Well, Google owns both Android and YouTube, so that thought occurred to me, too
“Windows Phone gets revenge on YouTube from the grave by helping users bypass its ad-blocker-blocker”
truth to be told - I am pretty certain, that Vimeo is sitting there, and seeing what lessons learned can be … ahem … learned - for them …
If YTs move is successful, I don’t think V. will have any qualms replicating the scenario …
I don’t think that probably is. YouTube isn’t really doing anything on the Android side right now.
But it does seem weird to me that they didn’t wait until Manifest v3 came out. As people above have mentioned, this extension change would make adblocking more complicated. The main issue is that they’d have to release whole new versions of the extension instead of just updating the lists. And Google has to review new extensions. All those delays would make it much harder to fight.
Maybe they intentionally wanted to face their opponents at their strongest? I don’t know. It’s hard for me to say anything since I’ve yet to run into a problem. It’s why my initial response was as low key as it was. I didn’t realize YouTube was gunning up.
Don’t get me wrong: I do think they’re still destined to lose. No website has ever won the battle. The most they can do is get some people to switch. And, YouTube’s video API means that, if we have to, we can just grab the videos ourselves and play it. Hence why there are so many third-party YouTube apps and sites.
But they are sure making the adblockers work for it.
I doubt they have the resources to constantly fight back against the adblockers. It really is something only the biggest companies can try. Sure, you see the occasional use of adblock blockers on smaller sites, but those are always worked around quickly.
The only other site that I know of that has given anything near this much trouble is Facebook. At this point, you generally have to use special addons to block Facebook’s ads. Adblockers alone miss too many ads.
You assume that will continue to exist in a free format. That is IMO an unwarranted assumption. You’re certainly right for the near term. But not necessarily for the long term.
Well, you don’t get much bigger than Google.
But, for every coder Google hires to write adblock blockers, there’s a hundred home coding enthusiasts willing to devote time into finding another way for free.
Exactly! Play a couple at the beginning then let us watch the video.
I’m assuming that they can’t easily change the API, yes. They have a massive technical debt in how they have things set up.
But also that any changes they make they themselves will have to be able to work with. YouTube—both the apps and the website—still has to play videos. Apps can use what they use. The only way to stop that would be to put in DRM, and that would be difficult simply because of how much video YouTube has.
It just doesn’t work out economically to put in all that effort to stop all adblocking. People who block ads, who really care to do so, just don’t cost all that much. And the ill will that happens every time they try doesn’t help.
I’m not worried about YouTube in the short term at all. And, in the long term, I’ve seen over and over that the adblockers win. They don’t have the economic issues–it’s genuine people who are genuinely passionate and genuinely believe that ads are harmful and bad.
I actually think the only real game changer would involve changing how ads work. Which is why I’m very wary of Google’s attempt to add a new ad tracking system into Chrome, and tell everyone to turn it off.
my nephew uses youtube on our xbox1 and sometimes the ads are every 3 minutes in a 10minute video …although the “Free” streaming services are more obnoxious
Also, anything can be an “ad” be it a Reesee’s pb cup commercial or a “Prager U” 30-minute screed on some biblical nonsense in the middle of a pokemon videogame post
I tried turning off my ad blocker as an experiment last night while watching YouTube, but the ads were just too annoying and intrusive.
I too am on Firefox, using Adblocker Ultimate, and haven’t seen the warning in 5 days now.
As mentioned upthrwad, I’m on AdBlock Plus. I have yet to see any of these warnings.
I’m on AdBlock plus on Edge on Win10. I see the warnings frequently. Still always dismissable though. So far.
Clearly this whole effort is being rolled out in a gradualist fashion. And is probably subject to continuous software revision.
Yes, there seems to be a new offensive, and it may be time before the dust settles.
Over the last couple of days I have seen Firefox lock up with massive memory usage; not sure if this is connected with any particular adblocker. Just now got a Firefox update, things seem to be better for the moment…?
There has never been a time when Firefox did not have an issue with memory ‘leaks’.
Yeah I got Mac OS and Chrome. I just get a blank screen for when an intro ad tries to play, then I refresh. With the iPhone, I “send” the video from the app to AdGuard, and it plays without ads or warnings. I’m on YouTube constantly and for some reason, the warnings haven’t hit me.
This just popped up. I can’t figure out what it does. I’ve been using ublock incognito mode which is working fine. It just says it “removes annoying content from youtube”.
I’d ignore it. I checked the link, and it seems to be for an old extension. None of the links work. And when I google for an extension with that name, the one I found hasn’t been updated since 2018. It’s almost certainly useless.
As a slight update on this, I’m now in the same boat as you, because I’ve bought a new phone.
I installed the app “Skip Ads Pro” which unfortunately only mutes/skips the second advert (I think the app must simply look for the skip button to determine that an ad is showing 
)
I’ll let you know if I find one which works.