blockers. Even with Youtube Premium (which gets rid of the ads) I STILL have ot use U-block origin to get rid of those damned end-cards.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They know why and don't care because it makes them money.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I thought that there was a setting to remove these info cards. I'm pretty sure I saw it a few months back when I was looking for a way to disable them.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I won't stand any ads on youtube. Getting blasted with 5 times the same ad at 300% loudness. And premium does not really get rid of it as well, they would have to forbid sponsored content. Every time ads start to slip through adblock I will happily spend hours trying to block them instead of watching a single one. If they don't want me to watch the videos for free they can easily put them behind a paywall. Or do some reasonable pricing if they need infrastucture costs covered.

However I don't mind sending a couple of bucks towards content creators that I watch regularly. That will easily be worth more to them than watching ads even for the rest of my life.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm not sure if it's related but I've been having a hard time playing videos through NewPipe lately. They just load very slow.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ive also noticed this too. Some videos essentially never load on new pipe. Freetube still works great tho 🤷‍♂️

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

If Premium was a third of the price it is now, I would pay the monthly fee.

But the price they want for it is ridiculous, so it is not happening.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Honestly if I had to sit thru ads to watch youtube videos I'd stop watching. I have 300+ subscriptions and after 15 years, can barely stand to watch more than a couple of them anymore. It's just not that interesting anymore.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Happily watching no ads with premium. Sure the sponsor spots are still there, but they pay the creator and I can skip them, so I dont mind... Propably not a popular opinion, but I do think YouTube/Google should get money by hosting the video content...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I would (and do) pay for similar services but I'm not giving google a cent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah I agree with this, unrealistic to expect it to be free w no ads. YTP comes with music too and its a good enough deal to me..

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The day I am unable to block YouTube ads is the day that I stop using YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've seen people bring up Youtube blocking adblockers a few times now, but I have yet to see anything myself despite using Youtube daily with an adblocker. What adblocker are you using?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Props to the article writer for not drawing Google's attention to the fact that Vanced was immediately replaced.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I tend to use yt-dlp to just download video and watch it locally, which provides for better processing and control over the video than browsers do.

It also doesn't have ads, though YouTube could probably theoretically embed the ads in the video itself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

YouTube could probably theoretically embed the ads in the video itself.

This. I have always wondered why they don't just do that. If you wanna serve ads so hard, just make them technically indistinguishable from the actual content. (Please don't.)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh, I hate Youtube ads with passion.

On iOS I use an app called Video Lite, I hope it won't get affected by this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just wished more YouTubers would jump onto peertube. Their sponsors still pay them for the views and it would just be so mich better...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They only pay them for establish views. They're not going to pay them for videos on peertube until they establish the same level of audience there.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you don't mind getting your hands a little dirty with self hosting...

I recommend using ytdl-sub with jellyfin ( or plex etc).

You download the video and person locally, so no ads, but you can also use sponsorblock.

It also has useful retention options, so I have some channels archive indefinitely and others delete week old or watched videos.

The downside is no gui, so lots of reading the docs to set up properly .

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