YouTube confirms 3-strike policy for blocking ads

What's with every big tech company trying to destroy their userbase this year?
- Interest rates hikes stopped the free money, so companies need profit.
  I’d argue they don’t need $500 million when they already make $400 million, but I’m just a lowly peasant.
  tl;dr: capitalism
- they think they have us sufficiently cornered on centralized sites, they may be right.
  
  Especially with video. Reddit was easy-ish to leave -- I haven't left entirely -- since it's just a link aggregator and glorified forums. That's nothing new to the Internet. And Twitter was easy to replace with Mastodon.
  But hosting video? That's a tough one to replicate. I know there are some other platforms out there, but I can't imagine any could really take on YouTube, due to space and bandwidth considerations.
  So yeah, I think YouTube has us all by the balls. And they know it.

Recently found this gem: https://adnauseam.io/
It's an ad blocker that only hides ads and clicks them for you in the background, which means you waste advertiser's money, support creators, can't get flagged for ad blocking as easily, and they can't build a proper profile against your ad activity since it's all noise. Haven't installed it yet, but this might be the push I needed.
- This might be an acceptable sollution, but what happens on the other side of the ad? If something maliciously is being spreaded, the click might have to happen in an isolated form from the rest of the system or the browser.
- The question is: How much data about me and my browser does clicking on the ads leak? I'm using libre wolf with additional hardening, including noscript, and I suspect that clicking on ads will not even register with the ad company?

Personally, I'd rather pay for Nebula than YouTube premium. Most of the creators I actively follow are on there anyways, and the few that aren't (usually the ones with very long videos) I should probably just watch with ads anyways to support them.
- I had a similar thought. How fair is nebula to their creators? I heard it was somehow creator owned, but other than that I have no idea how it works.

Mmmm, gotta love that enshittification strategy every big tech company is working on right now.
- Free money ended, they are trying to squeeze

Someone in the Fediverse (I don't know where and who) posted that you have to add the following filters into U-Block Origin. When done you shouldn't see any anti-adblock-warnings :

youtube.com##+js(set,yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel,false) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.adBlocksFound,O) youtube.com##+js(set,ytplayer.config.aras.raw_player_response.adPlacements,[]) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.hasAllowedlnstreamAd,true)
I might add that I haven't experienced any anti-adblock-warnings yet, but I added these filters in advance. I might be worth a shot!
- Also or just use a front-end like as Piped (https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) or Invidious (https://github.com/iv-org/invidious)
  A handy externsion of FIrefox wil automatically redirects you, see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/
  
  Thank you! I was aware of Invideous and I tried that in the past. However, Invideous-redirected videos always seemed to be slow, then disconnected or I experienced buffering. I'll give the firefox extension for libdirect a try. I tested it and it seems to work flawlessly.
- Nice! Im gonna throw these in. I havent had any warnings yet either but the experience of using the official YT site/app without some kind of blocker is horrendous.

Another executive-driven decision by people who clearly don't use their own product (kinda impressive really when it's YT).
I can't help wonder if they saw an uptick in adblocking as a result of their absurd increases in ad-time recently and somehow thought this was a reasonable solution.
- 8-10 unskippable ads before a video? Holy shit. That's ludicrous.
  
  It really is hard to fathom how that got through any internal discussion.
- I rarely use YouTube, but my nephew (he's two) was over the other day and we put on some cartoons for him that were in YouTube since my wife and I don't have Disney plus. I couldn't BELIEVE how many ads it showed. One five-minute merry melodies cartoon had FOUR SEPARATE ad breaks, the third and fourth of which were both 3+ minutes long if you weren't paying attention to skip.
  Wtf?! Not even shit ass normal broadcast television has that many commercials.
  
  Feels like every year corporations rely on the naivety of youth in an attempt to push more and more egregious shit.

And what are the consequences of "strikes"? Will you delete my Google account, including my email, and also screw up my Android phone and my kids Chromebook?
It's scary to realize that Google has me by the balls here. They can screw me in so many ways, and screw my family members as well. I'd rather have my bank credentials stolen than my email credentials, at least I can get real customer service from the bank, I can even go to a physical location and speak face-to-face with someone who can help me. Google wont give me customer support, and my email account is the closest thing to an identity I have for most businesses I interact with.
It takes a lot of work to avoid Google. Yes, there are alternatives, but in D&D terms, avoiding Google is like a -2 to all stats for your entire life, and not something we can expect the general population to do.
All this shows the need for anti-trust enforcement. The same company is controlling too much. Bust 'em up!
- Moral of the story: create separate account for YouTube that has no high value services or data on it.
  
  I've seen enough horror stories to know that's not going to help. They can, and do, associate multiple accounts to same users. Be it by cookies, IP addresses, or dark magic, the end result is the same - they can upend your entire digital life if they want to. r/degoogle better hurry up and migrate to Lemmy.
  
  I’d argue the bigger moral is that you should always own your online identity. You should buy your own domain (@yourname.xyz or something like that) and make your email on that. So if Google bans you, you just switch email providers and keep your address.
- We are nearing the cyberpunk future where corporations control every aspect of our lives
- Spend a weekend degoogling your stuff. There are alternatives for everything now. No regrets
- Article suggests you simply get blocked from watching additional videos. But there's no info on how that works- is it account based? IP based? Can I wipe my YouTube cookies to bypass a block?

If they want me to stop blocking ads, they will need to get rid of ads like this. I get ads like this all the time and it’s completely inappropriate.
IMG-7171.png
- Seems like ad targeting works
  
  You get weird ads if you turn off targeting too
- I don't get ads like that too often, but the annoying thing for me is when the ad is 10x louder than the video itself.
  
  There was this one add that had a gunshot sound then a really high pitched whistle.
  They might have gotten in trouble as the whistle sound was eventually removed.

Did all these tech companies just get together and decide to fuck us over around the same time? Seriously, what is going on with all these companies rolling out hugely unpopular new rules/changes all on one another's heels?
- The end of 0% interest means “business” no longer have access to free money. So now they want benefits, and growth but without the spending.
  Also we skipped a tech bubble crash around 2008, so these corpos deaths are more than overdue.
  The cicle as Doctorow says in his enshification tesis is:
  1.- be good to your users, spending tons of that VC and 0% interest loan free money.
  2.- be shit to your users, be good to your clients (add buyers, business that use your platform to do business)
  3.- be shit to everyone. Squeeze the platform and get every last dime of value as profit.
  Once you are in 3 there is no coming back. But these corporations have pulling the ladder behind them using an extra decade of dominant position to try to stop the cicle.

I'll stop blocked ads when I stop using their service. Not a minute sooner.

Ad blocker detection is not new, and other publishers regularly ask viewers to disable ad blockers
"everyone else is treating their customers like garbage, so they don'y hold it against us".
Yes, we can.
I didn't block when you had 5 second ads. I didn't block when you had 15 second ads. I started blocking when you'd play 2+ unskippable 15 second ads back-to-back. I didn't mind sitting through an ad when I appreciate the service you offered. Now, you're just being greedy, and I will go to great lengths to damage your bottom line as notably as I can.

Time to use an adblock blocker blocker extension.
- I think that would be NoScript.
  
  Does youtube even work with NoScript? I just assumed that google has 50 different scrips running that break the site if they aren't allowed

So if you are on android: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshade.newpipe (Newpipe with sponsorblock baked in)
If you are on PC: https://freetubeapp.io/ (Piped with sponsorblock baked in)
You're welcome.

YouTube without an adblocker is such a mess. I wish alternatives like https://odysee.com had more of the content I watch and less Nazi bullshit though. YouTube really needs some strong competition since they have an effective monopoly on long-form videos on the internet. :(
- Yeah, I'm glad at least a few YouTubers are starting to mirror content on sites like Odysee though (Such as Louis Rossman). I think that, like Lemmy, it just needs to reach a critical mass of users before it's viable
- I made an account there once and immediately got racist and homophobic results, so I quit using it.

So there are YouTube front ends for browser experience, but has anyone tried freetube from this guide?
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/
I've really liked the newpipe x Sponsorblock experience on my Android phone with having a subscription list, saves, playlists all locally with no YouTube account and ability to export and import the data of Playlists etc.
Freetube sounds like newpipe for desktop and has sponsorblock as an option too. Anyone use it or used it and have an thoughts on it?
- I exclusively use Freetube for my Youtube needs. It is great when it works. Sometimes you have to find the right Invidious instance for it to work properly. A few times videos play at 720p. I have also noticed search failing for specific terms sometimes - for example "machine learning". I don't know if it is a bug or blacklisted words/phrases.
  These are a few reality checks highlighting it isn't a perfect experience all the time, but I will be damned if go back to a vanilla Youtube interface after having gotten used to Invidious and then Peertube.
  The upsides are less fluff that is recommended, you control your own feed with the videos from the channels you subscribe to, no ads, sponsorblock, and I guess more privacy.
  
  I tried it and it is pretty good. Just wish it had compatibility with newpipe playlists.

Damn, what am I going to do with my life when I stop wasting time on youtube?
- Waste time on reddit! Oh, wait.....

What happens if you use SmartTubeNext on a TV? I'm assuming the interface wouldn't support the 3 strike YouTube popup so I guess you'd just get blocked without knowing why?
I'm guessing ReVanced will support the popup so you'd know.
- Is it really blocking ads when you have a front end that doesn't even serve them? I'm not blocking ads, I'm just not requesting to see them lol

Copying my comment over from fmhy instance -
If you don't mind paying ~2$ a month, you can get Family Premium using a VPN (I used India)
Current working method from HUKD: (Private/Incognito browser is best)
Create a new Google Account. Enter card details. Enter a fake billing address, any random address generator will do, as long as it’s from the correct region. Then select Try it Free. Navigate to YouTube, press YouTube Premium, and double-check that everything is in the right currency. Enter the same credit card and address information you used for creating the new Google Account. Click Buy 👍
You can then add your main Google account as a family member.👍
HUKD link
- I believe any accounts joining the family need to first have a Google Payments profile in the country the owner of the plan is in before you can join. Or is that not the case anymore?
- And then I might eventually get banned for abusing/bypassing regional pricing 🤷‍♂️. It's a nice workaround but that's all it is, it's gonna get worse with yt

That is pretty much the same policy I have for forcing adds on me.

I'm actually using YouTube Premium, but only because it's in my YouTube Music subscription... But I'd love to completely drop Google
- I used to pay for Google Play Music and get YouTube premium along with it, but stopped when Google decided to make a shittier app/service and drop it.
- If you are on android there is vimusic which is a completely free music streaming app that works through YouTube music apis so you will have every single song you already listen to

Twitch couldn't beat my adblocking, it just taught me how to find and use custom scripts. Shoot your shot YT, I haven't installed a script for your website yet but now Im gonna have too. Congrats the number of ads im gonna see from you is about to go down.
- What's your Twitch solution? Blocking Twitch is considerably more difficult than YouTube, every solution I've found breaks after a month or so. Best I can get is have it display a blank screen while ads play, but I still have to wait it out, which isn't ideal.
  
  pixeltris on github, a search for pixeltris should get you there first result. Everything you need is on that page, including how to instal the script to ublock, im using the vid swap script and TTLOL pro. It's not perfect but the ads are gone.
- Cat and mouse game. May get me to watch a couple, but I'll someone will have a way around it within a week.

Yup, I'm done also with this.

I´m sure the will be no false strikes at all. And even if, I´m sure they have a quick and easy appeal process in place, just like they have with copyright.
- I'd be shocked if there was even one human on the other end of their appeal process.

Nah, youtube content (for most part) is not worth the money or watching the ads for me.

that it's testing
That's not quite confirming a policy.

Hot take: this sucks, but YouTube premium is legit. I wish more platforms offered a paid, ad-free way to interact. I don't feel like figuring out a way around ads but I'm not about to start watching them. So I pay a few bucks a month.
- I'd be more willing to pay if it wasn't $10/mo (annual cost) for a bunch of stuff I don't care about. If they had a cheaper option that was just ad-free (maybe $5/mo?), I'd be down for that.
  I also like what Kagi does with their duo plan for 2 users. Some kind of duo plan for YT premium would be nice as well, since I (and many others, I'm sure) don't have a family of 6 people.
- Screw YouTube and Google. They aren’t getting a dime from me.
  
  In that case, you wouldn't care about this ad-block issue. The people who do care, want to watch YouTube but don't like ads.
  
  Why?
- I don't mind paying for services I use to avoid my data being the payment (like Kagi or Protonmail).
  But I don't like the idea of paying Google AND having my data farmed.
- I don't have any philosophical objection for paying to use a platform I enjoy, but in the case of youtube, they have been so deliberately detrimental to society in terms of platforming fascists that I feel bad about the prospect of paying them, even if much of the money is going to creators I do like who I'm actually watching
- It's simply a more honest model - you get content, they get money.
  I would love to be able to pay for an ad-free experience for the various websites and services that I browse and use in a straightforward way instead of being leeched for ad-revenue
  
  I wouldn't doubt paying a hundred per month to have an ad-free life.
  no ads on tv or sports, no billboards, no ads on buses. it would be awesome

This is really quite a silly move, I wonder when they will begin coming after other front ends. Only a matter of time now.. twitch have been cracking down on Android TV third party clients.
- Wait, are they going after s0und?
  
  Based on previous updates, Twitch are making it increasingly more difficult - per changelog...
  There WILL be a time when watching Live Streams and VOD won't be possible anymore in the app. I am not here to fearmonger, this is just a reality check, a reminder.
  Considering the Twitch app has been broken on ShieldTV for over a year, it doesn't bode well.

Welp, I guess I only have 3 videos left on youtube then, it was a good run. Then it's off to invidious and when that goes, probably peertube will have enough content :)
- I love the idea of peertube, and it works well but without monetization it's hard to see how any original content worth watching will end up over there
  
  Nostr's "Zaps" concept really feels like the answer to me. A lot of the other aspects of Nostr are probably too "weird", at least right now, for mainstream adoption, but Zaps are simple enough to explain and enable direct monetization for creators.
  
  I don't really know how much youtube ad-sense really pays out. It seems like for a lot of mid tier content the value is in driving folks to patreon. Even for the big channels the real money is in merch and other monetization methods. The problem is there is just such a smaller audience on peertube it's doesn't give the reach to find an audience worth monetizing.

lmao fuck right off Google. there are a million open source alternatives out there that still let me watch videos, nor do I (nor will I) have an account with you clowns.

Honestly if I got ads for things that are actually relevant I'd have less of an issue. Right now 7 out of 10 ads are for a local event where Christians come to grift other Christians. Wtf am I getting that ad constantly?
- He gets [our money]

If they roll this out for everyone I hope they will finally officially introduce YouTube Premium Lite, so I can get ad-free YouTube without paying for YouTube Music.

Copy this into uBlock Origin. Tells youtube ads are allowed and have been displayed, but no ads will show. Removes all references to shorts. Resizes video thumbnails so there's 6 wide.
`youtube.com##+js(set,yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel,false) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.adBlocksFound,O) youtube.com##+js(set,ytplayer.config.aras.raw_player_response.adPlacements,[]) youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.hasAllowedlnstreamAd,true)
! YT Homepage - Hide the Shorts section youtube.com##[is-shorts] ! YT Menu - Hide the Shorts button www.youtube.com###guide [title="Shorts"], .ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer[title="Shorts"] ! YT Search - Hide Shorts www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-video-renderer) ! YT Search and Channels - Hide the Shorts sections www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer ! YT Channels - Hide the Shorts tab www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="channels"] [role="tab"]:nth-of-type(3):has-text(Shorts) ! YT Subscriptions - Hide Shorts - Grid View www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-grid-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-grid-video-renderer) ! YT Subscriptions - Hide Shorts - List View www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer) ! YT Subscriptions - New Layout - Hide Shorts www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-rich-item-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-rich-item-renderer) ! YT Sidebar - Hide Shorts www.youtube.com###related ytd-compact-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-compact-video-renderer)
! YT Mobile - Hide the Shorts Menu button m.youtube.com##.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer) ! YT Mobile - Hide Shorts sections m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer ! YT Mobile - Hide Shorts in search results m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-video-with-context-renderer [data-style="SHORTS"]
!(Font Size fix) youtube.com###video-title.ytd-rich-grid-media, #video-title.ytd-rich-grid-slim-media:style(font-size: 1.4rem !important; line-height: 2rem !important;) youtube.com###metadata-line.ytd-video-meta-block:style(font-size: 0.9rem !important; line-height: 1.8rem !important;)
! YouTube Fix & Customization v1.7! (1-2/12) YouTube 4 Videos Per Row Fix (Home and Channel Pages) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer:style(width: 80% !important; padding-left: 50px !important; padding-right: 1px !important;) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-row, #contents.ytd-rich-grid-row:style(display:contents !important;) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer:style(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 6 !important;)`

Hobbist devs will just find a way to make an extension or script that blocks their "ad block detection" scripts anyway. Adblocks are like pirate websites. You kill one, two appear in its place. Youtube is unusable without adblocking, and so is 99% of the internet. They abuse their power until users block them, now they cry that they are blocked lol, cute

If they gave me an API key I'd be allowed use with SmartTubeNext and NewPipe, I'd gladly pay for premium.
I don't want to use your apps, Google.

I was subscribed to Youtube Premium for a good while (1-2 years), and I actually liked it for the money I paid. It was/is actually a good deal.
However, the amount of cases where creators were getting wrongly copyright striked and could do nothing against it were getting to high. The creators were often against a faceless corporate system.
I don't expect to view something on Youtube for free, however, I don't want to support a company that is as faceless as them. They need to be more accommodating, open, communicate more.
In the end I had to cancel my subscription as I could not continue supporting those practices.
- They want your money but they don't want to actually provide any customer or creator services. They think they can automate everything but do a shit job at it.

They will never win. They will only lose.

This doesn't sound great. I feel like this could possibly backfire on them. At the very least I would hope they would reduce the cost of youtube premium then. If you aren't sharing a family plan with friends it's really expensive

I'd love it if Youtube would make ads stick to strict standard The one I really had are the ads that are videos from content creator's channels that they put in as ads I don't want more than 30-60 seconds 20minutes, nope over an hour long ad, Fuck Right Off That shouldn't be allowed
- Also religious ads make me feel icky

Big web corps are a wild ride lately
- Enshitification is in full force
  
  I am here for it if the result is less ads and platforms in the hands of users and volunteers.
  
  Yeah what is it with 2023 and enshittification? This has been such a bad year in general

So you see YouTube, the thing is, I'm not gonna watch those stupid ads. I don't care how short or long, it's just not happening. No, not even the tip. I can use the site without watching the ads and maybe send links to my friends and they might give you some ad impressions. Or I can go do something else, get mad at Google and never spend another dollar at the play store and stuff. What do you think?

Anyone hoping there will be a mass exodus from YouTube to other--maybe fediverse YouTube alternatives, reminiscent of the Reddit exodus?
- Video hosting is way too expensive and complex to be decentralised.
  
  PeerTube is a thing, though it seriously lacks content. It uses WebTorrent, so similar to how more popular torrents end up being faster rather than more taxed, wider use could lead to better stream stability. It's hard to compete with literally the largest video platform in the world, but there is a world were the tech could give a solid alternative community similar to mastodon or lemmy.
  
  @cupcakezealot @vertelleus Didn't Vuze (aka Azureus) try to build a decentralized streaming service once? I could see how this might work, if built on top of Kademlia and WebSeeds.
  
  It's too expensive to host videos for free, but paying fractional cents to different providers is difficult and none of us want to deal with the current ad-financed model either.
- fediverse YouTube alternatives
  Yea, so who's hosting the videos and providing the bandwidth?
  
  With peertube it's kinda all of us.
- Well, PeerTube exists, but IDK how good it actually is since basically no one uses it. I also think professional content creators aren't going to like the Fediverse very much since there is significantly less money in it, but for hobbyists it could work. Of all the big social media platforms, video hosting/streaming is the hardest case to replace. It'll be interesting though. I hear PeerTube works like torrents.

Lol. Guess it's time to add the rest of my subbed channels to YT-DL and ditch their shitty ad-filled site entirely.

I don’t want all the other crap that YT is offering with premium. $12/month is too much.
- Not as good as not giving Google money but if you use a VPN and set your country to India or Argentina you can get premium for roughly $2/month

I look forward to the Revanced patch then.
This pretty much guarantees Chrome will push out Manifest v3 and kill ad-blocking in Chrome, though.
- Recently switched back to firefox + duckduckgo. I do not regret it.

And they're also trying to kill Invidious...

I think this is because YouTube pushed so much its shorts (tiktok knockoff) but they're not as profitable. My guesstimate is that at least 70% of traffic is in shorts now so longer content is rarely played along with longer ads
- YouTube Shorts are an absolute plague as is the TikTokification of social media generally. I don’t want that attention capitalist version of opium anywhere near me.
  
  Whats even more frustrating is now you have to choose between:
  48 minute long video essay about cheese
  10 second video about cheese
  I want a 5-10 minute video about cheese, something light I can watch while doing some other stuff, and then move on with my day. I don't want to watch a feature length movie.

Looks like I'm installing Invidious tonight.

The markets demand more profitability dude
- But that's like.. anti-consumer dude. These guys are nihilists.

People should develop a federated video hosting service. It will be expensive but I know the community can do it.
- Doesn’t Peertube already do this?
- LBRY is worth looking into, it's not quite federated but it is decentralized and based on blockchains.
  
  You almost had me until
  and based on blockchains.
  😉
- peertube?

Let's all click on the link that says 'I feel like I'm falsely flagged' to give them some noise to work with.
- None of the YouTube clients I use block ads, they simply don't serve them to me 😂
  
  The advertisers get to choose target markets, if your country is not an interest of many, you won't see as much. Years ago before i got alternative clients, i saw the same ad every second video, sometimes even the same ad in one block a second time.

Eh. I used to be a YouTube junkie but honestly I’ve gone back to live TV, Hulu, Netflix, etc… I’m kinda over the whole YouTube thing.
- It's just a bummer that most tech tutorials are on there...wish we were back in the early 00s when alternatives to Youtube were still viable.