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Re: No adblocker detected

#141

Post by Fnoord »

pfg_ wrote: post #126
Pooge wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. My point still stands that it's possible to have ad revenue with unintrusive ads. For instance, I'm fine with video creators having sponsored sequences because I can skip them if I want. And there's no way for them to know if I watched the ad. In fact, they don't care because they already got paid.

Youtube creators get access to watchtime stats which show a dip for sponsored segments. My understanding is that sponsor contracts typically don't ask to get access to that data though, instead they look at views and refferals

Hey, are you interested in whey powd... I guess not. And often it is the same sponsor in multiple video/audio. No, I am not interested in Crowdstrike. No, i don't want to become a Lord by owning a small amount of land in Scotland. Yes, I know about Ground News but I won't need it and yes, I know you can cheaply buy whey powder, add some flavor and hype it up.

And yet, HN (a text-based website) has advertising. It is a small headline in the list. Do people block this? I don't, and I am quite an adblocking person.

I actually believe billboards are a net minus for public safety. Just like you wouldn't want all kind of unnecessary traffic signs.

Re: No adblocker detected

#142

Post by baud147258 »

nananana9 wrote: post #68
jdprgm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point. Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them. Youtube ad blocking was briefly not working for me recently and the volume of ads just while doing some chores which forced interrupting flow to go manually skip was astounding and enraging. It's like if I was at a quiet library and every…

Most people don't use the internet at a whole - if you just stick to the 10 biggest apps/websites, the experience is acceptable without an adblocker. As for YouTube, blocking their ads is basically a part-time job at this point. On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.

On mobile I use Youtube with Firefox and Ublock Origin never had any issue with it.

Re: No adblocker detected

#143

Post by teekert »

Big tech has slowly convinced us that it is their right to violate us. Because they give us so much for free. But they also take things away from us, without our knowledge and consent, they manipulate us, they make barriers between us en the information we need. They change the human condition for the worse.

We do not have to feel guilty to act against them.

Btw, yesterday Chromium told me Ublock Origin is no longer supported. Well, thank you, now I know why I wasn't using Chromium for anything other than MS365 stuff. It's working just fine on Firefox.

Re: No adblocker detected

#144

Post by Fnoord »

somenameforme wrote: post #89
toastercat wrote: post #41

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeload…

Sites are using ads to be anti-competitive, such that you literally cannot compete with them on price because their price is $0. I'm rather surprised that we haven't seen the emergence of a site where you are literally paid to use it, because that business model is 100% viable. And the reason that business model is viable is because people don't realize how literally valuable their attention is. And most people also…

SomethingAwful forums have this for ages but also newspapers do, too. As do streaming services. Turns out youth don't have much to spend (nor to people generally outside of West), and it stops sockpuppets somewhat.

Re: No adblocker detected

#145

Post by dns_snek »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #132
dns_snek wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider yourself lucky. Some of their A/B tests seem to be designed to psychologically torment you with videos "buffering" for 10-60 seconds before they start playing, navigation taking 15+ seconds. If that happens to you, this thread [1] is sometimes updated with manual workarounds that sometimes work: www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001) www.youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_ena…

Although what you describe seems annoying, still no ads

No ads but it's far worse than just annoying — for me. I get annoyed when a video buffers for 10 seconds due to a technical hiccup. Being made to wait for up to a minute with pretend-technical issues and mocking messages like "Why am I seeing this?" that try to convince me that they're not doing this on purpose is insulting and enraging.

I would gladly pay for an independent alternative but I will never pay for Youtube Premium on principle [1]. If these workarounds stop working I'll just use third party clients all the time, I already use SmartTube on TV.

[1] If I give you my money, I want you to respect me as a customer. Google will continue tracking me, abuse my personal information, and almost certainly re-introduce ads at some point in the future in pursuit of infinite growth. It's never going to be enough, the only winning move (with them) is not to play.

Re: No adblocker detected

#146

Post by Spare_account »

discomrobertul8 wrote: post #134
ahofmann wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this often. My experience is totally different. I've installed ublock origin and I'm using Vivaldi as my blink engine wrapper. I've never seen a YouTube ad since years. I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube.

> I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube. 90% of my YouTube use is on my smart TV. There's not really a straightforward way to block ads there. Used to be many years ago that a PiHole or similar would work, but they clued onto that years ago.

I have a Chromecast with Google TV, and it allows sideloading of APKs. I installed SmartTube which is a YouTube client that incorporates Adblocking and also SponsorBlock.

It periodically has issues loading videos when Google change something, but the app gets updated every time within a day.

Re: No adblocker detected

#147

Post by dspillett »

> Unfortunately, I have no way to detect DNS based blocking short of loading an actual ad.

Before that point I'd already spotted that limitation, but there might be an easy solution: get a domain added to a common block list used by DNS based blockers. If you get the right content from a resource on a host with that name (or the other test passes, so we test for both forms of blocker) show the message.

Of course there will be false positives if the page goes down or if they're is some other network issue, but no test like this will be perfect.

Anyone want to save me the research to find out the easiest way to get a domain on the lists? I have no objection to sacrificing a few £ per year on a name to use and I've got spare resource to serve the pile of tiny requests that'll go through because people aren't running a blocker.

EDIT: as a secondary note, I wouldn't just flip between “display:none” and “display:block” on one element upon detection result. That might cause visual disturbance in many page layouts as things load. I would leave a block of the same positioning and size properties in the flow in either case, either blank or with a message like “You'll be pleased to know that your ad blocker seems to be working.”, perhaps leaving the space blank (but still in the flow with the same dimensions) initially so an incorrect message isn't displayed if something (scripting being disabled client-side for instance) stops the tests running at all.

Re: No adblocker detected

#148

Post by VTimofeenko »

nananana9 wrote: post #68
jdprgm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point. Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them. Youtube ad blocking was briefly not working for me recently and the volume of ads just while doing some chores which forced interrupting flow to go manually skip was astounding and enraging. It's like if I was at a quiet library and every…

Most people don't use the internet at a whole - if you just stick to the 10 biggest apps/websites, the experience is acceptable without an adblocker. As for YouTube, blocking their ads is basically a part-time job at this point. On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.

Consider using dedicated NewPipe repo in F-droid, fixes land much quicker

Re: No adblocker detected

#149

Post by zettabomb »

discomrobertul8 wrote: post #134
ahofmann wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this often. My experience is totally different. I've installed ublock origin and I'm using Vivaldi as my blink engine wrapper. I've never seen a YouTube ad since years. I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube.

> I wonder why anyone has to fight for an ad free YouTube. 90% of my YouTube use is on my smart TV. There's not really a straightforward way to block ads there. Used to be many years ago that a PiHole or similar would work, but they clued onto that years ago.

If it's a Google TV, there's an app you can sideload called SmartTube, which doesn't play ads and has SponsorBlock built-in. I went from often using my laptop just to play videos without being interrupted constantly, to actually enjoying using the TV app.

Re: No adblocker detected

#150

Post by nntwozz »

The ads themselves are one thing, the more sinister part is that they eat battery life and cause extra network activity.

It's like a leech, and they want you to think it's a symbiotic relationship.

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