I’m sure many of you are already aware that YouTube has been rolling out anti-adblock detection for Chrome users for a few weeks now.
Today, as a long time Firefox user with the fantastic uBlock Origin extension installed, I got my first anti-adblock popup on the platform. Note that this may not happen to you personally for a while, but it is inevitably coming for everyone.
Thankfully, the fine folks at uBlock Origin have already advised a simple workaround (on Reddit, yuck!) which I will duplicate in a simplified form below for your convenience. I have tested it on Firefox and it is working fine for me (so far).
PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST.
Update uBO to the latest version (1.52.0+) . <== The extension itself, for technical improvements. You do this in your browser.
Remove your custom config / reset to defaults. <== This means removing your custom filters (or disabling My filters) and disabling ALL additional lists you’ve enabled. It might be quicker to make a backup of your config and restore to defaults instead.
Force an update of your Filter Lists. <== This is within the extension. Lists are what determine what’s blocked or not. How to update Filter lists: Click 🛡️ uBO’s icon > the ⚙ Dashboard button > the Filter lists pane > the 🕘 Purge all caches button > the 🔃 Update now button.
Disable all other extensions AND your browser’s built-in blockers. <== No need to uninstall, just disable them. They might interfere with our solutions.
Make sure you follow all 4 points above. If you’re seeing the message, it’s likely due to your custom config (either additional lists or separate filters in My filters).
Restarting your browser afterwards may help too.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the issue on default settings, you can slowly start restoring your config (if you really need it). Do it gradually, to easier find out what was causing the issue in the first place. Once you find the culprit, simply skip it in your config.
If you want to use Enhancer for YouTube*, you have to* disable its adblocking*.*
May the force uBlock Origin be with you!
So, Youtube’s dying.
Maybe not right now. Maybe not next year. But they’ve decided to make everybody miserable, for a “business” that still won’t cause enough misery to turn a profit.
Meanwhile creators are censored worse than broadcast TV. Nevermind the effective ban on swearing - they can’t even reference concepts without a surveillance program declaring that their latest video doesn’t count, even though they’ll still slap ads all over that bitch.
Those people have things they want to share with an audience that wants to see. Any middleman can either help, or become irrelevant. Bandwidth is cheap. Some creators are just in it for the money… but the money is bad, on Youtube, and it’s getting worse. Patreon is more direct and far less stupid. As with all these lumbering ruins of 2010s internet media, the network effect of being the default will keep them relevant for a while, no matter what they do. Twitter’s on fire and it’s still not dead. But its prospects sure aren’t getting better… and not because people changed.
People are sadly predictable. These idiot robots exploit that masterfully, to a point, and then act bewildered when more pressure stops making more money. Like they forgot we can just leave.
WTF are you talking about? 99% of users watch YT with adds. It will not die because the other 1% stops watching.
Like legit, some of these comments are utterly deranged. YouTube has ZERO competition in the mass market consumer space, everyone else is a niche player, and it’s debatable whether YouTube even turns a profit despite that.
What do you mean it’s debatable if YT turns a profit? They make billions a year in ads according to their reports. You think they are lying?
Revenue, sure - I don’t believe Google shares profit numbers for Youtube separately to the rest of the portfolio. I could be misinformed though.
From a quick ddg it does. YT makes around 20 billion a year in ad revenue.
Again, revenue. They report revenue because it’s a nice big number, but it’s different to profit (which is why a lot of people suspect they don’t make much actual money, if any).
You’re right. Interesting. I guess the huge amount of data they get form it helps them with the rest of their ad business.
99% of former Facebook users didn’t block ads - but they still left. They found other shit to do. People who’ve somehow never blocked ads still complain about ads. They still recognize how advertising shapes the things they like, and they hate it.
Nobody enjoys being interrupted with repetitive corporate bullshit. Nobody’s thrilled when three-minute videos get dragged out to ten minutes and one second, or when punchy edited conversations sprawl into rambling podcasts, or when recipes start with the chef’s life story. They don’t need to know why these things happen, to know they don’t care.
Even if, god help us, Youtube remains the video-hosting site - spacing out to hours of passive content does not have to be how people spend their time.
And they don’t even censor the right people. They have these algorithms that keep on recommending videos designed to teach preteens that it’s “based” to:
- be cartoonishly homophobic to the point that gays live in your head rent free
- support the war in Ukraine because it hates gays slightly less than Russia does
- feel entitled to sex, getting mad when a guy of another ethnicity successfully hits on their crush because they never made a move
Which then ends with them joining and donating family funds that aren’t theirs to Andrew Tate’s little incel cult, blasting the soviet anthem on the bus and then getting mad when nobody laughs and/or with gay kids bullied to the point of suicide.
I’ve just noticed that this is in c/piracy. I suppose there’s lots of interest in the story here and everywhere else, but I’d just like to remind you all that ad-blocking is not piracy.
c/piracy is just c/useful, the only community on lemmy where you are actually getting something useful.
People interested in piracy are also interested in ad blocking. Seems relevant to me.
I do think it is piracy, for me piracy is taking what you want exactly how you want it and don’t ask for it, absolute freedom.
We small people don’t have the possibilities as the rich to save much money with tax tricks or anything similar, so this is how we’re compensating.
I rather have piracy seen more positively than distant certain areas from it. Just my opinion.
Linus Tech Tips seems to think it is, lmao
Ads make you pay with your time,
Yar me harties!
Why isn’t it?
Because ad blocking is a security and privacy feature. We have the right to choose what HTML and scripts are loaded into our browser. Without that right, we have no web security or privacy.
We also have the right to not listen to ads, turning off the radio the moment they come on. Internet ad blocking is effectively the same thing, just automated. Piracy is completely different, because it is the unlawful copying of digital data.
While that may be the case, when by terms of service the “fee” you pay to consume YouTube content is adverts, by blocking those adverts you are not paying the “fee” therefore it kinda is piracy. The argument about adverts with malicious intent or ones that are specifically designed to be deceptive is a different argument, though relevent for why said piracy occurs.
YouTube is free to you because you watch adverts. Otherwise you pay for YouTube premium. By using ad-blockers you circumvent these agreements.
I wholly support ad-blocking for the record, literally used ad-blockers my entire life and have absolutely no qualms with usage.
therefore it kinda is piracy.
It’s not an illegal form or copying though. It’s the equivalent or turning off the radio when an ad comes on, then turning it back on once it’s over.
But no one is stopping you from turning off your monitor until the ad is over and then turning it back on.
Why would I do that when it can be automated with a script that removes HTML and scripts responsible for ads?
@Flatworm7591 Many people will refuse to pay the high price of YouTube Premium or suffer through multiple pre and midroll adverts. It could lead to many abandoning the platform entirely.
I think the way forward is self or federated hosting. The time of YouTube may finally be coming to a close. @neil
The time of YouTube may finally be coming to a close.
Yes, and Reddit is dead. This is delusional, simply not happening. YouTube is huge and a self hosted or federated solution won’t come even close. Lemmy instances had issues with user overload, and this is a Reddit clone. What do you think will happen with videos?
@Sanrasxz Yup, and Twitter was too big to fail.
What are the yt federated alternatives?
@baldissara There’s not many, but Peertube is one of the better known ones. https://peertube.tv
I can’t justify a subscription bc my activity is very inconsistent. Sometimes I watch several vids on YT, sometimes I go long periods without going there, so I’m not gonna pay for something I don’t use half the time. If YT had a system where you could buy credits or something that don’t expire, then, depending on their cost, I could see myself actually paying to use their platform.
If it comes to a point it’s very hard to avoid ads, I’m genuinely contemplating podcasts as an alternative.
I wonder what made youTube decide to fix this loophole? These days the vast majority of people use phone apps or smart TVs to watch. The number of people using Firefox plus ad blockers must be quite small and it’ll be a constant effort to keep updating their anti ad block algorithms.
They’re probably just trying to prevent any user momentum away from Chrome from gaining traction. Ensure there remains no better options for the people who don’t care about privacy or ethics (which sadly is the bulk of ppl)
A LOT of companies have pushed hard on the enshittification pedal lately, apparently it has to do with interest rates or something like that, i guess it also affects Google
Maybe they want to start pushing ads harder and are afraid that more people will discover ad blockers? Once people switch it may be harder to bring them back. So you first close all the exists and than start increasing ads per minute. Because where will everyone go? There’s no where else. Ad blockers are the only option really.
The number of people using Firefox plus ad blockers must be quite small
Hmm, apparently either it’s not fully spread to all users yet, or AdGuard + MalwareBytes gets around it automatically. Of course, I also run Anti-Adblock Blocker, Bypass Paywalls Clean and Sponsorblock so it could be one of those stopping it from bothering me either.
maybe this problem is more than it really is, maybe youtube really really needs eyes on ads.
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.
Pure speculation on my part, but large corporations like Google always have endless meetings full of people just looking for any kind of shit to justify their jobs. I figured it was inevitable before some goons there put their sites on ad blockers and am surprised it took this long. After all, those of us that use them (including me) are using their resources without giving them any revenue in return. (Well, that’s not entirely true, I was a Premium subscriber until they hiked the price again).
Hey Google, maybe you assholes should realize that if people are willing to jump through this many hoops to not watch ads then maybe you should realize that ads are the problem, not users. Nobody wants ads shoved down their throat so kindly go fuck yourselves. Advertising is a cancer. I’ve been trying to convince people how dangerous attention grabbing billboards are but nobody seems to care.
But hey, richest company in the world need to eat ok?
/s
I pay for streaming services where I don’t want to see the ads - which is to say, every streaming service I use at any given moment. I hate ads.
If I can’t get media ad-free, to the high seas it is.
Website ads, though, can go to hell in my opinion. There’s no good way to let a tasteful amount through with negligible impact on pageload speed. I subscribe to a few newspapers, but for everything else there’s uBO.
I consider myself lucky to be able to pay my way out of the problem right now. Until I was in my early 30s, I never paid for a single piece of software or media, simply because I couldn’t afford it. I did FOSS where I could, but, still…
Now that I can afford to pay for the things I use (and frequently write the expense off to my business), I haven’t ventured into international waters for years. Hopefully, “voting with my wallet” and financially supporting the software and media I use can go some distance to preventing more draconian DRM from being imposed.
Although everyone needs to get paid for their work, I’ll never begrudge anyone pirating something because they can’t afford it. I’ve been there, and wouldn’t have been able to advance in my field without doing so.
Google won’t be coming on lemmy to read your rant. They just want more money.
There’s no fucking way I gonna watch a 20 seconds ad for a 10 seconds video.
They could not possibly care any less , sadly
I see a lot of people saying “but that’s how creators get paid”.
Listen: I didn’t put ads on my video. YouTube did. I can’t take them off and I don’t see a cent from them. Block away.
Except they don’t. They get demonetization from literally breathing from Google who treats them like shit, so it’s best to donate to their patreons anyway.
Their demonetization “policy” or lack thereof is a major reason why I block ads. I don’t believe that Alphabet operates in good faith in this matter.
The RIAA and MPAA are the driving force behind the copystrike behavior. I do think Alphabet has the resources and standing to resist and battle it in court, but that’s clearly not their business model. Alphabet is not invested in protecting content generators, only in what metrics they can sell to ad agencies.
It’s not a copyright problem. You get demonitized for saying “suicide” for example. They want an artificial happy place where no bad things happen and we can all have fun watching ads forever.
… and rape and sexual assault and pedophile… some videos (like on cults) are really weird to watch cus so many words are bleeped out.
Alphabet doesn’t have to battle it.
If they just had copyright owners use the DMCA process, creators could counterclaim illegitimate takedowns and Google would have no liability for leaving the content up as proscribed by the claim process.
They choose to do their far more aggressive alternate system instead. It’s not out of any obligation or legal exposure.
Next step from Google will be to make creators that have Patreon set up be ineligible for ad revenue or ban linking/mentioning Patreon outright.
Not even, though. Practically all the YouTube “creators” these days have [this part of the video is brought to you by scandanavian interwebz to keep out teh hax0rs] sponsored segments that are [Have you shaved your fuckin’ nutsack lately bro? Check out this ball hair trimmer from clipyerjunk dot com] littered throughout [zzzzzzzzzip … ^reecrootah ] their videos.
That being said, some of them at least put effort into finding and vetting content-relevant sponsors that can actually be helpful. I can kinda just barely tolerate those.
I can strongly recommend the SponsorBlock extention (also available in revanched).
Oh sheeeit! I used revanced on Android, but I had no idea there was also a Firefox extension for that. Thanks!
Blah blah blah blah.
I don’t care who does and who doesn’t get paid, and I’ll come up with every excuse to ignore that pesky creator income.
The mental hoops you all go through is insane. It’s on par with Trumpers, just less damaging.
I see a lot of people saying “but that’s how creators get paid”
And they’re not wrong. But they put themselves in this position when they uploaded their videos to servers owned by one of the worst corporations in the world, with massive privacy implications, and no alternatives.
I watch them on other platforms when they make it available.
Creators are victims here too. For most of them YouTube was a very different place when they were beginning their careers on the platform.
Not that it changes your point, I just feel it’s important to keep in mind that the process of “Enshittification” sucks for everyone (well, except shareholders).
Creators are victims here too.
Eeeeh that’s wildly arguable. It costs marginally $0 for a creator to upload their content to some other platform besides (not instead of) Youtube. If they don’t, and then they complain that people don’t Monetize Them, to me it feels like they are trying to, in ethical terms, make bystanders feel guilty that they (creators) are whoring out in public.
Their content has better reach on Youtube, though. And has a better comment section which would be relevant to the video (which Oddysee has a problem with)
Better comment section? Youtube is basically an incel / right-wing / flatearther comment pile.
I fucking hate that pop up so much! Youtube is so pushy about premium, dear god! I honestly wish a rival could rise up to Youtube because I’m absolutely sick of their bullshit.
I still use yt but most of the good content is also on nebula so you can try that. But yeah there’s just stuff that people on post on youtube so you might be stuck with it for a while.
The fact that nebula is paywalled is the reason why it’s going to fall
First I only saw screenshots of others getting it. Then I got it once, cleared the catche, updated and hoped for the best. The next day I got it again. Today I’ve gotten it 4 or 5 times. I wonder what’s up tomorrow.
So annoyed at how all these services keep degrading for users. I was happy to pay for premium light. I don’t need download/music/etc I just wanted no ads. Simple as that. The price was fairly reasonable and I would have kept paying it. Now they got rid of the premium light and I have to pay at least 50% more for additional things I don’t and will not use.
Alright then, well you lost a customer and I’ll just use AdBlock. And if you somehow figure out how to disable that, I’m just going to find content somewhere else. I’m fucking sick of ads. I’ll pay a reasonable amount to remove them. But I will not be continually wrung out for more and more money. Just leave me alone.
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I didn’t mind the ads back in the day, like 10+ years ago. They were ads for cars, cleaning products, food and drink, movies, games, theme parks, shit like that. Regular products, wasn’t really any super scummy stuff there. Now half the ads are scummy mobile games designed to cause a gambling addiction, impersonation frauds and scams, crypto doubling scams like it’s fucking Runescape, and a whole bunch of other shit that is actively harmful or brainrotting. I don’t mind seeing a funny little fox selling me laundry detergent, but the fart-piss-and-shit mobile ads are just genuinely revolting. If YouTube wants to make me watch ads, they should have some standards and vetting processes for those ads. Like, I still listen to the radio. I hardly notice the ads there because they aren’t actively making me feel worse physically for having listened to them. Very rarely I’ll watch regular TV and, again, don’t really mind the ads there 90% of the time.
And that’s not even touching on what the creators actually get from the hours of my life I would end up watching ads. If you donate 2 bucks to your favorite creator or sub to their patreon or whatever, you’ve probably given them more money than they would get from your ad views in a year. It’s not the loss of adblock revenue that’s making so many creators take sponsorships, it’s the lack of revenue in the first place.
I would be inclined to agree with you if they didn’t get rid of Premium Light. I think charging users for avoiding ads is completely reasonable, we live in a Capitalist country and video hosting isn’t cheap. Even still, axing Premium Light shows a desire to screw over users in order to achieve more profit, which in my mind makes YouTube scummy.
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Alternative solution: Since YouTube disabled all ads in Russia, you can just use russian vpn/proxy for the most effective YouTube adblocking possible.
Wow! What a great idea! What could be better than routing all your traffic through a Russian VPN provider and probably bypassing sanctions? What could possibly go wrong?
Just for the sake of clarity, what exactly do you think will happen?
Might get drone stoked to protect American interests.
lol the US security apparatus is bad but it’s not that bad. you might get put on a watchlist though.
deleted by creator
And you don’t think they are paying money to have those servers in Russia? It’s all more tax money for Putin.
Please do tell what could go wrong. Is the internet sheriff going to turn up?
Good evenin’ ma’am sniff * tips hat * so, we’re in bed with the commies eh ?
Having all your data routed through Russia. What could gp wrong indeed. On top of that the VPN purchase giving more money for Russia.
Nothing is going to happen when your traffic moves through Russia. In fact, you have more chance that something will happen to you if you don’t.
must be why the Ruzzians are axing all non-state approved VPNs. I wonder why they want to have control over VPNs, almost like they want to ensure only certain content gets through or the ability to monitor traffic. Oh but that would be so silly.
What is silly is the idea that that is in any way relevant to what we were discussing here. And I use the word discussing lightly. There’s a big difference between the insinuation that a foreigner is at risk for tunneling into the Russia and the Russian government eavesdropping on its population.
It is very relevant actually.
For starters tunneling there will mean having sites blocked, and secondly a foreogn government having my data, particularly an enemy authoritarian state, is no better than a corporation or my own state (where at least I have some say to what happens to my data)
Even your dog will get hacked
This one’s hilarious, but that one’s not gonna work for long as they will axe almost all non-government approved VPNs
Nice try, Roskomnadzor
Why did they disable ads there?
Ukraine use ads for anti-putin propaganda. So the russian goverment told Google to moderate ads, or all Google services will be banned. Google decided to just disable ads in Russia completely.
I’d rather deal with the ads until they make me go insane than do that.
Thanks for a solution that nobody will ever use
Im imagining any russian person who sees this comment just smiling smugly
Decided to start using Freetube on desktop, Newpipe on mobile. It works!
Also try yewtu.be (Invidious instance)
Firefox, Ublock on macOS and no adds so far. We’ll see about my Linux PC when I get home. I will leave YouTube before they force mw to watch add.
It’s said no one said users could move to other platforms like dailymotion - I know it’s irrilevant nowadays compared to youtube, but from time to time I find good videos there
I think any popular video platform will do the same shit. It’s just expensive to host on a large scale.
Realistically, we need a good P2P solution for this so everyone “pays” for the videos they watch with a bit of their own outgoing bandwidth.
Having the viewing platform paying the content creators is a bad idea. It’s mostly led to the video equivalent of spam, and looking around YouTube, it doesn’t stop them filling their own videos with ads for godawful exploitative mobile games anyway.
You could even have a Tubarr torrent thing that automatically downloads stuff to your Jellyfin server from your subscribed content creators.
Louis Rossman said in one of his video that at his views level it would cost him ~10k a year to host outside of youtube.
Removed by mod
They probably don’t care as they weren’t making money off you anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s what they want. Consume ads, pay or stop using bandwidth.
I am unsure how much they care about views when so many have adblockers. It will be a useful metric when the huge majority can not block ads.
I started using freetube for linux a month or so ago. This is so much better than native youtube. The entire interface is smoother, I get less “loading” moments (none really) and it does not try and constantly reduce my resolution by “auto adjusting”. No ads, no BS. Just better all around.
ugh, I wish they didn’t use Electron.
use youtube-tui then nerd
ah right, I forgot there are only two ways of creating a software - making the user install a separate Chrome browser that eats 10 times as much resources as it should for what it does, and a command line tool. there are no options in-between.
For me in Europe with Linux its thankfully still working with uBlock
I always try to use alternatives, but at least on desktop, it unfortunatelly often doesnt work right (freetube, piped)
But theres of also youtube-dl, hope at least this stays an option!
Try Invidious, it’s just a frontend for youtube hosted in various instances
