YouTube is now fully blocking ad blockers around the world
Since May, YouTube has ramped up its block of ad blockers and the company has now fully launched this policy worldwide...
cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/2787773 (!google@lemdro.id)
Some solutions:
Where is YouTube ReVanced?
Thank you so much for sharing Yattee and the guide.
For iOS I really like Vinegar.
Currently not working, but Firefox Focus is!
A fix for Vinegar is on the way.
Tangential question - what is stopping youtube from restricting access to their API for 3rd party apps like Reddit did?
SSSSSSHHHH
Embeds, probably
Remember people start logging out for these services. Any day they could decided to start terminating accounts if this whole anti Adblocking campaign doesn’t get subscriber numbers up
Hmm Yattee keeps saying “connection error service unavailable”
MacOS also supports freetube. Been using a few months now, it’s excellent. Just clarifying in case folks see desktop and want to be sure.
Sideload uYouPlusExtra on iOS
I am aware of this option, but sideloading on iOS currently kinda sucks. You have to use AltStore which sometimes goes unmaintained for a few months, even when it's maintained it's kinda buggy and the Windows version almost never works for me. It's also not available for Linux. And you have to connect your phone to a computer running AltStore every 7 days, otherwise the app will stop functioning. It's just not a great solution and especially bad for less tech-savvy users.
Just use a proper ad-blocker like uBlock Origin in combination with a browser like Firefox or LibreWolf that supports proper ad-blocking extension. Fuck this Chromium garbage that deprecated MV2 because Google is scared of adblockers. Don't support Google's monopoly on browser rendering engines and use Firefox or something even better like LibreWolf.
Ya know, I've seen a lot of posts regarding Elon Musk spam in this community, and calls to "ban" them, yet every week we get gloom and doom posts like this when some new subset of the world starts seeing this shit. I'd really like to see a pinned message about the fix, which is...
If you visit YouTube and see the pop-up, the page isn't loading the video content, or it just seems to be acting strange, do the following:
I literally have no other installed add-ons for ad blocking, anymore. Only uBlock Origin. Any time I see the message or YouTube starts acting up, I just repeat those 7 steps above for any YouTube tab that was already open, and viola, the video plays. It has simplified so many issues for me and reduced the number of adblock extensions I need to run.
I definitely plan on donating this holiday season to their team, probably the biggest share of the pie between the FOSS apps I enjoy and appreciate. Should uBlock Origin ever fail, I'll just stop going to YouTube.
Apparently you can't donate to them.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F
The element picker and disable JS button are also a life saver. Gets around so many shitty things about the modern web. The one thing I agree with from Brave (Firefox all the way though) is including uBlock by default (I just wish they gave credit).
Or just live with a couple five second ads, it's not the end of the world. At the end of the day, YouTube is a business, not a charity.
Intrusive and sneaky ads like the ones on YouTube should be heavily regulated if not illegal.
Edit: especially ads louder than the average content volume, repetitive jingles designed to get stuck in your head, billboards, and ads thrown in the middle of the video you’re watching
"Loud" is unfortunately hard to quantify. There's a lot of psychoacoustics that mean that the number of decidels really doesn't tell you what's loud and what's not.
This is a great demo of how sounds can appear extremely loud without actually being physically very loud: https://youtu.be/tONF9OSUOSw?t=7m16s
Anyway the point is that it's hard to make rules about this kind of thing, because sound is subjective and there are ways to circumvent any restrictions you make.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/tONF9OSUOSw?t=7m16s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Sounds like you haven't watched a lot of free to air tv haha
Free to air is heavily regulated in my country if it had a fraction of the fraudulent grifter ads Google would be shut down
Ads in those are also regulated in civilised countries.
Luckily all that is prosecutable by Ofcom here so it very rarely happens.
Googles ad platform is utterly full of fraudulent scams and grifters. Bring on regulations and HEAVY fines for Google making profit of fraud and crimes.
Ublock Origin on firefox still work for me no filter
It's pretty random whether you get the message or not. Some of my friends, including me, straight up cannot watch youtube on their website half of the time anymore, because it full blocks us. It's not just an annoying message, videos actually just don't play. But I only get it on some days. I think the message only pops up if you've been watching for more than like an hour straight. Then again, some of my friends have never seen the message. Who knows. Just more weird big tech server bullshit. Like how twitter's api works 15% of the time (for me).
Purge cache and refresh does the trick if you have problems with the firefox+ublock combination. Or you have some other active extensions which prevents ublock from doing its thing.
Been watching for 3h straight and still no pop or problem with videos but when time eventually come I'll try to setup UBO filter or using 3rd party frontend
I'm daily using uBlock Origin (with Firefox) on Windows, and ReVanced on Android, and have experienced zero indications that Google is at war with ad blockers. These two are fucking fantastic and highly recommended. I don't expect it to last forever, but bravo to these devs and contributors.
Firefox with Adblocker Ultimate working fine for me as of last night. I'll check again tonight.
They blocked me with that combo on my PC a week ago.
Librewolf is one that might work for you
It isn't blocking my uBlock Origin on Firefox.
It does on mine, sometimes, so I clear cache, update uBlock, restart Firefox. In general it blocks them again
Or mine on Vivaldi. It was showing me the notice the other week, but seems to have stopped now. Either they are now time limiting youtube before the ad blocking thing comes back, or uBlock upped the ante.
Your uBlock probably updated. uBlock has pretty much been able to successfully block YouTube's adblocker block since YouTube started blocking adblockers, so long as you kept the filters updated.
Never seen that banner or an ad. I guess it's just a matter of time though 😕
uBlock Origin is reliably blocking the blocker blocker for me at this time, though a few popups got through a couple weeks ago.
Same, it's a cat and mouse battle .. lol
Yo dawg, I heard you like blockers
Brave for iOS (sorry firefox gang I appreciate you guys) is working fine for me. I had some issues with both Firefox/uB and Brave on windows getting the pop-ups.
I got the pop up a couple of times until I manually updated uBlock's filters list. After that, no issues.
Brave is a bit sketch and the heads are kind of problematic. I would consider making the swap. Bonus points for not supporting chromium which helps google.
I used Brave for two years, swapped over to Firefox about a year ago and couldn’t be happier. Literally nothing Brave does for me that I can’t do on Firefox. Plus no crypto spam.
No, they most certainly are not.
Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone the way.
Be brave, tell everyone
I wish I could donate to ublock origin so badly. I never even saw the popup.
I didn't know they don't accept donations: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F
They make some interesting points, though.
As asked by uBo's creator: please donate to the list maintainers instead.
What a solid guy.
I get there's a heap of people on here who've somehow never seen these new anti-popup measures before, but they're definitely becoming more prevalent.
I switched to uBlock and purged the caches and it seems to have fixed the issue (for now anyway)
At some point I'll have to find a more permanent solution like switching browsers but right now things are working
a more permanent solution would be using an alternative front end like piped. there are a lot of public instances available
Use clients such as LibreTube. It works great and even allows skipping sponsored content.
never seen the youtube anti-adblock stuff.
Mullvad vpn + mullvad browser + ublock origin + never logging into google....
Also freetube, also newpipe...
Maybe they don't bother trying to block vpn users?
I use a VPN, and I saw the popup.
from what I've read incognito mode is still unaffected, but thats just rumors online
If you have a VPN just set your location to a place they don’t run ads
I saw them, then I purged ublocks cache and updated and they have been gone ever since (also on firefox, because I switched as soon as I read the news that they would pull this stunt on all chromium browsers a year ago).
No change for me, youtube sure is trying but ublock origin keeps fighting the good fight
Gotta love those guys
Firefox + uBlock Origin here still holding strong.
Nooo. YouTube thinks it's fully blocking ad blockers. In reality nothing's changed.
in reality nothing’s changed
I would not say that. Nothing has changed for you and me.
The barrier for blocking them has once again raised a little bit. When you are talking about hundreds of millions of users, that leads to significant peel off. They don’t need to stop everybody, they just need to stop enough people or make it enough of a pain that “the average user” just gives up and accepts the status quo.
Yeah yt-dlp has been my strat this whole time anyway. Also Piped and Invidious get the job done when i'm too lazy to type in one short command for every video I watch.
Also, specifying format with yt-dlp is unnecessary ("-f 22") if you have ffmpeg installed iirc because it automatically selects the highest quality, thus shortening the command even further.
This was annoying me in browsers so i did a bit of reading and found out that not only can I remove their ad block blocker in browser, but my TVs also support ad free YouTube. Thanks Google! Couldn't have done it without you.
Can you point me to ad free tv please
SmartTube (formerly SmartTubeNext).
Get any stick that runs android tv or fire TV and install freetubenext. Ads gone.
No problems here whatsoever, I don't know what everybody is talking about. Remember to donate some bucks to your favorite open source adblock (or piping app), thank you.
UBlock doesn't accept donations.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F
I would otherwise.
UK Firefox user here.... All good
It made an attempt for sure, a cute one at that 🤣
I was just using Chrome with ublock origin at work and didn't see jack shit.
**as best as they can
was patchy 2 weeks ago but havnt had an issue in over a week now. we are winning so far
... yes. I know because you've told me 25 times in the last week.
Nope. FF with UBO still works perfectly.
Ssh! Yes, me too, but don't let YouTube know that.
Oh! Yeah! I can't watch videos without tons of adverts every 15 nanoseconds!!
The ReVanced app still works just fine.
This will definetly be a shot in the foot for Google, the beginning of YouTube's downfall
Only cloud hosting providers can provide hosting for themselves as cheaply as google. Microsoft and Amazon (except through prime video and twitch) have shown no interest in entering the fray. The downfall will only come through antitrust.
Federation will be the only real option considering the massive storage and bandwidth requirements. Even then, once an instance starts to grow, they'll have to come up with some type of monetization strategy.
Even a low population instance will likely need many terabytes of storage.
I don't see how federation makes economic sense for video serving/hosting. To do it economicaly you need to have local data centers with peering agreements with local ISPs and good deals for transit. Only big data companies (Google) and huge or specialized self hosts(daily motion, Facebook), can really do it.
Reddit and Vimeo were stupid for hosting video on cloud services for that reason. Reddit wouldn't have been in such an economic crunch if they weren't burning money by serving video on the cloud.
Finally some fucking space for competitors
beginning
I hope PeerTube gets better
Please yes, it needs a lot of better.
The downfall of YouTube is creators being paid more for their work?
Me still haven't seen that shit, but my cousin does. Weird
Same, but I think it has to do with uBlock Origin updating. Nothing on my PC but saw it on a laptop.
A quick cookie purge and updating uBO and it was solved.
I don't get it, I use a variety of browsers and apps, with or without VPN. I even scrape channel RSS from the same IP and have never seen this.
You didn't state if you use an adblock extension, which is what this is all about.
Using some sort of ad-blocking is default. I haven't seen more than the occasional ad before the filters update for more than a decade and a half.
I’m self hosting an invidious instance and not once have I noticed any interruptions. 10/10 just use a public invidious instance and be done with it
Firefox nightly working lime a charm. I would rather download any video I want to see than using the shitty native app.
Three one minute adds was enough for me.
I have not changed anything about my browsing habits and I spend like 12 hours a day on YT, haven't yet seen this. Not very universal.
3 similar but different questions:
PC (ubuntu) and Android both w/ FF & uB. Have yet to see this in Canada.
But it does typically take Google a little while to remember that we're part of the world..
Pc, usa, chrome
My phone, my partner's phone, home pc, my partner's home pc, work pc, laptop, tv. Canada.
Nerds rejoice, we will never be defeated
They could put the ads in the data stream instead of implementing it client-side. But that is likely prohibitively expensive or cuts their ability to target ads.
And I just followed instructions on this page
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/19976
And it fixed it
Definitely not blocking here.. but.. I have to ask. Which takes precedence, YouTube's T&C's or EU law?
Obviously, the law beats any T&C.
Grayjay is the best all in all app for Android and Invidious Cross Platform. It syncs everything.
Love the Ficsit mug in the photo 😆
It has? 🤔
Just checked for myself and I'm not getting any popups, but perhaps it just hasn't quite hit my region yet?
Maybe you're like me and are already blocking the popups, too.
Google chrome U block user here. Still works fine
Get off chrome go to Firefox. Seriously it will just take you days to adjust and basically every extension available on chrome is available as an add-on on Firefox. If you’re using a password manager it’s even easier, because Firefox supports every major password manager as well.
The best and easiest thing we can do to help reduce Google’s footprint that actually matters is to get off chrome. Their browser dominance gives them such an advantage. It’s really hard to quantify the damage they can and have wrought.
is to get off chrome.
And stil lpaying visito to its search engine, using gmail or youtube... Stop using Google's products, instead of complaining about ads.
Firefox won't rise anymore from its 3-something%, no matter what you people do. Mozilla has been able to alienate a lot of their most loyal users.
Is it just me or is WireMin closed source?
In addition, the app contains Google tracker (This is what App Manager shows).
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this app recommended in Lemmy and I don’t understand why.
I think there are a lot of similar apps in Google Play.
Upd: I checked Damus. Contains 24 trackers. 😂
I just use the Vivaldi Browser and watch all my YouTube in browser. shrug
Until yesterday I was blocked from youtube, despite using UBO. Today it works. I don't know if it is random or if UBO does something. Possibly it will stop working again. In any case I started using piped (hope they don't decide to do something with it).
UBO updates their filters when they can, as they find and fix changes.
Youtube directly responds to those patches by updating their system. Last I checked, they do this twice a day.
Any time your UBO isnt stopping youtube, you are using filters from before youtubes last update. Opening your UBO settings, clearing and updating your filters, and refreshing your browser fixes this.
The only time it doesnt is if UBO hasnt patched youtubes most recent changes. This window of time is teeeny tiny.
there was an attempt
I only use Firefox for youtube and nothing else... it still just works the same as ever - the only ads I see are the ones the creators make themselves for sponsors. I only use Chromium-based browsers for anything that has nothing to do with google...
Try Sponsorblck. It can block sponsors, and a couple of other things. You can also set a skip button for specific segments and skip them if you want. Users like you can mark sponsor and other segments for others to be able to skip.
Not on my PC
I’ll just use an ad blocker-blocker
uBlock Origin has that feature built in
That is what google uses, after all they attempt to block your adblocker. You would need an ad blocker-blocker-blocker.
You think they don't have spies?
I recon at least 1 of the users here relays information to them, or even IS working for them.
I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in several years. Doubt I'll ever see one.
Haven't seen an anti-adblock message yet, and I block ads in all sorts of ways across my devices.
No issues with revanced
Same here
No they don't.
I got fed up with this shit and invested a bit of time into getting a working Premium Family plan through a cheap country (Ukraine is about $4 per month). I invited my whole family (parents included) so essentially 6 people have an ad-free YouTube now for less than $1 each (per month). I assume that's still less than what they have gotten by serving us a shit ton of ads. And I am rid of that cat and mouse game for a while.
How would I go about doing the same?
As others said: VPN. Ukraine seems to work good currently, since the Credit Card address isn't validated. Cheaper countries like India or Turkey now check if the CC you use is from that country. That is a bit more complicated to pull off, so that wasn't worth it for me.
VPN to the country of your choice, then hit the sign up page for the service your interested in.
I guess they made an account via VPN?
Love how Lemmy downvotes anyone who pays for anything. Such a great place for discussion! Definitely no echo chamber here.
For the service they offer (the hosting basically) I am actually willing to pay quite a bit. But what they typically ask for (about €15 for a single account) that's just not worth it, given that YouTube isn't the producer of the content they serve. Music might be a bit more complicated thanks to the fucking idiotic way how licensing around that works. Anyway: nothing of that excuses the excessive use of ads they serve nowadays.
lol, good luck with that Google
with FF and ublock i can watch yt as always. Never got the poup. But as of today, the youtube page is just blank. I can search and watch anything, but the start-page is blank. (no account)
