YouTube - Prohibited from using adblocker

[Zerg Rush]

Although the argument of using ads to finance creators is legitimate, the abuse that YT makes of them is not and makes the use of adblockers inevitable, if one does not want, for example, a concert to be crushed by interruptions, even with advertorials. , this is independent of countless clickbaits in the thumbnails and other shit that YT wants to push us to use YT Premium with its abusive prices.
A few months ago, YT began an aggressive anti-adblock campaign, with pop-ups reminding us of the ban and even blocking the player, in addition to YT Premium's self-advertisements. 

This leaves the user with only the options of either swallowing the ads interrupted by their favorite videos or signing up for YT Premium. Many have already moved to other platforms, for example Odysee, but the problem is that no other platform can compete in content with YT.
Luckily there is a solution to this problem, which, at least for the moment, works and is a small userscript that we can add to our browser.
For this we install the Tampermonkey extension and add this script

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477725-youtube-iframe-adblocker

In the Vivaldi browser it is not necessary to use Tampermonkey, there you just have to download this script in a folder (do not delete it) and drag the script to the extensions tab in Developer mode to install it.

This surrounds YT's adblock detector, as this script dynamically overlays the video on an iFrame, making the adblocker invisible to YT.

[jaxa]

It's a staggered rollout probably. My adblockers don't seem to have been affected. I will look at the script if I need it later.

[chakkman]

3 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

Although the argument of using ads to finance creators is legitimate, the abuse that YT makes of them is not and makes the use of adblockers inevitable, if one does not want, for example, a concert to be crushed by interruptions, even with advertorials.

Can you elaborate? How is that "abuse"? It's just like on commercial TV.

And, yes, websites/services like Youtube cost. A lot. Just imagine how much webspace they need for all those videos, or the costs for developing the site, making it secure, marketing etc. So, they have to either do paid subs or, for the most users, do ads. I really can't see the abuse. 

I already stopped using my adblocker (which is really just for blocking those penetrant website big ads which popup on some shitty website...) on Youtube, because I knew that they "take the gloves off" now. Again, I can understand them. That "everything has to be free" attitude on the net doesn't at all account for the work and expense which are happening on all websites.

Edited October 21, 2023 by chakkman

[demagogue]

FYI adBlocker apparently still works if you just watch videos while logged out, although that's also annoying in its own way.

[Shadow]

It's annoying what Youtube has done with the requirement to view ads. I get they need to make money, but that's not my concern, mine is that it's viewer choice. I have no less than 5 popup/adblock/tracker extensions running at the same time, and I've had to whitelist them all on Youtube's domain to be able to peruse content.

It's important to be able to block unofficial ad content because some payload malware scripts, depending on the site. This is how you get infiltrated, by unknowingly allowing it. Blocking everything outside the primary page load is a good idea.

I'll try this script. Thanks for the share.

 

[Zerg Rush]

6 hours ago, chakkman said:

Can you elaborate? How is that "abuse"? It's just like on commercial TV.

And, yes, websites/services like Youtube cost. A lot. Just imagine how much webspace they need for all those videos, or the costs for developing the site, making it secure, marketing etc. So, they have to either do paid subs or, for the most users, do ads. I really can't see the abuse. 

I already stopped using my adblocker (which is really just for blocking those penetrant website big ads which popup on some shitty website...) on Youtube, because I knew that they "take the gloves off" now. Again, I can understand them. That "everything has to be free" attitude on the net doesn't at all account for the work and expense which are happening on all websites.

It's worse than in commercial TV, Don't get me wrong, naturally they need money for the platform and I wouldn't use an adblocker either if it were for some banners on the page, some promotional videos present on the home page, but YT goes much further, videos that start with up to 3 ads not skippables, even in a classical concert interrupted by 1-2 idiotic telepromotions of almost 5 minutes, most of the thumbnails on the page are clickbaits, you cannot listen to a playlist, without YT paused it every 20 -30 minutes, annoying pop ups for a Premium Trial, etc.. This is abusive and they practically force you to use an adblocker, clickbait blocker, YTnonstop, etc., or send them to comb the desert.
It is about making money in an abusive way, which in the end harms the content creator more than it benefits him. There are ways to create much more ethical profits on the Internet than crushing the user and destroying videos.

Removing clickbaits in YT

Listen playlists, without annoying "Video paused. Continue watching?"

This apart of all other tracking crap which invade privacy and security.

[chakkman]

2 hours ago, Shadow said:

It's annoying what Youtube has done with the requirement to view ads. I get they need to make money, but that's not my concern

It certainly is when you use their service. 

[chakkman]

54 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

 There are ways to create much more ethical profits on the Internet than crushing the user and destroying videos.

"Crushing the user" and "destroying videos" is your subjective impression of what they are doing. Objectively, they're showing ads to pay for their service. You can also subscribe, and get an ad free service. Really, there's nothing unethical about it. Unethical would be to block their ads, and use and consider their service as free for you, while it isn't.

Don't take this personal, it's simply something I often read on the net. I don't think any of us really likes to work for free on their dayjob, right? Google and other big corporations also don't have some kind of money creating machine in their basement, and there are real people working for them, who should get paid for what they do. I wouldn't even say that's ethical, it's simply how life works. I don't know why big companies always have such a different status than your local 10 employee business. They're also a business, and, there's a lot of people working for them. Who should get paid for what they do.

Edited October 21, 2023 by chakkman

[PsymH]

Interestic discussion. Another basic problem might simply be that everything was free at first, and now all of a sudden you have to pay for it? For some people, this means a massive breakout from their comfort zone.

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, PsymH said:

Interestic discussion. Another basic problem might simply be that everything was free at first, and now all of a sudden you have to pay for it?

Was it? Youtube has had ads for as long as I can remember. They didn't have subscription schemes for a long time, if that's what you mean.

It's obvious to me that a service like Youtube costs a lot of money, and therefor must generate money. Many petabytes of data and traffic.

[Zerg Rush]

As I said, nothing against ads, which YT always had, but not in this abusive way like now. They always used a banner on the home page and also some other promotional video among the videos on it, then they began to put a promotional clip of a few seconds at the beginning of the videos, but now not only at the beginning but several times in between, sometimes longer than the content of the video itself. In between pop ups promoting YT Premium. All this makes YT unbearable even for the creators themselves, who want to present their work and see it chopped up with advertorials.

Ads are OK, but when in the statistics of my adblocker, by opening YT and watching a video, it appears that 12 ads and more than 20 trackers were blocked, confirm that i continue using adblocker or use a front-end. 

A more ethical way would be, for example, the possibility of buying a video, when you want to download it, as Odysee and others do. YT already does this with cinema movies, creating income with these, without having to sign up for Premium and pay a fee monthly, using it or not. This American custom of selling users' private data and bombarding them with ads is not necessary to create enough income.

This morning, open YT and viewing one video, result 61 tracker and 28 ads blocked, see Date and Time. A monopoly invariably leads to abuse and this is a fact.

[chakkman]

Again, there is nothing "unethic" about financing your web service. And, I know a gazillion of sites which have more annoying ads than Youtube.

If you don't like it, then, I'm afraid, the solution is to not use Youtube anymore, if you find their kind of making sure to pay the bills is too much for you.

[Zerg Rush]

No, it isn't certainly unethic to use ads, but it is to abuse, to sell user data, to scam the user with thumbnails that have nothing to do with the content (clickbaits), steal bandwidth by doubling the duration of the video with invasive ads. And yes, I am already using alternatives and I prefer to pay for an album on Bandcamp or others, instead of supporting the pure greed of a multinational with enough resources and income to pay the million-dollar fines of the EU, precisely for these abuses, from their pockets without flinching and handing out platinum plaques to mediocre influencers for many likes that they also monetize. 

YT already has plenty of revenue for its platform with YouTubeTV and its Cine Club, with prices Netflix can only dream of.
But this is it, throughout its existence until now, offering a good service with rational use of ads, to attract the majority of content creators and users, and now when it has absolute dominance of the market, it begins to make life impossible for users to force them to sign up for Premium.
Ethics is something else.

https://therecord.media/protonmail-duckduckgo-others-ask-eu-us-regulators-to-ban-surveillance-based-advertising

https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=jmHG92lARUQ

Edited October 22, 2023 by Zerg Rush

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, Zerg Rush said:

No, it isn't certainly unethic to use ads, but it is to abuse, to sell user data, to scam the user with thumbnails that have nothing to do with the content (clickbaits), steal bandwidth by doubling the duration of the video with invasive ads.

I don't understand why you think it's abusive. Or a "scam".

[Zerg Rush]

3 hours ago, chakkman said:

I don't understand why you think it's abusive. Or a "scam".

1,2 3 ads certainly aren't, but they are abusive and scam when there are 28 ads and 61 trackers for this 10 minutes on YT. I'm talking about the abuse of these techniques. Everyone is free to pay for YT Premium, even if they don't see ads, they will track you anyway and they also know your personal information and also your banking data. For my part, I do not plan to enter this game.

[thebigh]

I've watched less youtube lately because of the excessive intrusive ads interrupting the videos all the time. Also it's getting harder and harder to find interesting videos. To get picked up by The Algorithm it seems that everyone has started pulling stupid Youtube faces and scream-babbling in annoying Youtube voices, and it's impossible to get an idea of the content of a video from the thumbnail because everything is in the same uniform clickbaity format.

[Zerg Rush]

51 minutes ago, thebigh said:

I've watched less youtube lately because of the excessive intrusive ads interrupting the videos all the time. Also it's getting harder and harder to find interesting videos. To get picked up by The Algorithm it seems that everyone has started pulling stupid Youtube faces and scream-babbling in annoying Youtube voices, and it's impossible to get an idea of the content of a video from the thumbnail because everything is in the same uniform clickbaity format.

Front ends- still work (Piped, Invidious..), also FreeTube, SMPlayer also permits to view videos in streaming from YT and others, the Feed Reader of the Vivaldi browser also permits view YT videos embedded, Andisearch can reproduce YT sandboxed in the search results, all this still without ads.

Only real alternative to YT don't exist, maybe the nearest is Odysee with way better privacy and ethical business model, not related to Google.

[jaxa]

1 hour ago, thebigh said:

I've watched less youtube lately because of the excessive intrusive ads interrupting the videos all the time. Also it's getting harder and harder to find interesting videos. To get picked up by The Algorithm it seems that everyone has started pulling stupid Youtube faces and scream-babbling in annoying Youtube voices, and it's impossible to get an idea of the content of a video from the thumbnail because everything is in the same uniform clickbaity format.

Bookmark everything you have an interest in. The Algorithm can still be useful for finding related content, but it can't be relied upon.

As for the adblocking, I have different setups that are all still effective at blocking ads, and I spent no effort tweaking these. I usually don't use a user account. Maybe YouTube hasn't rolled everything out yet, IDK.

YouTube does have alternate sources of revenue, such as taking a 30% cut of superchats, and 50% cut on channel memberships. For the ads it does run, mobile users block ads less often than desktop users and are probably considered more valuable by advertisers from the information that can be extracted about viewership.

I don't think YouTube is particularly unprofitable, and Google is probably willing to run it at cost just to have a cultural behemoth in its pocket. Theoretically, the costs of running a video platform can go down if storage, computing, networking, and codec advancements counteract growth. Google also has advantages over upstart competitors, such as the ability to design its own transcoding chips.

[taffernicus]

i use invidious and newpipe on android so i don't have to endure with the uptick of creeping ads on youtube.

[chakkman]

15 hours ago, thebigh said:

I've watched less youtube lately because of the excessive intrusive ads interrupting the videos all the time. Also it's getting harder and harder to find interesting videos. To get picked up by The Algorithm it seems that everyone has started pulling stupid Youtube faces and scream-babbling in annoying Youtube voices, and it's impossible to get an idea of the content of a video from the thumbnail because everything is in the same uniform clickbaity format.

More of a social problem than a Youube one. 

I don't think the platform is to blame for the 99,9% trash that is being uploaded by users.

The one thing that stood out to me over the years in terms of that development: Mug shots on literally every video thumbnail now. Back in the days, people didn't upload their mugshots for every video. The video was about the thing the video was about, not about the person presenting it. I think that pretty much shows where humanity headed: Towards narcissism.

Edited October 23, 2023 by chakkman

[Zerg Rush]

37 minutes ago, chakkman said:

More of a social problem than a Youube one. 

I don't think the platform is to blame for the 99,9% trash that is being uploaded by users.

The one thing that stood out to me over the years in terms of that development: Mug shots on literally every video thumbnail now. Back in the days, people didn't upload their mugshots for every video. The video was about the thing the video was about, not about the person presenting it. I think that pretty much shows where humanity headed: Towards narcissism.

There is certainly a lot of garbage, conspiracy videos and mediocre influencers on YT. This naturally happens on any platform, especially on Odysee, although the reason is more understandable there, since Odysee is based on Blockchain, this makes it impossible to delete any inappropriate content, moderation, can only hide the videos if they are reported, but this only transfers them to LBRY. But YT does not have this problem and the moderation there is quite quick in deleting content that in its opinion is inappropriate, but this corresponds more to political reasons and content that is uncomfortable for Google, rather than other idiocies or complaints from users.

[Fidcal]

I'm with Zerg Rush on this. Non-intrusive moderate advertising is fine but aggressive, extremely irritating ones, especially when Youtube (google) are already making massive profit. (anyone remember early internet when gif ads were irritating?)

I use DuckDuckgo to search for videos then download with 4K downloader. Don't even need to go to the Youtube website usually. If the yt website was more friendly I'd much prefer to go there but it ain't. I'll always fight extreme commercial greed and support the friendlies.

[EDIT: PS, remember google don't even provide the content, only the platform. Without the providers they are nothing, an empty website.]

Edited October 24, 2023 by Fidcal

[chakkman]

10 hours ago, Fidcal said:

I'm with Zerg Rush on this. Non-intrusive moderate advertising is fine but aggressive, extremely irritating ones, especially when Youtube (google) are already making massive profit. (anyone remember early internet when gif ads were irritating?)

I don't see these "intruse, extremely irritating" ads on Youtube. I see them on other sites, but, not on Youtube. And, you don't know whether or not Google is "already making massive profit", and, it doesn't matter either way. What matters is that they're offering a service, and have real humans working for them, which have to get paid. And, if you use that service, you have to either watch ads, or subscribe to them. Or not use their service at all.

A real life example would be to fule up at a gas station, and just drive away, because you think they're making massive profit, and their prices are too high. I don't know if you do that, but, I surely don't.

[Xolvix]

Part of the issue, at least for me, is that I didn't even start using an ad-blocker until ads had become so ridiculous they were actually impacting the performance of my computer. I started using a blocker way, way back when I had a single-core CPU. I can even remember what it was - a Flash ad displayed on DeviantArt. The problem now is that I've become so used to a cleaned-up web experience that browsing the web in a non-blocked fashion is so incredibly shitty that if it weren't for ad-blockers, I'd barely use the Internet.

I can understand YouTube wanting to block ads, I really do. But from what I've read the increase in ads on YouTube over recent years is just not going to encourage me to disable my blocker and I'm not prepared to pay for Premium since I don't use YT much anyway. Is it unethical/immoral? Well I've crossed that bridge years ago; the web is so horrible without blockers that if it's unethical/immoral to block them, then I'm happy to be judged so. What I can say is that I would use YouTube even LESS if I was forced to view ads.

EDIT: For what it's worth I've never had YouTube show me that pop-up yet. I know the rollout is staggered but also that uBlock Origin filters are regularly updated to deal with it, so who knows. Maybe I did have it but the blocker dealt with it silently as with other ads.

 

Edited October 26, 2023 by Xolvix

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, Xolvix said:

I can understand YouTube wanting to block ads, I really do. But from what I've read the increase in ads on YouTube over recent years is just not going to encourage me to disable my blocker and I'm not prepared to pay for Premium since I don't use YT much anyway.

I don't know if you've read, but, Youtube will block users with adblockers soon.