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Really interesting read about the history of YouTube adblocking, how the new detection works, how uBO is responding, and how not to block the new popups.

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[–] Neato@kbin.social 109 points 1 year ago (5 children)

uBO team (2 people) should not be responding to questions on reddit or elsewhere. They should just update the filters and post a "extension updated, should work again now".

In the end, Youtube will win if they want to win. Google can throw unconscionable amounts of money at their techs to fight the adblockers while the volunteers spend their attention and patience.

[–] Faydaikin 50 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The question is 'Do they want to keep throwing money at techs in the hope of forcing people to watch their ads?'

At best, people will keep finding ways to get around the ads and YT will have wasted a ton of money on nothing.

At worst, a bunch of people will abandon YT all together. And YT will have wasted a ton of money getting rid of them.

Both options seem self-defeating and wasteful.

[–] DrRatso@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The point is to make adblocking so tedious that only fairly tech literate people would do it. That cousin whose pc you set up and installed uBO on? They won’t figure out how to update the filters, they will just whitelist (or realistically just turn off uBO) or premium.

Basically nobody will actually abandon YT over this and those who do will be so low in numbers it is ~0 to YT.

[–] Faydaikin 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there, who are just as fed up with ads as the rest of us.

And at this point, most of the cousins who don't know how to update their adblocker are already there. It's a matter of time. YT won't keep pouring money into this. Just long enough to the "balance the books." When the 'number of viewed ads' start slowing down again and they've hit their max viewership, they'll call off the hounds.

[–] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago

I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there

you can't imagine how many programmers out there are living their life without adblocks. Even before this last month's shitshow

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And I think you are overestimating how many savvy people bother with blocking ads.

[–] Faydaikin 7 points 1 year ago

I'll make a wild assumption and say that the people that made the adblockers might also be using them.

[–] 50gp@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i'd get premium if they didnt make it artificially more expensive by bundling other stuff with it, so adblock it is

[–] Faydaikin 8 points 1 year ago

Plus, it's likely to evolve into a "less ads" deal eventually.

The one constant is that there's never enough money to satisfy corporate needs.

[–] Khotetsu@lib.lgbt 6 points 1 year ago

There's a great video on this that was made when YouTube first started rolling this out called The Cobra Effect: Why Anti-Adblock Policies Could Hurt Revenue Instead, and one of the points mentioned in the video is the rising number of people who use an adblocker, and not specifically mentioned but shown in the video is a graphic from an article from 2015 which shows that just under 43% of people use an adblocker. That number will have obviously changed in the past 7 years, but if we just use 25% of viewers as an estimate, that's 25% of all viewers on YouTube who may turn to more "malicious" forms of adblocking such as things like AdNaseum and ReVanced or sites that host YouTube videos without the ads, and tell others to do the same if they're sick of ads. And even if they do give up and watch the ads, the science says that people who use adblockers are much less likely to click on an ad and make a purchase, which is bad for advertisers since they pay for the number of views an ad gets and their clickthrough rate would go down, making it more expensive and less profitable to do business with YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIHi9yH6UB0

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago

That is our win condition. To make it so costly for them that they bail on the idea. Because if we don’t, then it’s one step closer to their internet: locked down, hidden charges everywhere and content under their terms.

This isn’t just about ads, it’s about keeping information free.

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[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Realistically there is an equation money lost by ad blockers vs money gained by making ad blocking harder (money in - dev cost) unless its about sending a message.

[–] MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 4 points 1 year ago

Only so far, false positives scare potential customers away.

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Money or no money, whatever is made can be unmade.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure but doesn't mean it well be. satellite hacking was killed.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure there are still Methods to get free access to satellite TV channels (the paid encrypted ones, I'm aware that there are Free channels) the methods just changed from how it was done in the old days, nowadays you need internet to download the keys, which kind of defeats the purpose since you could just use a Free IPTV service on that same connection.

Also Satellite has fallen out of favor these days.

[–] DrQuint@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I don't see the moderator leaving as a huge loss or anything because the fight against misinformation and noise in inglorious and full of people who refuse to help themselves. They have a life demanding their concern, and as far as I care, if they finally ripped the bandaid and went and focused on that life of theirs, then the world has become a better place.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then there are non-tech-savvy users looking at the post and saying, “This is too complex. I give up.”

This is YouTube's ultimate goal. They don't need to make it impossible to block ads, just more trouble than it's worth for most people.

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

Fine with me, as long as I personally don't have to look at ads.

[–] Thorned_Rose@kbin.social 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones

As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.

[–] teichflamme@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know what you do exactly, but I appreciate every single volunteer and the work they put in to make everyone's life better

[–] japaneseschoolgirl@lemmy.cafe 35 points 1 year ago

if theres one thing im determined to do, its to never voluntarily see a youtube ad ever. praise ublock and revanced.

[–] millie 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I've moved on from trying to block the ads to using a front-end and a macro to do the annoying part for me. It's been nice. I hadn't realized how bad youtube's UI was until seeing a clean one. I definitely recommend using one of the less notable ones, they seem to be faster.

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's also how I often access YT. Libreddit is already selfhosted in the local network (+ wireguard on clients) and I'll look into hosting something for YT.

Sadly most people want to keep their recommendations and the UI, so they'll stay on the official site.

[–] dracul104@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which one do you use? I've never heard of them until reading this post but you've got me interested.

[–] millie 2 points 1 year ago

It's an invidious instance, but I ain't tellin!

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 year ago

I wasn't able to get it consistently working so I started using FreeTube instead of a browser, which seems to work without hassle

[–] kworpy@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nothing like watching everyone freak out while I'm just using invidious

[–] MrOzwaldMan@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

NewPipe and GrayJay (in the future)

[–] joel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Has anybody else not seen an ad yet? I'm wondering if it's because I'm using Enhancer for youtube which also has an adblocking function 🤔

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 year ago

Did you not read the article?

YouTube isn’t rolling out the anti-adblock to everyone. It seems to depend on things like your account, browser, and IP address. And if you’re not logged in or you’re in a private window, you’re safe. As a result, there are a bunch of people saying, “I use XYZ and I haven’t seen an anti-adblock popup yet,” unknowingly spreading misinformation.

[–] anothermember 2 points 1 year ago

I haven't yet but I presume that's because I don't have an account - which according to the article they're targeting people by account.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

With uBlock Origin I'm not getting anything, but the Ghostery plugin with "adblocking enabled" set to on actually now returns a blank youtube site. As soon as I switch it off (so blocking trackers only) it works perfectly fine and with zero ads.

[–] Banzai51@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For a day I got the no video but audio playing ads.

On my Shield where I don't have uBlock Origin, I get bombarded with ads.

[–] Gingernate@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Use smarttube

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 year ago

So today, YouTube's pop-ups rolled down to Views will be limited to one unless you remove your adblocker at which point the pop-ups ceased. (I was intentionally rolling them down). Have: Firefox, DDG Privacy Essentials, NoScript, uBlock Origin

Techs working to give me access: I love you guys! I really appreciate what you're doing.

Fuck the hurtful comments, and do it to fight capitalism and enshittification.

That said, when I can no longer YouTube without ads, I will no longer YouTube, which also means no engagement on video forums. Useful, interesting rants is what I have to offer.

[–] AsepticFuturisticFox 8 points 1 year ago

We need an economic system change. We should go beyond the data economy and find new sustainable ways to develop software and platforms and social networks. uBO won't win alone vs Google, unless they stop challenging it over technology

[–] scaglio@feddit.it 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

uBlock Origin Lite works just fine.

EDIT: as I wrote here, I am quite confident that my YT account has already been “rolled out” because of the many ads in the last 5–7 days. Before, I had 1 or 2 before some videos; now there are also pop-ups. I have made some experiments with VPNs (Mullvad) and browsers in several fresh VMs. uBOL works differently than the standard uBO and, from what I’ve seen, it seems to work fine. I’ll just stop repeating that.

[–] DrQuint@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Comments like these is literally the first thing the article warns against.

YouTube is doing this in a staggered and flaky rollout. Seeing the videos fine as an anecdote is no indication of anything. The only people who can claim a method works are those who have gained access to affected accounts, know how they're affected, and have issued a fix.

[–] scaglio@feddit.it 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't pay much attention about the warning in the article, you're right. 😅 I'll edit the post since I've been too concise, and I have a lot of negative downvotes. I am quite confident that my YT account has already been "rolled out" because of the many ads in the last 5–7 days. Before, I had 1 or 2 before some videos; now there are also pop-ups. I have made some experiments with VPNs (Mullvad) and browsers in several fresh VMs. uBOL works differently than the standard uBO and, from what I've seen, it seems to work fine. I'll just stop repeating that.

[–] aberrate_junior_beatnik@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is wrong. If it's working, it may be just because YT hasn't rolled their adblock defeating code to you just yet. And other extensions may interfere with uBOL and cause it to stop working. Even there aren't other extensions running, the built-in tracking protection in the browser can sometimes trip YT's code. The uBO reddit post (written by the author of uBOL) points out that YT changes the relevant scripts twice a day, so even if you have a perfect setup, there are going to be windows of time where it doesn't work.

IOW, you can't just install another extension and make the problem go away. Your whole setup matters.

[–] scaglio@feddit.it 2 points 1 year ago

New macOS Sonoma VM, brand new Firefox installation with just uBOL (not uBO). YouTube does not show any ads. ISP dns and no pi-hole or others.