I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is
I totally forgot how terrible a non-ad-free YouTube experience is
So I've been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I've been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren't allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel's back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn't let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and... wow. It's just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn't enjoy anything that wasn't already demonetized.
And you know I'm fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it's just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I've been on Firefox for over a year.
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This thread is in c/technology, but I swear these are some of the least tech literate comments I've seen. Stop using Chrome, yesterday. Use Firefox, use ublock origin. On Android use Revanced. I never see an ad on my PC or phone using YouTube, including ads in the video by the content creators (sponsorblock is built into Revanced and can by toggled).
I was already on Firefox.
I switched to ublock origin yesterday and it worked for about 2 hours before YT somehow detected it and shut down every video. My fix for that was to disable ublock, refresh, enable ublock, refresh again
Something is wrong, this has not happened to me ever. Is ublock set up to automatically update itself and it's lists?
You might be in different countries. YouTube has shut down adblockers at different rates depending on where you are.
Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I'm a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don't even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads
there have been many posts about YouTube detecting blockers recently and warning users it’s against the ToS. Not sure if they are widespread or not.
Because people are on Chrome.
Just got the popup on FF with Unlock Origin
Ad Block Plus in FF works well too. I haven't had to deal with any of YouTubes ad nonsense.
Regarding people saying the ad blocker is eventually detected; upping your privacy strictness settings might help. I keep settings as strict as I can, and then if there's a site that breaks I'll loosen them on a per-site basis just to allow the minimum needed for the site to function. Or I will sometimes selectively use a chromium browser for limited stuff (ordering grub hub or something)
ABP < Ublock Origin. I'm sorry, it's just facts.
I can't dispute it