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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?

#81

Post by guacaswole »

Flow wrote: post #20
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…

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.

I use Wipr, I’m in Australia and on Catalina. Now see Ads on YouTube, even when I update. Now I understand why.

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

#83

Post by wffurr »

teekert wrote: post #75

I just switched from Android and I love iOS (iPhone 12 mini). But man do I miss Firefox (the real one, not the Safari skin) and man do I miss f-droid (specifically gems like GadgetBridge). If only I could have those 2 things.

There's Cydia: https://cydia-app.com/

And if you have a Mac, you can build and install apps on your own device with Xcode. No Apple developer paid account required.

AltStore does something similar by signing IPA files with your personal key: https://altstore.io/.

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

#84

Post by happybuy »

Part of the problem – as AdGuard concedes in the post – is that Easy List (which AdGuard and many other ad blockers use) is a woefully inefficient rule list with over 50,000 entries. Many of which are out of date, redundant and not optimised for performance.

This leads to excessive memory use and performance slowdowns and is one of the reasons why there is a 50,000 rule limit in the Safari Content Blocking API.

As a developer of an alternate ad blocker[1] for the iPhone, iPad and Mac you can deliver a full featured, quality ad blocker with less than 5,000 core rules. This provides a faster and more efficient ad blocking experience.

As they note however, YouTube ad blocking is a more difficult problem to solve, but can be done cleanly on macOS. At least at the moment it can't be done 100% on iOS without Apple rolling out some additional features to Safari on that platform.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/

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

#85

Post by defaultname »

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).

If we go down that road, however, sites can make ads completely indistinguishable from desired content. Same domain, same stream, no easily marked container. All of the imperative adblocking tech in the world, short of queuing everything through a neural engine post render, can block what is possible.

So there has always been a detente between adblockers and publishers, presuming the former hit a small enough set of users that it was just ignored. It seems that is no longer the case.

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

#86

Post by jcastro »

Dah00n wrote: post #71
ascagnel_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a Pi-Hole on my local network, and I still see YouTube ads -- they're served from the same CDN as the videos. The way in which YT delivers ads (pre-, mid-, and post-roll videos on the same CDN/domain as the content) seems, on the surface, to thwart any type of static ad detection.

This is more of a rant on Pi-hole than related to Youtube ads but... Pi-hole can be fine but it isn't effective if you want it to block not only the lowest hanging fruits which a browser adblocker could easily block too but also stuff that doesn't follow the rules and might use hardcoded DNS IPs if they can't get the reply they want from the DNS server. With some Windows PC's, Apple devices, Chromecasts and Androids…

Have you tried self hosted adguard? It's very performant and can use any of the lists you can use with pihole: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome

Switched a few years ago and it's great!

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

#87

Post by Silhouette »

anticristi wrote: post #46
namdnay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now give me a bit of slack here, because I'm arguing a position I don't necessarily 100% believe in, and I don't pay for youtube red myself. But your argument sounds a bit to me like someone saying "I think this supermarket takes a too big cut on these apples, maybe if they split the price 50-50 with the growers I'd be happy to pay, but as it is I think I'll just take them for free"

While I do agree that I deprive Google of some revenue, not watching ads is not stealing. Otherwise, whole US would be in jail for going to the toilet during Friends commercials. :) Ad blockers simply automate that process for me. I love supporting creators via Patreon. I hate feeding a giant that will any day turn against both creaters and viewers. Not sure if I'm rationalising or defending creators.

The arguments that blocking ads are somehow unethical or depriving a business providing a hosting service of its cut of ad revenue hold very little weight for me.

If a service wants to ensure viewers pay, it would be easy enough for any organisation with the resources to offer large-scale video hosting in the first place to put the content behind a paywall and earn revenue actively from giving access to that content. That way, access without paying would be more difficult and, in most places, probably illegal.

But these services typically don't do that. Why? Presumably they have made a decision that offering the content openly is in their interests, even if they then have to rely on passive revenue channels such as ads, affiliate/referral payments, or promoting associated brands.

In that case, I don't think they have much right to complain when a lot of people access the content they make freely available in legal ways but without contributing to indirect revenue streams when they have no obligation to do so.

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

#88

Post by graftak »

anticristi wrote: post #7
twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I would, but: 1. I feel a 45% cut to YouTube is too big. Compare that to Patreon, which takes 5%. Granted YouTube offers a lot more for their cut, but the difference feels too big, especially given point 2 below. 2. YouTube is extremely untransparent about revenue sharing, so it feels like I'm paying Google, not the creators. So give me more transparency and take a smaller cut, and I'll be happy to disable my ad bloc…

3. It includes a music subscription that makes it more expensive than Netflix, I find this quite insane considering they’re in the business of hosting user generated content.

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

#89

Post by decasteve »

topicseed wrote: post #67
decasteve wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serving videos without ads was how YouTube's monopoly was built. It became an ad platform later. That created an expectation that YouTube was a library in the public interest. Pre-2010 Google marketing had that public interest and internet stewardship angle to it. Serving content over the web assumes that the content will be downloaded by a browser for rendering. Control over what and how that content gets rendered i…

You're mentioning the end user's learned expectation to get videos for free. But what about the creator's expectation to get paid for their hard-earned views, to then pay for the gear purchased and the production of the entire video, including team members? If you're really anti ads, don't take the content for free, find another piece of content that answers your ad-free philosophy.

I'm saying platforms can't have it both ways. If they want to avoid ad-blockers and video downloaders then pick another medium, or invent one and create a new thing that achieves this objective. The web is not TV. Public content on the web is public and user-rendered. That's what made the web and YouTube what it is today.

YouTube has every right to create a proprietary YouTube client (which they do on mobile devices) and prevent browsers from accessing it. Don't serve files to my browser if you don't want me to use them.

Creators, for better or worse, are putting themselves at the mercy of YouTube, as serfs to feudal lords. I'm sympathetic, and happy to pay (and do) for your goods directly, but don't complain to me if your lord mismanages your affairs.

Even TV users had VCRs to save content "offline".

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

#90

Post by sharps1 »

wayneftw wrote: post #30
twobitshifter wrote: post #2

The battle between ad platforms and users is going to be never ending. For YouTube, the _right_ thing to do is to pay for the premium option which removes ads. Otherwise as difficult as it is to say, you are getting something for nothing and people do make a living from YouTube videos. Ok, maybe you can contribute to a patreon outside of YouTube, but you’re not going to do that for everyone and those videos are not s…

I would pay to get rid of ads. The only problem is that I would need to log into YouTube to take advantage of that. If I log into YouTube, that requires me to be logged into Google everywhere and I do not want that at all. The only solution is to use Firefox containerization or use separate browsers or separate browser profiles for things and I'm not going to do any of those because all of those options are annoying…

I have a separate profile that is set-up for Google (In Brave). You could also use a container tab if using Firefox (Or even a profile, but FF profiles don’t work as well as Brave ones).

You can also see the YouTube creators who have BAT accounts set-up.

I do pay for YT premium family as well as I don’t want other family members to see ads.

Regarding FF profiles - if using more than one at a time, you need to set the others to -no-remote, and then opening links only ever opens up in the main windows. In chromium browsers when opening outside links whatever browser profile that had focus last opens the links).

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