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YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

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Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#41

Post by sircastor »

tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

I got blocked briefly. I switched to non-logged-in or using an alternative interface for a bit. I switched back and haven’t seen hide-nor-hair of the warning. I don’t know what that means though. Here’s hoping they don’t disable my Google account.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#42

Post by ttyyzz »

tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

Yesterday I got the popup constantly but could chose to watch anyway. Today it said "you can watch 2 more videos.." and now I'm blocked after said 2 videos.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#43

Post by mrguyorama »

Retr0id wrote: post #24
LtWorf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could do without js.

As the "cookie consent" debacle showed us, websites won't stop using JS, they'll just bombard you with consent dialogs until you click the button that makes them go away fastest, which is likely the one that involves consenting to run their JS.

A reminder that the "cookie consent debacle" is intentional. There is no requirement for a popup or any system to ask for your consent to store cookies if you simply do not store unnecessary cookies, and the carve out for "necessary" cookies is huge.

Every time you see a popup to approve cookies, it is explicitly so a company can beg you to allow them to track you for free money.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#44

Post by neuromanser »

tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

I've seen the pop-up twice in roughly two weeks, both times in Firefox on Linux with uMatrix, uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#46

Post by PrimeMcFly »

tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

Chrome users are out of lock due to the way extensions work, Firefox users can continue blocking without issue.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#47

Post by PrimeMcFly »

nkozyra wrote: post #40
tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

Cannot watch a video at all with it enabled while in my account. If I go incognito I can. FreeTube for now, I guess.

Or stop using Chrome.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#48

Post by cardboard9926 »

tokai wrote: post #33

Are people actually getting blocked? I saw the adblock-block popup once, and after flushing the cache and updating filters of my adblocker I haven't had any issues using yt since. Am I just in a lucky A/B group or is the detection and blockage actually that toothless?

Yes, it's crazy. Upon updating ublock, even turning it off and clearing cookies resulted getting blocked.

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#49

Post by nkozyra »

sonthonax wrote: post #39
nikanj wrote: post #4

Might* *Actually doesn't

I can see you're already being downvoted because Hacker News has a really juvenile attitude to DRM. No one has the right to YouTube (or free media for that matter).

> No one has the right to YouTube (or free media for that matter).

This is self-evident and we have Terms of Service for exactly this reason. What I think we're debating is what's reasonable reach for Terms of Service to have? Can we violate it by muting ads? Why not? Why is that different in principle than an Adblocker?

Re: YouTube's Adblock detection might break the law in the EU

#50

Post by pavon »

blibble wrote: post #10
Dwedit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not very hard to see when particular web requests did not happen, or particular JS did not execute.

you can make the request and hide the result from the user

For something like YouTube it can probably still be detected by timing. If the browser plays part A of a video, then when it is done immediately requests part B of the video, when there is supposed to be a 2 minute gap to play an ad, that can be detected on the server side. The client could try to get around that by doing things like telling the server it is playing at 2x, and then really playback at 1x, but then the server could send different content (pre-downsampled) depending on the playback rate requested.
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