A fast, lightweight, and undetectable YouTube Ads Blocker for Firefox | Hacker News Reader

A fast, lightweight, and undetectable YouTube Ads Blocker for Firefox

addons.mozilla.org

23 pointsdanny0013 comments

> This blocker is designed to monitor advertisements, automatically seek the ads and skip them. It's important to note that this doesn't classify as traditional ad blocking, as the ad content is technically "loaded". Nevertheless, the extension's underlying logic enables it to fast-forward through the ad content to its conclusion. The entire process is optimized to occur within an extremely brief timeframe, typically <=50 milliseconds, ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted user experience.

Why would I want to use some new random add-on that may be (or may become) malicious and doesn't even really block ads when uBlock Origin is a well established and trusted add-on that does the job perfectly well and works for far more than just youtube?

I'm all for having options, and I like that this project takes a different approach to the problem, but since installing random add-ons already carries a degree of risk there's just no reason to use it while better and more trustworthy options are still working.

Instead of an endless cat and mouse game versus YouTube, why not just play their game but with our own rules? It's a lot easier to do this than to have to purge caches every other day, imo.

You can't escape the cat and mouse game. I'm pretty sure that if this method caught on youtube would come up with counter measures for it as well. Right now, I feel like between ublock, newpipe, and yt-dlp I'm pretty well covered for ad-blocking. Maybe this method will get picked up and added as a fallback option in more mature projects, but I can't advise installing add-ons that don't already have a long and solid track record.

> when uBlock Origin is a well established and trusted add-on that does the job perfectly well

Author probably built this in the short period of time where uBlock wasn't bypassing YouTube's latest changes to make ad blocking harder. I agree that time is probably better spent contributing to existing block lists instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

How dependable are you on your google account? What if Google would block your account and make you pay if you don't go trough enough ads? It has already started to force you to disable the ad-blocker. So, I think that could be a next step.

With this blocker however, the ad is still loaded and played but it's skipped. So, you don't see the ad but Google, hopefully, still counts it as an impression.

I'm seeing all kinds of dark patterns emerging on google apps. In Google Play, the new notification indications (the bell icon with a number, supposedely indicating the number of new unread notifications) that are just ads. Still in Google Play, when you search for apps you get the sponsored ones on the top with the install button like it was a search hit. And of course, youtube that is just a bunch of traps all over.

I know they've thrown away the "Don't be Evil" motto long ago but this? This is just going the opposite way in full force and being in complete a$$O1e mode. I am sure I've seen malware applying less agressive tactics.

They are just not taking care of their product (their users) very well.

> What if Google would block your account and make you pay if you don't go trough enough ads?

I don't have a youtube account. If the day came where I was forced to be logged into youtube just to see a video at all I'd either find some kind of workaround (piracy, or maybe some kind of shared/proxy account) or I'd stop watching youtube videos. Under no circumstances would I pay Google to watch youtube videos and as long as I have some means to block ads available to me I'll keep blocking them.

I accept that my relationship with Google is adversarial and that they'll do everything they can to violate my privacy and make money at my expense. There have been times where I've gone to some lengths to block ads, for example never watching on the website and saving all videos to disk before viewing them, or not watching any videos for weeks while I wait for an update to tools like newpipe. I'll do what I have to. I'm mostly just waiting for Google to piss us off enough that we see people building and turning to alternative platforms that treat both viewers and creators better.

If anyone is curious, I found the source code for this: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

Seems to do a lot of DOM querying using a setTimeout

   if (isAd && skipLock) {
     const videoPlayer = document.getElementsByClassName("video-stream")[0];
     videoPlayer.muted = true; // videoPlayer.volume = 0;
     videoPlayer.currentTime = videoPlayer.duration - 0.1;
     videoPlayer.paused && videoPlayer.play()
     // CLICK ON THE SKIP AD BTN
     document.querySelector(".ytp-ad-skip-button")?.click();
     document.querySelector(".ytp-ad-skip-button-modern")?.click();
   }

So it looks for the ad player, mutes it, fast forwards it, and automatically clicks on the "skip" button (if available, not all ads are skip-able)

This seems to be the repository for it: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

I do not see that this includes sponsor block capability. Can anyone else confirm/deny as well?

How long until Google starts banning accounts for using ad blockers?

I'm not logged in into Google on my laptop. Of course they can use fingerprinting and get me when I eventually log in because I have to do something in there for one of my customers.

I use NewPipe on my phone. No ads in there.

Is it legit in general?

These days, I don't feel comfortable installing any extension that isn't part of the recommended extensions program.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com