Really interesting read about the history of YouTube adblocking, how the new detection works, how uBO is responding, and how not to block the new popups.
uBO team (2 people) should not be responding to questions on reddit or elsewhere. They should just update the filters and post a “extension updated, should work again now”.
In the end, Youtube will win if they want to win. Google can throw unconscionable amounts of money at their techs to fight the adblockers while the volunteers spend their attention and patience.
The question is ‘Do they want to keep throwing money at techs in the hope of forcing people to watch their ads?’
At best, people will keep finding ways to get around the ads and YT will have wasted a ton of money on nothing.
At worst, a bunch of people will abandon YT all together. And YT will have wasted a ton of money getting rid of them.
Both options seem self-defeating and wasteful.
The point is to make adblocking so tedious that only fairly tech literate people would do it. That cousin whose pc you set up and installed uBO on? They won’t figure out how to update the filters, they will just whitelist (or realistically just turn off uBO) or premium.
Basically nobody will actually abandon YT over this and those who do will be so low in numbers it is ~0 to YT.
I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there, who are just as fed up with ads as the rest of us.
And at this point, most of the cousins who don’t know how to update their adblocker are already there. It’s a matter of time. YT won’t keep pouring money into this. Just long enough to the “balance the books.” When the ‘number of viewed ads’ start slowing down again and they’ve hit their max viewership, they’ll call off the hounds.
I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there
you can’t imagine how many programmers out there are living their life without adblocks. Even before this last month’s shitshow
And I think you are overestimating how many savvy people bother with blocking ads.
I’ll make a wild assumption and say that the people that made the adblockers might also be using them.
There’s a great video on this that was made when YouTube first started rolling this out called The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead, and one of the points mentioned in the video is the rising number of people who use an adblocker, and not specifically mentioned but shown in the video is a graphic from an article from 2015 which shows that just under 43% of people use an adblocker. That number will have obviously changed in the past 7 years, but if we just use 25% of viewers as an estimate, that’s 25% of all viewers on YouTube who may turn to more “malicious” forms of adblocking such as things like AdNaseum and ReVanced or sites that host YouTube videos without the ads, and tell others to do the same if they’re sick of ads. And even if they do give up and watch the ads, the science says that people who use adblockers are much less likely to click on an ad and make a purchase, which is bad for advertisers since they pay for the number of views an ad gets and their clickthrough rate would go down, making it more expensive and less profitable to do business with YouTube.
i’d get premium if they didnt make it artificially more expensive by bundling other stuff with it, so adblock it is
Plus, it’s likely to evolve into a “less ads” deal eventually.
The one constant is that there’s never enough money to satisfy corporate needs.
That is our win condition. To make it so costly for them that they bail on the idea. Because if we don’t, then it’s one step closer to their internet: locked down, hidden charges everywhere and content under their terms.
This isn’t just about ads, it’s about keeping information free.
Well there’s a very realistic 3rd option where people get tired of the cat and mouse game and either suck it up and watch the ads or pony up for YouTube premium…?
Most people do. But it’s not enough.
Even if all their users payed, it wouldn’t be enough.
Realistically there is an equation money lost by ad blockers vs money gained by making ad blocking harder (money in - dev cost) unless its about sending a message.
Only so far, false positives scare potential customers away.
Money or no money, whatever is made can be unmade.
Sure but doesn’t mean it well be. satellite hacking was killed.
Pretty sure there are still Methods to get free access to satellite TV channels (the paid encrypted ones, I’m aware that there are Free channels) the methods just changed from how it was done in the old days, nowadays you need internet to download the keys, which kind of defeats the purpose since you could just use a Free IPTV service on that same connection.
Also Satellite has fallen out of favor these days.
Yeah. I don’t see the moderator leaving as a huge loss or anything because the fight against misinformation and noise in inglorious and full of people who refuse to help themselves. They have a life demanding their concern, and as far as I care, if they finally ripped the bandaid and went and focused on that life of theirs, then the world has become a better place.
Some solutions:
- Android
- iOS
- Yattee with this guide
- (Adding Piped/Invidious website to Homescreen)
- Web
- Desktop
- FreeTube
- (Using any of the web solutions as PWAs)
- TV
- Android TV
- Apple TV
- Yattee with this guide
This is the answer. I use Newpipe on mobile and Invidious on desktop. I dont even know what youtube ads look like. I run it all behind a pihole just to be sure. Works like a dream.
Personally, I prefer LibreTube on my phone and Piped on desktop. I also use NextDNS when I’m on the go and Pi-Hole when I’m at home. I haven’t used an official YouTube app or website for the last 2 years.
Libretube is usually broken in some fashion (often a fatal one, like failing to load video).
LibreTube isn’t broken, it’s the Piped instances that have issues. You just need to switch to another Piped instance in the settings. Click on the three dots, then select settings, go to ‘Instance’ and at the top you can hit ‘Choose…’ to change the Piped instance. I haven’t experienced any issues with adminforge.de. kavin.rocks also seems to work well.
I should have realised it was an instance issue. Thanks!
I use newpipe x sponsorblock, invidious, and pinhole as well, but it’s worth pointing out to those unfamiliar- pihole does nothing for YouTube ads. Pihole is great for sites that add google ads or random junk to their pages, it has no ability to block ads that come from the same domain as a sites content because it is DNS based.
Also want to submit for Android: just using YouTube in Firefox with uBO extension
I want to avoid solutions that involve using the YouTube app/website (including modded YouTube apps like Revanced or browser addons to use on the website)
ReVanced is not a modded YouTube app. None of these are.
Yes it is? The Revanced Manager app literally takes a YouTube apk and injects patches for ad blocking, SponsorBlock, etc.
Could be luck, but of those I only found Viewtube and Freetube to be responsive at this time of day to a live stream (the others either loaded endlessly or said they couldn’t load the page)
That was only of the web/desktop ones.
Freetube seems to support youtube chat as well, which the others don’t.
Smart tube next has always worked on TV with live and live chat. Usually newpipe works with live just hard to find the videos, usually end up pasting YT links.
Is there a de facto or generally recognized “best” Invidious instance? Like piped.video is for Piped?
There used to be one, but it was shut down. IMO there shouldn’t be an ‘official’ instance, users should be evenly distributed across instances and everything should be decentralized. The same goes for Mastodon or Lemmy, having most users concentrated on mastodon.social or lemmy.ml is not good. Centralization is pretty much always bad, but it’s the only model of how services on the internet work that new users coming from centralized platforms understand. It’s sad and unfortunate, but we might be able to change that. The more terrible decisions are made by corporations, the more successful will free and open source, decentralized software be. We saw it with Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter, we saw it again with Lemmy when Reddit was fucked by spez.
Host your own it takes a minute to do with docker compose.
Don’t forget https://revanced.app/ for Android!
The other options (especially LibreTube) are much better for Privacy as they don’t include any Google trackers and LibreTube doesn’t even connect to Google servers. It proxies everything through a Piped server, meaning Google never sees your IP address or any other connection details. It’s basically anonymized YouTube.
And that’s great and all, but some of us really only care about the ads.
Sure, but you don’t really lose anything by using privacy-oriented solutions like LibreTube. It’s just a really nice YouTube client for Android, it also has SponsorBlock and DeArrow integration, a nice and convenient download feature and many other things
I’m losing my tailored recommendations. And yes, I’m compromising my privacy for them, but I find value in that trade. I suppose I could open the official app, scroll my feed, and still open the videos in another front end, but as long as ReVanced exists I’ll take the easier route. And it has sponsorblock and newpipe integration for downloads.
you lose cross-device sync, don’t you?
that alone is kind of a big deal…
You can create an account on a Piped instance and use it to sync your subscriptions and playlists. You can also log into your account when using LibreTube on Android. Invidious also allows for account creation, but I’m not aware of any mobile apps allowing to connect to it.
ah, thanks!
that’s good to know!
Youtube Premium? The creators do get more than the standard ad-supported viewer and you don’t get any ads.
I get that we’re all trying to not see ads without paying money but I do acknowledge their infrasturucture and the feats they have accomplished trying to turn a profit. When youtube vanced was pulled, I did try reVanced for a while but eventually went with Premium.
I’m not saying you should get Premium and give up the fight, I’m aaying consider your usage of Youtube and whether if you can drop it or not. In my case I don’t watch TV or movie streaming platforms (not even on demand) and so Youtube is my primary video consumption platform and it made sense for me to pay.
Whether if I’ll switch to another country’s pricing by using a VPN or not, that’s for me to consider.
I absolutely hate Google and won’t ever give them even a single penny. If there’s a creator I like, I support them through Patreon, Ko-fi, Liberapay or preferably anonymous crypto currency like Monero.
Okay, good on ya. Hate Google on as much as you want.
I don’t have an infinite supply of income to be able to support their lowest monthpy subscription tiers of all my favourite creators, which ends up being the same financial issue with paying for multiple exclusive platforms, but for creators instead.
Even if I do support my most favourite of the most deserving creators, I don’t have the time to reap their benefits (eg. WIPs, streams, etc) as I already am consuming and enjoying their works that they publicly release. The only exception to this is exclusive content that isn’t posted on Youtube - which even then some creators do release them eventually.
You could probably take whatever premium costs each month and spread it around different creators you like each month. That may be more effort than is worth it to you but I’d bet they’d get more money from you still.
if theres one thing im determined to do, its to never voluntarily see a youtube ad ever. praise ublock and revanced.
Indeed. The uBO team are saints. Is a shame some are only recognised after leaving
Wait you got revanced working again? I couldn’t get it to work for my android phone since the last purge less than a year ago.
Are you thinking of Vanced? Revanced has been steady ever since I switched almost a year ago.
Yeah I am thinking vanced. I think I struggled with getting revanced to work
It was a bit rough in the beginning I admit. I’d recommend giving it another try.
You can look up this thread that has an updated tutorial.
https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/
Very easy to follow and should get you going.
Revanced has never stopped working for me. Make sure you update your app.
Last time it stopped working for me I just needed to update revanced manager, make sure the patches were updated on the main screen, and re patch the recommended APK version which had increased. They’ve done a pretty good job at keeping up
You can also get grayjay, which will also condense twitch, nebula, youtube, etc into one consistent feed without trackers or ads. Also it supports the down vote plug-in and 3rd party comment solutions so you can get even more from the app then you can with say revanced which is just the regular old YouTube app with patches.
Then there are non-tech-savvy users looking at the post and saying, “This is too complex. I give up.”
This is YouTube’s ultimate goal. They don’t need to make it impossible to block ads, just more trouble than it’s worth for most people.
Fine with me, as long as I personally don’t have to look at ads.
But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones
As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.
Thank you for the charity work you do. I appreciate it.
I don’t know what you do exactly, but I appreciate every single volunteer and the work they put in to make everyone’s life better
Here is my experience with it.
Up until last week I’ve had friends (who also use uBlock Origin, same country) kind of sequentially complaining for about a month about having the videos blocked. For me personally it has been working fine until then, but Friday I got the popup. Today the popup is gone however I get ads but they don’t play video, only sound.
YouTube isn’t rolling out the anti-adblock to everyone. It seems to depend on things like your account, browser, and IP address. And if you’re not logged in or you’re in a private window, you’re safe. As a result, there are a bunch of people saying, “I use XYZ and I haven’t seen an anti-adblock popup yet,” unknowingly spreading misinformation.
What I see with this is that Google might eventually lose more with this new policies than just leaving things as they were. Lets be real, if this shit show continues and they don’t drop it as it becomes increasingly difficult to watch without ads people will start looking for alternative frontends such as Piped or Invidious and that will hinder their ability to harvest data and force ads. What’s the next step Google? DRM protected media?
Only about 20% or so of users on YouTube use AdBlock. A frighteningly large percentage of the population is absolutely fine with being bombarded with ads - after all, 80% of the stuff we consume daily is ad financed and that money has to come from somewhere.
I have a friend that just refuses to use anything but chrome, refuses to use any kind of adblock and will only use an iPhone.
I don’t get it. I’ve asked him to explain but he just keeps saying “it’s personal preference” which is such a massive copout.
Maybe I’m looking into this too far, but I think if someone’s happy to have things the way they like them (ads, Chrome, etc.) and clearly doesn’t want to elaborate on it, they have every right to not elaborate further.
Let them find it their own way. Or maybe they won’t, but it’s their choice to make.
I mean… Ya. I fully agree. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a copout.
I respectfully disagree. Based on what you’ve said, it sounds like you’ve asked your friend multiple times to use something else, and there’s a chance they’re trying to be respectful to you by politely declining to hear more suggestions.
I’ve been on both ends of this, I’ve been pushed to look at games I could’ve been interested in but just didn’t feel like giving a novel back to my friend as to why I’m not going to buy it, and I’ve tried to push friends onto Linux and that ultimately resulted in them getting pissed off with me.
It took me a while to realize, there is no wrong operating system to use, there is no wrong social platform to use. People are willing to try new things, but at their own pace and if they can see that there’s an easy transition, but it’s more than that.
I used to think the more people I get onto Linux, the more I’m doing my part for the market share and in turn the software gets better for me and for them, but what I failed to realize is that I was no different to a Jehovah’s Witness, and I certainly came off as annoying as them to my friends. I don’t care what they use now, but if they’re ever interested in help on something that I’d love for them to use, I gladly help them and answer any questions they have, and so far, that’s worked better anyway.
I just fear that you’re going down the same path I did. I fear your friend isn’t copping out of wanting ads, Chrome, iOS, etc. They just want to avoid a confrontation with you.
Wow.
It really bothers me that you’ve somehow interpreted and asserted a relationship with my friend that you have no way of knowing.
But I will entertain your naive ignorance for a moment. This friend that I’m talking about, we’ve been friends for over 20 years he gives me as much crap as I give him and our relationship is better for it.
I have literally told him that he’s acting like an idiot for using these things that are actively monitoring everything that he does. His privacy is being systematically invaded and he doesn’t care.
The reason he doesn’t care is because he likes the stuff that he uses because it’s fast and he claims there’s little lag. Personally I think this is nothing more than an excuse for being lazy by not going through the steps of setting up his software so it won’t be invading his privacy (as much).
At no point did I pressure him to change or attempt to persuade him to get an Android or to use Linux or anything else he is perfectly free to use whatever he feels is comfortable.
Nevertheless it’s just a cop out he is acting stupid by using all of this stuff that infiltrates his privacy.
It’s okay to be accepting of people and to be their friend and to also call them on their bullshit. If their feelings are hurt and it strains the relationship then its probably not a good friendship.
‘I don’t care’ is the refrain of someone who doesn’t know how to safeguard his digital interests. Easier to pretend it doesn’t matter than admit to wanting to hit land, but are adrift at sea with no bearings or tools. It’s not entirely your friend’s fault either. Education systems have so much ground to catch up.
Just in case you weren’t aware, updating your block lists in uBlock Origin should fix this problem. It’s worked for me, at any rate.
That’s what I did today, popup is gone however I get ads but they don’t play video, only sound.
they could just block the alternative frontends. Then we’d need an alternative platform.
absolutely, the only draw for content creators is the money they can make on youtube, which means people intersted in making money are more likely to use it and their content is obviously biased towards profit building. Any other platform can easily recreate a sane profit sharing program for creators, eventually it might become youtube, but in the meantime we can all enjoy it.
What’s the next step Google? DRM protected media?
You don’t necessarily need DRM to break alternative frontends.
Yes but it might end there. Google can and will eventually push for DRM, after all they’re the ones making the web has DRM…
People will not leave Youtube. They got too many videos. I believe they will just find some proxy solutions or similar. Using anything else will for the author just result in they get paid less.
that’s exactly what he just said.
people will start looking for alternative frontends such as Piped or Invidious
This was really interesting. I’ve been looking for a slightly more technical explanation for how this arms race works under the hood.
Nothing like watching everyone freak out while I’m just using invidious
NewPipe and GrayJay (in the future)
Same, but I’m using Piped
I wasn’t able to get it consistently working so I started using FreeTube instead of a browser, which seems to work without hassle
I tried it, I agree it works fine. I only stopped using it because it doesn’t let me go back in live streams.
I mostly only use youtube for music, so my only complaint is that it’s some extra clicks to get a url in my clipboard I can use with my yt-dl script
So today, YouTube’s pop-ups rolled down to Views will be limited to one unless you remove your adblocker at which point the pop-ups ceased. (I was intentionally rolling them down). Have: Firefox, DDG Privacy Essentials, NoScript, uBlock Origin
Techs working to give me access: I love you guys! I really appreciate what you’re doing.
Fuck the hurtful comments, and do it to fight capitalism and enshittification.
That said, when I can no longer YouTube without ads, I will no longer YouTube, which also means no engagement on video forums. Useful, interesting rants is what I have to offer.
I’ve moved on from trying to block the ads to using a front-end and a macro to do the annoying part for me. It’s been nice. I hadn’t realized how bad youtube’s UI was until seeing a clean one. I definitely recommend using one of the less notable ones, they seem to be faster.
That’s also how I often access YT. Libreddit is already selfhosted in the local network (+ wireguard on clients) and I’ll look into hosting something for YT.
Sadly most people want to keep their recommendations and the UI, so they’ll stay on the official site.
Which one do you use? I’ve never heard of them until reading this post but you’ve got me interested.
It’s an invidious instance, but I ain’t tellin!
Mine are super inconsistent now. Obviously I have uBO, but I can typically watch like 10-ish videos a day before the popups start, at which point I just turn on libredirect.
does this affect the ip range blockers. I thought about getting one of those, but youtube will probably find a way to cook ads into regular content, but we have AI now…
YouTube for many years serves ads through the same domain and IP as the actual content.
Like pihole? I recently set it up and it is not blocking YouTube ads (as other commenters have also pointed out).
Most of the streaming sites are serving ads from the same subdomain these days. I think Paramount might still be separate? But causes issues when you try to log in as well, so have to pause Pihole to log in. Then ads are (sometimes) blocked :)
Has anybody else not seen an ad yet? I’m wondering if it’s because I’m using Enhancer for youtube which also has an adblocking function 🤔
Did you not read the article?
YouTube isn’t rolling out the anti-adblock to everyone. It seems to depend on things like your account, browser, and IP address. And if you’re not logged in or you’re in a private window, you’re safe. As a result, there are a bunch of people saying, “I use XYZ and I haven’t seen an anti-adblock popup yet,” unknowingly spreading misinformation.
I haven’t seen any anti adblock things on youtube if that’s what you mean
For a day I got the no video but audio playing ads.
On my Shield where I don’t have uBlock Origin, I get bombarded with ads.
Use smarttube
I haven’t yet but I presume that’s because I don’t have an account - which according to the article they’re targeting people by account.
With uBlock Origin I’m not getting anything, but the Ghostery plugin with “adblocking enabled” set to on actually now returns a blank youtube site. As soon as I switch it off (so blocking trackers only) it works perfectly fine and with zero ads.
We need an economic system change. We should go beyond the data economy and find new sustainable ways to develop software and platforms and social networks. uBO won’t win alone vs Google, unless they stop challenging it over technology
