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YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

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Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#191

Post by antonok »

ameshkov wrote: post #70
cgb223 wrote: post #68

Has anyone used iOS browsers with adblocking built in? How do Firefox and Brave compare to Adguard or 1BlockerX? Any other browsers out there that do a better job?

All those browsers have to use Safari (WKWebView) internally so they are close. There’s an important difference, these browsers can also run additional JS on web pages and partly compensate for missing content blocking capabilities. This could help to an extent, but I am not sure if the said browsers do that.

Brave on iOS does inject JS into YouTube and other sites. It uses exactly the same `+js(...)` injections as Brave on desktop and Android, as well as uBlock Origin, which is really helpful.

Unfortunately, JS can't solve everything... the WKWebView restrictions are definitely a huge frustration. Brave for Android and desktop both build from a single codebase, but everything has to be reimplemented to work on iOS too.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#192

Post by vbezhenar »

shawnz wrote: post #58
yliu wrote: post #6

Despite the title being about YouTube, this is fundamentally about Safari's declarative Content Blocker API being totally inadequate in the face of modern ad delivery technologies. Yes, it's fast and relatively more secure compared to old ad blocking techniques (which requires granting full access to effectively arbitrary JS), but ad tech has evolved since 2015 and Safari's Content Blocking API has not evolved with i…

This is basically the exact fear which was being expressed by users when Google announced that they would require Chrome extensions to only use declarative content blocking starting with Manifest v3 (which anecdotally convinced me to switch to Firefox).

Blocking YouTube ads requires injecting JS, it had nothing to do with Manifest.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#193

Post by Ballas »

ameshkov wrote: post #29
Flow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Wipr as a content blocker on both macOS and iOS. I never see ads on YouTube. But I've always felt that it might not be enough some day. Perhaps that day is nearly here.

Note that YT changes aren’t yet rolled out everywhere. Also, if you’re not authorized there’ll be no issues, but it won’t stay like that forever.

I'm not authorized and started getting the new ads about a week ago (with wipr).

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#194

Post by yc12340 »

acdha wrote: post #169
kibwen wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if that became widespread we’d just see more embedded placement Which is completely desirable. The problem isn't "ads", it's "targeted, personalized ads that rely on thoroughly destroying the the privacy of everyone on the internet in order to function". If a show/podcast wants to vet its own advertisers and endorse a specific product, that's great; it establishes a concrete relationship with the advertisers that h…

That’s one option but it’s not what’s happening. Historically ads were easily blocked because they came from different domains; as we’re seeing now increased deployment of blockers has lead to things like CNAME cloaking or even first-party hosting. The amount of money at play is enough that they’re going to keep trying more invasive approaches as the old ones become less profitable. The podcasts I mentioned aren’t ru…

> Historically ads were easily blocked

Historically ads were served by the site owner at their own discretion. Prior to that ads were served by TV and radio channels. None of those approaches were easy to block.

Dedicated ad networks on separate domains are relatively recent fad (since ~15 years ago). A lot websites still ship first-party ads, many have never stopped to.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#195

Post by ameshkov »

contriban wrote: post #179
Scarbutt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adguard requires an electron app(wut?) to run in the background to provide much of its functionality, is Wipr like this too?

No. Wipr is a clean content blocker. I don’t know how it handles auto-updates of the blocklist, but I definitely don’t need to keep the app open nor does it add buttons to the interface like AdGuard does.

Running the app is not mandatory and neither is adding buttons to the interface. If you just need content blockers, you can simply enable just them, close the app and forget about it until you feel the need to check filters updates.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#196

Post by nexuist »

Labo333 wrote: post #64

Unfortunately, the web gets everyday closer to some kind of "interactive TV". Computations are moving to the server side and clients are merely there to get input and display information. An illustration is the very controversial Mighty browser. As a result, programs will shortly become dependent on having an internet connection. Today, people use more Google Docs than Notepad. This removes a lot of freedom because c…

The entire server-first computational model of today is a direct result of the disastrous adoption of NAT, which killed peer to peer applications and from which the P2P market is still recovering from (uPnP was one such [failed] attempt to fix the problem, now WebRTC and its friends STUN/TURN are up next).

Google Docs doesn't have to run on Google servers. It could run on any operating system and work from anywhere provided that you and whoever you want to work with have public IP addresses. But because everyone and everything is behind a corporate or residential router, this avenue is not available unless you are willing to work for it -- and in the case of a corporate network, you literally can't do anything except connect to a third party proxy (or a first party server) in order to be able to talk to your friends' computers. There's also no good way to handle the mobile phone problem, in which your IP address changes every so often as you pass between cell towers.

Ultimately, having each client connect to a centralized server and shuttling data between them server-side ended up being the much better solution instead of the far more attractive option (to users anyways) of connecting to each other directly.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#197

Post by warpech »

dilap wrote: post #129
viktorcode wrote: post #44

There's some misconceptions being put forth in the article which I, as a developer of a Safari ad blocker, would like to address. Content blockers are limited by design to ensure privacy and speed, but they may work together with other kinds of Safari extension. So, when AdGuard guys say that the only debugging tool you can use is Console, know that this isn’t true. There’s SFSafariExtensionHandler API which you can…

> but it isn’t a priority. I would kill for this.

Unpopular opinion: you can subscribe to YouTube Premium to stop ads on YT on all your devices

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#198

Post by hughrr »

ehsankia wrote: post #141
stemlord wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm gonna pay for a service it sure as shit isn't gonna be from a company with no customer support system

They have plenty customer support if you're a paying customer. Pay for Google One [0] for example and you get Customer Support for all Google services. [0] https://one.google.com/about/support

Have you actually tried Google customer support? I had more success out of staring at a banana for half an hour and waiting for an epiphany than paid GSuite support.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#199

Post by izacus »

mullingitover wrote: post #121
topicseed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They, at least, offer a free hosting service. Not ideal to monetize on the back of the creator's work, but it's not comparable with friendly piracy rationalised through semantics behind what User Agent means (as per parent comment).

Not free anymore - they're now adware that's monetizing your viewers after unilaterally changing terms and cutting you out of the deal. It arguably puts them on equal footing with people who unilaterally change the terms of the site usage deal and block their ads. Remember, forcing you to watch ads means it's not free - it's you trading irreplaceable moments of your life for something. Unless your time is worth absol…

Why are you constantly ignoring the fact that they also keep paying for all the bandwidth, encoder CPU use and development of playback platforms for any device brand capable of showing a video out there?

Try running a hosting platform yourself and you'll quickly see just how crazy expensive bandwidth is. It's just ridiculous to expect that someone will 100% subsidize your video bandwidth for free.

Re: YouTube ads in Safari: you see them now, will you see them in the future?

#200

Post by ajsnigrutin »

yc12340 wrote: post #194
acdha wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s one option but it’s not what’s happening. Historically ads were easily blocked because they came from different domains; as we’re seeing now increased deployment of blockers has lead to things like CNAME cloaking or even first-party hosting. The amount of money at play is enough that they’re going to keep trying more invasive approaches as the old ones become less profitable. The podcasts I mentioned aren’t ru…

> Historically ads were easily blocked Historically ads were served by the site owner at their own discretion. Prior to that ads were served by TV and radio channels. None of those approaches were easy to block. Dedicated ad networks on separate domains are relatively recent fad (since ~15 years ago). A lot websites still ship first-party ads, many have never stopped to.

First party ads are also a part of many content creators (eg. "this video is sponsored by NordShadowraid Wallet"), and currently, the only way to block them is via crowdsourcing (eg. sponsorblock addon).
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