Ugh, I hate to do it because I’m so integrated with Chrome right now and I’ve had bad experiences in the past with Firefox being a major resource hog, but you’re probably right.
FWIW it seems Google is making this change this month.
It is now sooner than later.
I’ve finally seen some effect of this with an opera/ublock combo. Now when I scroll through shorts if an ad appears it plays for half a second, then stops and somehow breaks the queue so I can’t scroll anymore. Fortunately for me, this is more of a feature than a bug. Now I don’t get caught scrolling through just because I’m bored - Youtube literally forces me to do something else. It’s honestly very convenient.
I’ve seen some attempts at playing an ad. A spinny circle thing shows up along with a “skip ad” button. The button worked. Then the next time I waited for the ad to start playing… 20-30 seconds of spinny and it couldn’t quite pull it off and just finally started playing the video.
Does Invidious work under chrome?
Sorry, I have no idea what Invidious is - I am largely ignorant about browsers/ad blockers.
It’s an alternative front end to youtube with no ads or tracking—but occasionally is affected by the same Youtube “updates” we are discussing. So I would try a few of the instances from the official link above and see if they are currently working with your browser.
I had some time this morning, so I looked into it and tried some of the instances you linked to. In the first two cases, I got to the front end, was able to search, but any video I clicked on from the search I got an error with a message like “Looks like YouTube pushed another update blocking Invidious - please use other services at this time.” The third instance worked fine.
So, it works, sometimes. And I did use Chrome.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I never have ads when I watch youtube on my Chromebook.
When I watch youtube on my laptop via Chrome I sometimes do and sometimes don’t.
So you may be right, but so far Chrome is working for me. I don’t understand much of this and lately have become much more addicted to youtube so I don’t like to hear there are (more) changes coming up!
FWIW:
Now I get ads EVERY time despite using uBlock.
But, if I log out, no ads whatsoever.
Dunno what to make of that.
Same here. Now I just rightclick—>open in private window videos then set it to “Don’t Suggest—>Already seen” on the main window. Dumb but better than spending two minutes watching ads for a 12min video.
It appears that this will train people to not use Google’s non-walled ecosystem including chrome. Not sure this if this is a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite their face, but it seems to be working. And it may be for the better, less google in our lives may let many get back to their lives.
Still no problems for me using Firefox with ublock.
I’m normally logged on, since I occasionally post some of my original music.
Mind you, I am in the UK, perhaps that makes a difference?
There’s been some talk lately about how they might start ‘baking in’ the ads into the main video stream - so they aren’t even separate things now - they are just part of the video - and because there’s no guarantee of consistency or placement of these baked-in ads, solutions like sponsorblock (which rely on a database of ‘skip’ timestamps) won’t work, at least not in their current form.
Apparently YT has already begun testing this in some form - and I think it’s responsible for some existing features to have broken - because it’s basically editing in an additional piece of footage into the video, it may impact timestamped shortcuts.
Also, I have noticed that on my own videos and some others, end cards are appearing way too early in the video - they are only ever supposed to be the last 20 seconds max, and I leave space for them so that they don’t overlay the actual content, but on occasion they have been just popping up when there is still a couple of minutes of runtime left. This problem started at about the same time as the baked-in ads trial is supposedly happening, so I suspect it is a related bug.
Firefox with uBlock Origin here, in Oregon, USA. As I’ve reported several times in this thread, I have yet to see any of the issues described. I just popped over to Youtube and watched a couple of videos, without even a hint of ads.
A short while ago I signed up for YouTube Premium. I’m still in the “free trial” period but am leaning toward paying for it after that. I get enough benefit from YouTube that it seems fair that I pay something for it. (I did have some minor concerns that I was rewarding enshittification; but YouTube has to pay their bills somehow, either by ad revenue or some other revenue source.)
Anyway, since that time I have seen neither ads nor any kind of nagging or pushback against using adblockers. I’ve mostly been using Chrome with AdBlock, although I just turned the AdBlock off on YouTube to see if it made a difference, and so far I haven’t seen any.
I’m not even especially opposed to paying Youtube for the videos. But they don’t have an option that doesn’t include Youtube Music which is completely redundant to me and blows the value proposition out of the water. If they knocked it down to $9.99 or less, I’d probably jump on it. That also fits my view of them primarily showing amateur level video produced at no cost to Google – hard to justify “Hollywood” streaming pricing for that (in my mind)
Dang, this has got to be my most successful thread ever. 
All I really have to add is that I consider Chrome obsolete, and Firefox can’t meet my needs anymore. I’ve switched to Brave and haven’t regretted it. It’s cleaned up YouTube better than anything else I’ve attempted, and it’s easy to keep tabs and bookmarks organized. On rare occasions it lets something slip through, but on the whole my Internet experience is much better. Can’t recommend it enough.
As for Premium, one more time: YouTube does not get one more cent of my money until 1. the price becomes more reasonable and 2. there is an option to BLOCK posts and posters. (Sheesh, it’s bad enough that I had to shell out 15 bucks for that lousy TV show…)
I occasionally watch a bunch of YouTube videos, and I have to say that I fully agree with the OP – the ads are incredibly annoying, and even more so when they occur not just before a video, but also halfway through.
What’s funny, though, is that the tech to stop ad blockers is incompetently implemented and very inconsistent. YouTube sometimes warns about ad blockers, sometimes not. I never get ads on my tablet. On my Windows computers, I may or may not, depending on the particular browser, the particular ad blocker, and, apparently, the phases of the moon. My current browser + ad blocker is currently in one of its wonderful modes where YouTube tries to show an ad, but it disappears in less than a second. I love it! I wish I could put it in this mode consistently.
I have no objection to paying a fair price for a service, but as already noted, the cost of a YouTube subscription is way too high – by more than an order of magnitude – and the ads way too obtrusive when you don’t.