YouTube Begins Blocking Users Who Use Adblock

For me, it also works to stop using Chrome and use Firefox instead (so far.)

> enable ublock origin in incognito mode in options

I can't find that option. Where's it at?

I’ve been blocking ads for a long time but I’m not going to cry about mistreatment when somebody shuts the back door that I’ve been using to get free lunch.

The ads are annoying, I might just use nebula more.

Put simply, the end user is not the customer. The shareholders are. As in "we need a product that harvests money from people" instead of "let's solve a problem for people while adding value".

> This marks the moment Google officially decided it didn’t know how to innovate any longer

What? THIS marks that moment? I haven't seen google innovate since they built google search. Literally every other successful thing they have was bought.

The silicon valley engineer should also be able to easily afford premium.

Every innovation they have tried themselves has failed and they just discontinued it. Other good things they have done are actually by buying other startups and then using their tech .

I'm not even convinced they'll make more money clamping down on ad blocking this way. I'd happily pay £1 or £2 a month for no ads, which is still infinitely more than they make out of me now (given I never willingly click on, engage with or otherwise view their or anyone else's ads), but I know a rip-off when I see one and £12.99/month definitely is.

YouTube has been a thorn in the side of Google for a long time. Think about it, what has YouTube brought to Alphabet other than brand recognition? YouTube has already peaked.

It's not profitable. It's a source of a lot of drama, and ill-will toward the company, it doesn't generate much ad revenue, it's no longer a "feat of engineering" that so many people talked about in the mid-2000s - and it seems like the general populace whom generate a lot of revenue by being targeted on the platform (eg US, North America, Western Europe, Australia) are beginning to shift from adblockers is the exception, to adblockers is the default.

I've worked at F500's where uBlock Origin is part of the Chrome Enterprise profile. Why? It brings security, and performance, to the majority of users. Yes there's occasional issues, but it's worth it.

I suspect we'll see YouTube clients built into AdBlocking software (eg I'm pretty sure SponsorBlock has already begun this). AdBlock and uBlock Origin likely won't implement this, at least initially - but I can definitely see this taking off. At that point, what can Google do?

They'll enforce their walled garden and kill off all Google-ToS breaching extensions.

I'm probably also in the minority, but I think Youtube having a near monopoly in this space is bad for consumers and would prefer to see some alternatives. If by merely executing control over my own hardware to see only what I want is enough to actively harm them then so be it.

I also have been subscribed to NebulaTV and Curiosity Stream for years.

Yeah but I have a problem with being bullied into paying them. It will just make me want to make their engineers life a pain by working on work-arounds.

I agree with all of that, and I sincerely was planning to become a paid subscriber. But I have some irrational resentment around being a statistic validating their increased pressure campaign. I don’t like feeling forced to spend the money! Which is weird because I get significantly more value from it than any streaming service.

I've posted this a few times recently, but I used to pay for youtube premium, but it started showing me ads while using chromecast. The third time it happened I cancelled and went back to using ublock. I don't use the chromecast much because the ads are unbearable but I see exactly 0 ads ever on my pc. In short, I block ads because not only is it free, it also actually works. My guess is as soon as(if?) they manage to totally stop ad blockers, they will pull a cable company move and start showing ads to paying users as well. They'll say it's to help creators or something or course.

I have zero problem paying for ad-free... but what I do have a problem with is that I have no ad-free only option. You have no choice but to also pay for their music streaming service for $14 per month when other, subjectively better music services are only $11 per month. They should have an ad-free a la carte option for something like $6 per month.

> I feel like I'm in the minority that has zero problem paying for an ad-free experience.

this is fine until enough people pay

at which point they add ads for paying customers too

see: cable TV, netflix, disney plus, hulu, ...

I paid for Premium for years. But then I started asking myself if wanted to give money to a company that pushed things like FLoC, Manifest v3, and WEI.

And the answer was no. We used to pay them $284/year for our household services.

Now we pay them nothing. Maybe they'll have a change of heart someday, but until then, not a dime.

Hear hear. I've been a Premium subscriber for awhile.

If you have YouTube Premium, you can watch videos with an ad blocker on. I found this out last night after getting Premium because they blocked me...

For me, it was the ads more than the tracking. But after a while, I couldn't in good conscience pay Google any longer. They're not a good netizen, and if they luckily go bankrupt, I won't shed a tear.

Yep. That's why I only watch YouTube on a tablet that is dedicated solely for watching YouTube on.

And why would I pay them for the privilege of them spying on me?

Fadblock doesn't go far enough; it should simulate clicking on the ad, loading and discarding the landing page in the background.

Isn't it a little optimistic though to think that the AI itself will be free from advertising/grubby-monetization in the scheme of things? Sure, it feels great now, and maybe even you can pay for the GPU and run it on your own, but not everyone will, and either way the future is long! It just feels inevitable that somebody or something will come to collect one day, in one form or the other.

yt-dl with a batch file running in task scheduler every night is a great way to make sure you keep up with all your favorite channels. Or at least so I've heard. It might take a person an hour or two to get it running, with spot checks to make sure it's still running, but it could be a great solution. Further, if one were so inclined, one could download the subtitle files as well, and throw them into a database by episode. Then, one could easily find a video they remember watching a while back by searching the database for a phrase.

I don't know how it is done for certain, but with absolute control of the client you could send any information back to Youtube that you wanted. So if all Youtube was requesting was that the minimal amount of time of ads be watched before playing the video you just tell them that you have. I'm sure it is getting far more complicated than this, but I suspect this is the basic idea of this back and forth arms race of ad blocking and adblock blocking and so forth.

As I understand it, the streams are served on their own. All the control is in the client. That's how downloaders can just download the streams if they can pass as a legitimate client.

Historically, if the ad failed to load, the player just continues with the actual video. All the adblocker has to do is block requests to DoubleClick.

Third-party clients can read and display the requested video parts though.

i would buy for 5 a month for ad-free, but newpipe + revanced is better on mobile and on desktop kodi, or SmartTubeNext

i don't want to pay for a worst experience.

> without paying a cent

You mean, YouTube has not paid you a cent for your attention.

I'm even willing to pay but with sponsor messages being baked in even paying for Premium means having to take extra steps to avoid ads. I'm also not sure if I pay for Premium if YT will still shut me down for running uBlock origin? I guess I could allowlist it at that point...

I can and I will. Just don't make me run software I don't want to on hardware I own.

Such a silly comment when you know full well that YouTube has a monopoly on user supplied video content.

Well, if that's their rules, it's a choice.

If you pick up a free newspaper on a commmute, or, say, a community "What's on" sponsored by ads, does someone look over your shoulder and insist you read every ad before they let you turn the page?

Best course of action. More free time reading books.

Seems like a win for YouTube, they don't have to waste bandwidth on users that don't bring in any revenue.

I don't think the link makes it clear but this is a new development in the Saga: some users are now getting a new message:

"You have 2 videos remaining, if you continue to use ad block the video player will be blocked"

Previously users simply had a timer to wait through, this is a much stronger action

From their perspective, they don't care if they are blocking all the adblockers, blocking the major ones on the major platforms is still a big win.

it is called greed.

Support creators outside of Youtube, even if you find them via Youtube.

Youtube needs to die and get replaced by something more democratic anyway.

On my Desktop, Brave is counting down the last 3 videos I'm allowed to watch with ads blocked.

I hope Brave can give me the option to make Google think I'm watching the ad by downloading the ad but somehow not showing it to me.

Or, failing that, show it but auto-mute the audio during the ad (I spent lots of time on Youtube listening to my playlist).

yes I got the notice 2 weeks ago on FF with ublock origin, then last week the 3 video countdown, and now the full ban

And not just browsers. I'm sure other clients exist. I'd be surprised if VLC doesn't already have an extension that allows you to play YouTube.

They'll have to interpolate the ads into the stream. Then people will code clients that detects the ads and black them and mute them. Then YouTube will learn how that works and will change their ads not to trigger detection. Etc. This is called an arms race.