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...
Install Firefox or a derivative, and add the uBlock Origin extension.
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:
Click on the uBlock Origin brown shield in your extensions.
Click the three little gears icon to enter the settings.
Make sure you're in the Filter lists section from the top and click the Purge all caches button below it.
Click the Update now button.
Wait until the filter update completes.
Refresh the tab(s) that YouTube is in.
Press play.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
The power of a centralized manner lies in the concentration of control, leads to efficiency in management but potentially at the cost of flexibility or individual autonomy.
Decentralization is the key, and I can see it's coming.
Fediverse platforms like Lemmy, Mastodon, and Misskey have already appeared.
It won't be long before we see fully decentralized platforms like WireMin and Damus gain popularity.
Their only weakness is that people have 100% ownership, so spam and sensitive content could be hard to control.
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...
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.
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)
Question.
Wouldn't the catch-all solution for YT is to pair the AJAX calls for the video with a "view video key", and that key to be found out after running a deeply obviouscated javascript served with the html of the "view video" page?
They could even bundle some of the key-building-js with the ad being served.
At some point in order to "block the ad" , the ad blocker would have to run or analyze tons of JS code , making the ordeal to difficult to compute.
Vanilla Brave blocks ads and doesn't show the blocker. Ublock & Better YouTube will cause it to trigger. Tampermonkey script prevents the blocker from appearing after disabling/enabling Ublock for a video or two.
Fuck YouTube and Google. They make enough money selling my data.
EDIT: I'm fascinated by the childishness of those who are complaining about the $10. Not only you don't have to pay it, and not only that it's open source, and not only the intentions are clear on why it's not a permissive license made to fight filling average Joe with malware like always being done with NewPipe and others on Play Store, but also you can pick your poison. Would you like google to win this dumb war on ad blockers? Or would you like to support non-perfect people making FOSS apps for your benefit? I really don't get you, guys. Pick your battles! Take the win and shut up for once!
Meanwhile here I am with a YouTube premium account that they don't charge me for
Back when YouTube red/premium came out. I was big into vulnerability/pen testing, and I used several scripts and spoofing techniques to try to get it for free. I failed and failed and failed. But then after I had given up. I decided to just watch some YouTube videos, and realized it said I had premium. And then I checked on the YouTube app, I had premium there too.
Years and years have gone by.
I still have YouTube red/premium for free.
They have never charged me. And I even had support transfer the YouTube red/premium to a new email at one point. Not ONE question. It says active and a price. But, I'm never charged. And the card that is on file, isn't even active anymore and hasn't been for about 2 years.
My theory is, one or several of my attempts combined with each other to get it for free. Glitched their system somehow or straight up allowed me to have it for free. But in terms of what I did. Whatever I did, I did everything again recently for my boyfriend, all the failed methods, everything again like I did for me. In the same exact order. Same error messages, same failed connection messages, same everything I went through. Didn't have hope for him, but. He goes on YouTube later that night, and has premium.
I'll look forward to reading this yet again next week, alongside all the entitlement in the comments section that seem to think running YouTube is free and recommending trash alternatives which have less than 1% of YouTube's content and don't even work.