It looks like Google are pushing pretty hard on AdBlockers now. Looks like a pretty aggressive new UI from them.
I’m finding revanced for Android is still working well, but I’ve got no idea when that’ll become less reliable
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.
You, sir, have my respect!
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.
Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.
That’s how end of Web 2.0 looks like. It really lived a long life, maybe even too long.
And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.
That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.
I had no clue of the existence of the Ad Nauseam browser extension. I use Firefox and I just added it to my browser.
I read that it’s built off of uBlock Origin, which I already trust because of the open source nature of it, so that was a huge plus for me.
It may not necessarily have been your intention to inform people of Ad Nauseam, but I definitely thank you for bringing it up in the first place!
Do you know if it interferes with unlock origin?
It does yes. It also interferes with other privacy related extensions like privacy badger. I have disabled both Ublock Orgin and Privacy Badger in favor of AdNauseam and have been pleased. After using it for about a week, it says I’ve “clicked” on about $150 worth of ads.
The main thing to note is if you’re on a site, and you see ads, you can always flip AdNauseam into “strict” mode. In strict mode, it is less effective at clicking on ads, but better at making sure nothing pops up. There’s only one site that I’ve had to use strict mode on so far. Attached image is of my “ad vault” (the ads that have been clicked). I did hide the NSFW ads:
One thing that worries me about this approach is that it’s still generating ad revenue. Sure you don’t actually see the ads but it’s still an incentive for companies to continue running more and more ads.
From the persepctive of the host site, maybe. But for the advertisers, AdNauseam punishes them pretty badly. The idea is to destroy the relationship between the “click through rate” and “conversion rate” of offending sites/ads.
The linked article discusses the phenomena in more detail, but the bottom line is that advertisers want sales. If their ads don’t get sales on a certain platform, they will no longer advertise on said platform.
I’ve also attached a screenshot of the relevant part of the article.
https://www.wordstream.com/average-ctrThat’s without even considering how this screws up the data that organizations like Google are trying to track. That data is worth something to them, and this obfuscates it.
he idea is to destroy the relationship between the “click through rate” and “conversion rate” of offending sites/ads.
Ah, I didn’t think of this part. I was going of off click through rate but didn’t think about it destroying the conversion rate
But they’re not making the company paying for the ads any profit. It’s a money sink for them. But you’re correct in that whoever is hosting the ads will make their coin.
Just to clarify, AdNauseam doesn’t click on every ad. Certainly not by default. I’ve noticed that while it does hide ads embedded in YouTube videos, it doesn’t seem to click them often. (Though, it does still click on image based ads on YouTube).
Additionally, by default AdNauseam does not click on ads that are “do not track” (DNT) compliant, an emerging standard set by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I’ll link to the GitHub FAQ post the devs made regarding why they, by default, don’t click DNT compliant ads.
The day I am unable to block YouTube ads is the day that I stop using YouTube.
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…
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.
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…
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 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.
Yeah that’s the thing. I’m happy to watch reasonable ads but the concept of reasonable seems to continuously shift. I was happy with a single 15s ad occasionally but it’s:
- 2x 10s ads
- 1x 15s ad and 1x 10s ad (with a skip at 5s in)
- 1x 15s as (with maybe a skip at 5s)
Like the pattern and the frequency are all over the place and it feels like I’m constantly watching ads.
I get that need to pay for traffic / usage, but I’m watching 720p / 1080p at compressed quality. How much do they truly need
And don’t forget that even after that you still have to watch baked-in “This video is sponsored by <insert shady company here>” adds since the actual revenue that gets passed to creators from youtube is so low that to keep the ship afloat they have to look for additional revenue streams.
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
just use firefox
How will that help if they block you server side?
drm does not work
Sure it does. Technically, it’s perfectly feasible to put up an ad-wall.
show me one example that DRM ever worked for streaming services and wasn’t immediately cracked
I get the feeling we are now talking about two different things. If by “cracked” you mean that someone can rip and redistribute the content once they get access to it, sure, it’s very hard to protect against that.
What I mean is: it’s possible to restrict access to the service so that you cannot watch a video unless you’ve played the ad first or you are a paying customer. As an example: Netflix or any of the movie streaming platforms. There’s no add-on or special browser that allows you to use Netflix without being a paying customer, and if YouTube implements their plan, they can make it so you won’t be able to circumvent it just by using Firefox, like you claimed.
For now until they start ruining that too somehow. I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see browser based throttling.
Or pull a reddit and try to force app usage
Ngl would like to see the browser vs. app usage statistics for YouTube. They’ve been moving into shorts hard so I’m thinking that desktop users are becoming a minority on the platform.
I imagine they will eventually simply splice ads into the videos themselves. But even for that there is already a solution with sponsorblock.
Sponsorblock is the reason I’m confident that no matter what they try people can and will find ways to overcome it.
I suspect that all of the AI these companies think will solve all their problems (and add profits), will actually be a tool for us to use to skip and block ads.
Someone will learn how to use AI against them.
[evil laugh heard in the background]Shit if I have to I’ll download every single YT video I wanna watch with yt-dlp and watch em in VLC/MPC/Plex/any other video player in the world lol. My eyeballs see advertisements when I choose for them too.
There is “anti adblock” blockers, mine work on even the most aggressively advertising sites and i don’t think the adblock developers will stand still either.
Do you have any recommendations?
uBlock Origin on Firefox is best, enable all the filter lists (except the regional language ones). Not to be confused with uBlock, they are not the same.
Yes this would be mine as well, ghostery and privacy possum might help as well.
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.
If I used a 3rd party client for a month would this still apply for the browser?
No clue tbh how they track it - neither my partner nor I watch youtube much, so they don’t see much traffic from our network. Don’t know if they track usage by user, ip, cookies, etc
I tend to use
yt-dlpto 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.
YouTube could probably theoretically embed the ads in the video itself.
This. I have always wondered why they don’t just do that. If you wanna serve ads so hard, just make them technically indistinguishable from the actual content. (Please don’t.)
My assumption is that they don’t want the ad to be fast-forwardable – their own client restricts that – but I’d think that having fast-forwardable ads would be preferable to no ads at all via a given distribution mechanism.
The ads are per-user and the video can be static, but I’d think that they could put together a piece of software that reasonably-efficiently splices per-user data into an existing video file.
I think its because, if you put it in the video itself, you will have old ads in old videos. And the companys wouldnt pay for ads for a product wich isnt made anymore.
They can merge it at the time you download it. Would need to to do targeted ads.
