It looks like Google are pushing pretty hard on AdBlockers now. Looks like a pretty aggressive new UI from them.
I’m finding revanced for Android is still working well, but I’ve got no idea when that’ll become less reliable
just use firefox
How will that help if they block you server side?
drm does not work
Sure it does. Technically, it’s perfectly feasible to put up an ad-wall.
show me one example that DRM ever worked for streaming services and wasn’t immediately cracked
I get the feeling we are now talking about two different things. If by “cracked” you mean that someone can rip and redistribute the content once they get access to it, sure, it’s very hard to protect against that.
What I mean is: it’s possible to restrict access to the service so that you cannot watch a video unless you’ve played the ad first or you are a paying customer. As an example: Netflix or any of the movie streaming platforms. There’s no add-on or special browser that allows you to use Netflix without being a paying customer, and if YouTube implements their plan, they can make it so you won’t be able to circumvent it just by using Firefox, like you claimed.
The day I am unable to block YouTube ads is the day that I stop using YouTube.
There is “anti adblock” blockers, mine work on even the most aggressively advertising sites and i don’t think the adblock developers will stand still either.
Do you have any recommendations?
uBlock Origin on Firefox is best, enable all the filter lists (except the regional language ones). Not to be confused with uBlock, they are not the same.
Yes this would be mine as well, ghostery and privacy possum might help as well.
I imagine they will eventually simply splice ads into the videos themselves. But even for that there is already a solution with sponsorblock.
SponsorBlock is such a godsend for (live) music videos as well, especially with Eurovision VODs will all those intros and endscreens
Sponsorblock is the reason I’m confident that no matter what they try people can and will find ways to overcome it.
I suspect that all of the AI these companies think will solve all their problems (and add profits), will actually be a tool for us to use to skip and block ads.
Someone will learn how to use AI against them.
[evil laugh heard in the background]Shit if I have to I’ll download every single YT video I wanna watch with yt-dlp and watch em in VLC/MPC/Plex/any other video player in the world lol. My eyeballs see advertisements when I choose for them too.
There’s an unwritten deal, you know. Youtube lets us block and in return, we allow Youtube to know we block. Because if we take that away from Youtube, Youtube no longer has reliable viewer statistics and the price of their ads will go down.
Now it seems Youtube wants to break the deal (and they can, unless we start pirating Youtube content, they can at the very least make us sit through a minute of black screen before each video). They probably think the damage that will be done is less than the additional income that the subscriptions generate.
it’s just the same old story. Grow, grow, grow, wait until you’ve got a monopoly, now squeeeeeeeeze the profit.
Twitter, Reddit, now Youtube. Welcome to the age of enshittification.
And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.
That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.
I had no clue of the existence of the Ad Nauseam browser extension. I use Firefox and I just added it to my browser.
I read that it’s built off of uBlock Origin, which I already trust because of the open source nature of it, so that was a huge plus for me.
It may not necessarily have been your intention to inform people of Ad Nauseam, but I definitely thank you for bringing it up in the first place!
Do you know if it interferes with unlock origin?
It does yes. It also interferes with other privacy related extensions like privacy badger. I have disabled both Ublock Orgin and Privacy Badger in favor of AdNauseam and have been pleased. After using it for about a week, it says I’ve “clicked” on about $150 worth of ads.
The main thing to note is if you’re on a site, and you see ads, you can always flip AdNauseam into “strict” mode. In strict mode, it is less effective at clicking on ads, but better at making sure nothing pops up. There’s only one site that I’ve had to use strict mode on so far. Attached image is of my “ad vault” (the ads that have been clicked). I did hide the NSFW ads:
One thing that worries me about this approach is that it’s still generating ad revenue. Sure you don’t actually see the ads but it’s still an incentive for companies to continue running more and more ads.
From the persepctive of the host site, maybe. But for the advertisers, AdNauseam punishes them pretty badly. The idea is to destroy the relationship between the “click through rate” and “conversion rate” of offending sites/ads.
The linked article discusses the phenomena in more detail, but the bottom line is that advertisers want sales. If their ads don’t get sales on a certain platform, they will no longer advertise on said platform.
I’ve also attached a screenshot of the relevant part of the article.
https://www.wordstream.com/average-ctrThat’s without even considering how this screws up the data that organizations like Google are trying to track. That data is worth something to them, and this obfuscates it.
he idea is to destroy the relationship between the “click through rate” and “conversion rate” of offending sites/ads.
Ah, I didn’t think of this part. I was going of off click through rate but didn’t think about it destroying the conversion rate
