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YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

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Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#421

Post by tjpnz »

daeros wrote: post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

I ditched Chrome after a Google ad hijacked the browser and attempted download malware onto my device. If you value your own security you absolutely should be using a browser with support for ad blocking extensions. At the same time Google must be held criminally liable for the massive amounts of fraud their ad business facilitates.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#422

Post by satvikpendem »

marapuru wrote: post #255
satvikpendem wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet VCRs could easily detect and skip over them when recording How did they do that? Is there any more information on this topic?

In the Netherlands I remember typing in a code to record something. That code corresponded to a specific start and end timestamp. So in that case it ‘skipped’ the commercials.

Seems to be similar to the SponsorBlock extension for YouTube then, where start and end timestamps are crowdsourced for various types of filler, such as intros and end credits, sponsor segments, calls to subscribe, etc.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#423

Post by ohhnoodont »

garciansmith wrote: post #418
daeros wrote: post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

While I agree to an extent, to me the larger issue is that Youtube has become the default video hosting platform with no real competition. I adblock everything but I am sympathetic to the idea that video hosting costs money. But I watch, on average, less than 1 hour of Youtube videos a month, so paying for Youtube makes no sense. Plus I have issues with privacy (part of the reason I've never created a Youtube account…

Especially when youtube's early success was built on piracy. That continued for a long time even after Google's acquisition. Arguably still is a major contributor regardless of Content ID.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#424

Post by briHass »

chmod775 wrote: post #329
blindseer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think YouTube will "win" this war, unfortunately. Even people that "join" individual channels cannot watch content from those channels if they use AdBlock. At some point these people are either going to buy premium or turn off the ad-blocker. It boggles my mind that engineers and managers that have kids and are working on the YouTube team think this is okay and this is what the future of the platform should look li…

YT is too big for people who hate ads to not invest a massive effort. The ad blocker endgame will be YT videos being "pre-watched" by a headless browser running in the background and the video data grabbed from there (either recorded or directly). You then watch the ad-less video in a custom frontend. If implemented correctly there's pretty much nothing YT could hope to do about this.

Sounds like how DVRs worked on cable TV back in the day. Some were even sophisticated enough to use the typical video cutout before commercials to auto skip them on playback.

Now, of course, we have community efforts like SponserBlock that could easily identify ad locations or some form of auto detection based on analyzing the video of they insert the ads at random locations in the video stream itself.

I'm certain this is coming. There's very little on YT I need to watch right now, and having a bunch of videos already downloaded and de-ad-ified would suffice. It would prevent the mindless watching anyway.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#425

Post by globalnode »

I run ad-blockers because most of the internet becomes unusable without them and I'd rather focus on education and interesting things. If that ceases to be the case, I'll cease using the internet and go to my local library. There's no scenario where I'll watch ad's on youtube. The internet is just not structured for money making unless its a paid service. Advertisers are the aberration here. They're wasting their and others' time and contributing to global warming unnecessarily. Maybe if people had more critical thinking skills they would see what a burden advertising/marketing/propaganda is on their time and how often they become biased by it - in one form or another.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#426

Post by blooalien »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #303
jasonboyd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I allowed ads for a long time, believing a site should be able to earn revenue for the content they provide. I started blocking ads when ad networks failed to properly vet their ads and allowed malicious ads to be distributed.

Do you allow ads on sites with more responsible ads?

Yep. All two of them. ;~)

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#427

Post by eqvinox »

This is of course bringing up the discussion on the "morality" of Adblocking. I'd like to point out something that I don't think is getting enough attention.

There was a point in the past where video platforms were competing, and by no means was it clear that YouTube would end up dominating this area to the point of being close to a monopoly.

When YouTube won that race, they won it with a given set of parameters, including the kind and amount of ads they show. Society at large has, at that point in the past, basically decided that YouTube's offering is the best, and given this market domineering position.

YouTube is increasingly moving away from the parameters of this implicit agreement, in minor ways at first, more now. Had they "competed" in the video platform race with current policies, maybe everyone'd be using Vimeo now.

And here's the crux. YouTube can only do this because their old policies allowed them to establish this domineering position, and by doing so are breaking the implicit "deal" that actually allowed them to get into this position.

To me, there's currently no alternative to going onto YouTube. And no, I won't pay for YouTube Premium — because that wasn't part of the deal either. The platform won the race as a free platform. So, until Google can figure out how to serve a reasonable amount of safe ads — adblocker it is.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#428

Post by garciansmith »

ohhnoodont wrote: post #423
garciansmith wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree to an extent, to me the larger issue is that Youtube has become the default video hosting platform with no real competition. I adblock everything but I am sympathetic to the idea that video hosting costs money. But I watch, on average, less than 1 hour of Youtube videos a month, so paying for Youtube makes no sense. Plus I have issues with privacy (part of the reason I've never created a Youtube account…

Especially when youtube's early success was built on piracy. That continued for a long time even after Google's acquisition. Arguably still is a major contributor regardless of Content ID.

Yes, true. Gain traction through piracy to get to an immense size, let everyone use the service for free to grow even larger, introduce ads but only easily blockable ones, then slowly tighten the vise.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#429

Post by matheusmoreira »

caconym_ wrote: post #404
matheusmoreira wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by a similar token they are certainly not under any obligation to continue serving data to users who don't generate any revenue Sure. Let's see them return HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of a free video stream then. I'm actually okay with that. Somehow I doubt they'll ever do that. They want that mass market appeal, don't they? I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. Just like the "free" apps who do anything…

I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. By all accounts, YouTube is implementing countermeasures that block adblock users from watching videos on their site. What is functionally different between that and returning a 402, especially since you can in fact pay for ad-free YouTube?

Nope. Still free, they just managed to circumvent my browser extension. They're not even supposed to know I have it installed.

They need to either start charging everyone for access or stop complaining. I pay for access to a lot of things but I'm not paying money to avoid ads. I sure as hell am not gonna pay money to watch videos with hard coded ads.

Re: YouTube's Anti-Adblock and uBlock Origin

#430

Post by gruez »

tjpnz wrote: post #421
daeros wrote: post #356

While it has ultimately come up in this discussion my honest input is most of the comments I see here evaded the elephant in the room of all of it which is that Google doesn't do a good enough job of vetting the people who advertise with it, its search engines have repeatedly allowed malware to slip through the cracks leading to people being exploited and nothing stops those same malware developers from serving up ad…

I ditched Chrome after a Google ad hijacked the browser and attempted download malware onto my device. If you value your own security you absolutely should be using a browser with support for ad blocking extensions. At the same time Google must be held criminally liable for the massive amounts of fraud their ad business facilitates.

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