Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube | Hacker News Reader

Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube

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49 pointsintunderflow69 comments

Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please. If the ad industry hadn't turned out to be predatory and malicious, I'd be just as apathetic to watching ads today as an adult as I used to be as a child. Google has nobody but themselves to blame for pissing in the pot and telling us to drink up. You'd have to be a fool to allow ads on your machine in the modern era.

I've recently been wondering how viable is it for me to send a ToS in a request header that basically says something along the lines of "If your server chooses to respond to this request with a non-error HTTP code and content, it constitutes your acceptance of these terms. These terms say you owe me $10 per ad you attempt to show to me."

It’s entirely viable to send, but said contract would be entirely invalid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds

My headcanon is that this is no different than most ToS on websites, and if those hold up to legal scrutiny, so should this. Either both are valid or neither are.

They are largely invalid too, which is why no one catches CFAA charges for accessing YouTube in violation of their terms.

It depends on how the website handles its TOS. See this article [1] for information on how a website can make its TOS legally binding.

[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...

Or perhaps a kind of standardized reverse EULA that you store in your browser. If the webpage doesn't support it, the page won't load.

Nah, no standardized EULA -- if they're going to have us accept freeform ToS, the same should apply in reverse.

I've never signed a contract with Alphabet or Youtube. Maybe because I don't log into Youtube? I'm still waiting for people to follow my AUP/ToS. [1] I will never know if they are in compliance.

[Edit] I suppose ironically Youtube have a myriad of instructional videos on how to follow my AUP/ToS. [2]

[1] - https://bender.ohblog.net/#AUP-ToS

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuTSLp8BCwo [video][3 mins][tutorial]

Yes, but that works both ways. My website works the way I code it to work, and if that means I detect adblockers and display a different page to you if you're running one then that's the website you visited and you have no recourse other than to accept that's how I want it to work.

You can't have things both ways. You have to accept that the cost of seeing content is to see ads. You should have no expectation that you can block ads and see content.

Or you know, try to evade the detection.

Like you can say that is unethical or immoral or whatever, but it is certainly a form of recourse.

I agree, but that leads further to the argument that I then have the right to modify the code that is running on my machine as I wish, which includes removing protections you put in place to make it not work when I do something you don't like.

The cat-and-mouse game continues...

It’s an impasse not a cat-and-mouse game. Sure you have the right to modify any code that Google’s server serves to your machine, but if Google’s server decides to not serve you videos, for any reason, then that’s where your game ends.

It’s likely that there are server side checks for a whole tangled mess of client cookies and XHR pings across a hundred different subdomains, and you’re not going to trick them into thinking you’re watching ads when you aren’t.

> and you’re not going to trick them into thinking you’re watching ads when you aren’t.

Trivial.

https://adnauseam.io/

No, it is a cat-and-mouse game, because I could start doing things like detecting the ad frames and blacking them out in the compositor. What if my browser had a plugin that did that? Think SponsorBlock that talks with the browser's rendering engine. As far as youtube could tell (unless they record my screen and process it to detect that I'm viewing an ad...but that would be a bridge too far for a lot of people I think) the ad is playing, but I'm not viewing. Audio can get similar processing.

Oh, true. Then you’re not really blocking ads, you’re sending them to the shadow realm!

Except for some reason Google wants to show me Two ads every 10 minutes, to the point Ive given up on YouTube on devices without an ad blocker.

Cable tv is much nicer. (Although they’re under local jurisdiction which may have something to do with it.)

I wonder if Googles idea of ads is even legal here…

Every 10 minutes? I envy you, I get them every 5 minutes.

No one is stopping you from watching cable TV instead of complaining about YouTube

Most video creators choose to upload only to YouTube.

I generally watch neither :)

Not into talking heads, if it’s worth saying it’s worth putting it in writing.

I used to use YouTube for music occasionally, now I’m a Spotify subscriber.

If your site wants to block me, that's fine, you have that right. What I object to is the notion that I should feel any sort of moral guilt for viewing a website however I choose to. Your site is a newspaper that is delivered to my house; you have the right to charge for it, and you have the right to put ads in it, but once it is in my hands it is mine, and I will cut it up with scissors or scribble mustaches on all the photographs to my heart's delight.

If you cut the ads out of the newspaper, the publisher still gets paid. If you block ads on YouTube, they don't (but still need to pay for the bandwidth to deliver you the video).

That's a problem with YouTube's business model then. If a business wants to make money, then charge for it, just as businesses have done for thousands of years. Don't tiptoe around the issue and hide prices by presenting it as "free" and get mad when people take that literally. YouTube can very well be Premium-only and they'll see how much their service is actually worth to people.

they could monetize differently, without ads. let creators monetize it like patreon tiers and let users make proportional donations to their favourite creators through a flattr-like system. take the ads out and a place like youtube only need like 5 guys to run.

Whoever came up with that copy must be a complete megalomaniac.

I have no problem with sponsored YouTube videos where the host inserts a quick ad. If it's too long I can fast forward through it.

I'm at the point though where if I want to watch a YT video I'll download it.

> Your website is a guest in my house, which is to say, my machine, and I will do with it what I please.

If only - but sorry, nope. Both for websites and software, the provider provides a service under conditions (or license) backed up by IP laws. This is what allows Windows to behave as if your PC was their property.

Your only option to keep being a master in your house is to not let in vampires.

If you update all the uBlock Origin filters it doesn't appear anymore. I was still getting this warning when I had Sponsorblock active though.

It feels like YouTube bitrates have progressively kept getting worse. I follow competitive Brood War and the difference in quality between YouTube and AfreecaTV is massive.

I was paying for Premium for a few years but videos were so full of sponsored segments that I felt like it wasn't worth it. And beyond that, YouTube claims it won't show you ads with Premium but they still try to upsell you on their cable alternative bullshit. That's called a fucking advertisement, even if it's for a feature on your platform.

I feel like YouTube Premium would be more compelling if you could tweek the algorithmic suggestions to suit your needs. Why can't I customize my recommendations more deeply? Give me more knobs. I'd probably start by having it stop suggesting that I rewatch content I've already seen. And allow me to apply blacklists for certain whole categories of content.

Despite being owned by a search company, YouTube has also done a terrible job at innovating within that space. For starters, search has been utterly crippled and it inserts recommendations right in the middle of your results. But also, why can't I explore the topological space of adjacent / related video content? I'm sure there's tons of interesting videos out there which I'm never going to find because YouTube doesn't provide sufficiently powerful search and exploratory capabilities. Why the heck are we still limiting ourselves to searching with keywords? Is that really the peak of search and exploratory capabilities that one of the biggest tech companies in the world has been able to implement? What the heck are all the PhDs at YouTube even doing?

It's tragic that YouTube has grown so large that now they're just resting on their laurels without any meaningful competition.

Tragic and repeated time and time again by almost every once-successful company.

I asked not be tracked years ago. I set all the “do not track” switches and you did it anyway.

Now you want me to do this? I’ll do the same as you and do it anyway.

I wanted to be exclusively exclusively opt in only years ago, but you couldn’t fathom that being an option.

So me watching your ads isn’t an option I’ll fathom.

I wanted to get ahold of your support for help or concerns and you ignored me.

So I’ll ignore these plees too.

Want to make a deal? Ok: allow me to 100% opt out of tracking, for real. Allow me to use the products without your dumb cloud attached. You first, then we’ll talk.

You don't have to use youtube if your don't like the deal they're offering. Seems clear to me that they're no longer interested in Adblock users watching videos on their site.

And they don't have to track me either across the internet, but I don't get a choice to opt out. Just playing by their rules.

That is a reason why they can do that: they monopol the whole category of websites with videos SFW. Being monopol and doing things by your rules is bringing up other people's interests making another platform that fills the gap the youtube doesn't have.

I don't know whether someone is planning to open a platform or at least has an idea: but it wouldn't be a bad move at all.

Somebody in the past argued that ad blocking is theft, and while i disagreed, i could see the point being made.

However, lately youtube has been serving me so many ads so often that i don't think anyone could honestly make that point anymore.

I get so much advertising that i kinda miss TV. It's that bad.

So far i've setup my own invidious instance at home because ads in youtube are really unbearable.

And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking.

> And from the advertiser point of view... that is really theft: i get served the same ad for the same product like 12 times in a row in the same video. And it's not even sold in my country. Youtube is literally stealing money from their advertising customers, and yet the issue is ad-blocking.

That's a really good point. I subscribe to YTP (costs £20 per month for 6 of us, bargain) so not an issue for me however those advertisers must be querying the value of this?

Dupe with no new information:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892512

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35883457

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37782171

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106802

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37798150

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277079

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825887

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37866601

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35916592

They cracked down on me just yesterday, although they offered a few months of free premium to make up for it. Honestly I'm a bit split, I've often thought that supporting the internet through ads and information gathering has been a huge detriment that's lead to a lot of anti-patterns, so I really should pay up since that's the logical alternative. As long as they continue to provide a reasonable alternative to viewing ads, although I'm sure they'll continue to harvest my personal data.

YouTube Premium Lite at ~7 € was awesome for me. I am disappointed that they sent an email saying "your version of Premium Lite will be discontinued". They are forcefully ending my Lite sub next month.

I will most likely upgrade to the 12 € version which is for single person (not family). It is disappointing because I don't have a use for the added benefits like "downloading" videos (offline viewing) or Google Music.

Having said that, it's still worth it to me.

Ads absolutely have destroyed the web. The problem is the subs they're asking for are way too expensive. I do not use Twitch Turbo for example, because that would be already well above 25 € per month with both YT and Twitch Turbo (and also Twitch's Apple TV suxx balls but I digress).

Also a good time to remind ppl if you have YouTube Premium you can create more "brand channels" ot share Premium. The only downside I'm aware of is the brand channel does not seem to store the search history so if I'm on Apple TV it's annoying as I can't select previously used search terms. Only the YT account on the email (the non-brand account then) has a search history available through the TV app).

its funny because I am 100% sure the devs working on this feature use ublock/adblock :)

They can't hear you over their compensation package. They might regain hearing after layoffs.

You can use the tips from this thread over on Reddit to circumvent this message. At least it worked for me in Brave: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtu...

There are elections upcoming over here and any YouTube video is preluded and interrupted with very aggressive, primitive political propaganda and agitation. I don't even distinguish whether our politicians are such scumbags, or it's some form of malicious foreign intervention. You are a piece of trash, YouTube.

I paid for Premium Lite because I hate ads, wanted to support creators and and price was decent. However they removed that option, and now there's just regular Premium which has YouTube Music which I don't really need and offline viewing is a non-issue for me as I never watch videos over metered connections.

I did sign up for Nebula[1], but there's several smaller YouTube channels that are only on YouTube so will be a bummer to go Nebula-only.

I also like to watch YouTube links from others in a private/incognito session so it doesn't pollute my viewing history (it's a chore to manually clean it). But with 15 minutes of ads or whatever it is now that won't happen.

[1]: https://nebula.tv/

Same but at least now the solo Premium option is more visible. Last year I wasn't even aware it was there. So for me it'll be 12 € for Premium single-user (but multiple channels/accounts via brand accounts is possible).

I just wish they had a sub-10 € offer. 9.99 would be a lot more digestible.

i get it all the time now (dismissable for the moment)

Youtube scraping the bottom of the barrel cannot be a good sign for google's business. In any case youtube is awful with ads so i d gladly follow my favourite creators to their other platforms that they advertise all the time instead of paying. YT is only good as long as it s free.

uBlock and YouTube have been regularly updating to counteract each other's counteractions for the past few weeks (at least, in my branch of the A/B rollout). Force refreshing the filters has usually fixed the issue for me. There's also a pinned thread on the subreddit with troubleshooting issues.

I rarely use YouTube on my computer these days anyway, I mainly use NewPipe.

Honestly, for the amount of time I spend watching YouTube content, YouTube Premium is a bargain. People have been spoiled by VC funds allowing services to run without making a profit for so long that paying for a web service that's so cash-hungry like streaming HD video to hundreds of millions of people a day is almost a foreign concept.

I would rather we discuss the benefits of paying rather than how to circumvent adblock bans, which will just lead to even more unpleasant ways of recouping costs.

I'm surprised you're getting downvoted. Running youtube costs money, some creators spend a lot of time or even make a living out of their videos, that we, the users, willingly enjoy to watch. Youtube (just like Nebula) enables us to watch content we like, and helps funnel some money from the users to the creators. The whole tracking industry sucks, contextual ads seem acceptable as an alternative to payment and still protect privacy. But there is no free lunch

And then there's people in the comments saying it would be cheaper without Music bundled in. I'm willing to argue Music is by design baked in so they just advertise it as extra to look good. I use both. I had YT playlists long before Music was a thing. When they bundled it with Premium it was a no-brainer. I still have my youtube-dl scripts syncing music for offline though .. just in case.

related "Tell HN: "Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube”" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37793375

I've just been hit with this message when opening Youtube on my work computer (I have premium on my personal account)

Looks like Youtube are cracking down hard on Ad-blockers

uBlock Origin was updated to address it, I've never seen it. A/B test?

They’ve been testing since at least June. That’s when I saw the first reports that they were rolling this out to random users. I just started seeing the notice but I have friends that still don’t see it. It also does not appear when I’m logged in to an alternate account. I suspect they may be showing it to users who they’ve detected using adblockers for a while but that’s just my speculation based on my non-scientific testing.

I know Google is the current bête noire, but shouldn't we be having a conversation about how web services are paid for? As I understand it YouTube Premium gives you YouTube without ads. What's wrong with that? If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong.

> If they got no revenue from YouTube they would close it down in a heartbeat. I would. Wouldn't you? Please explain why I am wrong.

but they don't just want revenue: they want every growing revenue, for no additional benefit.

YouTube Premium also provides access to YouTube music, which many people will not want; if Google split YTM from YTP I think they would have an easier case to argue that everyone should either watch ads or pay the premium price.

If the advertising agency, and by extension, YouTube had not gotten so insanely aggressive with their advertising, I would not need to block them. I don't know if it's greed, hubris, or just hate, but the advertisements across the Internet are out of control.

This still works. Just replace the 'youtube' part of the address with 'yout-ube' and it plays without ads.

Edit: if the link contains '&modestbranding=1' then you might have to delete that part.

What is the sorcery behind this?

I already reported this last night and seems like they went fully aggressive with it!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37863899

Personally, after asking [1], I decided that I'd better not risk my Google account, so I'm now not watching any YouTube.

I don't want to take the chance that Google would ban my account over this.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37857017

i see this some days and not others. testing stuff in production - not a good idea?

Just use PiHole.

They can't beat DNS blackholing.

Until they serve ads from the youtube domain

YT ads cannot be blocked this way as they aren't served from a distinct domain.

Sure they can. DNS black holes can only work when ads are served from a known and distinct set of domains than than the intended website content. If the domains are the same, then one cannot distinguish between an ad and content at the DNS level. In an extreme example, DNS black holes cannot block "baked-in" sponsor reads precisely because those are indistinguishable from content.

Moreover, adblock detectors tend to apply introspection to the page as it's loaded, to see if the ads have loaded or displayed correctly. A DNS black hole will often properly prevent the ads from loading, but this is exactly the situation that the adblock detector looks for. I would not expect a PiHole to offer any great advantage over something like uBlock Origin.

Or even better, NextDNS, which works on every device, on every network, not just your home network.

DNS blackholing only works for third party ad servers. Twitch has already started embedding ads right into the stream, youtube can't be far behind.

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