YouTube's ad blocker crackdown is getting harder to dodge | Hacker News Reader

YouTube's ad blocker crackdown is getting harder to dodge

gizmodo.com

33 pointsbookofjoe70 comments

YouTube ads are very intrusive. But YouTube also censors and plays games with search and with promoting or hiding videos; they claim it is to maximize advertiser engagement but effectively is viewpoint discrimination.

I have largely switched to Rumble; it’s not as refined as YouTube but they don’t have most of YouTube’s dark patterns. Their ads are in search and don’t seem blockable but are not intrusive like YouTube’s.

Youtube is one of the most valuable educational resources online. Often you can find links to other resources from helpful videos on youtube. A big part of this is because youtube has decades now of content on a huge variety of topics and unless someone is able to copy that archive of content I dont see myself switching to any other comparable service like nebula. The whole premise that allowed youtube to be an invaluable archive of tutorials and sources in the first place is that it is free to use and free to host on.

I also dont ever see myself paying for youtube or willingly not using an ad-blocker. If there is a creator I feel is particularly valuable to me I will consider signing up for their patreon but I dont feel its any of googles business who I choose to monetarily support. The whole premise that allowed youtube to be an invaluable archive of tutorials and sources is that it is free to use.

No, the premise is you get to watch the content if you watch the ads or pay for premium. How do you expect them to pay for their expenses?

It doesnt really matter to me how they pay for their expenses. It doesnt change the fact that youtube loses its value as an education/entertainment platform to me if they attempt to enforce their adblock-free policy. My choice to support individual creators is none of their business. If its an unsustainable business model for them its odd that its been around for a decade but its really not my concern. If they are going to shut down because Alphabet just cant afford to host it anymore then I would probably try to scrape as much valuable content as possible but for now Ill continue to block ads and support who I want to outside of googles ecosystem.

But it IS their business because believe it or not it costs a lot of money to operate a video on demand service, and creators don’t pay YouTube.

They could offer a p2p layer. The world’s video library shared between humanity. I’d happily seed educational videos.

With the billions[1] they already make on ad revenue I guess? I don't care. For me it's either ad blockers or I don't use the service.

YouTube is only still viable because the barriers to start a competing service are so high. Just like every other Alphabet-owned service, their single-minded focus on serving the bare minimum content merely as a vehicle for ads has just decimated the quality of their products.

[1] https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/youtube-q3-2023-alphab...

Given the direction Youtube is going I'm extremely hesitant to just give them money to stop ads and after so many years of little exposure to them I can't stand how obnoxious they are. If they're this aggressive about going after a small minority of users for a blip in revenue then it makes me wonder what quality reducing decisions will happen after this if it goes over well.

Is it really that small though?

We have a biased perspective compared to what the average user does, so only Youtube knows, but I do know the vast majority of people I know outside of tech don't even use adblockers.

I always imagined a substantial amount of YouTube views is from apps like their native YouTube app.

Two media subscriptions I cannot live without: spotify + youtube premium.

That being said if they ever try to put any ads in premium videos, that is getting cancelled so incredibly fast. It's the most expensive subscription I have right now, justified only by the sheer volume of content I watch from them.

If you pay for your subscription through another country (or via some VPNs), the price is different.

I used to have a grandfathered plan from Google Play Music, and that lapsed (so I lost it) while I was living in Mexico. I got premium for <8usd (it fluctuates with the peso, obviously) and that's locked in as long as I pay in pesos (most American/European/Chinese banks support auto conversion) and don't let it lapse.

You could cut that down to one, if you were willing to switch to YT Music.

I personally prefer it, and it's at feature parity (afaik). Obviously, however, you do you.

Almost feature parity. You cannot download songs to your Apple Watch using YouTube music.

Blame Apple for that. It works fine with Android smartwatches.

But yes, if that's a feature you need, obviously you shouldn't use the service.

YT Music basically made me quit my Premium subscription because it was so bad. They may have fixed some of these by now but I used it during the pre-release period and it didn't get much better.

1. The recommendation algorithm didn't work very well for me. It would keep repeating the same songs. Even songs that I didn't like (and only 5k dislikes are excluded, it used to be 2.5k or something and they "fixed" it when I first filed feedback that I was being recommended disliked songs).

2. You can upload your own music but it is in a separate "library" than their music. So you can't just shuffle both and your own music will never be recommended in radios.

3. The app was shit with spotty connections. It didn't even seem to preload the entire current song. So if you had occasional brief lack of connection it would drop out.

4. Various UX complaints about the web client. Mostly that it was slow and awkward.

Google Play music was actually fantastic. Such a shame that it got killed. I agree that moving it under YouTube was the logical move but they should have just rebranded rather than writing a shitter version.

1 - not sure what your issues were with the recommendation algorithm. It seems to be a mix of the GPlay Music algo with YouTube's built-in. The playlists I get are fine and don't usually repeat until ~35 songs (only if you don't have auto-load enabled for the playlist, if you do it can go much longer). Spotify most definitely has better prebuilt and community radios/playlists, however.

2 - this is probably the worst feature dropped from the GPlay -> YT transition. It's clear they're trying to discourage personal library use.

3 - I've not seen this issue and generally I get a two-three song buffer. I imagine this has to do with your settings and device configuration. I don't doubt your issue, simply can't corroborate it.

4 - the overall UX and client (web and native ones) have both improved drastically in the time I've used it. I stuck to GPlay for as long as possible because of it's terribleness, but it seems pretty useable these days. That's all going to be preference though.

You could cut it down to zero if you just download the music you like. Then you won't have to worry about it being in The Cloud and able to disappear / revoke your access at any moment.

the cost of hunting down media + maintaining a library + making it portable across all my devices is totally worth $10/mo.

TBH I only download things from YouTube into a folder and I just use Syncthing to make it portable when it matters. But I'm not particularly "on the go" so I don't bother with mobile devices, or generally any wireless things.

I don't organize playlists or anything. Every piece of music I have ever downloaded is in one playlist. I access a song by name when I want to hear it.

FWIW student rate for YouTube Premium is $7.99/month v regular $13.99.

Ad nauseum seems to do the job well. Ads are clicked and not displayed. So YouTube is happy I guess.

Actually from the advertisers' point of view this could be worse than blocking ads, as it makes profiling worthless.

Yes, that is the entire point of the project, and the name.

Disclaimer: I don't know what tech ad nauseam used, never used it.

Now, isn't it dangerous running ads and clicking on them from a security point of view? Can these ads exploit some vulnerability and pwn your computer? I would prefer never to run ads and not risk some infection.

It does not actually clicks on the ads. It sends the request to ad server but does not execute any response from the server, so it's safe to run

https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...

This thing seems to work pretty well: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

Instead of actually blocking the ad elements, it just auto-forwards the videos to the end once loaded. Slightly jankier, but much harder to detect.

The 'Stop the Madness' plugin can do the same thing (and lots else besides).

https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/

Why doesn't YT simply stream the ads, making them in essence unblockable? I dislike invasive advertisement just as much as anyone else, But I also see the value in making YT as annoying as possible to use so competitors can grow and thrive.

And who’s stop an extension taking that stream and then filtering out the ads from that stream? More difficult but someone will implement it if YT takes that route.

I'm curious how to make this unavoidable. Something along the lines of of `randomAmountOfSecondsForAds + minimumNoAdsSeconds` per session token. Scrolling on the stream would keep showing the ad. I suppose someone could generate a bunch of sessions to bypass this, but could this be detected?

For the economists out there: are ads the only economically viable way to maximize user count while providing no cost to said users?

Thinking about this, given the ads are shown randomly, generating sessions doesn't work. It makes the ads unavoidable.

It basically already exists: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

I can't even use youtube anymore. I do have an adblocker and made an exception for youtube but still get blocked. I disabled it completely and it still didn't work. Not sure if I use it enough to justify a subscription but as of now they're not getting any ad money from me until this is fixed.

Hey why everyone seem to think it's legitimate to pay for content?

So if you are poor, access to content should be denied to you?

Most of the people on the internet are poor accessing youtube with $40 smartphones.

They cannot pay premium, why send them ads? What's the point? Make them waste their precious time and bandwidth?

The browser built-in blockers still seem to work. What would it take to defeat those?

The 'terms of service' stuff always puzzles me. Why does YouTube think its terms of service should be able to dictate which software I run on my computer.

Because you agree to the terms of using their service when you use their service.

Nope, that's not a contract because there is no consideration.

Receiving a service is consideration.

If you reply to this comment I expect $10000000000 and your firstborn.

And your cat.

TOS are a joke made up by lawyers. I don't have to sign a TOS when I buy a cucumber, and I don't get my cucumber revoked if I stick it up my ass rather than eat it as was "intended".

No reason to complicate commerce just because it happens online. TOS needs to die in favour of a few simple standard rules.

A cucumber is a good, not a service.

What is the percentage of YouTube users who use an ad blocker? I'm curious.

There are people that don't use ad blockers these days? I'm honestly not aware of many besides maybe some of my elderly family members. Not that people necessarily declare to me upon first meeting their stance on ad blockers, but it's a common enough topic at work, with some of my friends, and with some of my friends/family when they ask my help figuring out if there's a reason their computer is slow. Many of the people that ask for my help with their computers are already using ad blockers too.

Granted I imagine there's a sizeable percentage of people that watch YouTube from a smart TV and don't have, say, PiHole configured as the default DNS server on their router.

And it's not that I'm against web services making money off of my page views, it's just that some of the ads out there are just downright malicious, and I don't trust advertisement services to properly vet them.

Almost everyone using an iphone to watch youtube, or using safari on Mac probably doesn't use any adblocking. I'd wager that's a significan part of the population in some countries (where Apple is dominant, like the US or Japan).

Similarly, most people on Android likely use the youtube app, and not the off-playstore ad-blocking alternatives, or Firefox + ublock.

Every Android user who uses either the default browser or the app, as well.

Yeah, lump phones and other such appliances into my anecdote above about smart TVs :)

Though, a technical user may still use PiHole or similar services for their entire home network. Or VPN into their home network for the same protection on their cell service. Though, outside of my personal bubble, this is probably a small percentage of people that go through that effort.

PiHole doesn't block ads on the YouTube app.

Ah you are right. I believe it did at one point? Unless I'm mistaken, their ads were served from a different URL at one point in the past. But not anymore. I've just used YouTube Premium for that particular site for a while now.

I've never used an ad blocker nor does anyone I know. I am a retired 75-year-old physician. I would bet <1% of people >60 use or will ever use an ad blocker.

Also I have NO idea what a Pihole is OR a DNS server. My ilk are the vast majority of people online.

And YouTube is getting easier for me to dodge.

I still watch a few things on yt, but many of my favorite channels are over on Nebula.TV, so I watch them there. It's around $36 a year for Nebula + Curiosity Stream, with no yt "suggestions" or ads.

Now, if yt offers something in the same price range (maybe up to $50/year), and lets me opt out of data collection and "helpful" suggestions, I'd certainly consider it.

Once they completely block ad blockers, it will be my last time watching YouTube, I guess.

There are some diamonds in the rough, but most of the content seems like a big ad to me anyways. Would love to see a creator network spawn out of this where I could support which channels I wanted to directly, ad free of course.

Just switch to FreeTube, or NewPipe/LibreTube if on Android. For Youtube Music there's Harmony or ViMusic.

Edit: also LibRedirect is a useful extension.

Those are just as adversarial as adblockers.

If Google ever makes a serious attempt at breaking compatibility like they're doing now (or we've seen from reddit/twitter), you'll see degraded ux.

These apps still play the same cat and mouse game as uBlock and the likes. We don't know how long these will last. YouTube is getting more aggressive against these too, and youtube-dl.

Wouldn’t you get the same benefit by singing up to YouTube premium? Creators you watch will get a higher share of money from premium subscribers.

If google could just take our money and give us videos in exchange yes.

But unfortunately, they still suck all your data and sell it to third parties.

It's even worse if you pay, because if you sign in into your youtube account on the offical app, your entire phone is now linked to your a account even if you didn't link it before, with all the data in it. If you are not careful, your entire agenda and calendar immediatly exfiltrate.

Plus google gets your credit card, which means it will now link orders and data from other services using the same card number with its partners and get even more data.

After paying of course, you still can get your accounts locked out for obscure reasons with no appeal, and despite being a customer, have zero service support.

Google is not a respectful company.

And given what we know about the PRISM program, centralizing all this data in there is not good for democracy either.

> But unfortunately, they still suck all your data and sell it to third parties.

They don't sell your data to third parties, they do advertising for third parties on their data.

I can't believe people on HN are still confused by this concept.

Thanks. This is exactly what I think every time someone says "just buy premium". There's a reason I don't have a Google account.

And even if you do have a Google account, you might not want to log into YouTube with it; for instance, I recall reading that logging into YouTube with your Google account required you to put your real name into it, and if for some reason Google decided that your real name isn't your real name, you could lose access to your whole Google account, including more important services like Gmail and Google Talk.

I don't watch nearly enough videos for that to be worth it. Probably less than 5/month. I realize that I may be in the minority, but pay-per-video or pay-per-channel is a better value prop for me.

> Wouldn’t you get the same benefit by singing up to YouTube premium?

I'm a YT premium user. I'm always shocked when I see how many ads are forced on non-premium users.

You mean the sponsored segments that creators encode into their videos? I believe I haven't seen any ads that came from Google as a Premium subscriber.

I guess YouTube could offer some way for creators to deliver two different videos to regular and premium subscribers so they could even take out sponsored segments?

Assuming this would be a non-trivial balance act because decently sized niche channels could probably make a big chunk from a big sponsor vs. free users seeing ads.

I've been saying for forever that things like creator coops and PeerTube are a match made in heaven. A major barrier right now is that services like Nebula are rolling their own software and without interoperability the lack of any sort of discovery algorithm is a clear failing. With interoperability, however, things could return to a place where word of mouth across a distributed set of social networks is a reasonable way to build an audience. Long term I think the return of content discovery algorithms are inevitable but in the form of open and tweakable algorithms where engagement does not necessarily mean ad views.

the only thing I find myself relying on for youtube lately is music. Their suggestion algorithm is actually pretty decent and I like how their generated playlists suggest music I like, and once in a while will slip in something new and similar.

> Would love to see a creator network spawn out of this where I could support which channels I wanted to directly, ad free of course.

Aren’t you basically describing Nebula?

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