There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Has YouTube Blocked Your Adblocker Yet??

UPDATE 2It seems that starting today, uBlock Origin is working to combat this Youtube Block. Mine started working again! Lets all thank the devs of UBO for fighting this fight!

UPDATESo as new info comes out, I’ll be posting it here. It seems as if this Rollout Has Several Parts.

Part 1

You get a popup message over top of your video, blocking the screen: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/bd0e0c67-f37d-4b82-a5b8-1703542f0af1.jpeg

  • This is the first sign. If you see this popup AND are logged into a YouTube account, your account has been selected.
  • At this stage you can likely close or block these messages with an adblocker.

Part 2

This message will change, indicating that you have 3 remaining videos to watch without ads.

Will insert photo once one has been found

  • At this stage your adblocker will imminently stop working in 3 videos time.
  • Personally using Firefox + uBlock Origin and tweaking filters and updates does not even fix it.

Part 3

None of the video loads now, everything looks blank.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/e37261ac-cf82-4ecd-9481-bea42029a3a0.png

  • At this stage you must tred new ground to avoid ads. I have posted methods in the comments. If you want to bypass this end page, read down there.

End of Update

YouTube has started rolling out anti-adblock to users inside the United States, which means that they are preparing to roll this out to the entire country. Personally, I have been blocked already. I want to gauge how common this occurrence is.

roon ,
@roon@lemmy.ml avatar

I didn’t get this banner yet maybe because I’m using ublock origin

SlippyCliff76 ,

You either aren’t part of the “small” test groups or you aren’t logged in.

HiddenLayer5 ,

Does NewPipe count as an adblocker? Not yet but I fear its days are numbered.

3FingersOfMilk ,

NewPipe+=1;

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Newpipe is accessing the videos straight from the backend. There is no chance to splice any ads into, unless youtube were to modify the source material, and that’s highly inconvenient. And then we’d just use sponsorblock anyway.

They tried to change the code to access the raw video material many times over, but unless they encrypt it and enforce decryption via keys uniquely embedded in the official youtube app while somehow finding a way to prevent a disassembly to use their keys in unofficial apps, I don’t see that happening.

DogMuffins ,

They don’t need to splice ads in, they could just render NewPipe inoperable. I’m sure it would be fairly trivial to detect which page loads are from NewPipe.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Not trivial at all, else they’d have done that already instead of playing cat & mouse. How would they differentiate whether it’s the official app, some mobile browser, or newpipe? Changing the user agent or cloning a fingerprint from a browser is the trivial thing here.

DogMuffins ,

Well if they’re detecting active ad blockers then presumably they’re running some client side js to decode the url if certain conditions are met.

I don’t think think they’ve been playing cat & mouse with newpipe, they just break it by accident.

smc87 ,

Have you heard of shape from f5 or similar services?

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Nope, what’s that?

pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

probably not ublock and for sure not revanced

Hhffggshn ,

I’m still good with revanced

cosecantphi ,
@cosecantphi@hexbear.net avatar

Youtube’s use of A/B testing is very smart in that it’s actually nothing about testing user response and all about limiting the number of people they piss off at once with their god awful changes.

The day I can’t block ads on the internet is the day I stop using the internet.

energetic695 ,

targeted ads have broken the Internet, saturated our subconsciouses, hijacked the attention economy, and continue to erode what’s left of our dwindling privacy

advertisers are the de facto gatekeepers of larger and larger swaths of online content.

it wasn’t always like this. it’s gotten so much worse in recent years.

seaturtle ,

I always knew that funding the internet using ads wasn’t sustainable in the long run.

Mini_Moonpie ,

There’s constant fixes for it btw from the ublockorigin team now! :D

Ads would have happened anyway like it’s happening on the streaming services. They’ve got people paying subscriptions *with *ads. Double the money, double the fun, right?

DogMuffins ,

I wonder if there’s actually any benefit to ads. Like if you could magically ban advertising, would people spend any less money?

bobman ,

Banning advertising will cause people to rely on word of mouth.

Now, instead of some nameless entity telling you a product is the greatest thing, you’ll be able to hold people accountable for the things they recommend you.

bobman ,

I wonder how lemmy makes money…

Oh wait. It’s almost like ads only exist so people can make a living doing nothing.

bobman ,

It’s only going to get worse.

Shoving more ads in people’s faces just desensitizes them to it so you can keep adding even more ads into the mix.

“You were okay with 2 ads, why not 3?”

“You were okay with 3 ads, why not 5?”

Repeat until the end of time, or until the masses stop being dumbasses and work together to topple the ruling class.

P.S. I have no respect for anyone in the advertising industry. They are all scum worth less than the gum under my shoe.

mindbleach ,

Advertising is poison.

The entire concept is intolerable, and it breaks whole industries. We’ve ruined televisions - not the medium of television, the physical rectangle in your living room - for the sake of cramming ads into the menus. They can show ads over your home movies. Paying for content to avoid ads is impossible because they just add ads. The siren song of slightly more money must not be ignored!

AcidSmiley ,
@AcidSmiley@hexbear.net avatar

yeah this, youtube inb particular is entirely unusable without an adblocker

ParanoidFactoid , (edited )
@ParanoidFactoid@beehaw.org avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    PeterPoopshit ,

    This. When YouTube finally succeeds in making it impossible for anyone to use their website without watching ads, they probably still won’t succeed in preventing people from downloading for offline viewing. When this happens I’m going to invest in making scripts that autodownload stuff ahead of time and I’ll only watch whatever videos are in my home network.

    Im not watching their brainwash bullshit ass propaganda. I’ll find other stuff to do for entertainment before I give in to ads.

    Steak ,

    Fuck ads. I put in a decent amount of effort to make sure I see exactly 0 seconds of ads per day. So far going strong.

    Echo71Niner ,

    They are rolling this out in stages to users worldwide, It happened to me 3 weeks ago, on Brave, Firefox, and on Chrome. I had to junk Brave, update firefox, flush out my extensions (remove them) and reinstall, and now I run 6 different ad blocking and tracking extensions and its back working again. You should also know that Adblocker Ultimate are also involved and working on blocking their extension from working so they can sell premium app, which is now an app that runs on your computer, not an extension anymore.

    Sanrasxz ,
    @Sanrasxz@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    This is quite concerning. Hopefully the adblocker extension devs are able to bypass this. I expect a cat and mouse game eventually.

    ToxicWaste ,

    It will be a cat and mouse game, which YouTube will loose in the long run. Don’t remember the name, but there is a very clever solution: They download all the ads so YT thinks you are watching. However, ads are never shown to you. This is extremely hard to detect and it muddies the data collection of Google since you watch and click everything.

    IMO: This is a net loss for YT/Google. Their collection of data looses value. And advertisers wont be willing to pay the same amount for clicks, since a registered click is not necessary someone who watched and the targetting got worse…

    1993_toyota_camry ,
    @1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

    Worst case of this solution is you might have to wait before watching your video. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for google to refuse to send you the video until $ad_duration has elapsed.

    Still beats watching ads though. I could queue up a bunch in a “watch later” playlist and have a program get them all ready for me.

    327 ,

    AdNauseam is a browser extension that uses the same idea to obfuscate tracking. I never used it myself, but it seems like a good alternative to blocking ads.

    mineapple , (edited )

    6 adblockers?! Have you looked into uBlock origins customisable block lists? You can combine at least 3 blockers with that. Additionally you could add custom block lists.

    Edit: clarifications and spelling errors.

    Echo71Niner ,

    unlock origins customisable block lists? You can combine at least 3 blockers with that

    I’ll look into it.

    ChaoticNeutralCzech , (edited )

    filterlists.com - list of auto-updating filters, makes it very easy to add one. Make sure to use one with a good rating.

    Yeah, do it. uBlock is great in terms of performance so you will feel how much faster browsing is after uninstalling the other add-ons. You can also block known scams or websites known by pirates to be unsafe. It can also block cookie popups (but I don’t care about cookies might be better at this).

    I also suggest Redirector, which lets you can set up custom redirects such as

    
<span style="color:#323232;">Pattern name:  YT Shorts in normal player
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Example URL:   https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ExmplVid-ID → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExmplVid-ID
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Match pattern: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/*
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Redirect to:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1
</span>

    It is very powerful and can also replace multiple extensions. For example, it can percent-decode URLs, which enables me to prefix a URL with ar[space] in the address bar and redirect me to the archived version of that site. Just add https://web.aarchive.org/web/*/%s as a bookmark with keyword ar. (This trick is useful for making custom “search engines”, which would often require yet another extension.) However, this trick is not enough alone because it goes to https://web.aarchive.org/web/*/example.com%2Fpage and Archive.org needs a decoded URL. So notice that I used the nonsense address web.aarchive.org which Redirector will detect and correct using this rule:

    
<span style="color:#323232;">Pattern name:  archive percent-decoder
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Example URL:   https://web.aarchive.org/web/*/example.com%2Fpage → https://web.archive.org/web/*/example.com/page
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Regex pattern: https://web.aarchive.org/web/*/(.*)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Redirect to:   https://web.archive.org/web/*/$1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Process match: URL Decode
</span>
    PipedLinkBot ,

    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/shorts/ExmplVid-ID

    piped.video/watch?v=ExmplVid-ID

    piped.video/shorts/

    piped.video/watch?v=

    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

    ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

    Yes, you can also add a Redirector rule that redirects you to Piped.

    Admin ,

    I don’t care about cookies has been bought out by Avast, use I still don’t care about cookies

    count0 ,
    @count0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Regarding cookie pop-ups, there’s a little known gem: consentomatic.au.dk

    mineapple ,

    Problem with that is, idcac accepts the cookies, ublock blocks the banner and thus you havent given consent and no cookies should be placed. Note that some websites might collect data regardless but there’s nothing much to do about it. ¯_ (ツ) _/¯

    CampRefugeeCounselor ,

    Unlock or UBlock?

    mineapple ,

    UBlock Origin is the name of the extension. My autocorrect messed it up ^^

    blakeus12 ,
    @blakeus12@hexbear.net avatar

    welp time to use yewtu.be

    Echo71Niner ,

    noice

    Tayphix ,

    Alternatively, piped.video.

    randint ,

    Mine is not blocked yet. I am definitely worried about this though. I am in East Asia.

    Wonder how much YouTube is going to squeeze out of this ad blocker blocking.

    Thisfox ,

    I recommend trying something like AdNauseum or similar. I get the idea they haven’t reached us yet, only people reporting this are in the US so far.

    BrownianMotion ,
    @BrownianMotion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Is google that stupid that this will not bring on an onslaught of abuse to circumvent their false god status of the internet? I have already been “part 3’d” and completely bypassed it.

    They get jackshit from me now at all. At least before they may have made some revenue from me for viewing the videos, now I am a ghost. No money for anyone. (and in case you are gonna say - I dont care content makers are losing, they are all dumbarses, and if they are supporting yt still and not posting elsewhere, then they are just stupid cunts. The only reason google is doing this is to make more money off of the people who make content, but not upset their already unstable revenue income. If the content providers get antsy and leave, YT loses.

    ASK_ME_ABOUT_LOOM ,

    Talk about exactly what you did to bypass it!

    XYZinferno ,

    I dont care content makers are losing, they are all dumbarses, and if they are supporting yt still and not posting elsewhere, then they are just stupid cunts.

    You had me until here. If you want to monetize online video content or get widespread appeal, YouTube is pretty much the viable choice atm, save for Twitch which only works if you’re a streamer or Nebula, which even then it alone doesn’t suffice and is very specific. If you plan on trying to “make it big” using PeerTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc. alone, your aspirations may as well be dead on arrival.

    Not losing sleep over the money content creators lose over you using adblock is fine, I personally don’t put too much importance on it myself. But to call them all dumbasses or stupid cunts is just unreasonable, given the lack of a proper, popular alternative for most of them to do what they do.

    jarfil ,

    I don’t agree with the name calling, but many content creators have already set a website, with some outside revenue sources like Patreon, selling merchandise, or other stuff.

    They can’t leave the most popular platform, but they can set up alternatives for when it stops being the most popular, and in the meantime also target people who are leaving it already.

    XYZinferno ,

    Oh yeah, I agree it’s a wise decision for any content creator, especially those who want to make a living from it, to diversify their sources of income. Backing up all content they post on YouTube to other sites as well is also really nice as it contributes to the push away from YouTube without having to risk little on their part as well

    stebo02 ,
    @stebo02@sopuli.xyz avatar

    should I vote if I’m not in the US?

    theshatterstone54 ,

    If you have a good party to vote for. I’m in the UK, and I’m not so sure if any party deserves my vote.

    HappyFrog ,

    You should always vote, if only to not let the worst party get power. Your enemies would rather you didn’t vote than vote for their enemy.

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Fair enough. The thing is, do I vote for the near-anarchists, that, save for the anarchism, align with my principles? Do I vote for the party that is further away from my ideological beliefs, but doesn’t have the anarchism, and is a bit larger? Or do I vote for the main opposition, which is even further from me ideologically (and doesn’t seem to have much of a clear vision)?

    jarfil ,

    That sounds like a question about how much you oppose anarchy. Any change, involves some loss of established order, so if the Overton window tells us something, is that “anarchist parties” are just the ones trying to push it stronger. Actual anarchists, wouldn’t try to be part of a government in the first place.

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Okay, but then we still have the problem of FPTP. If I’m in a Labour dominated constituency and I vote LibDem, my vote wouldn’t matter cuz Labour will win anyways. And if I live in a Greens Stronghold and I vote Greens, my vote wouldn’t really matter, as they would have won with or without my vote. The way I see it, your vote can only make a difference in a constituency where there is no clear winner, and it’s everybody’s game.

    Please correct me if I’m wrong in my assessment of the situation.

    jarfil , (edited )

    Then you want to fight FPTP and vote pruning by constituency, to make your vote matter.

    You could vote blank, or a poop emoji to show your disconformity, but organizing or supporting a protest to reform the voting system might be more effective.

    If we counted all those who don’t vote because it “doesn’t change anything”, those who vote blank or null, and those who vote knowing their vote will still get thrown away… it could actually make a majority.

    Thisfox ,

    Still odd to think of countries where voting is optional. It’s compulsory here, adn the only people who can afford to not vote are the rich…

    stebo02 ,
    @stebo02@sopuli.xyz avatar

    i meant on the poll lol

    ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    PipedLinkBot ,

    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&amp;

    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

    ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

    I’m in the UK, and I’m not so sure if any party deserves my vote.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&amp;t=216 / Obligatory Piped link

    PipedLinkBot ,

    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=_gbDAvK42yA&amp;

    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.

    ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

    Aaaaah man, I literally added the link so you wouldn’t show up. Also your timestamp doesn’t work.

    theshatterstone54 ,

    Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

    doggle ,

    It’ll be a shame if I have to ditch YouTube. There’s only 2 or 3 channels I would even consider paying for and they don’t have Patreon or anything. I’m less than interested in giving Google a cut.

    LoafyLemon ,

    Remember when some people said we're nuts thinking Google will try to ban ad blockers with manifest v3? Yeah.

    HerrLewakaas ,

    Google will try everything in their power to stop us from blocking their ads. It’s their main source of revenue, you don’t have to be a genius to see why they don’t like ad blockers

    jarfil ,

    Wouldn’t this show that they failed, if they have to recur to site-based adblocker blocking? Clearly v3 hasn’t stopped people from using Firefox, yt-dl, or whatever.

    LoafyLemon ,

    The Gecko Engine (Firefox), holds a user share of 4%. When compared to Chromium's (Google Chrome and its clones) whooping 72% (roughly) user share, it's clear that Firefox has limited relevance to their business strategy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-202011-202011-bar.png

    jarfil ,

    (according to latest statistics, Firefox would have an even lower share)

    My point is: if v3 were effective at neutralizing ad blockers in 75% of the user base, or even 95% since Safari is supposed to get on board too, why are they developing additional countermeasures?

    Or has Safari decided to do like Firefox, and still allow full ad blockers?

    LoafyLemon ,

    I reckon that blocking ad blockers isn't some extra countermeasure here. It's actually right in line with what Manifest V3 and that new environment attestation system are all about. They're basically making sure that if you tinker with crucial bits of the JavaScript -- stuff they see as essential (like anti-adblock) -- you won't make it through the attestation and you'll get blocked.

    They don't want to block all modifications because that would be a hindrance to many users, for example the visually impaired. However, anything affecting their bottom line will probably be blocked.

    How that will affect Firefox? I don't know, maybe nothing will change for us, or perhaps Google will block Firefox altogether. We certainly know they're capable.

    jarfil ,

    Yes, attestation is in line with V3 changes, just that it makes them irrelevant: YouTube’s website could some day ask for environment attestation of “no extension using the intercept hooks”, or “only the approved ones”, and still have the same effect. The fact that they’re implementing a server-side anti-adblock now, while postponing V2 deprecation over and over, makes me think the V3 changes are a flop.

    Firefox… would likely require Mozilla to play ball and implement similar attestation in an official binary attestable by the OS. Edge too, just so MS doesn’t mess with Chrome’s binary attestation on Windows.

    Safari already has attestation, without extra parameters, but it could be extended:

    httptoolkit.com/…/apple-private-access-tokens-att…

    Venus ,
    @Venus@hexbear.net avatar

    What happens to me now with Firefox and ublock origin is if i leave a video paused in the background for a long time and then it unloads it and then I click it to continue watching so it loads back up, then it plays an ad. I was legit like cat-confused because I haven’t seen an ad on the internet in years.

    denton ,

    Same! I was taken aback and offended all at once then refreshed to get rid of the ad which thankfully still works… But for how long more is the question 😭

    w00t ,
    @w00t@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yep, same here. Today I’ve been abruptly reminded how intrusive and obnoxious ads on Youtube are!

    https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/1b3a68fc-2e41-4662-aa51-a4a97f56a0d5.png

    1984 ,
    @1984@lemmy.today avatar

    Very good. It will be nice to be off YouTube completely.

    Landrin201 ,
    @Landrin201@lemmy.ml avatar

    I genuinely think that advertising should be illegal at this point. It’s a ridiculous concept.

    Venus ,
    @Venus@hexbear.net avatar

    Based. Absolutely true, there is no good use for advertising.

    merc ,

    How do you define “advertising”?

    Is it advertising if a community government makes citizens aware that bus service will be changing?

    Is it advertising to tell people that there’s a suicide hotline available if they need help?

    Is it advertising to encourage people to volunteer for a local festival?

    What about telling people that the festival exists using a poster? Is that an ad? Does it depend if the festival is free or non-profit?

    Advertising is just fundamentally about bringing people’s attention to something. The spectrum can range from a municipal government “advertising” its monthly meeting so that local people can participate in their local democracy, to spam emails hyping a pump-and-dump cryptocurrency.

    Different people will have different ideas where the cut-off should be. The extreme libertarians will say that nothing should be banned. Others will say that it’s ok to ban ads for alcohol and cigarettes but not for makeup or coffee. Even totalitarian states and supposedly communist states where one entity controls all companies have ads. Some of the most striking ads ever made were for Mussolini.

    So, the question really isn’t about banning ads, it’s just where to draw the line.

    captain_aggravated ,
    @captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

    An increasing number of states are banning billboards along highways. Travelers do need a low tech method for finding certain services though, such as food, lodging, fuel and restrooms. So you’ll see those blue signs that says “FOOD NEXT EXIT” with a Waffle House and Burger King logo. In order to put the logo on that sign, the business has to meet certain criteria (which vary from state to state like all highway laws), for example a restaurant must be within 3 miles of the highway, be open for at least 12 hours a day and feature public restrooms and telephones. The sign itself may include a distinctive logo and the name of the business in legible font but no slogans or ad copy. “This burger restaurant is nearby.”

    This I see as an appropriate amount of advertising.

    bobman ,

    Paying to tell others that they should buy something they otherwise would not.

    merc ,

    So, the government of Florida advising people to stock up on emergency supplies ahead of the oncoming hurricane – banned?

    OminousOrange ,
    @OminousOrange@lemmy.ca avatar

    It is a great example of how an industry can survive with only self-reported effectiveness. I remember a freakonomics episode where it was shown that very infrequently do companies get a positive return on marketing spending. It will be very interesting if that industry ever collapses.

    MrPoopyButthole ,

    Multinational scam artists

    blergh ,

    They know. The fact that targeted ads leveraging so-called “big data” are not more effective than standard advertising is now known to the public. We can bet Google knew this years in advance. But they can’t abandon their whole business model since that would freak the stock market and investors out. So, they need to squeeze as much as they can before the entire model becomes unworkable and they’ll be forced to switch to something else or disappear.

    OminousOrange ,
    @OminousOrange@lemmy.ca avatar

    Oh definitely. Its essentially a massive case of ‘it’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it.’

    mindbleach ,

    Same shit with Facebook claiming videos were the bestest content possible, using numbers sourced from the vicinity of their pelvis. Now every goddamn news site has autoplaying video for no damn reason.

    jarfil ,

    Advertising is about creating trends, and catching some impulse buyers. Effectiveness is likely overstated, but on the other hand it’s difficult to quantify the effectiveness of a trend. I don’t think it’s likely to ever collapse, people will always want to believe they can influence others more than they actually can.

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