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Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

ericdraken.com

151–160 of 659 posts

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#151
post #6

that's not really a "flaw" in protobuf; the protobuf is Working As Intended by decoding the field in a different place when you modify it. i am not sure how one could possibly characterize that as a "flaw," since protobuf is a field-numeric length-prefixed protocol in the first place. it makes a (reasonable) assumption that bytes won't be messed with over the wire, leaving integrity to the reader, so even if this _wa…

I don’t know how mandatory fields work in Protobuf, but to mitigate the attack, Google’s YouTube client could treat the field as mandatory and refuse service when it finds the field to be missing or having a default value.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#152

I've been MITM'ing my traffic to, among other things, strip ads and rewrite pages with things like custom CSS, ever since I discovered The Proxomitron over 2 decades ago. It does tend to get me profiled as a "bot" by CloudFlare and such, but there are not-so-trivial ways around that too. It also shows why things like remote attestation are hazardous for user freedom.

Presumably this involves installing new CA certs on your devices, no?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#153

I just subscribe to YouTube premium to support my favorite application out there. I learn so much from the people who spend hours and hours making videos every month that I am more than happy to pay a measly $13 or whatever it is every month to YouTube.

I’m not against YT premium, but wouldn’t a better choice be to give the people you’re learning from money instead?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nebula sounds like a better fit.

Youtube has the content the GP wants, why switch to a platform with different content?

Because people here like suggesting alternatives that _they_ like.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#155
post #149

I just subscribe to YouTube premium to support my favorite application out there. I learn so much from the people who spend hours and hours making videos every month that I am more than happy to pay a measly $13 or whatever it is every month to YouTube.

If you continue to give Google money you'll continue to get things like AMP, Manifest V3, Web "Integrity", and whatever else they think up to track you across the web. They're an ad company. They pay the creators per impression even if you block the ads. Blocking ads harms Google, not the content producers.

No that's what you get when you're the product by being a free user. Paid service relationship works just fine for me - Google isn't ideal but YouTube is one of my main content sources + YouTube music for my family for slightly more than the price of Spotify family subscription - yeah it's an easy choice.

Spotify suggestions and playlists weren't a seller feature for me for years. Maybe I'm missing out on a few podcasts.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#156
post #28

This reminds me of a now-dockerized Privaxy, which is a UBlock-origin blocklist compatible MITM proxy. It’s crazy to see how many ads and tracking scripts are on smart products, especially my TV where so far in my testing it’s over 40% unnecessary traffic. Its been pretty fun to try and strip out ads on my smart-tv apps. https://github.com/deetungsten/webui-privaxy is the dockerized fork of https://github.com/Barre/p…

Adguard is working on something similar too.

https://github.com/AdguardTeam/urlfilter

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#157
post #45

I've been MITM'ing my traffic to, among other things, strip ads and rewrite pages with things like custom CSS, ever since I discovered The Proxomitron over 2 decades ago. It does tend to get me profiled as a "bot" by CloudFlare and such, but there are not-so-trivial ways around that too. It also shows why things like remote attestation are hazardous for user freedom.

> among other things what else do you MITM for?

MITM is kind of a silly term for what the computer owner is doing when using a forward proxy. If the computer owner binds the proxy to a localhost address, the unencrypted requests need only go over the loopback. There need be no unencrypted requests travelling over the LAN. The computer owner, the "MITM", is on their own computer sitting in between an application and the network interface. That is exactly where they should be, IMHO. Corporations do it. They own the computer and they own their internal networks. It's no different for home users. And WFH is blurring the distinction anyway.

Once the requests leave the computer and travel onto the internet destined for another computer, then of course "MITM" makes sense as a concept. We all want to prevent that.

The computer owner controls the proxy and it's the proxy, not the untrusted application, like a "modern" web browser for example, that handles authentication of the remote peer. Compiling and fully controlling a "modern" browser is a PITA. Almost no one does it, even software developers. Instead people beg for an advertising company or their partner to make changes to a browser. That does not seem to work. Sometimes when people complain it stops the company from making undesired changes. But only temporarily.

Whereas compiling a proxy is easy and the user can fully control it.

Having used many different applications that implement support for TLS, I actually trust the proxy's implementation more than most applications. It's arguably easier to audit one program, the proxy, than it is to check every application to make sure the developer didn't make a mistake when adding TLS support. I recall socat as one example. That mistake went undetected for a long time. Elinks was another. At the time, it was dropped from OpenBSD ports as a result.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#158
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fair to not want pay enshittification tax to rent seekers. The said ability exists on the YT website if you use desktop mode on the mobile browser.

Asking you to pay for service costs and content is not rent seeking. That's not what that phrase means.

No but you have to agree on the enshitification part. Youtube turned to one of the worst UX apps I have on my phone, I hate paying them for such a shitty product and I'm waiting for the time they're off this planet

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#159
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you continue to give Google money you'll continue to get things like AMP, Manifest V3, Web "Integrity", and whatever else they think up to track you across the web. They're an ad company. They pay the creators per impression even if you block the ads. Blocking ads harms Google, not the content producers.

No that's what you get when you're the product by being a free user. Paid service relationship works just fine for me - Google isn't ideal but YouTube is one of my main content sources + YouTube music for my family for slightly more than the price of Spotify family subscription - yeah it's an easy choice. Spotify suggestions and playlists weren't a seller feature for me for years. Maybe I'm missing out on a few podca…

No, Google will keep fucking you over and destroying the Internet, whether you pay or not. Not to mention the fact that what they pay out to creators is absolutely pathetic. Go find their Patreon, their Ko-fi, hell their paypal, anything but giving Google 13 bucks.

Adblocking Google is morally right.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone recall when cable TV first came out - "Pay for cable, see no ads!!!" That didn't last long...

You can go to the cinema, buy a ticket, buy a popcorn, and then watch ads there.

This is why you enter the theater 20 minutes after the hour that is written on the ticket
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