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.

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

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.

blakeus12 ,
@blakeus12@hexbear.net avatar

welp time to use yewtu.be

Echo71Niner ,

noice

Tayphix ,

Alternatively, piped.video.

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 ^^

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.

    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

    pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

    probably not ublock and for sure not revanced

    Hhffggshn ,

    I’m still good with revanced

    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?

    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.

    Neon_Dystopia ,

    I wouldn’t know because I use firefox. Fuck google.

    Waluigi ,

    Sad thing is that this will affect even Firefox + uBlock

    Neon_Dystopia ,

    How’s that? They’re just gonna block YouTube? Way to kill their own service.

    Chriskmee ,

    How are they supposed to run a free service without ads, especially one as expensive to run as a video hosting website?

    AzzyDev ,

    google has “fuck you” amounts of money, the minority of users using firefox mean nothing to them.

    If google was having problems funding youtube, believe me, they’d stop paying creators before that would happen, and then the creators would tell us about it.

    Chriskmee ,

    Do you really think they would stop paying creators before stopping people from bypassing the way both them and creators make money? It doesn’t take a business major to see that running a free service without ads is only going to cost them money.

    AzzyDev ,

    I think (unsure) you misunderstand. Google, and any other company’s, main goal is to make money. To achieve this goal, i’m saying that if google were to lose profits from people using ad blockers, they are more likely to extract profits from their creators than sacrifice their bottom line.

    If google can’t adequately monetize their services (by losing the ad-blocking war), they can’t monetize the creators. Google is evil, but so is the economic system that causes inconvenience to be the most effective way to monetize content.

    This is why i wholeheartedly support things like Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. because that directly supports creators and means that they don’t have to completely rely on a company that no longer says “don’t be evil”.

    Chriskmee ,

    To achieve this goal, i’m saying that if google were to lose profits from people using ad blockers, they are more likely to extract profits from their creators than sacrifice their bottom line.

    The creators are their product, the adblock users cost everyone money and provide no benefit, why would they punish their product over the users costing them money? The adblock users aren’t the bottom line, they are no benefit, and cost both YouTube and the creators in lost revenue.

    This is why i wholeheartedly support things like Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. because that directly supports creators and means that they don’t have to completely rely on a company that no longer says “don’t be evil”.

    That’s great and all, but YouTube still has bills to pay, they can’t just let you use the service free without ads, let you just give money to creators through those other services, and expect to even break even.

    AzzyDev ,

    “…why would they punish their product over the users costing them money?”

    That’s if Google loses the ad-blocking war, hence the second paragraph, unless they manage to stuff web environment integrity/similar into their website, or if front ends like Invidious become more popular.

    “…YouTube still has bills to pay…”

    That’s true, but I think Google makes enough money from other things (tracking, other website’s ads) that it wouldn’t hurt them too bad. I think the recent crackdown on ad blocking is less from a large profit drop and rather to send a message to avoid the former from happening. Again though, I could be wrong about that one.

    In the end though, I just want to watch and directly support my creators without being forced to waste 15 seconds of my life that I will never get back on a product I never have and never will use.

    SuddenDownpour ,

    By making Youtube Premium worth it, both for users and creators. Make it transparent what % of the YP fee is actually going to creators, make that % actually fair, give extra features to YP users, incentivize creators to ask their viewers to collaborate with it if they actually can afford to. Youtube has reached a point where it has become a public utility, to the point that tens of millions of people use it to supplement their education or stay updated on the news. A website increasingly necessary shouldn’t force someone without a penny to choose between paying what they can’t afford or have their head fried up by ads.

    Of course, this idea rooted in civil values is incompatible with an economic actor that sees both creators and consumers as cattle that must be milked as efficiently as possible.

    Chriskmee ,

    A website increasingly necessary shouldn’t force someone without a penny to choose between paying what they can’t afford or have their head fried up by ads.

    If not ads then what is the free option supposed to look like. I hate ads also, but it’s not like it’s sustainable to run free without ads.

    SuddenDownpour ,

    Wikipedia has no ads yet it has a pretty large amount of spare money, and there are plenty of other free to use platforms and projects. Youtube is not Wikipedia, sure, but Wikipedia has no reason to offer Youtube Premium.

    Chriskmee ,

    Wikipedia mostly displays text, YouTube mostly streams HD video, which one do you think costs more?

    bobman ,

    It looks like Lemmy and PeerTube, where people do the hard work because they care and not to make a profit off of idiots with more money than sense.

    Saying it’s ‘impossible’ is objectively false and just shows people you don’t understand the world you live in.

    Chriskmee ,

    Are creators making enough money to get by on PeerTube? The idea is interesting, but I don’t see people making enough to do it full time, and I don’t see how the streaming quality can be anything as good or reliable compared to something like YouTube by relying on P2P.

    bobman ,

    get by

    What does this mean?

    Chriskmee , (edited )

    Make a living, pay the bills.

    bobman ,

    How does lemmy make money?

    Also, hasn’t youtube been wildly profitable for years? Profit, by definition is excess. It’s what’s left over after all business expense have been paid.

    If youtube is profitable, why do they need more profit? Oh yeah, they don’t.

    Sorry this needs to be spelled out for you.

    Chriskmee ,

    As far as I know YouTube is not that profitable, but it’s hard to tell as they don’t release all the numbers.

    Do you make any excess money? Do you have any money left over after rent, food, etc? If you do, do you need that money? If you don’t would you like to make more? Nobody wants to live with no excess money, so why should a business?

    bobman ,

    Woah dude, you’re getting right into my point of projection.

    Just because you want to use your excess to get even more excess, you’re assuming that everyone else will. Why eschew luxurious so those who have less can have more? You’d never project that lol, cause that’s not how you feel.

    Have a good day, man. Hope I enlightened you a bit.

    Gonna block you now cause I feel you have nothing to offer me. See ya.

    Chriskmee ,

    So you want to live just making ends meet? Don’t care about having a savings account? You would be happy with just enough to get by without any excess? I don’t know anybody who would be happy with that.

    If you want to run away from the conversation then go ahead. If you do happen to have some money you don’t want though, since who needs to make more than what they need just to break even even, right? I’ll happily take it off your hands.

    Neon_Dystopia ,

    Thing is, even with all their efforts they still can’t make it profitable. Not sure if they release the data (doubt). But, YouTube has always been barely profitable or operating on loss. Google bought yt over 15 years ago and haven’t figured out how to make money off it and arguably made it worse with their policies and algos.

    Chriskmee ,

    Part of the problem might be all those people blocking the ads, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a pretty big chunk of their viewers. No ads means no ad revenue, which means losing money.

    mindbleach ,

    I don’t care.

    Chriskmee ,

    Do you care if the service goes down and nobody gets any videos?

    mindbleach ,

    As if video streaming will die with one site. One for-profit site, that’s not remotely turning a profit. A vestigial organ of an advertising giant, burning money to build dependency and exploit it for control.

    BitTorrent used to share more video than Netflix - despite a lack of money, despite a lack of ads, and despite being illegal. Content creators will be fine without this corporate facade.

    Chriskmee ,

    I don’t know what YouTube’s market share is, but for videos that are not short TikTok style it’s probably like 95%? And they are also in the TikTok short and twitch streaming areas now, so I think it would be a massive blow to video streaming if they went away.

    BitTorrent just moves all the costs to the users, and users are typically not wanting to run their own video servers. They might work for tech people who don’t mind running servers or already have a server they are running, but you have to think about the regular user that is probably 80% or more of the market. You can’t expect to get big off relying on users to be the servers.

    mindbleach ,

    How things are now never ever means change is impossible.

    You can’t expect to get big off relying on users to be the servers.

    BitTorrent did exactly that.

    Chriskmee ,

    BitTorrent may have been big as in number of files, but as far as users and having content on demand it never got there. I remember waiting for days to get a single movie, not because my Internet was slow, but because the peers were slow.

    When it comes to a YouTube replacement I don’t think you are going to get big relying on users to be the servers. Nevermind the fact that the nature of how BitTorrent works means no company will allow their content on it legally.

    mindbleach ,

    And nothing’s changed in all those years. Yeah? P2P technology couldn’t get any better than 2004. The fact it was slow sometimes means we’re boned forever.

    Corporations already have streaming. I don’t care if they come along. Their content might be there whether they like it or not.

    Consider where we’re having this conversation: is big even desirable? Has the dominance of one video platform been good for the internet? I’d say plainly fucking not, if killing ad blockers is even a feasible outcome. When YouTube was its own company there were a dozen competitors of similar size and quality. Google pouring money into one, so it could swallow everything and censor everyone and shove people toward right-wing propaganda, is not exactly ideal.

    Chriskmee ,

    Has P2P changed much? I don’t think it has really. I use private sites for that stuff now and it’s great there, but the public stuff still seems pretty bad IMO.

    Well if they don’t want their content there, then you have the whole problem if it being illegal. Now you have to convince people to break the law, and go as far as to install a VPN or whatever so your ISP doesn’t send you warnings. This isn’t a great start for something to replace YouTube.

    I think Big is required for a P2P YouTube style thing to work. You need lots of peers to stream content in decent quality. You need people to knowingly break laws and use VPNs. You need people to run their own media servers, you are asking a lot from people, all YouTube is asking you to do is watch some ads or buy premium.

    flerp ,

    Oh no! Is the company that makes 70b per quarter and is buying back 70b of shares to keep making more in trouble of only making 80b per quarter next year and not 100b? Poor babies.

    Chriskmee ,

    Maybe instead of looking at revenue you should look at profit. Revenue means nothing if your running costs eat it all up.

    Also, maybe try to look at YouTube Numbers instead of the whole parent company? The patient company being profitable isn’t an excuse for the child company to lose money.

    gonzoknowsdotcom1 ,

    All my subscriptions are on peertube and odysee but no

    hellfire103 ,
    @hellfire103@sopuli.xyz avatar

    *Laughs in PeerTube

    samus12345 ,
    @samus12345@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Not yet, just waiting for it.

    MiddledAgedGuy ,

    I feel like we can ignore this and it’ll mostly be a non-issue. Hopefully I don’t have to eat those words later.

    YouTube can detect common current adblocking methods, and use this to hinder you now, prompting to comply with them. If you do, they win. You pay for no ads or you have an exception in your adblocker.

    As another comment mentioned, it’s a cat and mouse game. Adblockers will get ahead of it. So just wait it out.

    MattTheTekie ,

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

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