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Comment by refactorworks | Hacker News Reader

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.

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