I’m sure many of you are already aware that YouTube has been rolling out anti-adblock detection for Chrome users for a few weeks now.
Today, as a long time Firefox user with the fantastic uBlock Origin extension installed, I got my first anti-adblock popup on the platform. Note that this may not happen to you personally for a while, but it is inevitably coming for everyone.
Thankfully, the fine folks at uBlock Origin have already advised a simple workaround (on Reddit, yuck!) which I will duplicate in a simplified form below for your convenience. I have tested it on Firefox and it is working fine for me (so far).
PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST.
Update uBO to the latest version (1.52.0+) . <== The extension itself, for technical improvements. You do this in your browser.
Remove your custom config / reset to defaults. <== This means removing your custom filters (or disabling My filters) and disabling ALL additional lists you’ve enabled. It might be quicker to make a backup of your config and restore to defaults instead.
Force an update of your Filter Lists. <== This is within the extension. Lists are what determine what’s blocked or not. How to update Filter lists: Click 🛡️ uBO’s icon > the ⚙ Dashboard button > the Filter lists pane > the 🕘 Purge all caches button > the 🔃 Update now button.
Disable all other extensions AND your browser’s built-in blockers. <== No need to uninstall, just disable them. They might interfere with our solutions.
Make sure you follow all 4 points above. If you’re seeing the message, it’s likely due to your custom config (either additional lists or separate filters in My filters).
Restarting your browser afterwards may help too.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the issue on default settings, you can slowly start restoring your config (if you really need it). Do it gradually, to easier find out what was causing the issue in the first place. Once you find the culprit, simply skip it in your config.
If you want to use Enhancer for YouTube*, you have to* disable its adblocking*.*
May the force uBlock Origin be with you!
Update
Just wanted to mention a few things that have been pointed out in the comments:
- There are quite a few projects that provide an alternative ad-free front end to YouTube. These include Invidious, FreeTube, LibreTube, Newpipe, Revanced, and I’m sure there are several more options I’ve missed. I don’t have any particular preference really but I routinely use NewPipe on my cellphone just because I tried it once and couldn’t be bothered trying all the others.
- In step 4 listed above, to clarify, afaik you only need to remove adblocker extensions (if you have more than one installed) that might conflict with the uBlock Origin rules and trigger the anti-adblock, not all extensions.
- If you hate non-stop ads but want to support your favorite content creators then be sure to give them some love on Patreon or whatever alternative options they provide. Creators typically make only a tiny, tiny fraction of what YouTube makes in ad revenue, assuming YouTube doesn’t just outright steal the lot, and it’s a shitty business model that’s ruining the internet. Even if you watch the ads, you’re only supporting YouTube most of the time, not the creators.
I see a lot of people saying “but that’s how creators get paid”.
Listen: I didn’t put ads on my video. YouTube did. I can’t take them off and I don’t see a cent from them. Block away.
Except they don’t. They get demonetization from literally breathing from Google who treats them like shit, so it’s best to donate to their patreons anyway.
Their demonetization “policy” or lack thereof is a major reason why I block ads. I don’t believe that Alphabet operates in good faith in this matter.
The RIAA and MPAA are the driving force behind the copystrike behavior. I do think Alphabet has the resources and standing to resist and battle it in court, but that’s clearly not their business model. Alphabet is not invested in protecting content generators, only in what metrics they can sell to ad agencies.
That’s not even always the issue though - like recently Veritasium had an ancient video demonitized for mentioning that the subject of the video committed suicide, so now their most recent video is a censored re-upload of it. They include a new segment talking about the frustrating demonitization scheme Youtube has.
I see a lot of people saying “but that’s how creators get paid”
And they’re not wrong. But they put themselves in this position when they uploaded their videos to servers owned by one of the worst corporations in the world, with massive privacy implications, and no alternatives.
I watch them on other platforms when they make it available.
They are wrong. Most creators don’t get paid from ads.
But it wasn’t always that way. Creators had to survive multiple crises as Youtube made sudden changes that impacted their livelihoods.
Those that survived rely on merch, patronage platforms, paid promotions, and promoting their content on other paid platforms.
id actually love to see the breakdown of channels with content by subscriber count/youtube partnership status. I suspect a very large percentage will be non monetised. speaking from experience it either takes a shitload of work to get the ability to earn literally a few dollars or you somehow get lucky with a “viral” hit. even people in my niche the “big ones” make maybe a couple hundred bucks a year in ad revenue
…yes? They do.
Creators are victims here too. For most of them YouTube was a very different place when they were beginning their careers on the platform.
Not that it changes your point, I just feel it’s important to keep in mind that the process of “Enshittification” sucks for everyone (well, except shareholders).
I have a note in the description of every video that say “seeing ads on my videos? Use ublock origin!”
That’s a really good idea!
To add, you have to become a partner before ever seeing a penny, which means you’ve fronted all the start up costs.
Use adblock, then work an extra 3 minutes and donate your salary to the creator.
Blah blah blah blah.
I don’t care who does and who doesn’t get paid, and I’ll come up with every excuse to ignore that pesky creator income.
The mental hoops you all go through is insane. It’s on par with Trumpers, just less damaging.
You think I’m jumping through mental hoops for telling people to use an ad blocker?
Alternatively, some folks can also try Freetube for an ad free youtube experience as a desktop app
Not sure what site that is you’ve linked, but the official site seems to be this one: https://freetubeapp.io/
It works perfectly with Libredirect. Thank you!
I’ve been using it on Linux and it’s pretty nifty.
The only right answer.
I was worried we’d be seeing waves of this kind of anti-user aggression from large websites. My hypothesis is that twitter is running an active experiment to see just how user-unfriendly you can make something with an established userbase / what level of profitability corresponds with what level of fuckiness.
YouTube n’ friends have been watching from the sidelines and picking their own jaw up off the floor after seeing just how much the average user will bend over and take.
…which all makes me absolutely LOVE to see communities like this. Yo ho, motherfuckers!
twitter’s not meant to be an experiment. Musk is just really stupid. But other platforms are learning from it anyway
Seriously though, what does it say about people that still think he’s a genius and secretly has a plan he’s working on? Those guys are reaching levels of stupid I struggle to comprehend
Yo dude, Facebook has been doing this for a decade or more. They intentionally break parts of their website and then track how often someone will come back and try to use it, assuming they ever left in the first place. Now they’re about 99% absolute dog shit, and people still go there. It’s actually kind of amazing.
Anyone else remember the first ad-pocalypse?
Like when OG AdBlock was created and there was an all-out race between individual websites and AdBlock?
Then OG AdBlock sold out and allowed “approved” ads to still show.
We are seeing history repeat. The only reason ads survived was due to increasing number of users who weren’t using adblock.
Now, with market saturation, Google is starting to fight back.
I would absolutely love to see a revitalization on proxy software specifically designed to eliminate ads and tracking. I haven’t looked into this in quite some time but I think we’re crossing into this territory now.
The pessimist in me says to look out for a bill authored by Google to make adblocking illegal.
But the optimist in me says “the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.”
If adblocking becomes illegal I’m done using the internet.
If adblocking becomes illegal people will still do it (and you should too), some really stupid article tried to claim circumventing Anti-Adblock was illegal under DMCA a while back (interestingly they took it down when people continued to block their ads) and the filter providers did it anyway. Piracy still happens in countries where it’s criminalized, ad blocking will continue, though the Quorans (used them as an example because they’re the biggest snobs about the law and ethics) and people like them will likely use it less, though it’s not like they don’t already think it’s wrong (some also think it’s already illegal).
To be fair I don’t think it is possible to come up with a legitimate argument for making adblocking illegal. You would have to argue that people aren’t allowed to own anything such as their computers.
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The current Google approach is adding attestation to Google Chrome. They claim that it is to stop bots, but it can (and will be, they are slow boiling us) also used to block adblockers.
Anyone who cares about free (as freedom) should stop using chrome and clones and switch to Firefox.
No, thanks. Mozilla is the worst of the open source world. I prefer not to give them market share. Brave works beautifully for me and YouTube may disappear tomorrow and my life wouldn’t change a single bit.
Brave the chromium based crypto browser better than Firefox? Mozilla isn’t perfect but you’re off your rocker if you think that is better.
Boy, I’ve been a FF user for 20 years before. Don’t try to school me, please. And yes, Brave is actually much better than FF and I enjoy a lot using it.
The pessimist in me says to look out for a bill authored by Google to make adblocking illegal.
“These brave content creators, who produce such culturally significant shows as ‘Ow my balls’ and ‘Matrix 1999 [full rip]’, are being literally murdered by hackers who use adblockers. These pirates use their hacking technology to steal this content and threaten our very way of life. While we regret resorting to legislation, we are left with no choice but to show these thieves the harsh reality of the criminal justice system.”
The pessimist in me says to look out for a bill authored by Google to make adblocking illegal.
Not a lawyer, but that doesn’t sound legally possible. It’s like turning off the sound when the ads on TV start, you must have the right to consume the data that has been delivered to you however you desire.
Do you know what the DMCA is?
I would absolutely love to see a revitalization on proxy software specifically designed to eliminate ads and tracking.
You’re in luck because we already have several. Namely Piped and Invidious.
The pessimist in me says to look out for a bill authored by Google to make adblocking illegal.
But the optimist in me says “the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.”
They’re both right.
I’ve just noticed that this is in c/piracy. I suppose there’s lots of interest in the story here and everywhere else, but I’d just like to remind you all that ad-blocking is not piracy.
c/piracy is just c/useful, the only community on lemmy where you are actually getting something useful.
To corporations, doing anything that’s not they way they want you to do it is piracy.
People interested in piracy are also interested in ad blocking. Seems relevant to me.
While I wholeheartedly agree, you’ll hear a different tune from others. “You’re accessing our service without paying in ad-revenue!!!” and the like.
Why isn’t it?
Because ad blocking is a security and privacy feature. We have the right to choose what HTML and scripts are loaded into our browser. Without that right, we have no web security or privacy.
We also have the right to not listen to ads, turning off the radio the moment they come on. Internet ad blocking is effectively the same thing, just automated. Piracy is completely different, because it is the unlawful copying of digital data.
Alternative solution: Since YouTube disabled all ads in Russia, you can just use russian vpn/proxy for the most effective YouTube adblocking possible.
Thanks for a solution that nobody will ever use
I’d rather deal with the ads until they make me go insane than do that.
This one’s hilarious, but that one’s not gonna work for long as they will axe almost all non-government approved VPNs
Hey Google, maybe you assholes should realize that if people are willing to jump through this many hoops to not watch ads then maybe you should realize that ads are the problem, not users. Nobody wants ads shoved down their throat so kindly go fuck yourselves. Advertising is a cancer. I’ve been trying to convince people how dangerous attention grabbing billboards are but nobody seems to care.
I get if your position is that the ads are too intrusive, but if you don’t want ads at all, you need to understand that that is not a viable solution for free services. If your position is that you feel like your use of that service should be subsidized by others, who can afford it more, I can even understand that. But they do also offer an ad free experience for a fee.
I don’t love that they’re doing this, but I do understand it.
Honest question. What is the consensus for how services like YouTube should be funded?
They have a paid method in place.
YouTube Premium.
Free access you pay with ads.
All of us cheapskates have been using adblock or YouTube vanced to get the service completely free.
I’m not going to curse them for making efforts to stop us leaching their service for free.
The problem with this is that Alphabet already collects and sells your usage data. When you use any of Alphabet’s “free services” you are the product. What they’re doing is double dipping. Not only that, but they’re getting very intrusive with the ads.
I can remember a time not long ago when the only ads on the platform were in the form of banner ads placed in the bottom of the video and off to the side next to recommended. There were no ads in the player. If they went back to that, I would not mind disabling my ad blocker.
What are they gonna do with your user data, if they’re not gonna get to serve you any ads, though?
Not defending them in any way, fuck ads, and fuck user data collection
This is very true. They sell your data to their advertising partners. That’s what it’s for.
YouTube is trying to maximize profits. Doesn’t mean we should let them.
Who cares? If they can’t run a service providing what people want. They disappear. The world won’t fall apart without a website that hosts videos. We’ll move on.
In the meantime don’t let them try to get away with maximizing profit at your expense.
Your best investment at this stage is support your local software developers and pirates working against the huge megacorp that gives zero fucks about what you think.
If they want ads then fine, however for them to be acceptable there needs to be massive changes to how they are served. First curate them. Ads are a security risk and speaking from experience I can tell you it absolutely does happen even on popular sites. I got a nasty one once on an old XP machine I didn’t really care about once from opening Spotify. So it’s not just shady sites. Even Blizzard had a malware infected ad on their forums years ago.
Second, stop being so aggressive with them. I don’t need a product ad forcibly shoved down my throat. If they want a banner on the side showing something then fine as long as it’s not a bloated mess of JavaScript or before it was canned, flash. And ads should not be taking up 40% of the page and causing it to load 3 times slower.
Third, advertisers need to stop harvesting my data for their financial gain. If they’re going to sell my personal life then I deserve the majority of whatever they made off me. But they didn’t ask permission nor do they share so fuck them. I’ll do whatever I can do they get as little from me as they can. Advertisers are leeches and honestly should just be removed all together. I’ve never purchased anything because of an ad and there are several products and companies I refuse to support because their ads were so obnoxious to try and get my attention. If a product is good enough word of mouth will be plenty. It seems like most of the time the more annoying and more often I see it the shittier the product or service being sold is. And if they can waste that much cash on ads then then they should pay employees more instead.
I pay for streaming services where I don’t want to see the ads - which is to say, every streaming service I use at any given moment. I hate ads.
If I can’t get media ad-free, to the high seas it is.
Website ads, though, can go to hell in my opinion. There’s no good way to let a tasteful amount through with negligible impact on pageload speed. I subscribe to a few newspapers, but for everything else there’s uBO.
I consider myself lucky to be able to pay my way out of the problem right now. Until I was in my early 30s, I never paid for a single piece of software or media, simply because I couldn’t afford it. I did FOSS where I could, but, still…
Now that I can afford to pay for the things I use (and frequently write the expense off to my business), I haven’t ventured into international waters for years. Hopefully, “voting with my wallet” and financially supporting the software and media I use can go some distance to preventing more draconian DRM from being imposed.
Although everyone needs to get paid for their work, I’ll never begrudge anyone pirating something because they can’t afford it. I’ve been there, and wouldn’t have been able to advance in my field without doing so.
Google won’t be coming on lemmy to read your rant. They just want more money.
I just replace youtube.com with piped.video all the time
Nobody should ever share data with american corpos - there is no example where corporations harvested data and anyone but the shareholders benefited. So for me it feels like a win whenever they fail.
“American corpos”? Are you implying that it’s okay to share your data with non-American corporations, or government entities?
Are there any you fear?
Yes.
But you are so scared you aint gonna tell us who?
I looked into some new EU legislation and did not find non US but zalando in there…rest is just US corpos. So fuck US corporations.
No one asked me to name non-US corporations that sell your personal data, but…it’s not hard to find? TikTok, Wyze, and Samsung immediately come to mind. Idk which EU legislation you’re referring to, but if they only refer to US corporations as examples, then they either have other motives for solely focusing on US (besides Zalando), or they are blind to the rest of the customer data market.
US data collection is pretty terrible, but let’s not ignore everyone else that contributes to the problem.
Fuck data brokers.
Do you know who is running piped.video?
I tried piped today for the first time. It seemed like it was struggling to search and load videos/channels. In your experience is this standard? Or is there a sudden influx in traffic after the youtube news?
you answered your own question.
Yeah wanted to make sure it wasn’t like that all the time.
That’s way too much hassle. I guess, when the anti-adblock kicks in on my devices, I’ll just stop watching YouTube. I have tons of better stuff to do anyway.
I made a user script that will make a button on each video which jump you to piped, that way you can continue to use YT to manage your subscriptions and see your feed, but you never have to watch to video there
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477267-youtube-add-watch-on-piped-button-to-each-video
google admins arw here reading all this mate. i give that solution 15 months max
They’ll have to find a way to shut down all the piped instances too… its a losing battle for them quite honestly as people will always find ways to pirate their signal as people always have found ways around stuff like this. At the same time they take a very loud, very smart minority of their users and turn them into pure haters, for no real benefit to themselves.
I’m trying piped and invidious for now, but I like where you’re going with this. It’s a good opportunity to kick my stupid youtube habit.
“What just happened?”
“War were declared.”
Going to be following these threads closely as I’ll be damned if my students are going to put up with adverts from a file hosting service.
The Adblock Wars continues…
Grandpa, did you fight in the Adblock Wars?
you excluded an important piece - YT has been updating their script (idk terminology) several times a day. so the instructions may not work. see the below -
I followed the 4 steps, but I’m still experiencing issues The latest fix for anti-adblock was made on Oct 12, 2023 and currently corresponds to ID cc87ee3e *.
- The ID mentioned above refers to YouTube’s latest anti-adblock script. You can monitor it via this link: https://pastefy.app/G1Txv5su/raw (top to bottom = oldest to newest). This means that the current fix is matched with the script with corresponding ID.
For example, in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/c97476a7/jsbin/desktop_polymer_enable_wil_icons.vflset/desktop_polymer_enable_wil_icons.js, the c97476a7 part is the ID.
If the latest ID (the last line) does NOT match the current one written above, it means YT has updated it recently and you may encounter anti-adblock again. PLEASE DO NOT REPORT IN THIS CASE.
If the ID does match and you still get anti-adblock, kindly repeat the 4 steps above. Thank you.
Uninstalling + reinstalling uBO, then force updating all your filter lists like in step #3 may also help.
PSA: skirting their attempts to block ad blockers if you have a Google account you would rather keep may be unwise.
Google has been known for banning people for stupid crap, and this checks all the boxes.
While they were silent on this topic there was a gentlemen’s agreement that you could block ads. But now that they have voiced their opinion the jig is up.
I’d recommend people to use an alternative account if they are going to block anyway and they want to keep their gmail.
Download your data while you still can.
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For things like ReVanced, they have been disabling Youtube per account. So what you are saying may have some weight if they feel like that’s the next logical step
They have?
While I have seen a few instances like this on Reddit, they were always at least 6 month old posts, and none that’s from the recent ad crisis. So yeah, not much to conclude here imo.
I have heard of them banning people from YouTube over this, but I have not heard of them banning them from all of their other Google services. I’m not saying you’re lying here, just saying I personally have not seen any reports on this (but I have seen reports of YouTube-only bans).
I pay for Drive and have a ton of shit on there, and I use gmail as my primary email (not my only email) for a lot of logins and such. My plan is to just stop using YouTube, they better not ban my whole account because I use an ad blocker.
The really frustrating thing for me was I was paying for YouTube Premium until they jacked the price up AGAIN and then I was like nope, I’m out. I can live just fine without YouTube and its horrible ads.
Out of fear of losing access to my accounts I’ve been moving them out of Gmail as the central point of control. I suggest other people do this too.
This sucks, I have a LOT of online accounts that use that email as the login email (not federated, just as the login) and it’s going to be a giant PITA to change them all. Thanks, Google.
Just do a bit at a time. I even installed a desktop email manager to help me with it, since it’s easier to switch between the two accounts in a single application versus having the two webpages up.
Also, if you use a password manager you’ll be able to filter your database by email since email address = account login credential in most cases.
Thank you for the tips and suggestions! I have already started the process and thankfully, I do use Bitwarden and it does indeed make filtering the accounts easier.
I’m glad I almost never use federated accounts for logins. I understand the convenience and security of using them, so I’m not against them in concept…but then there’s the putting too many eggs in one basket risk with doing it.
Google has banned whole accounts of some users for copy pasting comments on Youtube chat (similar to what people do on Twitch).
https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-emote-spam-markiplier
I wouldn’t gamble on it.
I’m not super worried about them banning me (from a probability standpoint). But it would be highly disruptive to my life if they did. So from the general principal of not keeping too many eggs in one basket, I have already started disconnecting other non-Google accounts from my gmail address.
I wonder what made youTube decide to fix this loophole? These days the vast majority of people use phone apps or smart TVs to watch. The number of people using Firefox plus ad blockers must be quite small and it’ll be a constant effort to keep updating their anti ad block algorithms.
Pure speculation on my part, but large corporations like Google always have endless meetings full of people just looking for any kind of shit to justify their jobs. I figured it was inevitable before some goons there put their sites on ad blockers and am surprised it took this long. After all, those of us that use them (including me) are using their resources without giving them any revenue in return. (Well, that’s not entirely true, I was a Premium subscriber until they hiked the price again).
They probably are just asking for a loan right now and need to justify that they are going to increase profits.
Use the revanced version of YouTube.
For those using Safari, a simple custom browser stylesheet with a few styles is all you need, and is undetectable, as anti-adblock works with javascript, so no pesky “Why you blocking the ads? Mimimimimi…”
