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YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

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Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#371

Post by tjlingham »

gregoryl wrote: post #365
madars wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second Chrome drops uBlock Origin (as part of their "Manifest V3 without blocking Web Request" plan), I'm off to an alternative browser. Enough is enough.

Do it now? I use Firefox on all devices, it's completely fine.

I agree, but I do need to keep a chromium browser around for the odd times that: my webcam decides to flicker uncontrollably during a meeting, a website just happens to put JS that runs terribly on Firefox in the hot path and it slows to a crawl, or a new feature is being demonstrated with Chrome only support.

Beats ads, as far as I'm concerned, but I can't help but feel like your average user wouldn't agree.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#373

Post by BeetleB »

stickfigure wrote: post #277
mcdeltat wrote: post #234

I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look, but otherwise no engagement with the platform…

Or just pay for it? I have my whole family on my plan. Nobody gets ads. It is a bargain. You're right, I could probably finish my motorcycle build projects without videos. But why??

If someone really likes Youtube content - sure, I guess. For me the cost isn't worth it - when I compare with other streaming services.

I got rid of the Youtube app from my Roku many months ago, and I haven't missed it. That wouldn't be the case for most other streaming apps that I still have.

I think for me - right from the day Youtube launched - I never liked the interface. It's the worst streaming interface of all the streaming services.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#374

Post by zarzavat »

bitpush wrote: post #363
zarzavat wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARE YOU OVER 40 AND THE ONLY AI YOU KNOW IS CHATGPT? The burden of proof is on the ads to justify why they should be watched, given that the ads themselves provide zero value to the viewer. YouTube ads in particular are a cesspit of scams. I don't want to watch ads for things like Scientology.

Huh? You're on their website to watch videos. And it costs them money to send you those bits. And they offer two ways for you to compensate. Watch ads, or pay premium. What is so difficult for you to understand this business relationship?

It's Google. The relationship is not consensual but adversarial. Google attempts to get free things from me. I attempt to get free things from Google.

It's like asking a lawyer why does he defend an obviously guilty client? Because it's adversarial system, his job is to protect his client, not to worry about the other side. The other side is trying to maximize their advantage too. Google has defined my relationship with it in such terms through its behavior.

If YouTube were still an independent operator I would be more amenable to your argument.

In any case, the fact I can recite an ad from memory shows that I am at least watching some of their ads, notably on mobile.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#375

Post by rasz »

josephcsible wrote: post #211

> This locks a few global objects by using Object.defineProperty to set them as non-writable, which prevents later code from overwriting them with a Proxy that alters their behaviour. So uBlock Origin can only proxy JSON.stringify if it can run before this locker script does. This seems like a bug in browsers, or possibly in the spec. Page content and scripts should never be able to restrict what browser extensions c…

>This seems like a bug in browsers

oh its a Chrome feature! Around 2 years ago Chrome pushed an update that speedup time to load first initial page by delaying Extension initialization. Last page you closed Chrome on will load before uBo, will be able to bypass all filters/block and will be able to detect uBo being loaded.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#376

Post by tomasphan »

tlogan wrote: post #239

Why do we justify blocking ads, even when we know the content we’re consuming isn’t free to create and even if the content is free, it still costs money to store and distribute? We often rationalize using ad blockers because ads can be intrusive or annoying. But let’s asking ourselves: Why do we feel entitled to get this for free? This isn’t a moral judgment. I genuinely want to understand the reasoning.

Ads are a litmus test for how much a service values its users and the ecosystem it’s built upon. When premium cable first replaced broadcast television it had no ads in lieu of a subscription cost. Now you pay a subscription and get ads. The same is true for streaming services which switched to ad supported subscriptions. Let’s look at YouTube; in the early years ads were few and far between, then came mid roll ads, then end roll ads, then multiple ads in a row. Now YouTubers started doing their own ad reads, baked into the video. We’re in a growth oriented era, so companies and individuals will take more and more, as much as they can to keep the numbers going up. What they’re taking is your time; a very precious commodity in my opinion.

Why do I Adblock? Because a line must be drawn or else this marketing growth engine will consume everything. I mean literally without any consumer pushback this attention extraction engine will continue expanding until every moment of digital consumption is monetized. It’s already destroyed too much of the internet.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#377

Post by rasz »

ranger_danger wrote: post #9

I'm surprised they don't just inject the ads directly into the video stream, I think that would solve their issue overnight (not that I want any ads personally). You could also rate-limit it to the playback speed to prevent pre-downloading the stream easily. But now that everything uses HLS/DASH, it's easy to inject different content right in the middle of the stream without re-encoding anything.

They are working on it. Web YT player no longer fetches separate video and audio streams from the server, it requests them pre bundled and receives a single server side muxed stream.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#378

Post by cyberax »

I'm curious, has someone tried the authenticated Youtube Premium API in third-party clients?

I'd love to use Invidious or Peertube to watch the videos, but I also want my subscription money to go to the video creators. Youtube allocates it proportionally to the viewing time.

Re: YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

#379

Post by adzm »

memset wrote: post #296
mcdeltat wrote: post #234

I recently stopped watching youtube altogether and surprisingly haven't been missing it. And I used to watch a LOT (like hours per day) of youtube, mostly quality educational/scientific content. But ultimately you'd be surprised how much you don't need in your life. And side effect is no more ads. If someone sends me an occasional youtube video to watch, I'll take a look, but otherwise no engagement with the platform…

What do you do with all the extra time? How do you keep from sliding back?

Wait you people have extra time?!?
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