I have been adblocking on YouTube for as long as I remember. Personally I think it’s unusable without an adblocker. What’s the alternative? Because I am not suddenly going to pay for a platform that keeps getting worse all the time.
When ever I see someone using YouTube without an adblocker it looks like some cheap chinese knock-off or something. As someone who sees less ads than 99% of people I’ve genuinely became a bit oversensitive to them. Podcasts are the only thing I keep paying attention to despite them having ads which even then I always skip over. Other than that every online platform I use is ad-free and I don’t watch TV or listen to radio either.
I like to listen to podcasts in the gym and I will interrupt my set to skip sponsors and ads. The enshittification on Spotify is particularly bad as they now play ads in addition to sponsorings for premium listeners.
Yeah I don’t personally use spotify for podcasts even though I have premium aswell. Except for the occasional JRE episode I listen everything else on Podcast Republic.
Thanks for the tip, I will try that one out!
The enshittification continues until profits increase!
(Btw I still haven’t seen those yet. In USA and I’m using uBlock Origin on Firefox)
Browser and plugins don’t matter, this is being rolled out in waves. People are getting this on all browsers, with or without ad blockers
So this is how the internet dies? With ads, paywalls, and DRMs?
🥲
It doesn’t have to be. This could be how YouTube dies.
Websites are nothing without users. We have the power to stop using websites that pull this shit and promote new websites that don’t.
Reddit = Text based platform. Text: 1 Character = 1 Byte
Youtube = Video based platform. Videos: [Error, Not Enough Storage]
🥲
Edit: Also, bandwidth.
Normies will just watch the ads and keep using yt
I’ll fucking use Vimeo if I have to.
Looks like I’m about to switch fully to YT-DL/Plex for the subscriptions I care about. Should be good until they start embedding ads into the video files anyway.
As long as we have the physical capability of pointing a camera at a display, people will control what they see. Worst case scenario in these browser wars, you run Chrome on a Google certified device then stream the output of that device to the computer you’re actually using, using various filters and vision recognition removing the advertisement from your video stream.
This is extreme, it’s a little crazy, but I think everyone can agree it’s technically feasible. This means we will always have the edge in the browser wars. If we control the display, we control the flow.
Everything else is just an optimization
It’s fundamentally impossible to grant read access without copy. And you can always do whatever you want to your copy.
Otherwise, piracy wouldn’t be a thing.
This message is displayed in the browser because Google asked your browser to do it, and your browser got the message and put it there.
When displaying ads, the end user experience is 100% client-side. You are using your screen and speakers to observe it. You can turn off your speakers and screen if you want, which will effectively “block” the ad.
But that is silly. Not only do you own your screen and speakers, but you have control of what you’re browser is doing, too (if you use a respectable browser). When HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other content is downloaded, just that happened: file downloads. After it has been downloaded, your browser then consumes it.
When it is consumed, a lot happens, but ultimately, the code in the browser displays content. Your (respectable) browser does all of this, and will change the look depending on local fonts, accessibility options, etc. With an ad block add-on, it will also remove these ads.
However, when ads are removed, the DOM is mutated with deleted or replaced content. It is possible for a website to then write ad block detection scripts to see if the ad contents have been removed or not. There are many ways to do this, and this screenshot is the result of one way of doing it.
However, enter the cat-and-mouse-chase of ad block block blocks. You can block your ads, then block the ad block block like this screenshot. These types of ad block rules are less common, but many public ones are available. Check the uBlock Origin lists in the setting page. By default, only about a third of the lists are enabled, and these extra blocks are in there.
Another avenue of determining that ads were not loaded is for the server to inspect if client-side (you) requests were made to fetch the ads. Even if this is in place, the server cannot determine if you have actually watched the ad or not. It could try to do more client-side attempts at validating that you somehow displayed it, but again, that’s client-side.
Imagine if you were sent a letter and a pamphlet in the mail. Imagine if the letter said that you could mail them back for a free sample of their product, but only if you read the pamphlet. They would have to trust that you read it, because you are reading your mail in the privacy of your own home. However, you could opt to toss the pamphlet (like an ad blocker) and never read it. It’s your mail, your home, and your choice.
Worst case scenario, they won’t respond for requests for the actual content of the video untill the duration of the advert passes.
How does YouTube know whether I’m blocking or not if it all happens at the client side?
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Put a few blocks of information encoded in the video of the ad itself. Require that block of information as a key to watch the next video on Youtube.
Interesting. But it probably only takes less than a few seconds for a program to scan a 30s video file and extract that bit of information.
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Is “allowlist” the new word for whitelist?
Some people mistakenly think that the “black” in “blacklist” is a reference to skin color, so they demand it to be changed.
“Excuse me, it’s ‘list of color’.”
Seems like it’s controlled test in different countries and segments. I (Europe) get this popup in Firefox, I also use pi-hole DNS and ublock origin.
Also Europe here, using ublock and firefox, and I don’t get that popup.
Dies your PiHole block Youtube ads?
It does not. It can only block domains. Youtube ads use same domain as actual videos.
Thanks, I thought so.
It doesn’t because it can’t the ads and videos are on the same domain now
Thanks, I thought so.