YouTube continues global crackdown on ad blockers, targeting mobile third-party apps
https://www.techradar.com/computing/websites-apps/youtube-is-becoming-unwatchable-for-ad-blockers
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https://www.techradar.com/computing/websites-apps/youtube-is-becoming-unwatchable-for-ad-blockers
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PeerTube
Odysee
Internet Archive, to an extent
Nebula
Floatplane
Vimeo
Patreon video
Bitch your content creators to also provide content on other platforms.
The content creators won’t make the effort unless they have some way to monetize their views though.
I’m my opinion the best days of YouTube were before monetization was a thing. There were plenty of creators back then, and it was a lot less corporate than it is now.
People think TikTok took off because the algorithm has some magic sauce the other platforms don’t. Nope. It’s because the content was more authentic because creators couldn’t monetize. It was like YouTube in the early days.
Unfortunately, you need monetization to keep going. If creators didn’t, they wouldn’t have folded to YouTube monetization rules and just kept posting whatever they wanted. Basically, YouTube demonitezes then crrators have folded to just censoring their videos instead of pushing back because of money.
What they are saying tho is that people who want to make actual content don’t care about monetization. They do it for the love of the game. Sure you can get a few to censor swear words and suicide, but the thing that built it was freedom. If you take away freedom then you’ve got nothing. Half the equation is people who watch the content. If people don’t want to watch your shitty watered down bullshit, and other people don’t want to be gagged by censorship, you’re going to alienate the base; that is, actually red blooded humanity. Oh, let’s say between the creators and the viewers its about 60% of your base. It won’t be over night but it will be enough that ther3 will be alternatives to the bullshit. I say bull shit because that’s what it is. Fucking goddamn horseshit. Thank you for glistening.
AFAIK, it’s still possible to upload content that can be demonitized if you really don’t care about monetization. The video will not be deleted, it will just be demonitized. However, creators don’t want to get demonitized so they bow down. There is still freedom just as long it’s not some extreme stuff.
NewPipe
That’s a privacy overlay like nitter for twitter, not a hosting platform.
Works better than invideous though.
From what I understand (very limited knowledge here, might be BS) YouTube actually pays creators more than pretty much any other platform.
invidious inv.nadeko.net/feed/popular
That’s a privacy overlay like nitter for twitter, not a hosting platform.
I haven’t been able to get invidious to work reliably for a year or more.
I’m not asking for a how-to. I’m happy enough with freetube on the desktop.
man I love your profile pic! made my day :D
I do but they usually bitch right back
Also remind them that html has a <video> tag that is very easy to use
I bought a lifetime to Nebula for $300. Enjoying zero commercials on the content
Also not sustainable.
Maybe add Bilibili, TikTok, Facebook, and Dailymotion to the list. Yes, they also have ads but they are not that strict about ad blockers.
Fuck tiktok, Fuck facebook.
Once thousand percent 💯
But they are the only plausible alternatives with enough funding to operate
They should both be dismantled permanently and their scumbag owners/CEOs dealt with in an appropriate fashion
The day they “win” is the day YouTube is dead to me
Same, will just read books instead (if nothing on alternative platforms)
Exactly. In some way this would even be appreciated since I would probably do way more useful and healthy things with the time that I currently spend on YT.
God I wouldn’t mind if the ads weren’t so fucking cancer. Like I have streaming with ads and dumb Liberty Bibberty or whatever is fine.
But YouTube, it constantly runs gambling scams and then rolls into a 90 minute “ad” podcast about some bull shit
I just noticed they removed the button to report ads as inappropriate.
because ads are never inappropriate!
source: Google
I get SO MANY ads for dick pills. So many. How do they even get away with that?!
I would mind. I will never not mind. No ads, all or nothing.
I will never pay for youtube while sponsor block is not part of the default app and downvoted are visible.
Frankly, I find most YouTube content to be super obnoxious, so I would not pay for it anyway. I already barely ever use YouTube outside of trailers and music videos.
YouTube can’t have sponser block as that is not part of YouTube.
Even with the consequences of popularized tracking?
You guys, Mr YouTube worked really hard to make and produce all those videos quit stealing them!!
The link is broken.
After some searching, found it here.
So no one else has to do that annoying seach, here is the article text.
I’m sure formatting will be shite. Sorry about that.
YouTube is becoming unwatchable for ad block users – thanks to this powerful new crackdown tactic News By Mark Wilson Published May 28, 2024 Videos now auto-skip to the end, ad block users report
A laptop showing YouTube's ad blockers message next to a laptop showing UBlock Origin (Image credit: YouTube / Shutterstock / monticello) Share
The battle between YouTube and ad blockers is heating up again, with some YouTube users reporting that videos are now auto-skipping to the end if they’re using extensions to block advertisements.
The new YouTube tactic has been widely reported on Reddit (via 9to5Google), with ad blocker users revealing that video playback immediately skips to the end of their video. This apparently continues to happen even if the video is immediately replayed.
While Google hasn’t officially stated that this is a new tactic for dealing with ad blockers, it has escalated its crackdown on apps and extensions that remove advertisements in its videos over the past few months.
For example, in April a Google post in a YouTube Community forum stated that viewers who use third-party apps like NewPipe “may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video”.
This new auto-skipping behavior appears to affect multiple ad-blocking extensions including AdBlock, although there’s some evidence that uBlock Origin has already found a workaround for the issue.
The other solution, of course, is to subscribe to YouTube Premium ($13.99 / £12.99 / AU$32.99 a month), which is undoubtedly what YouTube is pushing users towards with its ad block crackdown. But its tactics are seemingly nudging many towards doubling down on ad blockers, resulting in a game of whack-a-mole that’s likely to run for a long time.
Is Premium worth it? A YouTube Premium menu on a tablet
(Image credit: Shutterstock) YouTube argues that using ad blockers “prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership” and that the site’s increasingly long advertisements “help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service”.
The problem is that, with those advertisements becoming increasingly lengthy and unskippable, many users feel that YouTube is increasingly looking to boost its own bottom line as much as its creators’ income.
In a parallel to Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown, there is evidence that YouTube’s ad blocker is working – back in November, ZDNet reported that Google’s tactics had led to a record number of users uninstalling their ad blockers. And in February, YouTube reported that it had hit a new milestone of 100 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.
But with YouTube Premium also recently getting its biggest price hike in years, many are still holding out and using ad blockers and extensions like YouTube Enhancer to preserve an ad-free experience. With YouTube ramping up its battle with ad blockers, though, the game of cat-and-mouse will likely become increasingly hard-fought.
yt hasn’t defeated uBo or revanced/morphe in the 2 years since this article came out.
On android use a firefox fork with ublock I’m sure there is an equvalent on ios as well. It’s much easier than playing whack-a-mole with an app.
Try Unwatched
It even have sponsorblock built in.
Thank you so much I have looking fr something like this for nearly a year now.
My pleasure.
It can be finicky sometimes playing videos but a long press of the play button would give you the option to reload the player.
Bonus
Ublock works in normal mobile Firefox on android
Firefox integrates AI bullshit these days therefore I would never recommend it.
While I share the sentiment, they do have a master toggle to turn all of it off.
Does the ublock addon also do the cat and mouse game with Google when google patches ad blocking with ublock?
I have yet to have an issue like that. I’ve been watching YouTube through ironFox with ubo for over a year with no issue I disabled the mobile yt app
I haven’t tried yet so i am asking. I currently only use brave because I know they patch whatever google does to evade adblock
As of recently the offical block list doesn’t because they gave up but there are many others maintained by folks that still do.
Vinegar works really well on iOS: apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id1591303229
$1.99?
No thanks. But thanks though.
It’s an Apple app so be thankful it’s not $29.99. I’m not endorsing the price and haven’t even had an iPhone in years but it did work well, even on such a locked down platform
Ok bud
pipepipe is fine. Install direct from github. It alerts you when theres an update.
100%, there’s plenty of alternatives. Nobody should be paying for this garbage.
On Android, the DuckDuckGo browser and AdGuard both have ad-blocking video players.
Is the article 404ing for anyone else?
Yep
For me as well (in germany)
Some of us don’t base their buying off of stupid ads. Why can’t we just be left alone. At this point I’m just basing on if I have any money left after going to the gas pump.
That’s not the point. Youtube doesn’t want to sell you anything. They want to sell you to the companies that want to sell you something. Doesn’t matter if you buy anything, as long as you give them some attention.
Yeah, it’s really annoying how ads have become “Mr. Beastified” too. I can’t even turn a TV on without some attention sucking advert coming on that demands your full and centered attention. What was a chill afternoon feels more like a tax.
Newpipe’s been relatively solid for me on Android. I think I have more subscriptions there than on Youtube at this point.
Yep, Newpipe and PipePipe which is a fork of Newpipe are both working just fine for me.
What differentiates PipePipe? I really liked Tubular, which was NewPipe+SponsorBlock, but it quit getting updates
github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
youtube/google is spending more time, money and reputation (not that it cares about reputation since its the only player in the game) trying to defeat adblockers, than it would have ever spent on just moderating its platform to make sure its not airing scams, malicious misinformation, frauds, hoaxes, outright porn, and all the other nasty shit that piss people off about the advertising.
cause thats really all this comes down to. no one likes ads, but they’d be a lot more tolerable if google fucking policed what they showed so people didnt get fucking AI nudifying ads on kids videos, or if they just didnt air 2 hour long prageru videos about why the white race is superior and why blacks should be happy whites “elevated” them with slavery.
but they’d rather force us to see that shit, than put in the slightest effort of moderating themselves
Just quit YouTube. Just part of degoogling. When I finally get all my auth off of Google I’ll finish it and go to graphene.
any good alternatives? I know of curiosity stream etc but not another site where anyone can upload.
Not the alternative one would be usually looking for, but Glomble is a neat place to share videos
You’ll come crawling back
I use two separate third party apps, and YouTube is very diligent with screwing with my favorite of the two.
Which forces me to use the other, which is very diligent at clipping out the sponsor ad.
Come on, you can’t just say this and leave without naming the app lol.
I already left youtube. Do I miss it? Not really.
Good to see they are actively making it worse.
Been using Morphe for over a year now with no issues. Smarttube also still works fine on my tv.
Pichai, you fucking banchode.
Oh, yes, uBlock Lite and a bunch of other plugins killing off intrusive ads can’t still be beat.
Any selfhosted, web based, alternative YT client? I’ve tried some quickly but nothing worked out of the box. Any recommendations?
I started routing all of my system traffic through Tor recently, which made YouTube nearly impossible to watch. So, my watching time on YouTube has dropped, and I have started watching more Rumble, Odysee, and PeerTube.
Freetube is a third party youtube client that usually works, but they are also in a cat and mouse game with youtube blocking.
freetubeapp.io
Guess that explains why GrayJay stopped working.
Logging out and in fixed this for me
I was never logged in. But it did start working again for some reason.
“Page not found” but the post is upvoted this much? Is the article taken down perhaps?
It’s probably upvoted because fuck Google.
When Gemini recommended SmartTube I made the switch.
Hasnt been very successful as i can see, mine goes well and i even vibe coded some slop IPA for my iphone to sideload a custom ad free client that works flawlessly. Idgaf their greedy ass, ima watch my shit adfree until i tapout
Try Unwatched
I’ve probably watched thousands of hours of YouTube over many years. I honestly don’t see what people have against paying for the service in stead of watching ads. It’s not like you never heard of YouTube premium, you know it exists.
Paying them not to stuff annoying bullshit into your content still doesn’t stop them from slorping up every possible facet of your personal data. So long as they’re double dipping, I’m not giving them a dime.
15 years ago I would have agreed with you, but it’s not just ads any more.
These companies track everything you do, share data with eachother, and create profiles on everybody.
If I were to follow you around keeping track of everything you do and share that info with my buddy who does the same thing, you would probably feel unsafe, and it’s illegal. It’s called stalking.
So why is ok for a corporation to do these things?
I paid for it for a while, but the price kept going up way faster than inflation (and even faster than my salary). I just play for Nebula and Dropout instead.
Some people don’t really watch it as much to justify a subscription. I watch it everyday and listen to yt music daily as well, so my sub is pretty worth it. Otherwise i’d just get Nebula
You already pay for it in more ways than one. Who pays for the data centers? You do, the increased water and electrical bills. The increased property taxes.
Those mutually shared power pylons didn’t get built for free, you paid for them. You pay for the internet service. What else do you want to pay for? Just line right up. These companies aren’t paying you for the fuel to deliver their vomit yet you line right up and eat it all and say it’s not that bad. Get bent. oh wait spit roasted? sorry don’t mean to kink shame.
Ads require streaming. I prefer watching already downloaded videos so I don’t need to worry about having a stable internet connection.
But I’m watching through RSS feeds, yt-dlp + VLC player, so browser adblockers aren’t really relevant to my use-case.
And a lot of people already pay for spotify, so they could switch to YouTube premium and have music and ad free videos