YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround
a year ago by moe90 to c/technology
Especially since Adblock Plus take payment to whitelist adverts.
Or even better, Librewolf.
Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER? In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?
In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings.
They're abusing the default and making privacy settings require user intervention rather than defaulting to the most private settings and allowing the option of opting in.
It's abusing consent, so people move to browsers where privacy is the default option.
Blocking abp was the last straw for me, thank you for suggesting librewolf
Yes. I consider it better because it's preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla's telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.
I'm more worried about the updates not happening in a timely fashion. Is it just a passion project by a handful of devs, or is there some kind of funding?
Librewolf doesn’t just block Mozilla telemetry, it also has an easy to understand default for cookies and privacy settings so someone who isn’t a computer expert can rely on the librewolf’s defaults to keep trackers from being able to build a profile on you.
There's benefits to us not tweaking privacy settings. TOR explicitly discourages it. You don't (always) get fingerprinted by a single unique item, it's through an ensemble of data points that companies can identify who you are. There may be 10% of users with your same font library, and 1% who has the same monitor width, and 5% with the same time zone, and voila, when you multiply those percentages, you get close to one in a couple billion, and they've successfully fingerprinted you.
If everyone tweaks their settings from default Firefox, you reveal more information about yourself each time. You may think you're protecting yourself, but the reality is the opposite, you're creating a one of a kind browser config. This is where Librewolf can really reign supreme, if we all just use stock Librewolf, no one will be unique, and everyone will be anonymous.
This is caused by not allowing the website to access your html canvas data. You can fix this in the address bar by clicking the icon on the left of the URL to grant permissions.
To add to this.
This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Canvas data gives a lot of datapoints that websites can use to fingerprint your browser. This allows them to track you across multiple sites even if you're blocking ads and pi-holing tracking services.
There is an unavoidable tradeoff between convenience and security/privacy. Privacy features are inherently less convenient than allowing everyone access to everything.
You could disable canvas blocking globally (I'm assuming, I haven't looked) and the problem would go away, but you've then weakened the privacy protections that were built in to the browser.
As much as I like Librewolf as concept and ideology, I can't keep thinking that if there's a Firefox 0day, Firefox gets patched first, Librewolf later, and I'm potentially exposed for longer. That's why I prefer to stick with upstream.
Have you noticed uBlock Origin being a bit hit and miss on YouTube lately? I’ve had it happen a few times lately where the video won’t play, or an ad comes up but doesn’t play. I’ve had to keep refreshing until it gets to normal where it just plays the damn video.
No. It works across all my systems. I never see ads on YT. However...
Videos not loading or playing delayed: That's a YT feature which they implemented for Firefox users, to annoy them. And to promote Chrome as "the fastest" webbrowser.
I also have dns issues at home... I should fix them already. Sometimes, a page doesn't load on the first try.
You can try user agent switcher. Sometimes it is detected or causes issues, but if YouTube thinks you are running Chrome then you may get better service.
I noted an experimental rule in uBO to address delays, but have not tried it yet myself.
Under settings, Filter lists, Built-in, uBlock filters - Experimental
Code has a comment:
! fake buffering on the initial load
I think youtube might have implemented something that prevents the server from delivering the video files until the expected duration of the ad has passed. This idea is completely unfounded, but this is what it feels like to me.
Maybe it is a regional thing? I was watching YouTube 30 mins ago with no issues and haven't ever had any unless I open a new tab but don't try to watch until the next day. Then I just need to refresh and it is off to the races.
Work PC and I have to use edge there with Ghostery (ugh). Was trying to find a decent coding tutorial. Every page load of a video was a playback error that instantly vanished when I hit reload. No problems on FF with uBO today, though.
Thats fine for me. Just make sure to always "Reject all" on the cookies. If you accept then the whole site sometimes breaks for me.
I sometimes get a popup warning from YouTube that my account will be blocked from viewing videos if I keep running an ad blocker. But the warning goes away after a while and YouTube still works. I don't see ads except on mobile.
Oddly, they also keep begging me to "return" to YouTube Premium, though I have never paid for YouTube Premium.
Oddly, they also keep begging me to “return” to YouTube Premium, though I have never paid for YouTube Premium.
This is just 'normal' commercial psychological manipulation.
Returning sounds better than starting, so a small percentage of people would sign up that wouldn't have otherwise if it was worded accurately.
I am not an expert so don't quote me here, but I think there are ways of bypassing the agent switcher/spoofer (like chameleon) revealing the true browser you are using... that would actually make you MORE fingerprintable.
I use different shared PCs at work and this happens every time on the Windows 11 machines. Some ad plays before the video, but disappears when I refresh the page. This doesn't happen on the Win 10 machines we still have left. In forced to use Chrome there but everything has UBlock Lite enabled.
The article even links to a guide to get it on chrome
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
I don't know about that but they do have a program where advertisers can pay them in exchange for their ads being allowed past the block.
The workaround
Quit using YouTube directly and proxy your request through an Invidious instance.
Your requests are mixed in with everyone else’s, ad’s are blocked and most importantly only 1 machine touches YouTube directly and that’s the server hosting Invidious.
Not a solution for most people, unfortunately...
Most people don't even know what Invidious is, let alone the fact that there are other video hosting sites that aren't youtube (Vimeo, for one).
Invidious is always breaking, too, and most people will stop using it when that happens.
We are talking about most people, not the absolutely tiny minority of technical users who are aware that such a thing as Invidious even exists.
I wonder what percentage of views are done with a general purpose web browser vs. YouTube apps on phones and TVs. Otherwise, yeah, if you have a web browser it is an option. And since this thread is about browser extensions, I too am wondering what they meant.
You see how often growing youtubers complain about more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed to the channel, or how just some videos have more views than their main content? The issue is that Invidious doesn't have the algorithm Youtube provides to everyone, and that not a lot of people really watch their subscribed page.
Unless the instance owner is a network god, they blacklist the IP address almost immediately (they see thousands of videos watched at the same time from the same IP address, trivial to detect)
I just tried this and I get an alert that unlock isn’t fully available. Seems it can’t access web request API.
I’ll give it a spin out of curiosity. I pay for Kagi anyway. I’m very opposed to Google.
It doesn’t work properly… Orion still really falls short. I use Brave on iOS just because of Adblock and paywall bypass.
As much as I hate to say it, if on iOS use Brave. You can disable the crypto shit, but it’s got the best adblocking on iOS, and paywall bypass built in.
Why?
I think you stopped scrolling too early
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
They even link to what I assume is that process.
But...
It costs the same as Spotify
I used Google Play music and it was awesome, when it shuttered I tried Spotify and didn't like it.
YouTube premium is worth it just for music on your phone/car, getting YouTube ad free is kind of just a bonus. But there's a couple podcasts I watch on there, and I've found a couple really good channels for all the crazy science stuff that's been happening. Not to mention a lot of UK shows upload full episodes, and there's more than one account that somehow uploads full runs of shows after being upscaled to 4k.
I really don't understand why so many people are against YouTube premium. It makes sense if someone just pirates all their other media. But people pay for a music streamer and a couple TV streamers.... It seems like an arbitrary line.
Edit:
The article is from "toms guide" not "toms hardware".
The guide has every article like this where it reads like paid advertising. The "hardware" one is a good resource.
But yeah, pretty much anything from "tomsguide" is going to read like paid advertising for something. I legit don't know if they're affiliated or it's a ripoff site built to confuse people with the "hardware" site.
Three out of four of the paragraphs in the article's solution were spent convincing people of the benefits to buying premium. Still feels like an ad despite the tiny mention of uBlock Origin at the very bottom.
I do agree that Youtube, premium isn't bad value. But I refuse to support google or youtube directly with my money. If I ever want to support a creator, I can throw them a couple dollars on patreon and help them far more than buying premium ever would have.
Yeah, the site is pretty garbage and every article reads like an ad.
"Tom's hardware" is still an amazing resource, but "Tom's guide" is so shit I can't tell if it's a ripoff site or just how they find the good one. Especially since the sites look the same, just different background color.
I'm used to it now so I didn't mention that, but for people who don't know about the site it makes sense why they were thrown off.
My reasons:
- I don't want a YouTube account, that just makes it easier for Google to track me
- premium costs too much relative to how much I use it (Nebula is more reasonable, which I do pay for)
- I can support my favorite creators in other ways (merch, patreon, etc)
I don't pirate. I buy movies and TV shows and rip them to my media server, I buy lots of video games both physical and digital, and I buy books if my library doesnt have it or I want to keep it on my shelf. I'm not against paying for things, I'm against my privacy being violated.
I watch a few hours of content a week, and I'd be happy cutting down a bit. I don't follow any of the big names, rarely listen to music, and really only watch videos from a handful of channels, most of which are a waste of time anyway. If Google blocked my ad blocker, I'd be fine just not watching YouTube anymore.
$14 is too much, I think $5 is about as much as I'd be willing to pay, or $1/channel. Give me that and I'll consider signing up, despite my misgivings about Google.
I read that. But the way the article is written suggests that the workaround they're implying is to buy YouTube premium. I am not per se against YT premium, after all its normal business to take money and serve a product, but what my biggest cons are
- The price
- I already use all of the mentioned premium features and more but for free
For example: YT music -> ReVanced (background play, no ads) YT App -> ReVanced (no ads, Sponsorblock, no shorts) YT on browser -> Extensions (uBlock, Sponsorblock, block yt shorts)
If I were to pay for premium and use the regular app, I would lose that functionality and 130€ per year. This money would support a company whose business model involves extensive collection of personal data, which is then sold to third parties, effectively contributing to the global surveillance infrastructure.
I would rather not use YouTube than pay for it.
About YouTube premium :
- I don't like the idea of spending money for Google. I don't find it very ethic to use their services in the way I do but no replacement has come up for years. I try to mitigate by donating to some content creators and I would love to pay a subscription to something like Nebula if there were at least 3 people I follow in there.
- I would use an adblocker even if I paid. On my phone Tubular is just a much better experience : multi platforms, aggregates my subscription, no addictive low quality suggestions and lightweight while still featurefull (and it integrates sponsorblock 🤫)
Also on my previous phone the YouTube app was super slow and would regularly crash because of RAM shortages. This was 6 years ago though.
The thing about it costs about the same as Spotify is not really true. I have been using Spotify family for a long long time (maybe 10 years). I use it with 5 other "family" members and we split the costs.
I think it's decent value but I'm already running extensions or mods to skip the in-video ads, so I may as well just block ads for free too.
If YouTube Premium ever got an official sponsorblock, it'd become a good deal.
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
Tom's Hardware sold out looong ago, sold in 2007 to some faceless consortium. The original "Tom", Thomas Pabst, who is GenX and not a boomer btw, has had nothing to do with the site since.
The editor of this article looks to be a millennial btw.
To gen z, a boomer is anybody older than them
boomer is a state of mind
I actually have a Premium subscription, but it's kinda half assed journalism to suggest that as a solution.
Citizen, that sounds like communist anti-consumption talk.
Now go back to working 60 hours a week so you can buy things to feel better about having to work 60 hours a week.
No, author of this article, paying for premium is not a workaround.
Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.
I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.
I care about making google lose money. They deserve it. I will only make accounts on big tech just to abuse them.
All of big tech deserves to be bankrupt, convince me otherwise.
They only care about money. No ethics, no rights, no environment, just money. And money IS NOT more important than ethics, rights, etc.
I understand your reasoning, and you're not wrong.
However, the amount that they charge you FAR outweighs the cost of compute, bandwidth and storage. The few tens of GB of bandwidth that you use and the storage costs of the video may cost them $1/user/month or less.
Their costs have been easily covered by ad revenue for decades. This subscription service is only because they've purchased all meaningful competitors and can now turn the screws and juice their customers for more money because they have no other options.
Sure, though they also need to pay people, run the platform, run Youtube music, pay for rights to things, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m not about to say that they aren’t another greedy corporation, that would be crazy, but ya’ll expecting to pay nothing are flatout ridiculous.
Their costs have been easily covered by ad revenue for decades.
This subscription service is only because they’ve purchased all meaningful competitors and can now turn the screws and juice their customers for more money because they have no other options.
Sure, if paying them ment that they also didn't data mine the shit out of you and sold it to 3rd parties...but no they insist on double-dipping so they can get fucked.
We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don't or can't block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn't deserve our money for Premium.
Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads... how long did that last?
I don't watch enough YouTube to make premium worth it. If they had a lower tier with a cap on ad-free watch time, I probably would pay.
For my wife and I, whose main background noise/entertainment is Let's Play style videos on YouTube (Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, RTGame and such), paying for premium just makes sense. Like you said, we can and should criticize them for how they handle things, but everyone making a fuss about premium existing just makes no sense.
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
Or..... You could just ditch Chrome altogether!
I don't know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It's a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.
I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that's become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don't even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.
And if you don't want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.
All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).
Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.
People keep forgetting that Google is quite literally the largest ad company in the world. That’s the vast majority of their revenue.
They’re never going to do something that fucks with ad income.
(I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).
FYI in case anyone needs to hear this, but Firefox can be installed as a user in windows if you just decline the admin prompt when installing.
To be fair all the "dancing around and jumping through hoops" is enabling developer mode (which is just a switch in the extension settings) and turning back on manifest 2 in chrome://flags then just reloading the extension.
given that you know about them. they will also get removed soon according to their description.
lots of users won't get to know all this, or if they do, they won't go messing around there because "its complicated"
Additionally, I'm not paying that evil company a dime. All the people I follow on YT get way more money from me on Patreon.
Or at least use a Chrome fork, if you must use it for compatibility or something.
TBH I think it's just an accessibility issue. It's easier to install an extension than find another browser and swtich to it for most people. Hence Internet Explorer lasted as long as it did.
And Firefox.
Stop using Adblock Plus and start using Firefox with uBlock Origin.
If you’re on iOS, swallow your pride and install Brave and just turn off the crypto features. You’ll thank me later.
Stop using youtube and start using peertube. WE DONT FUCKING NEED GOOGLE!
That does not apply to most people. Also, peertube is really getting better recently.
Yes even meta noticed that the qualityof videos on peertube is increased, they're illegally scraping all the content for training their closed source for-profit ai video generator
It's not a matter of "getting better". It's a matter of having the bandwidth. You can't serve a video to ten of thousands of people from one or two servers. And you can't do it with P2P at that scale either. There's nothing technical to do about that; it's basically a physic limitation. To address that you'd have to publish your video in dozens or hundreds of servers beforehand, and the system have to handle load balancing and source lookup efficiently. Basically, work as a full CDN. And that's expensive to do. The reason youtube can do that is not that they have wonderful, almost magical software running on their servers, it's that they have a lot of them.
And, sure, it doesn't apply to most people. Which is irrelevant; most people are not what are driving the masses. One large enough youtuber going peertube would give it more visibility than thousands of individual people. That's the reason people are still using youtube; because people go where the content they want is.
Where do you get ublock for ios? Its not mentioned on github or on the site
So my parents use chrome even though I constantly install Firefox and hide chrome. Problem there is they end up with Edge so I stopped doing that. (Didn't windows get in trouble for this kind of market control in the 90's?)
So I had Ublock origin on chrome for them but it's "not supported" anymore and my usual method of ignoring what it says and turning it back on are now failing.
Any help?
If they are technologically inept, reduce their accounts to limited, lock down the admin account. That will prevent them from uninstalling FF/installing Chrome, and if the admin account sets a shortcut on their desktop(s), they won't be able to remove it. Disable Edge (there are multiple ways to do so), install the necessary extensions on FF, then change FF's desktop icon and text to "Chrome".
Problem solved.
You can disable Edge if you don't want people launching it... "accidentally." There are a myriad of ways. Most recently I've used Edge Blocker, which does what it says on the label. Note that this will cause the opening of any file types associated with Edge by default to silently fail if you don't reassign them to some other program.
The install Firefox and uBlock origin. Unless your parents deliberately go out of their way to download and install Chrome (and depending how heavy-handed you want to get you could even prevent this by busting them down to a limited user account) they won't have any choice but to use the correct browser installed on their system. That is to say, the only one.
Oh my. THANK YOU for that edgeblocker! Going to get that on every computer in my home.
Yeah I'm not "the boss" of my parents. My dad was very tech savvy, but he doesn't have the same memory and cognition as he used to so when I set it up nice he likes it, but any friction sets him off to "solve" the problem... By doing some random totally different thing that doesn't so much solve the problem as "gets it working, sort of" with a browser he recognizes. Then because there are ads he loses interest and just puts on the 24/7 news cycle. :(
On the off chance that you have not heard that Linux is way more user friendly now, I recommend switching over. Especially if you are able to update the computer frequently.
Beside a big whack behind the head, Ublock Origin Lite is supported on chrome. You lose some features, and it is slower to update, but should still mostly work. Unfortunately, the youtube/ublock fight move quite fast, so results won't be as good on that front.
Setup a firewall and black access to websites where they're able to download other browsers. Then change the icon for Firefox to Chrome's icon. For bonus points, you can probably find a firefox theme to make it look more like chrome.
Or if they just really don't like Firefox for some reason they could look into trying Cromite. It has worked pretty well for me and actually does better at blocking ads on sites like https://adblock-test.pages.dev/ than Firefox with uBlock origin does.
I added a user script to clear some of the URL trackers just in case I copy links anywhere as it like opera doesn't use extensions up front.
But on sites like that Firefox w/uBlock with score a 90 for me unless my Pihole is running, and Cromite will score 100 without it. Opera a 75, but I do like Operas interface on Android a lot.
Fyi uBlock Origin Lite was recently released on iOS
AdGuard and SponsorBlock work fine on Safari on iOS.
The internet hasn't noticed yet
Says article on the internet shared with others on the internet and linked to from many internet places.
Article titles are fucking garbage. At least it didn't pul the "Here's why" bullshit.
Based on the other comments, the article itself is as garbage as the title.
Damn sure was clickbaity. No ads? Buy YT Premium they say.
Whoopee. Saved you a click.
I stopped using ABP years ago and switched to uBlock Origin. That and some *Monkey scripts.
"I've found a workaround"
Workaround (according to article): "First of all, YouTube Premium"
The actual workaround (according to article): "Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome"
Seems like they are being paid by Google. Actual workaround should be to drop Chrome.
My thoughts exactly, what a heap of crap. Tom's Guide used to be one of the good ones out there, real shame.
What I was wondering though is if they detect browser plugins through some public ID - how difficult is it to change those? In Firefox it's absolutely trivial, you can simply download the extension, open it as a zip file, and then edit the files inside with a text editor and change the ID.
Haven't used chrome for years, but extensions used to be javascript files just as well, so I doubt they are that hard to edit. Unless they found a way to block installations from local files and enforce their shop, no idea if that's a thing.
if they detect browser plugins through some public ID - how difficult is it to change those?
I actually dismissed that one from the get go since there is not confirmation of any mechanism they described in the article. Not going to spend time on technical-looking explanations from someone who calls a whole another extension a "workaround". Might as well be the case of broken or outdated filters in ABP.
I'm sure if some major site finds a way to know your extensions we'll see some major unsolvable issues.
Bah, This is just an add for a YouTube premium subscription
"Adblock Plus" Me: WHAT YEAR IS THIS?
FreeTube with an ipv6 rotator and Invidious will make sure you never have to deal with this.
Please elaborate...
FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.
FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won't be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.
Sometimes even this doesn't block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking "open invidious link" will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.
The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.
Thank you!!
I too am intererted in your rotator script
https://github.com/ycd/ipv6-rotator
Edit: not my code, for the record.
Where can I get such a rotator script?
https://github.com/ycd/ipv6-rotator
Edit: not my code, for the record.
I like freetube ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can also use Freetube with tor/socks5 proxy, and every time you open Freetube, you automatically get a new IP.
This is true, but I try not to put such a heavy load on the TOR network personally. Its always good to have folks using it for clearweb stuff like this though, keeps the network legitimate.
ABP hasn't been relevant for years, because they started on "acceptable ads" back in 2011.
Anyone with sense has long since moved on.
But a Chromium fork called Chromite still uses it
At least they've zapped the acceptable ads out of it :)
Ironfox is my current pref for mobile, backed by uBO & a VPN to a box running pfsense.
Why pick shit out of your cereal, when you can just get the other brand that doesn't have shit in it?
The Internet is full of people who can't understand irony unless they're slapped in the face with the /s.
With all due respect, that's exactly what the article suggests is the solution.
Didn't read it, did you?
The article can say that the sun is blue, that doesn't make it true - which is the point you're ignoring.
Because buying premium is not a workaround for an ad blocker not working, it's giving up on the broken extension.
I'm not going to debate you on that, but the original commenter was saving people the effort of reading a pointless article, and getting shat on for it.
I didn't think that was fair.
... Did you?
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
Don't shoot the messenger, they're just citing the "workaround" from the article. The article also mentions using uBlock but only after writing two paragraphs convincing you that Premium is totally the solution to go with.
I think that's fine. Let the non-tech-savvy users pay for the service. It seems like they deserve it, and also they keep YT running for "free".
You can keep enjoying YT with Firefox + uBO or PipePipe on your phone.
You could save nearly a couple hundred a year in most instances. LG have a dev account path, android is relatively simple I hear and various foss apps and patching apps will cover most.
Google are undeserving of more money
I'm saying it yourself to them for us
Who uses Adblock Plus? Isn't uBlock Origin (Lite) the shit to go to?
Lite was delibaretly in brackets :)
I see, but lite is much less effective. google has worked hard to make it lose its capabilities. it may still be effective at blocking youtube ads (though as it cannot use frequently updatable blocklists it probably has a higher delay for fixes when something breaks), but it cannot have specific rules for less popular sites, because of chrome's low limit on allowed filtering rules, and even though it can hide ads, that's not the sole function of ublock origin. ubo is a complex content blocker, with versatile tools to defuse site tracking on lots of websites. lite cannot do that anymore effectively, because both its capabilities have been reduced (e.g. it cannot edit network traffic anymore I think), and the number of filtering rules that it can load.
and even before lite, ubo could not be as effective on chrome as on firefox, because of slight differences in the extension api, with not so slight practical differences.
yeah, lite is worse, no arguing there
Luckily I use Maxthon which stll supports uBlock Oriigin non Lite. When it stopps, Firefox here we go :)
Yes, and it has been for many many years. In 2011 Adblock Plus deemed some ads acceptable, no longer blocking them categorically. Following that controversity, uBlock Origin became the popular standard.
Honestly, given that Adblock Plus has always had an "acceptable ads" system - I guess they simply decided now YouTube ads are acceptable. Not really surprising then.
I'm using Adblock Plus, because of their Acceptable Ads system. Imo it's far more ethical to regulate ads than to ban them entirely. Websites have to make money to sustain themselves, and ads are the least intrusive way this can be done besides donations (and let's be honest, most websites can't support themselves on donations alone). I'd rather have an ad or two at the end of an article than a paywall.
I would love to switch to a different adblocker, ABP has quite enshittified over the years imo. But it would have to be one with Acceptable Ads support.
Donating costs me money. Donating to every single website I like or rely on requires far more money than I have available or am willing to spend. I don't know your situation, but I'm not rich. I don't have that kind of disposable income to just throw around.
That said, thanks for mentioning that. I did donate to kbin when it was still around, but I've forgotten to set up donations for mbin and kbin.earth since switching over. I'll have to get on with that.
DNS does nothing for youtube.
I mean, Firefox + uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock makes YouTube usable without giving Google more money
To my knowledge, sponsors do not give money to Google, just to the creator. So SponsorBlock isn't needed.
But I have to admit that some sponsored segments can be obnoxious as hell, so I can understand why one would use it.
When I'm using sponsorblock, I sometimes just stop watching if I see a long sponsor section, regardless. If the poster has like 20% of their video used to talk about shilling something, then they're probably not someone I trust.
Ah, yes, you're right. If the focus is just on not giving money to Google then SponsorBlock is unnecessary.
However, I also find most sponsored segments obnoxious as hell so SponsorBlock still helps with making the YouTube experience better in general
What if people just learned to use Firefox or NewPipe?
The time to learn would still save time wasted from watching ads.
If someone is fixated on using chrome, so far there is still a workaround:
Other than that, just switch to Firefox.
The YouTube app on my old tablet has been breaking on ads recently. First it stopped playing and then it wouldn't even resume. Their own app. On playing ads. No ad blockers. Fuck you I'm not paying premium.
There's a name I haven't heard in years 😂
Article wasted my time. I want it back moe90.
YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus
They've been A/B testing anti-adblock attempts for months or even years now, idk exactly with my sense of time. Sometimes adblocker A doesn't work, sometimes adblocker B doesn't work. Sometimes switching browser makes the same adblocker work, sometimes clearing cookies helps, sometimes its dependent on your account. Different users at the same time report different experiences with different adblockers. Sometimes watching a single non-blocked ad restores adblocker functionality magically for a few days.
What I'm trying to say is, this didn't "just" happen, and it's specifically the author's current experience. I myself use Adblock Plus on Edge and Youtube works perfectly fine currently. This has been happening for a long time, and I'm sure there's uBlock Origin users currently who have the same experience while Adblock Plus works for them. Since that's how it's been the last times I've seen people talk about this, everyone talking about different experiences.
there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin.
Vivaldi without any plugins also works. No ads. And I’m sure there are many more possible configurations. This article reads like the author thinks there’s only two browsers and two ad blockers.
Everyone else has switched to Ublock Origin adblocker years ago :) Try it, it's the only real one
10+years ago since they annouced the whitelisting of adlbock plus around that time.it was around the same time youtube to started drastically increasing thier advertisements.
@moe90@feddit.nl I've found a better workaround, which is to tell YouTube to go pound sand. I definitely don't miss YouTube since I stopped accessing it more than a year ago (actually, I don't even remember when I stopped, it's really been a long while). Okay, maybe I miss one or other content (Technology Connections, Electroboom and Numberphille to mention a few I used to watch), but this didn't stop me from stopping using YouTube altogether. Sad thing Alec, Mehdi as well as the people behind Numberphille either don't know or aren't willing to use alternatives (e.g. PeerTube) to share their knowledge with the Internet.
There's a Portuguese maxim "Falem bem ou falem mal, mas falem de mim" (roughly translatable to "Talk goodly or badly, but talk about me") and this is perfectly fit for YouTube vs Premium vs AdBlockers: people (both content creators and their consumers) are understandably enraged with YouTube and its enshitification, yet they continue to access it instead of boycotting it to, hopefully, reduce the power and monopoly that Google have with YouTube.
I am willing to completely ditch YouTube and not access it, but there are a couple of channels that just aren't anywhere else that I do enjoy watching.
Currently, I use RSS feeds in order to stay up to date with their videos, and I use new pipe to actually watch the videos, but still, it's annoying. I would like to stop using them and cannot. I feel as though I'm being held hostage.
I have this running on a local server: https://github.com/alexta69/metube
It’s a frontend for yt-dlp and whenever I want to watch something I just download it and have a copy saved locally. It makes it harder to binge youtube feeds that the algorithm tries to shove down my throat, and that’s a good thing.
I've noticed quite a few people who used to do YouTube videos have moved to podcasts because of YT's fuckery.
iOS and Mac users have Vinegar, if you want to spend like $2 and support an indie developer.
It’s strange that they go to this much effort to ban ad blockers. What’s the percentage of their user base watching on devices with ad blockers? I bet it’s low — especially when including smart tv viewers in those numbers.
AdNauseum still works; so do many others.
Ublock was leading to errors when a YouTube link was clicked for me, but refreshing the page just loaded the video. It seems that doesn't happen anymore today. Am I the only one?
I got a question in my head just now.
DNS sinkhole doesnt help with youtube ads but UBO does. DNS doesn't help with twitch ads and neither UBO does. Why is that youtube doesn't do the same what twitch does?
On a side note, my ads on twitch are basically "ad is in progress" screen and not an actual ad. And lately YT has couple of seconds with no video in the beginning as if it loads (1Gbit connection) but eventually loads up and plays with no interruptions after.
I don't work on uBlock or even webdev but it doesn't take much of a stretch to think YouTube's servers will refuse to immediately transmit a video stream after the webpage is requested; probably waiting for a typical user to skip 2 30-sec ads.
Adguard still works too
Just use LibRedirect extension to redirect to an invidious instance. Take the URL of the video you want to watch and download the video using yt-dlp. Watch it on your desktop using mpv.
On Android, use Newpipe or Tubular Fork of Newpipe to download video. Better yet, use Seal with Sponsorblock flags to download and watch without sponsor mentions. Watch using mpv.
On iOS, use Brave browser...
Same for Firefox.
Brave is not a privacy company. They are affiliated.
But I don't think switching to Firefox is good enough, since Mozilla is adding bloats to it. Use forks.
Everyone breaking the website so they can watch gigabytes of content without ads or subscription: You're not allowed to break things just because you disagree with the other party! You should find an amicable alternative!
- I ask a website for content.
- The website gives me content and a side of shit.
- I instruct my intelligent butler to discard the shit and only give me the content I requested.
- I get only the content I requested.
If a website wants to run ads that's fine, I'll just remove them. If they want to gate their content behind a paywall that's fine, I'll just make a determination about whether or not what they offer is worth it.
Removing ads is not "breaking a website" if anything it's the exact opposite--restoring a cleaner layout, faster loading, less privacy invasion, and a reduced chance of malware.
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@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
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- Politics threads may be removed.
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Just stick with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
save