YouTube is testing a more aggressive approach against ad blockers

just use firefox

I‘m the type of determined contrarian who even pays for AdBlockers to support them in this arms race, so if they want that sweet subscription cash to keep coming they‘ll defeat whatever bullshit Youtube comes up with. Worth every cent, for a less ad infested world.

There's an unwritten deal, you know. Youtube lets us block and in return, we allow Youtube to know we block. Because if we take that away from Youtube, Youtube no longer has reliable viewer statistics and the price of their ads will go down.

Now it seems Youtube wants to break the deal (and they can, unless we start pirating Youtube content, they can at the very least make us sit through a minute of black screen before each video). They probably think the damage that will be done is less than the additional income that the subscriptions generate.

it's just the same old story. Grow, grow, grow, wait until you've got a monopoly, now squeeeeeeeeze the profit.

Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.

Oh, no no no no no. I'm not going to sit through ANOTHER year of election commercials with you-know-who and other assorted fear-mongering fascist freaks. As what remains of my sanity is my witness, I will slay every ad they send my way!

I don't mind having to watch an ad every now and then, a couple of years ago the ads were still acceptable, watch 30s, one ad, the video starts and enjoy. Now it is two or three ads and the start, which can be longer than the video itself, and you can have ads in the middle of the video. It just becomes very annoying, very quickly. Hence, I started blocking these ads more and more.

I imagine they will eventually simply splice ads into the videos themselves. But even for that there is already a solution with sponsorblock.

and the ppl at ublock will find a way around it in approximately 3 hours lol

Rather than doing this, they should work on the reasons WHY people are using adblockers. Some totally unrelated to ads, like those huge end-cards that block the video that you're still trying to watch. I use adblockers to remove those.

You used to be able to turn their predecessors off, but the new ones? I haven't found a way to turn them off without using ad-blockers. Even with Youtube Premium (which gets rid of the ads) I STILL have ot use U-block origin to get rid of those damned end-cards.

I won't stand any ads on youtube. Getting blasted with 5 times the same ad at 300% loudness. And premium does not really get rid of it as well, they would have to forbid sponsored content. Every time ads start to slip through adblock I will happily spend hours trying to block them instead of watching a single one. If they don't want me to watch the videos for free they can easily put them behind a paywall. Or do some reasonable pricing if they need infrastucture costs covered.

However I don't mind sending a couple of bucks towards content creators that I watch regularly. That will easily be worth more to them than watching ads even for the rest of my life.

I'm not sure if it's related but I've been having a hard time playing videos through NewPipe lately. They just load very slow.

If Premium was a third of the price it is now, I would pay the monthly fee.

But the price they want for it is ridiculous, so it is not happening.

Honestly if I had to sit thru ads to watch youtube videos I'd stop watching. I have 300+ subscriptions and after 15 years, can barely stand to watch more than a couple of them anymore. It's just not that interesting anymore.

The day I am unable to block YouTube ads is the day that I stop using YouTube.

Props to the article writer for not drawing Google's attention to the fact that Vanced was immediately replaced.

Happily watching no ads with premium. Sure the sponsor spots are still there, but they pay the creator and I can skip them, so I dont mind... Propably not a popular opinion, but I do think YouTube/Google should get money by hosting the video content...

Oh, I hate Youtube ads with passion.

On iOS I use an app called Video Lite, I hope it won't get affected by this.

I've seen people bring up Youtube blocking adblockers a few times now, but I have yet to see anything myself despite using Youtube daily with an adblocker. What adblocker are you using?

I tend to use yt-dlp to just download video and watch it locally, which provides for better processing and control over the video than browsers do.

It also doesn't have ads, though YouTube could probably theoretically embed the ads in the video itself.

If I have to start torrenting YouTube videos to avoid ads, I will. Glad Firefox is still going strong for now.

Just use Invidious instead, its better than the official website

If you don't mind getting your hands a little dirty with self hosting...

I recommend using ytdl-sub with jellyfin ( or plex etc).

You download the video and person locally, so no ads, but you can also use sponsorblock.

It also has useful retention options, so I have some channels archive indefinitely and others delete week old or watched videos.

The downside is no gui, so lots of reading the docs to set up properly .

Invidious, either with Pale Moon or Tor Browser. Keep uBO on, have anti-anti-AdBlock userscripts up, block as many known malicious ad or tracking domains in HOSTS. Solved.

I just wished more YouTubers would jump onto peertube. Their sponsors still pay them for the views and it would just be so mich better...

This might be very well related to Google's Manifest V3.. Google is NOT your friend. They pushed Manifest v3.. hard!! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

I'm pretty close to avoiding Youtube altogether. This might be the thing that makes me block it.

Just stop using YouTube.

Did you know the software will only display none or at most a single 4-second skipable ad if you watch less than 15 minutes of youtube a month? I hear people complain about 5-15+ minute youtube commercials and laugh because I've never dealt with that.

The secret is to literally just stop watching youtube (and television in general). The content you find on Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, etc is all going down hill quickly.

Once revanced goes I'll use NewPipe, once NewPipe goes I guess I'll go to the library for my useless knowledge.

The moment I get blocked I'm going to Freetube for my pc and Newpipe for my phone, then to import all of my user data. (hopefully Newpipe gets a pc version as well because Freetube is a bit clunky). Maybe delete my youtube account too.

We use STube; its bloody magic.. Not sure what wizzardry goes on in the background as not only does it block youtube ads it also blocks the add that the content creators put in the middle of their vids.. No more NordVpn / Squarespace or clash of twats add...

Pound that "report issue" button & feed them garbage.