YouTube "forbidding" ad blockers. Concerns, if any?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, it finally happened: Youtube is throwing up a think-of-the-poor-starving-megacorporation banner in response to ad blockers. In my experience, this generally happens when the ownership gets a case of runaway hubris (which I witnessed firsthand at TVTropes) or starts going off the rails (as we’ve seen with DeviantArt). Either would be plausible for YouTube except for one little detail…it’s saying, in a big banner, point-blank, that ad blockers are FORBIDDEN. :astonished::roll_eyes::man_facepalming: (Yeah, because everyone knows the way you get people on the Internet to do what you want is to preach to them like they’re children!)

All right, my understanding is that these warning messages are a service provided by the ad blocker sites themselves, which each individual website has to pay for, continuously. Furthermore, the blocker site will make less convenient but will not outright prevent the website from being accessed with the blocker active. (The situation is of course much different for paywall and subscription-only sites, which I won’t be covering here.) That stands to reason as the makers of ad blockers also want to get paid, which gets a lot harder if anyone can cause their product to not work.

Now, I do believe that good, honest workers have the right to earn a living, and I believe in paying for things that are worth it. (I’ve been subscribed to this message board for over two decades, just to put it in perspective. :+1:) The problem with paying for YouTube Premium is that it’s just not the level or service I’m willing to shell out 14 bucks a month for. Let’s be clear: They are not making the videos, they are not doing much of anything to moderate the comment sections, and the angry testimonials about unjust copyright strikes, warnings, and outright bans could fill books. At absolute minimum I would require an option to BLOCK…unconditionally, completely, and immediately…any post or user I did not want befouling my monitor. YouTube refuses to do this, and that to me says it all about how much consideration this company deserves. Don’t preach to me about laws and morals when you allow the cockroaches to spread their droppings everywhere. :angry:

Huh. Well, I’ll put up with this for a while before…being marginally less willing to put up with it, I guess, maybe. At least I’m not a Vocaloid fan anymore, so it should be easier.

2

YouTube is big enough that they are almost certainly writing their own anti-adblock stuff especially since Google is its own ad provider.

Right now I think they’re trying to see what they can get away with, perhaps to please the bean counters. I suspect the better ad blockers will, as always, work around any forced attempts.

YouTube would have to make a lot of changes to with their API to actually stop adblocking. They’d basically have to put DRM on all videos, instead of just the paid movies.

3

Wow, that was fast! :grin: Just so we’re clear, I’ve tried capitulating and shutting off my ad blocker with both TVTropes and DeviantArt, and the ads turned both websites into complete disasters. Just flat-out unusable. I have no intention of repeating this mistake.

I use Ublock right now. Is that a good one?

4

<< deleted by poster >>

5

Any site that becomes unusable with an ad blocker can go f*** itself in the neck. I simply stop using it. Or use it in another manner which circumvents their nonsense.

As it stands, I never view YouTube videos on the actual site. This is actually quite easy and a much better experience before you even get to ads.

6

Yeah, uBlock Origin is usually good at thwarting any anti-adblock stuff. The only exception I know of is Facebook, which requires a special addon to block ads due to all the shenanigans they pull. (I know of two.) And I don’t think YouTube is ready to pull out all the guns like Facebook tried. (Facebook doesn’t even show a popup. It just tries to evade adblock detection, and does occasionally succeed–temporarily.)

7

I can’t block youtube ads. My Vizio tv doesn’t allow any custom installs. The youtube app Vizio provides shows ads.

I could go back to using my phone or pc. But the ads don’t bother me enough to sacrifice my tv screen.

8

The last week has been a tug of war between YouTube and the Ad Blockers with UBlock requiring regular updates and filter purges to stay functional. Then you have outside people writing additional scripts to help keep their ad blocker functional in the face of YouTube’s efforts.

I think it’s safe to say that YouTube will never eliminate ad blocking under current conditions – there’s too many freelance coder nerds willing to spend their time crowdsourcing workarounds versus how many professional coders Google needs to pay to work at it. But what they can do is make it obnoxious or techie enough that the average person just caves in and watches the ads (or better subscribes for $15/mth) while admitting that there’ll always be a fringe group of freeloaders.

9

Or any malware-infested ads.

Since I have no way of knowing if there is such an ad on a given video’s page or not, I am going to use comprehensive blanket protection and kill 'em all. Really, are these sites THAT stupid or ignorant to NOT acknowledge one of the main reasons people use adblockers? I had one sneak thru last week a few times asking me to “install an update for Firefox”…jeezus beezus.

10

When I read articles on my phone (with no ad-blocker) the number of ads that show up can be truly astounding. Popup videos you can’t close till an ad runs and stays with you as you scroll…sometimes more than one…other popup ads…sometimes more than one and comeback if you close them, embedded ads in the article so big that, as you scroll down using your finger on the screen, you are very likely to click on the ad and open it…and those can recur every few paragraphs and, often, all that can be in one article. It’s absolutely bonkers and awful.

11

They must either be doing A/B Testing or my adblockers are working really well. I haven’t noticed anything different at all with youtube on my home or work computer. Between UBlock Origin, SponserBlock and a pihole, very little gets through. I assume UBlock is doing the heavy lifting as my phone (even on wifi, with a pihole) still gets a few ads on youtube and lately, imgur as well.

One thing I’ve always thought would work well is if, when Sponsor Block skips an ad, if it could spawn a pop-under window and run the ad with the sound muted. That, I think, would mean I could skip the ad and the channel would still get paid for running it.

12

As I’ve read it, it’s been slowly rolled out in testing since June/July. I first started getting it a week or so ago.

13

Yeah, I’m confused by the OP as well. In addition to not having any problems with YouTube, I’ve never noticed the behavior described in the OP regarding TVTropes or DeviantArt - not that I visit either site all that much. But I just went to both, and randomly looked at a few pages, with Ublock on. Neither site is telling me to turn it off.

14

You make some good points about the negligence of YouTube regarding moderation of comments, etc, but I didn’t see any point where you acknowledge realisation that a share of the ad revenue on YouTube does go to the people making the videos. When you watch with an adblocker, you are causing revenue to be withheld from both YT and the people making the videos.

I don’t think I would argue that what you’re doing is morally wrong or anything, I just didn’t see anything in your post that acknowledges that you understand this.

15

This is one of the main reasons I don’t use my phone for reading articles or watching videos. Complete trainwreck.

I use uBlock Origin on my devices and just started getting the Youtube warning yesterday. However, all you have to do is close that window (only pops up once) and then you can continue to watch ad-free videos to your hearts content. At least for now…

16

Stage two is a timer on the window before you can close it. Then it’ll give a “three strikes” counter before finally just giving a “You must disable your ad blocker…” in the video window in lieu of your video.

17

I’m doing a Yosemite Sam impression over here!

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YouTube Anti-Adblock and Ads - October 09, 2023 (Weekly Thread)

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtube_antiadblock_and_ads_october_09_2023/

Note:

If a new solution is pending, you should still be able to watch YouTube when

Logged out
Private Window / Incognito
Click on Share button -> Embed

So simply logging out or using Private Browsing/Incognito should work.

19

I was so annoyed by the anti-adblocker that I deleted all my links to YouTube videos. Figured I could do without. But then I clicked on a link to YouTube on another site and it played. I’ve been keeping that window open and just watching what I would watch anyway and I don’t get any anti-adblocker crap. So far.

20

Ditto. I use AdBlock.