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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

#91
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there's no other option it's a still infinitely better than seeing HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA or another MANSCAPED ad if it gets to that point I wouldn't mind the adblocker even automatically clicking the ad some percentage of the time, just to punish Google

That's called AdNauseam.

not quite

I don't want to punish everyone, only those attempting to coerce me into disabling the ad-blocker

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

#92
post #90
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used uMatrix in years, but isn't the UI in uBlock Origin > More similar, do you know what's missing? https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

Everything is missing? That left panel as shown in the screenshot is display-only, you can't click on it to allow/disallow anything (also: it's below the rest of the interface in my version, not to the left, which requires a lot further mouse travel). ...oh, I see, I have to first go into the settings to declare myself an able-minded human. That's quite the UX failure, hiding functionality behind an unrelated toggle…

To allow disallow, click the smaller rectangles to the left, on mouse over they are grey and red squares.

>uMatrix lets me see how many resources of what type were loaded from that domain.

uBlock Origin > Logger (its an icon)

> enable javascript for just one third-party host

Red button (with more enabled) disables a specific resource in a nested-list UI very similar to uMatrix AFAIR.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uMatrix implements that. Highly recommend.

There is also https://noscript.net/ I don't think umatrix is actively maintained any more

Correct, umatrix is not actively maintained anymore. It still works flawlessly and is (IMHO) feature complete, but as time goes on it's good to be cognisant of the security implications.

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

#94
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, this about what websites will do in response to legislation, not what the legislation actually intends for them to do.

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

#95
post #90
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used uMatrix in years, but isn't the UI in uBlock Origin > More similar, do you know what's missing? https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

Everything is missing? That left panel as shown in the screenshot is display-only, you can't click on it to allow/disallow anything (also: it's below the rest of the interface in my version, not to the left, which requires a lot further mouse travel). ...oh, I see, I have to first go into the settings to declare myself an able-minded human. That's quite the UX failure, hiding functionality behind an unrelated toggle…

If the missing functionality is there, I can't find it either and no mention in the docs.

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

#96
post #92
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is missing? That left panel as shown in the screenshot is display-only, you can't click on it to allow/disallow anything (also: it's below the rest of the interface in my version, not to the left, which requires a lot further mouse travel). ...oh, I see, I have to first go into the settings to declare myself an able-minded human. That's quite the UX failure, hiding functionality behind an unrelated toggle…

To allow disallow, click the smaller rectangles to the left, on mouse over they are grey and red squares. >uMatrix lets me see how many resources of what type were loaded from that domain. uBlock Origin > Logger (its an icon) > enable javascript for just one third-party host Red button (with more enabled) disables a specific resource in a nested-list UI very similar to uMatrix AFAIR.

Yes, I phrased that one badly. I meant to ask: how do I enable just javascript for a domain, rather than also enabling css/img/frames? But that's more of an academic question since if you trust a domain to run javascript, you'll surely also load css and img from that domain.

Red button (with more enabled) disables a specific resource

I don't see it. Red button disables a specific domain for as far as I can see. It doesn't disable just one type of resource from that domain.

in a nested-list UI very similar to uMatrix

It seems this is the problem: uMatrix is most emphatically not a nested-list UI: it is an authorization matrix UI. It seems that UBO does try to incorporate some of uMatrix' features back into it, but in the basis it's still a one-dimensional blocklist. That's just not good enough for how I browse the web in safety.

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

#97
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been blocked for a week now.

you need to clear cookies and local storage on youtube.com and also google.com, update ublock, and make sure you're on the default filter settings, then you'll get unblocked

I know, I just don't really care.

I never watched much of any creator-based content, just used it to browse for music, most of which was uploaded by someone other than the artist and, usually if I like it, I'll go and buy it directly from the artist/label. Someone's gotta pay for that hosting, though, right?

Sure, I'll tell my ad blocker to allow YT ads through, that's a compromise I'm fine with. But Google decided, arbitrarily, that that compromise isn't good enough and the mere presence of an inactive adblocker is enough for them to tell me to fuck off.

If that's how they're gonna be, then it's not gonna bother me at all to use Invidious.

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

#98
post #90
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used uMatrix in years, but isn't the UI in uBlock Origin > More similar, do you know what's missing? https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

Everything is missing? That left panel as shown in the screenshot is display-only, you can't click on it to allow/disallow anything (also: it's below the rest of the interface in my version, not to the left, which requires a lot further mouse travel). ...oh, I see, I have to first go into the settings to declare myself an able-minded human. That's quite the UX failure, hiding functionality behind an unrelated toggle…

Replying to myself to further refine my issues:

Why are there two two columns to the right of every domain?

The left column is for global rules (independent of the currently-visited domain), the right column is for rules specific to the currently-loaded domain. This is strictly inferior to uMatrix, which allows me to set rules for every part of the dns name (e.g. I can easilty switch between settings rules for news.ycombinator.com, ycombinator.com and even for all .com sites). So what's missing: source domain control for the rule(s) I'm currently configuring.

What's more, in uMatrix I could set a hard block on a toplevel domain (say, google.com) and then add a whitelist for a subdomain (say, mail.google.com) which would override the higher-level block. Since UBO only uses block (red)/ignore (grey), this kind of setup is not possible. So what's missing: an explicit allow/ignore/block toggle like in uMatrix.

What is the significance of the +'s and -'s in the various cells?

These are blocked and allowed resources, so there's some level of feedback there. But it seems that CSS resources are not included in those statistics at all, and images do cause a + to be displayed in the domain-specific row but not in the generic "images" row whereas third-party javascript gets a + in the domain-specific row and in the generic "3rd-party scripts row". So what's missing: I want resource type indicators rather than generic "+"

I'll repeat what I wrote as a response to the sibling comment because it seems to be a fundamental UI issue: the UI of UBO still seems geared towards a one-dimensional blocklist and is missing all the controls for two-dimensional control of [domains]x[resource types]. And after years of safely browsing the modern web with uMatrix, I can't imagine going without that control.

-- edit:

To explain a bit more my thought proces behind how I browse the web: I maintain effectively four trust levels in the browser, which are:

(0. not a browser trust level: pihole-style dns rpz blocking)

1. no trust: all outgoing connections to the domain are blocked.

2. static content: html/css/img is allowed to be loaded from the domain.

3. dynamic content: allow javascript and cross-site requests

4. embeddings: mostly used for payment processors, these tend to get very anxious if some things don't work as expected.

My default (uMatrix) settings put the primary domain at level 2 and all third-party sites at level 1. Surprisingly, this still works fine for a lot of sites, at least the sites that I find worth reading. I guess I'm enough of an academic to prefer reading over "consuming" content.

The first trust increase, if needed, is to selectively bump third-party domains belonging to the same first party to trust level 2. This is mostly because CDNs use a different hostname (such as theguardian.com using guim.co.uk for their content, bbc.co.uk using bbci.co.uk). These rules are configured once as I encounter them, then saved so I won't need to worry about it again.

Then there's webshops I frequent, which are by default at trust level 3. But even there, only the first-party domain is at trust level 3, and the payment provider for the site it whitelisted at level 4. But other third-parties are still at level 1 or 2. Even for these sites, I prefer to keep the trust low and only elevate said trust when I'm actually making a purchase.

So, with respect to uBlock Origin: I don't see how it would allow me to switch easily between trust level 2 and 3 for each third-party domain. And as described here, I use trust switching a lot -- it's become an ingrained part of my browsing habit. In uMatrix, the same is actually very easy, I only have a resource-level Deny on javascript and a resource-level Deny on iframe embeddings. Setting a specific domain to Allow will only bump it to trust level 2 because the resource-level Deny's are still in place; to put a domain at level 3 I must explicitly authorize javascript, and similarly for iframes.

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

#99

How does Youtube detect adblock anyway? Is that documented anywhere?

I read somewhere Youtube used to send a response like {..., ads: [1, 2, 3]}. uBlock would see this response and turn it into {..., ads: []} and load the page accordingly. I guess now, Youtube expects a response back, and occasionally, the request/response is faked. So, when uBlock adjusts the request/response and says "This user watched the ads", Youtube knows the request/response was fake and there were no ads to be…

Looking at the filters that uBlock is using, it still seems to be some sort of regex on the xhr request/response body [1]. Why can't youtube trivially defeat this by encrypting everything? It seems like trying to go about the cat-mouse game in this fashion in a losing battle, because all google needs to do is just change up the names a bit each day.

[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/commit/fb33bb3c1fa99...

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

#100

Why should companies be required to offer content to people for free?

Because they do offer content to people for free, and have for years. And people might actually be willing to put up with ads if they weren't so invasive and obnoxious - static ad banners, for instance, would probably be fine. But interrupting a video every few seconds for several minutes of ads is just ridiculous.

Also because the ability for the end user to have complete control over the content the server sends them has been baked into the web since the beginning. You can send your content for free and hope that I choose to view your ads (which I probably wont,) or you can put your content behind a paywall, and hope it's worth paying for (it probably isn't.)

What you can't do is send your content for free and just expect me to view your ads, as if the internet were old media like radio or television, where even then, you could skip ads with DVR or just change the channel.

It's not our problem corporations thought the web was going to be a gravy train where the rules didn't matter, and they poisoned the well and ruined everything in the process. To hell with all of them, let them burn. We'll go back to sharing videos on torrent or something.

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