I actually didn’t care when there was an ad in the beginning of the video or what not. It was when I had to start watching multiple ads in the middle of a 10 minute video as well. Like come on, not even broadcast TV is that annoying.
laughs in firefox + uBlock Origin
If I understand correctly, there’s nothing about Firefox that makes ad blockers any harder to detect. What can Firefox and uBlock do to stop Google from blocking adblock users on the site?
That said, I use Firefox and uBlock myself, and I’ve yet to see YouTube stop me from using the site.
They don’t care about Firefox. Chrome is the browser market, they have weakened extensions, they implemented DRM, and here we are.
Coming to you later… “Your browser violates YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
This would become an Anti trust suit I would imagine.
They can just phrase it a little differently and argue semantics in front of a bunch of 70 year olds who don’t know what a browser is in a hearing or two. Maybe a couple campaign contributions through completely legal channels and that’s that. Anti trust enforcement has been falling in the US for decades.
I am cautiously optimistic of that new gal heading the FTC, she’s preparing suits I to Amazon and Google, so we’ll see how that goes
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You could use an extension that changes your user agent but I’m not sure how well that’d work
They have control of Chrome, so they could always implement some kind of API into Chrome to check.
C-C-C-C-Conflict of interest!
Everybody thought this was OK because Chromium is open-source.
Laughs in useragent switch
They’re TRYING, but for now, it would be a user agent extension matter.
It doesn’t matter if YouTube can detect uBlock. The great thing about uBlock is you can just block the anti-adblock script. Since Javascript is executed on the user’s computer, it’s trivial to just tell your computer to ignore it. And moving it to server side would cost them too much money in processing power.
That’s why they want everyone to adopt their DRM, so they don’t have to worry about it.
This logic is so flawed lol. It’s also completely trivial for them to detect when their anti-adblock script has been blocked. If it gets blocked, then they can just stop serving you videos.
There are websites that already do this; it’s not theoretical. The website just doesn’t work if it detects an adblocker.
Whether or not it’s trivial to detect depends on the method used to block it. It already is an arms race, and said race will continue.
Ok but do they know we know they know we know they know?!
Those sites aren’t popular enough for people to actively develop custom scripts to get around them.
Didn’t Spotify do this a while back, they made threats of account bans as well. In the end it was bypassed and you can still use Adblock in the browser or adfree clients on desktop (or just block ads across device with Adguard or Portmaster), though honestly Spotify kind of sucks in my opinion (usually doesn’t have the music I want and has UI unresponsiveness).
The only one that kind of worked was Twitch, and the Alternative Player plugin for Firefox still bypasses the ads, you just have to wait while Twitch thinks the ad is playing because they inject it into the stream directly and you can’t access the stream without waiting out the timer.
OK, show us an example. I’ve never run across a website that adblockers just didn’t work on, but maybe you know of one. Give us an example, and we’ll see if we can bypass that. Then we’ll know which of us understands how Javascript works, and which doesn’t.
Firefox currently enjoys protection from being “relatively niche” in the browser market (aka not Chromium based trash).
But if I had to place a bet on which browser would put effort in to protecting your privacy, including which extensions are installed, my bet would be on Firefox over Chrome.
i think it’s mainly the list maintainers staying on-the-ball with changes to sites. they can move quicker than a giant corporation can develop, test, and roll-out potentially site-breaking changes that could adversely affect ‘billions’ of users.
It has always been my understanding that uBlock and uBlock Origin were two totally different extensions for ad blocking. Is this not correct? Back several year ago when ad blockers were new, I recall seeing two different Firefox listings for them, and people would caution users to get uBlock Origin and not the other truncated named one
Ublock fucked the creator who made ublock origin
I am assuming that is metaphorical?
Yes, it is metamorphical lol. Gorhill is the creator of both uBlock and uBlock Origin. However, he gave the uBlock github repo to another dev, who sold it to adblock plus. Do not download uBlock.
However, he did fork uBlock and continued to develop his own version, now named uBlock Origin. Do download uBlock Origin.
PSA: ublock.org is not related to uBlock Origin.
The difference is Firefox is not a chromium based browser and thus not subject to googles fucking bullshit, esp when we come to things like web drm
What can Firefox and uBlock do to stop Google from blocking adblock users on the site
Not sure if you question is serious … but just in case, Mozilla is one of the few non-profit orgs that is fighting for an open web
ref. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/and uBlock Origin can literally work its magic because firefox provides the necessary APIs that allows it to work. (old ref. but AFAIK still relevant: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox)
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Just another Firefox fan boy. They do this shit when as blockers get brought up too as if Brave, Vivaldi, etc isn’t going to strip out the ad blocker nonsense when they build their versions. Just because these versions use Chromium as a base in no way means they have to use their code. Firefox fan boys are too busy talking about Firefox to understand this.
Except WEI is going to make it so the website can detect and block you if you don’t allow the ads, regardless of your browser and extensions
At the moment WEI has been rejected by mozilla, so it wont be implemented into firefox. if google decides to add it into chrome and to their services, they will effectively lock out all firefox users. - A very anarchistic part of me actually would like to see how that would play out … but at the moment i am unsure if google would actually dare doing this, but i guess, it will only be a matter of time and we’ll find out.
Not sure if this move would actually damage the open web … since basically google would single itself out as the enemy … and i dont see many users appreciating such a move.
But if the worst happens and the whole web follows googles example, i guess we can just call this iteration of a “open web” a failure and start over with something much simpler … maybe something like the gemini protocol as its base, which isnt polluted with clientside javascript garbage and bloated CSS/XHTML parsers and rendering engines .
I fully expect that without a change of current course, Google will ensure yt will just stop working on Firefox at some point.
I guarantee there will be a workaround. It’s not magic it’s just code. And once that code is on your machine there’s not much they can do about it.
With streaming media they created this tiny DRM blob (you might have have heard of widevine.drm) which every browser needs to have to decode certain types of streaming media. Now imagine if something like that would be required … the website would only be loaded and rendered if the module would “validate” that nothing has been tampered with (think: signing and checksum validations). - Suddenly no more content filtering/adblocking or maybe just enhancing websites with userscripts. That is the web google is trying to create. Totally under their control and static. The user will again just like with television be a receiver without any influence. I personally find this to be a very scary, degrading and sad thought so much … that i would likely turn my back on this kind of web as much as possible and look for other networks (maybe something like i2p, gemini , … )
I don’t see the W3C or any of Google’s competitors jumping on board to give Google the keys to the web.
With chromes marketshare, they basically already have one half of the keys. If they can get a significant amount the server/backend owners to adopt/use their “features” (maybe lie like they tried with MV3 that it’s all about security and keeping bad actors out) … it’s game over.
Firefox + uBlock Origin user here. I started getting those popups a few days ago.
Purge and update your filter cache, check to make sure you have Anti-adblock filters enabled. If that doesn’t work do some troubleshooting with the extensions, one user found that other extensions were interfering and after disabling the problematic extension it worked.
I’ll try this. Thank you very much!
Laughs in Invidious
People who choose not to watch ads are far more likely to not spend money based on ads. I know that when I see the same crappy ads over and over, yeah, I remember the name of the product, and I remind myself every time never to buy it. I’m more likely to buy from that seller if I don’t see their ads.
100% agree, but they charge for eyeballs, not clicks.
That’s because the average person is influenced by seeing the same shit over and over again, and it improves sales. Not every single person, just most of them.
Not most. Just enough to make it worth the money they spend.
“just enough to justify not paying their workers livable wages” FTFY
Depends on the age demographic and lifestyle. For example, I pretty much buy the same things for the last 20 years. I’m not going to change my shopping patterns because of an ad.
Also, YouTube ads are about the most random things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad on YouTube for anything that I would actually buy. I’m not even nearly immune to ads, either. Show me a product that solves a problem for me and I’ll strongly consider it. Consciously and I’m sure subconsciously.
Google knows what I do for a living, where I live, and what I spend money on. Google also knows that I use YouTube primarily to watch videos in other languages. It’s not a secret to them. Yet they insist on trying to sell me products or services that have zero relevance to anything that I do. In English.
It makes me wonder if they’re even trying to profit through ads. I know the answer – no, not really – the advertiser is the customer, not me. It must be too complicated for them to realise that they could charge more for ads the more sales they led to.
Clicks are the core part of how ads work… Cost-per-Click, Click-Through-Rate, etc.
Everyone thinks ads only work on other people, that’s why ads haven’t been banned yet.
I operate this way too. There must be literally dozens of us.
In all seriousness, I do find it somewhat surprising that some of these companies think saturating everything with ads is a good idea. As a simple matter of brand recognition, I get that the power of suggestion is a helluva drug. But all that stuff does eventually glom together in my head as general advertising nonsense – as a result I see companies that advertise less / not at all and rely on a quality product and word of mouth as a better buy.
They don’t just think it’s a good idea, marketers have convinced themselves they’re doing you a favor by pummeling you with advertisements day and night.
How else could you learn about their valuable product if not for constant, unending advertisement?
I work in Google Ads every day.
It’s more likely that they’re incompetent and haven’t checked/manually set up their video / display ads, and have let Google decide how often to show their ads. Google then decides to show their ads as often as possible because it gets clicks (even if they’re accidental) and nets them more money each time.
The best trick Google ever pulled was telling advertiser’s to trust them with their money and “leave it up to the algorithm”.
Fuck no, you set it up so Google doesn’t abuse their platform and spam your ads everywhere, ignoring everything Google tell you to do.
The shit I’ve seen in people’s accounts because Google told them to do it…
You can and should limit the amount of times your adverts are shown per day to someone. There’s a not-so-fine line between brand awareness and pissing off potential customers.
Yeah. I’m completely allergic to ads. If this goes through I’m simply not going to use YT anymore.
I can list a ton of products I by principle will never use. Athelic greens, casper mattresses, simplisafe, express/nordVPN, Honey … Some people may see a pattern there.
Ironically I might actually buy your product even if you spam annoying ads as long as you do it on a platform I block ads on.
No Ad is good sunscreen.
then they are succesfully livin in your head rent free
Chumba…Jordan Peterson and the stupid best fiends game, I’ll NEVER use
Lamo this will introduce more people to revanced
You know why it’s called revanced? Because youtube came after vanced. They wont ignore it forever, unfortunately.
YouTube Vanced was shut down because they tried to monetise it by releasing their own crypto NFTs, sparking Google to shut it down. I think for now Revanced is safe.
Every great project always seems to have that one dude who is like, “But what if crypto?”. Really hoping we are moving past that phase.
But what if AI?
Its a monetization approach, same motives as what youtube does here with the ads so doubt itll ever go away.
The thing is that Revanced follows a new distribution model. Rather than distributing a modified app, they instead distribute patches for the normal YouTube APK so that the user modifies the app on their own device. Thus, ReVanced never distributes any of Google’s IP. It’s kinda like game modding. ReVanced will be a lot harder for Google to kill.
The one downside for ReVanced is that it’s harder for ordinary users to install, so that will limit its popularity.
True enough, but there are always options.
Rerevanced will be popular
Oof, one day soon, we’ll all be watching torrented rips of youtube videos, like we already do TV shows.
I’ll cherry pick every youtube url and download 40 gigs of mp4s off real-debrid before I see another fucking grammarly ad
I just use yt-dl to download anything from youtube. It cuts the commercial out during download
Rererevanced will be the pinnacle
I know if I’m not wrong vanced got in trouble for using YouTube logo and reverse engineering the YouTube app. Revanced technically not breaking any law as it not directly modifying YouTube like vanced.
Yeah, but YT can change the terms, and now blocking ads, its clear they are stepping up the aggression in chasing profitability.
they’ve captured as many paying
customersproducts as they could under the ‘old’ system, so now they’re trying to squeeze more cash out every other source they can.I don’t fully agree. I buy premium. As long as they keep it ad-free, it’s a vote for a better business model, for platform, creator, and user alike. YT has had that option for years. Up to now, it was essentially voluntary.
It’s time to leave the ad-funded internet entirely behind us, and move to platforms like Nebula, Floatplane, Proton Mail… And yes, even YT Premium. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed they don’t pull a hulu and try to double dip on both a sub and ads.
If that happens, YT is dead to me.
I just can’t agree with the $73/month price for something I rarely if ever use. My grandson loves watching Elmo’s world on it on the tv, ads aren’t too bad yet, get like 10 mins of video before 2 30 second ads. But I refuse to pay google any money, they make enough off the android phones and all their ads they shove down your throat via websites, YouTube and google search engine
I mean even if you pay for premium, they don’t give you the option to not have shorts shoved down your throat. This is a “feature” that has been added after premium was a thing. It’s also not too hard to figure out shorts are an optimized method to harvest more user data on interests.
While I don’t disagree with leaving the ad-funded internet behind us, I also don’t trust Google to be a pioneer in reducing ads on the Internet— considering they’re an ad delivering company above all else at this point.
I don’t have premium and I don’t see shorts either. I’m not sure if some of my addons is blocking those or I just clicked “not interested” enough many times.
EDIT: Yeah. Enhancer for YouTube blocks them
No one said we should trust a corporation to do anything, much less google. I’ve ditched chrome and encourage others to do the same every chance I get. But I also think Premium, YT Music, Android and Pixel, Google drive/office suite, are all reasons for google to rely less and less on their ad business.
The challenge they now face, is the unwillingness of customers to pay. Due to google having relied on ads for so long, people are more than used to accessing their services free of charge. Just looking at the ad-block-blocking situation, they demand that they be able to do so. All the while rejecting even the ads.
Ads will never be the long term play. Sooner or later legislation will step in, as people who actually use the internet and it’s services like youtube, start getting into government.
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Let’s get specific here, it’s legal to bypass it for personal use, illegal to bypass DRM to distribute copies of whatever you removed the DRM from.
What are they gonna do? Revanced is just a patcher, unlike the previous version that fully distributes modified YouTube apk. There is a separate repo that has patched YouTube apk, but if that repo got taken down, the revanced manager still live on.
it’s YouTube re-Advanced
Bailamos.
Or, you could buy YouTube TV, which gives you YouTube Premium as a undisclosed bonus I’ve found. A great option because it helps content creators and allows you to cut cable. I may have some bias on the topic of paying for media content services, but in general pirating hurts the creators. I hate that I’m old and wise enough that I might have been more receptive to Metallica’s arguments during the Napster era. I do feel though that it is in the best interest of creators for certain content to be previewable. The problem with YouTube video monetization are that most are not going to be rewatched.
Wait what? I have YouTube TV and pay for YouTube Premium so would love to not do the latter. Where might I find this undisclosed bonus?
I simply find that when I am logged into YouTube with my same account that purchased YouTube TV I receive no ads. I am not using an add blocker or anything. I assumed that was because of my purchase of YouTube TV. It might be a bug with my account because I still get a splash occasionally to buy premium, however no ads ever.
Adblock is one of the greatest human inventions of all time.
Oh my, the creators get paid?!?
https://influencermarketinghub.com/youtube-money-calculator/
Oh… So no, not really…
Sounds like they’re lying to me!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word “allowlisted”. Did someone forget “whitelisted” is a thing, or is that term finally cancelled?
Even the FBI recommends you use an adblocker, for your personal safety. Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/the-fbi-now-recommends-using-an-ad-blocker-heres-why
Remember when YouTube was just a video of a guy at the zoo? Pepperidge farm remembers…
Two days ago I noticed when watching through the app on my phone that I could no longer just skip ads, and the trick of reporting them to skip didn’t work anymore either. I effectively had to just sit and wait.
That same day I got NewPipe, imported my subscriptions, and honestly even if this is just a phased trial or something, I won’t be going back to the standard YT app.
Creators make pennies from ad revenue. If I want to support them, I’ll make a donation or subscribe to their Patreon or something.
I won’t just sit and suffer a slew of ads while my data is harvested under the false pretense that it’s all to support the creators.
I’m unironically considering ditching any online interaction(s) on the internet and use my PC solely for offline content (write documentaries, texts, play retro games). Because I really don’t want to use the internet with that level of intrusion in my pc.
Take any cybersecurity class and you’ll want to burn your tech in a dumpster. In most cases it’s security by obscurity from sheer numbers that hackers/sites don’t give a crap about you alone.
Additionally, every site you have ever visited tracks your browser, IP, OS, location, and more. This AdBlock tracker is just observing that you have a plugin for ad blocking. That’s the least intrusion that YouTube does.
In summary, there’s no need to be paranoid, but only because everything that can be stolen or observed already has been.
Also to add to what you said, switch away from (Google) Chrome everyone!!
Imagine this message, but on every website, and it literally cannot be prevented, as the browser itself will sooner than later just straight up tell the sites “yo, your content has been modified, maybe block the user from viewing”, snitching on you.
Come to think of it now, I wonder if this will affect poorly implemented sites using that feature to accidentally (or intentionally…) disable dark mode/reader extensions.
And then, due to Chrome’s market share, if left unchanged, web developers/companies will at some point just not bother anymore. Imagine “this works best in Google Chrome, download now” you see for some web apps today, but even with the most basic text based site that can’t prevent you from using your Adblocker in e.g. Firefox or Safari.
every site you have ever visited tracks your browser, IP, OS, location, and more.
This is wrong to a degree of paranoia. That’s simply not true. Every site can observe it, some might even log it, but that’s a far cry for tracking it.
In most cases it’s security by obscurity from sheer numbers that hackers/sites don’t give a crap about you alone.
Also no, maybe in the 90s, but modern systems are (increasingly) designed to be secure by default.
There’s a great way I figured out to differentiate quickly between Cybersec Fud and legitimate discussions related to security. The usual main difference is that they are meant exclusively to sound scary there’s no room for constructive criticism, discussion about it, or finding solutions to the problems presented, and I’ve found that if you try to steer these discussions in said direction the person will usually try to shoot you down.
Someone might say there are no solutions but see, here’s the thing, there are always solutions, you’re just not looking in the right places. After all lack of source code and sparse dubious documentation didn’t stop people from studying and disabling IntelME, and believe it or not while security Vulnerabilities are usually bad, some can be your best friend and the key to the solution. (Not saying it’s easy, I’m saying it’s possible, contrary to what most open source advocates say).
Honestly if someone wants to have one of these discussions with me and they don’t want to discuss it constructively or think about possible solutions I don’t want to hear it because it’s not meant to promote intelligent discussion. It’s more like scary campfire stories but it’s portrayed in a way that seems constructive and intelligent. It’s also usually very patronizing since many times (not necessarily this specific commenter) the people making the statements tend to inadvertently talk down to you, this was my experience from hearing similar ones from colleagues.
It is like people freaking out over giving out their phone number and SS number. I guarantee you that info is already out there in countless databases.
I’ve had the same thought before but then I don’t want to become one of those older out of touch people. I think each generation feels like the world was in better shape when they were younger. But the truth is that many of the young kids today will look back on 2023 with the same fondness and nostalgia as I do when I think about the 1990s. Back in the day older people would warn us that video games and television would rot our brains. Now we warn our kids that TikTok will do the same. Everything is always getting faster and faster but young people are adaptable and I think they’ll find their way.
So, alphabet can rip off the creators but we can’t? What a crappy double standard.
Aw that’s so cute, they think they’ll be able to stop adblockers from working for more than a few days. Just like everyone else before them. Good luck with that guys.
- TV : SmartTube
- Mobile : NewPipe / LibreTube
- Desktop : Piped / YouTube with a bunch of browser extensions
This my YouTube Premium
The streaming crash has only just begun.
