YouTube steps up fight against ad blockers again
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ghacks.net
So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site.
First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.
If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple.
A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy.
Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.
It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.
You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking
about removing their income.
Clear your cookies and check out youtube sometime. Perhaps once they stop pushing vile right wing nonsense, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and assorted brain rot I'd consider tossing money at Google.
Again justification for why your free loading is actually a moral act.
If you're small time Google won't pay out enough to make it your sole source of income so you'll probably seek out other ways of monetizing your videos (e.g. Patreon, merch). If you're large enough you're gonna seek out more stable source of income that won't threaten to demonetize you at the drop of a hat (e.g. Patreon, merch).
Me? I think it's immoral to run 30 minute ads hyping up hate churches and 15 minute ads hawking missile launchers.
e.g.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/17lcv5e/...
Why don't I have a right to that money? Why should I then have to pay google even more either directly with cash or indirectly through more advertising and spying?
Google has made FAR more than enough money by spying on me than it actually costs them for me to use adblock. Bonus, I don't have to watch AI generated ads for boner pills with a celebrity's fake face on it
To the extent that youtube has anything interesting on it, it tends to be random 1 minute recordings from some dude that just fixed something, or recordings of e.g. lectures that were being given anyway, and they felt like posting it somewhere free. These aren't people asking for support. They're unlikely to get more than a few hundred views.
See also [0]. There's already an infinite wealth of top quality works out there, already for free. It'd already take a lifetime to scratch the surface of the best ones. The "creators" you speak of are irrelevant.
False. Sense. Of. Security.
The lock on my front door doesn't have to stop a professional lock picker to be useful.
Of course you do, you've managed to justify to yourself that your leeching is both giving it to Google and somehow supporting content creators. The internal inconsistency could only possibly lead to a good nights sleep.
They'd highlight new products because they believe they're good.
The solution to your last problem is to make exclusive dealing contracts always illegal and actually enforce antitrust law.
Putting a product at a prominent part of your store because you think it's a good purchase for customers is also completely different from accepting money from a manufacturer to place it prominently.
Going to an event where everyone specifically went to meet and exchange information about what people in their industry are doing is also again entirely unlike paid promotion.
You're missing a step though. There is no consumer pull for new products so there is no reason for stores to bother with them even if the owner thinks it's a great idea. The demand isn't there
Consumers can access the database through provided UI or through 3rd party tools using this database API.
You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"
> you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials
You already have to do that for commerce. It's called incorporating.
> giant list of your competitors
Isn't that what market is? Giant amount of competitors is what's best for consumers. And what's best for them is the only thing that matters because they together have the money to foot all the bills.
> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?
It's fine, you can provide as much documentation as you want for your product or service. You are even encouraged to provide it. Like user and service manuals for your products. Maybe you even should be required to post them if you significant amount of your product.
Consumers can decide using the provided UI, or using 3rd party tools, which can't take money to promote specific items, because that, unlike verbose entry in the database, would be an ad.
> You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"
Do you read all of the databases alphabetically? No, I end up with search engine, for products and services, with open data and any kind of filtering and sorting that anyone can dream of. No more enshittificarion of the result to sell clicks of confused customers.
That sounds wonderful! How do you see dystopian?
> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?
God forbid I listen to my neighbors and their experiences! Come on, there's even a term for it: "word of mouth".
Why should private corporations with no oversight or meaningful consequences have the unlimited and unchallenged right to market drugs to kids? Why should they be allowed to post enormous flashing billboards on our roads? Why do these corporations have more right to common public spaces than the people do?
Sorry, "but the public wants to get screwed" is a complete joke of an argument.
Spoken like someone who has never built anything of value in the world. Even Apple, who famously "hates advertising and adtech companies" makes ads to promote their products. Ads exist for a reason.
Your statement is no better than "if your company emits carbon, you need to close". Sounds nice. Doesn't work
Oh, how mistaken you are. Apple runs a profitable ads business. Not as cute as meta or Google, but still meaningful.
Earn revenue with advertising on Apple News - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/guide/news-publisher/earn-revenue-...
Apple doesn't report Ad business numbers in quarterly earnings report, so we have to rely on third party analyst reports.
> Last year, Apple’s U.S. ad business totaled $6.47 billion, but only accounted for 2.1% of total digital ad spending, according to eMarketer’s March 2025 forecast
https://digiday.com/marketing/when-it-comes-to-ads-apple-isn...
I bought products and software before. Because I wanted them and the software was good. I used it. I even payed for apps that we 99% free and the pro version almost had anything more than the free version but I still payed, to thank the programmer. And not even use anything from the pro version.
My statements were radical. It has to be, to wake up people, because everyone seems to think ads are normal.
And ads on the web are not normal. It's a cancer. They are abusive. You can see that when companies like Facebook and Google make money.
Marketing is the cancer. If your business is to trick people and make them stay on your anti-social-plataform because they know how to mess with your mind and you don't even have a clue of what is going on... oh Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, others...
There will always be someone who says oh I don't mind ads, there might be something I need...
What about uMatrix; some might argue it is even better than uBlock Origin, at least one can use both at the same time; if "security issues" are a concern, the so-called "modern" browser is a gigantic target that sources and runs Javascript from the internet automatically; there is also the choice of not using one (hence no need for uBlock or other extensions); Javascript isn't required for downloading or watching YouTube videos but YouTube of course wants everyone to use their "Javascript player" so they can monitor people's behaviour at the computer with telemetry and other unsolicited connections
"A company that depends on ads, lives by using you."
Ad services. The company acts as an intermediary (middleman), sitting between two parties, e.g., a video producer and a video consumer, conducting surveillance, collecting data, serving ads, relying on other people to produce and upload video, for free, then targeting the people consuming it with ads; parasitic
Mozilla is the company's business partner, sending data about www users to the company
As such, their software seems compromised; they continually promote an "internet advertising ecocsystem"
There are other ways to avoid ads that do not require a so-called "modern" browser that runs Javascript; usually the so-called "modern" browser are distributed by the company and its partners or competitors; optimised for serving ads
In fact, usually internet ads rely on Javascript, so the "ad blocker" solution is using Javascript to counter Javascript
Some users might prefer to just not choose the so-called "modern" browser as their client, and not run Javascript
Also, not sure whether it is still true but Pi-Hole used to suggest the company's DNS service as "upstream", provide it as a choice, maybe even set it as a default
Nothing hands the company more control than using its public DNS service; the company's DNS cache is filled with IP addresses of tracking and ad servers; users will actually pay third parties like NextDNS to filter these addresses out while the company's hardware products hardcode their public DNS service into the products to allow phoning home to the mothership and free flow of telemetry, tracking and advertising
uBlock Origin is still the best. It does not have "white lists".
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/14/adblock-plus-defends-new-whi...
Estimated 198 million people using ad blockers
The sluggishness of the www without an ad blocker, not to mention the extent of the surveillance, has only gotten worse in the last 9 years
What is the number of ad blocker users today
But there are many ways to avoid ads; "ad blockers" are only way
Users have choices
Ad blockers are tied to the so-called "modern" browser coupled with "browser extensions"; some "modern" browser users might be running in guest mode where extensions are not allowed
These browsers and extensions come with inherent trust and "security" issues
The so-called "modern" browser is so large and complex that users generally do not edit or compile it themselves
If there is something about the software they do not like, then they do not remove it and recompile; instead they may complain via online comments, or in the case of a small few, write "browser extensions"
As it happens, the source code and compilation of these "modern" browsers is generally controlled by corporations, their business partners or competitors, that each have a financial interest in internet advertising services
Whomever controls the source code for the browser can disable browser extensions; this was recently illustrated when Google disabled uBlock Origin (cf. "uBlock Origin Lite") in Chrome
uBlock and other ad blockers rely on "blacklists" or "blocklists"
These lists try to predict every possible domainname or IP address that is an ad server, tracker, telemetry endpoint, etc.
The number of domainnames and IP addresses associated with ads, tracking and telemetry is not fixed, it is very large and constantly changing
Generally it is unlikely any single www/mobile user will encounter all of the servers listed during their lifetime
Nevertheless the ad blocker will "auto-update" and download these lists
The user is unlikely to review these lists; for those that do, some might find there are some shocking domains in these lists
Every user is different
Another method of avoiding ads is via "DNS blocklists"
It has the advantage of not requiring a so-called "modern" browser or extensions
It can also use wildcards
But it suffers from the same problems as the blocklists used by ad blockers mentioned above
In addition, it is susceptible to "CNAME cloaking", which required changes to ad blockers and other methods using blocklists
https://petsymposium.org/popets/2021/popets-2021-0053.pdf
There are other methods to avoid ads that are neither "ad blockers" nor "DNS blocklists"
For example, it is possible to avoid ads using DNS without using "blocklists"
The user simply determines what domainname and IP addresses they want to visit and places them in a root.zone file^1
The user serves this zone to all their computers
There is no recursion, no need for a forwarder like dnsmasq/pi-hole, no need for a cache like unbound, etc. and certainly no need for third party DNS service like NextDNS
There is no "CNAME cloaking" problem
This is a "root" authoritative nameserver run by the user
(I have been using a custom root.zone for over 16 years)
By analogy it is common for personal computer users to adopt configurations for network firewalls (e.g., ipf, ipfs, netfilter, pf, npf, etc.) with default "deny all" rules that block all traffic by default; the computer user then specifically adds further rules to create exceptions to allow only the traffic that the user wants
The list of exceptions is arguably comparable to a "whitelist" or "allowlist"
Perhaps the important difference from the "whitelist" mentioned in the CNBC article is that this one is controlled by the computer owner, not the software developer or the advertiser
Personal computer owners using a default deny rule in a firewall config are not attempting to predict all possible src or dst addresses to which they do not want to connect, like ad blocker blocklist do
1. Over the years, the method of determining what names and addresses are needed to enjoy a set of
If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.
It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult.
Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.
How many ads does YouTube have to serve in order to net $15 from the advertisers?
How much would they gross in this circumstance (vs. what they pay out to content creators)?
When people do not pay for services directly with a credit card, they pay for it indirectly with ads and data collection. The internet would be a better place if companies didn't have to worry so much about monetizing indirectly. Plus, the only companies that can give out free services often have monopolistic intent.
This whole debate embodies why the internet has become what it has.
Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.
My understanding is that most people actually watch youtube on smart TVs and then smart phones. It may very well make sense for them to leave ad blockers alone and to keep youtube dominant while they make money off consumers like that which can't run ad blockers (or at least make it much harder to.)
The kinds of people who use ad blockers are also the kinds of people who start new things and convince the larger consumer oriented people to follow them. The reason YouTube is dominant is because it's still usable for that set of people.
There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).
If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
But this topic has grown more than I could imagine. Ads are a jungle. We do need to change this. Make this companies behave and not exploit people.
There isn't and never was. Adware and spyware have always been flavors of malware. Some people thought they could use that as a business model. It was pretty much immediately met with people blocking it and providing software to remove it. Some people have tried hiding botnet command and control functions in software they give out as a business model or putting crypto miners on web pages. That also doesn't form a social contract. That makes them malware authors.
At the same time, AI will replace politicians and become president. Just imagine a president that does the right things and no lies.
A prime minister that you can write and it will write you back with a proper decision. Government being efficient! Wow! And not someone being just an idiot trying to fake responsible spending or cut waste. And then no more contracts for their friends.
AI will be really for the people and not for the rich. End those "meetings" with all presidents and ministers who fake being really worried about something.
Any problem with the AI itself, Facebook will have a hot line where you can call... and talk to an engineer.
I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.
And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised.
(I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.)
It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games...
Btw cutting on titanium cutting board is the fastest way to have dull knives. So we moved from scam to deception.
I would have thought so. But the ad explicitly claims that this helps keep them sharp, IIRC. So there might be a legal case there too....
Aren't they really just confined plasma torches though, lore-wise?
Either that or they meant "torch" as in "flashlight", which I've seen shitty lightsabers be.
I saw around me that many people are fine with ads, so I don't think it's much of a problem for YouTube
I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads.
saw this meme
I think the article is quite old?
If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.