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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#111

Post by jeroenhd »

ketzo wrote: post #8

Why, from first principles, should YouTube allow this? Why shouldn’t they go thermonuclear? I understand ads are annoying - I block as many as I can! - but I’ve never seen someone put together a coherent defense of the practice.

For random websites, adblockers provide security against malvertisers.

On Youtube, it's convenience and unwillingness to either pay or stop using the service. I don't have a problem being unethical to Google, but I will probably end up paying once my adblocker no longer works on Youtube.

Many people have literally grown up with Youtube, and a large section of them have used ad blockers for most of their lives. They see the adblockblock on Youtube as an attempt to take away a service that's supposed to be (ad) free, because to them, it always has been free. When you see Youtube as the free, unlimited repository of videos that the internet provides you with, forcing minute long ads on Youtube would feel like putting billboards in a national park.

The same is true for many other services. Everyone is mad that Netflix wants its customers to pay. The best stretch I've found is that Netflix tweeted "sharing is caring" once, but sharing accounts within a household has always been allowed.

In their attempts to undercut the competition by shedding money to provide services for free or for cheap, large corporations have cultivated a large audience that expects everything for free with no contribution from their end. Fifteen years of free, almost ad-less service, is a long time, and it changed the culture of the internet.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#112

Post by cvoss »

photochemsyn wrote: post #64

My solution seems ethically valid: I watch the majority of YT videos on a browser with adblocks turned off, but if it's a long technical video I'm trying to learn something from, then I use a full adblock setup on a different browser because the advertising interruptions make concentration impossible. I suppose if I was rolling in money I'd just pay for premium - though I'm sure all that data would also be fed into t…

Interesting, I was expecting to hear kind of the opposite: that you'd selectively tolerate the ads on videos that meet some bar (where that bar might be quality, importance, education, artistic value, personal support for the creator, etc.) and then leave the ad blocker on for all the junky other things that we honestly need less of. But maybe you only watch good non-junky things anyway, in which case, carry on.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#113

Post by CuriouslyC »

a257 wrote: post #97
CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

YouTube will "lose" the war, but they'll make adblocking difficult enough for a while that it might get some premium subscribers in the short term in exchange for the loss of goodwill.

What makes you think that Youtube will "lose"? From a technical perspective, they have been rather conservative in their efforts so far. It can get so much worse, they could bake ads directly into the video stream or automatically randomize their API. Don't forget that Google also owns Chrome, which by its dominance over the market can be used to effectuate DRM (such as widevine, or web integrity). They also own the…

Pirates and crackers have won every single time in the history of BigCo vs BlackHat. The more draconian and clever google gets, the more talented hackers are drawn to the cause of defeating them, and the more motivated people become to spite them. The only winning move is not to play.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#114

Post by seasox »

jamielife wrote: post #55
throw_pm23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about ads displayed on a busstop? Should I feel guilty for looking the other way? It subsidizes public transportation afterall..

Not really a fair comparison. The equivalent to "looking the other way," on YouTube would be exactly that, looking somewhere other than the ad (opening another browser, going to the bathroom, etc.). Ad Blockers are essential painting over the bus stop ad completely, so you don't even have a chance to see it.

Ad Blockers are special glasses that allow the wearer to see an empty area where the ad is supposed to be.

I believe people should be allowed to wear the glasses they want.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#115

Post by hotnfresh »

bruce511 wrote: post #88

>> Maybe that’s how YouTube will win this war of attrition. YouTube will win because they are financially incentivised to so so. UBO and other free blockers will fail because there is so much downside, and no upside. Wars are always won by those with the most resources, whether it is money or people or both. I say this not to gloat (I'm no fan of google) but rather because it can be useful to understand both the goal…

> YouTube will win because they are financially incentivised to so so. UBO and other free blockers will fail because there is so much downside, and no upside.

This has been the situation for the ad-blocking war since it started. If the pro-ads side is destined to win, they're sure taking their sweet time about it.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#116

Post by bri3k »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #94
crop_rotation wrote: post #9

Apart from the Youtube stuff, the post also highlights something else, entitlement towards free services like uBlock origin. > It’s one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It’s quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. > And then one of the moderators actually deleted their Reddit account. “The ID in the post wasn’t updated because my mother was hospitalized,” they said. It’s sad to see them leave becau…

But I don't understand why this would be annoying at all to the developers. I have absolutely zero conundrum with just ignoring a request if I'm not in the mood to do it. Most of them I even delete outright, but I still have requests that were sent to me in 00s that I'm keeping just in case one day "I'm in the mood". And yes, people request (demand!) crazy things, and have done so for decades. There are even "If you…

But why are you working on a project? If it isn't for the money then you are doing it to 'give back to the community'. But if they are turning hostile to you then why continue?

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#117

Post by dessant »

crop_rotation wrote: post #9

Apart from the Youtube stuff, the post also highlights something else, entitlement towards free services like uBlock origin. > It’s one thing to play cat and mouse with YouTube. It’s quite another to deal with a wave of angry users. > And then one of the moderators actually deleted their Reddit account. “The ID in the post wasn’t updated because my mother was hospitalized,” they said. It’s sad to see them leave becau…

It also feels awful to be called a beggar and a panhandler just because you're trying to find a balance and build a sustainable project by having a donation popup (that can be disabled) in your software.

This disgusting review was sitting at the top of the review page for Search by Image on the Chrome Web Store: https://i.imgur.com/P1QU176.png

This person has edited their review a couple of times in the past year which pushed it to the top, and also emailed me with a similar demeaning message. I've reported it to Google staff, and they thought that the review did not break their content policy, so they did not remove it.

So yeah, it hurts when you're offering so much of your free time for so little benefits, or none at all, and a couple of entitled jerks still manage to poison the well for everyone.

With each abusive message the thought of no longer offering up your time and the results of your work for free grows stronger and stronger. It's no surprise that people either quit, sell their open source projects, or stop offering it for free.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#118

Post by userbinator »

cj wrote: post #76

At a technical level, what prevents Google from deploying unblockable ads on YouTube? I’m honestly surprised adblockers are able to block YouTube at all. The easiest way to prevent an adblocker from blocking is to make ads and real content indistinguishable in frontend code and network requests. Tie ads and real content together in a way that if you block ads, the video also doesn’t load. Or in the case of video ads,…

Or in the case of video ads, you could stream the ad as part of the video itself instead of a separate pre roll.

Back when people watched an actual "tube", ads were indeed like that. Yet VCRs could easily detect and skip over them when recording. Remember that this was before AI too, so the technology exists to counter it already.

I suspect YouTube keeps the ads separate from the content because the sort of "splicing" that would be required is not trivial to do at the scale YouTube handles video. Also, perhaps they'd rather users who are adblocking not waste their bandwidth downloading ad videos which are going to be ignored anyway.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#120

Post by Cilvic »

seydor wrote: post #99

I wonder why Youtube does not try other kinds of ads.why not ads in the sidebar, under the videos etc. They know which products and keywords are mentioned, and sometimes i google them anyway. Why do they insist on silly clickbait ads that are much worse than old-time TV ads. I don't want that because i don't like people wasting my time beyond a few hundred milliseconds. They d probably have made more money if they sh…

>I guess it's because they want to sell "video inventory" to their advertisers. But why really?

My guess is because the non-modal video ads are the only things that a human can not ignore easily. Banner blindness is a thing and I'm pretty sure we are great at "blocking" everything around the video (that we actually want to look at).

So the only option is to withhold what we want (the content) until we consumed what we don't want (the ad).

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