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Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

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Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#71

Post by acdha »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #43
nickthegreek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is what you are looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37873749 But I also recommend purchasing YouTube Premium if you watch a decent amount. I find it to be a great value.

At this point, I consider blocking ads to be a moral obligation. By giving in, you enable Youtube to abuse users further

Stealing is never a moral obligation. The only moral choices are not using YouTube or paying for it - and if you truly believe YouTube abuses users, you definitely shouldn’t be encouraging more people to use it, which your presence does by telling creators they get more traffic there.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#72

Post by drdaeman »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #59
kaelinl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, in turn, will spawn user scripts which work around the detection. Any client-side solution will be an arms race between Google and user script/adblock devs. The only real way to prevent it is to withhold the video stream from the CDN until the client has streamed the full ad and/or bake it into the video stream. My impression is that Twitch does this for its live streams (although not VODs).

Another option is to require Chrome for playback outside of authenticated apps, and lock Chrome down. TBH baking it into the video stream is probably the easiest path. The whole video doesn't have to be re-encoded if the ad is spliced in. This is a "soft lockdown" since the ad can theoretically be manually skipped by the user, but its probably good enough.

I wonder when they’ll completely forgo HTML and will just start serving giant polymorphic/obfuscated WebAssembly blob that would perform all the rendering

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#73

Post by alsodumb »

hh3k0 wrote: post #63
francislavoie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Premium actually gives more money to creators you watch on YouTube than ads do. It's win-win IMO. Save yourself time, give them more money. Also comes with YouTube Music which is quite good (arguably worse than Google Play Music was but eh)

How about I don't watch ads and don't buy premium?

How about you stop using YouTube? Getting annoyed by ads is understandable, but server space isn't free.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#74

Post by Nullabillity »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #41
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #9

uBlock is very much https://xkcd.com/2347/ I know there are other implementations that support the same filters, but it still feels like a big lynchpin in the escalating adblocker war.

I guess the good news is that uBlock Origin is open source, so if the main addon stops being supported, it's possible for someone else to implement a new addon where they left off (indeed, uBlock Origin is this to the original uBlock).

Origin is maintained by the original µBlock author.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#75

Post by paulmd »

idonotknowwhy wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #25

It’s funny to look back on all the people who were doing the “see, the world didn’t fall apart just because apple had to allow sideloading” over the last month. Like the law didn’t even come into effect yet and google is already flexing their monopoly power / browser monoculture, but people think that just because the internet didn’t explosively destruct overnight that everything is gonna be just fine. See also, the…

We'll end up with a Firefox add on to bypass this. And failing that, a piratebay of YouTube videos

The entirety of HDCP exists to prevent this. That has literally been the driving factor in Secure Enclave adoption since day 1 too (along with bitlocker, but, video DRM has always been the other big one).

There will always be vulnerabilities and improper implementations and workarounds, but, the entire point of secure enclave is for someone at netflix or your employer's HQ to be comfortable knowing they have a toehold in your machine that can't be broken via Remote Attestation, and that there is no way for you to get the keys out of it when it's acting as a HSM.

You can always disable it/etc, or use another browser (like firefox) that doesn't provide a secure enclave. But then, google won't serve you video, just like netflix reduces the stream quality for people who don't have the hardware DRM set up right.

Since 95% of the world is already using chrome anyway (other than ios), this is a pretty low-risk move.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#76

Post by Liquix »

eek2121 wrote: post #70

Note: for me,disabling Firefox 'enhanced' protection and updating uBlock Origin filters fixes the issue. An initial packet examination showed little changed. I hope others will weigh in, however.

They are A/B testing various anti-adblock strategies. You might be in the control group

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#77

Post by gruez »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #32
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a place where there are fewer ads" requires some alternate form of monetization. If "paying for it" isn't acceptable to you, what's left?

We had the "old" internet and we had ads... a text banner here and there, and then an image or maybe a gif banner on the other side. Noone really cared, sites got ad views, users got content. Then ads moved to flash (security issues), popups, popups when you close the first popup, video was added, with sounds, two banners became 20, fixed location floating divs were added, and in the case of youtube, a 3 minute video…

> We had the "old" internet and we had ads... a text banner here and there, and then an image or maybe a gif banner on the other side. Noone really cared, sites got ad views, users got content.

The "old" internet was also run by hobbyists without a profit motive, and did not have sites that hosted your videos for free. A few static banner ads might be able to keep the "old" internet afloat, but it certainly would not be able to keep today's internet afloat.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#79

Post by acdha »

dylan604 wrote: post #67
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option is to require Chrome for playback outside of authenticated apps, and lock Chrome down. TBH baking it into the video stream is probably the easiest path. The whole video doesn't have to be re-encoded if the ad is spliced in. This is a "soft lockdown" since the ad can theoretically be manually skipped by the user, but its probably good enough.

baking into the video stream loses their ability to auction off ads in realtime to customize ads per viewer based on all of the analytics they've hoovered up on that viewer. they aren't doing the hoovering to go back to old school pre-determined ad placement

It makes it harder but there’s no technical reason why they couldn’t assemble the video on the fly and splice in ads seamlessly based on the same selection logic they used now.

Re: Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message

#80

Post by jona-f »

gruez wrote: post #69
alwayslikethis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I consider blocking ads to be a moral obligation. By giving in, you enable Youtube to abuse users further

What's the point of blocking ads when they're already not present? Or are you saying that we should block ads and refuse to pay? How is that sustainable in the long term? If you're against ads, shouldn't you support monetization models that don't involve ads?

We treat google how they treat us, as exploitive as possible.
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