6 ms·

YouTube crackdown leads to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of ad blocker uninstalls

21 points by mikece 3y ago

Kelteseth 3y ago
So tl;dr they uninstalled a shitty ad blocker and probably install uBlock origin
riidom 3y ago
And how many people reduced the number of subscriptions by 90% and their video watch time by roughly the same amount? I don't know, but it's at least one.
- PascLeRasc 3y ago
  Two. Those particular ads are so intrusive and annoying that I never finish a video. I’d like to figure out a way to youtube-dl just by clicking the video link.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    Haven't tried it on YouTube in the past few months, but the VideoDownloadHelper browser extension is shockingly effective despite maybe looking a bit sketchy https://www.downloadhelper.net/ https://www.downloadhelper.net/
- lta 3y ago
  At least two, and I expect many more to follow. It'd be great to have some other platforms to emerge (back), as this quasi Monopoly doesn't seem very healthy to me
- yetanother-1 3y ago
  They tried that on my 15 years old account, then they reverted it back because I could still watch them in incognito windows, or stopped completely watching Youtube. I am not very profitable to them anyway, but they appear to test you for a couple of days and see how you would react.
_8j50 3y ago
I just want to say that there are ways to watch youtube without ads that don't involve adblockers and vpns. Hint: it just works for me without ads by default and I am in the US. It's nothing fancy but I won't advertise it so they won't crack down.
- rifty 3y ago
  Oh interesting, i too had been experiencing no ads but what they did recently caused me to get them again. I could never figure how i caused it to happen. Good to know it is/was purposefully causable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DistractionRect 3y ago
  Yeah, it's not hard. I've got an app on my phone and plug that redirects to a different front end on desktop. It all just works
- leosanchez 3y ago
  You are a bad rabbit :)
rifty 3y ago
Somewhat related, YouTube seemingly fixed an issue with this event which had been giving me ad free viewing without an adblocker everywhere i was logged in. I essentially had premium for free for 4-5 years. I wonder how many other accounts experienced this which are now being served ads again.
- sushid 3y ago
  You might have just been in a small holdback group. Not getting the same experience as others doesn't always mean it was an accident on their part.
  - bilekas 3y ago
    4-5 years in a group specificly with no adverts.. from a company who's business model is ad revenue.. seems unlikely!
lapcat 3y ago
The source of this article appears to be https://www.wired.com/story/youtubes-ad-blocker-crackdown-spurs-record-uninstalls/ https://www.wired.com/story/youtubes-ad-blocker-crackdown-sp... See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 (3 hours ago, 151 comments)
e2le 3y ago
On Firefox, uBO and AdGuard don't appear to be doing badly despite the crackdown these last few weeks. ABP has being declining in popularity for years, 7.75M users in 2020 and now down to only 4.22M (-3.53M). Since 2020, uBO has gained 2.25M users. ABP [1] (Oct 18th - Nov 3rd): -16707 uBO [2] (Oct 18th - Nov 3rd): +197610 AdGuard [3] (Oct 16th - Nov 3rd): +11258 [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adguard-adblocker/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m...
- bilekas 3y ago
  I found that adblocker when paired with uBO actually circumvented the uBO filters specifically for the premium spam. So after disabling adblocker uBlock was free to do it's thing. Very strange but uBO seems to do everything now with a good filter list.
_lvbh 3y ago
Invidious gets around the ads. You can even just run it locally without hosting
mrandish 3y ago
uBO on Firefox is still giving me ad free YT like it always has. When and if that changes, I'll stop watching YT. Nothing there is worth watching ads for IMHO.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  YT is still performing A/B testing. So probably your on group A. And I agree. Instant tab closure at any advert. I'm not going to watch five seconds of adverts on a 15 year old video of 30 seconds. Sponsors, I'm fine with.
  - AussieWog93 3y ago
    I'm in group B. The ads definitely make it harder to perform "mindless scrolling", but if I actually "need" to watch a video (e.g. a setup video for a product purchased recently) I'll just eat shit and watch the ads.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      My favorite thing to do is mute unskippable ads (like on the Youtube app on my TV). Just cuz I can't skip it doesn't mean I have to actually listen or watch!
- KingGeedorah 3y ago
  I only started getting hit a few days ago
- olyjohn 3y ago
  I mean, I totally feel you. At the same time, I'm fine with a few ads. But holy balls, YouTube throws so many at you, it's unbearable. And it's the same ones over and over and over. Do they not have very many advertisers, or what? Also, I'm not going to be forced into paying for Premium, especially when they're still making billions of dollars in profit every year. They just need to keep making MORE money. Then after that, EVEN MORE. I mean for no real reason at all, they've jacked up the price of premium twice just recently... It's like back in the day, a banner ad didn't really bother me. But 52 blinking ads all over everything with one paragraph of real text? Fucking bullshit. Just like YouTube.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Youtube encouraging people to uninstall adblockers at all is going to do a number on general network security in the population, isn't it?
- asdff 3y ago
  To say nothing of the climate cost of the massive waste of compute rendering an ad about tide laundry detergent on millions of cpus.
Kye 3y ago
Soon: 'hundreds of thousands' of ad blockers reinstalled as people discover the state of the web without one.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Why uninstall when you can disable it just for yt and keep for everything else...
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  Because you're in the middle of trying out a new adblocker
bradley13 3y ago
Funny, my wife asked me why people are so annoyed by ads. She didn't know about our pihole. I VPNed around it, and...she understands. One of my students came to me with a question. She had a browser window open, sidebar filled with blinking, animated ads. How do people stand it? The ad industry consists of parasites, sucking people's attention. Today, most people are free of physical parasites (worms, fleas, lice, etc.) Maybe someday soon we can eradicate advertisers?
jowea 3y ago
Uninstalled? Not just turned off on youtube? I'm surprised.
newaccount74 3y ago
Am I the only one paying for Youtube Premium? Everyone's always saying "if you aren't paying you are the product", but Google actually offers an easy way to pay to not get any ads! Unfortunately you still get the ads -- sorry, sponsorships -- baked into the videos, but the obnoxious interruptions and scummy links are all gone for 14€/month. Compared to Netflix this seems like a fantastic deal, there's so much more stuff on Youtube than on Netflix. Or is it because Youtube used to be free that people just don't want to pay for it?
- asdff 3y ago
  I don't agree with this sort of advertising as a business model. I don't like being extorted to not see ads. I don't agree with the assumption that me watching youtube without such invasive advertising is a valueless proposition for youtube, given what has been argued to mean value in shareholder meetings over the years. I don't like this idea that I must accept a firehose of data that I have no interest in, that I am not allowed to filter what renders on my own machine. I also don't agree that a 1.62 trillion dollar company now needs to start penny pinching.
  - sushid 3y ago
    How are you being extorted? Who is forcing you to watch Youtube videos?
    - asdff 3y ago
      Unfortunately for youtube, they have positioned themselves as a de facto public utility now that things like local council meeting recordings and even federal announcements go directly onto their platform, not to mention things like conference recordings, school lectures, job training videos, the works. So yes, in theory, sometimes you very well can be forced to watch youtube at this point in time. We are no longer in the age where youtube was merely one of many equivocally popular media hosting sites on the internet. They have eliminated nearly all competition and monopolized most video hosting.
- LordShredda 3y ago
neuralRiot 3y ago
I have ABP on my phone, it usually allows 1-2 ads at the beginning of the vid but no interruptions. If i ever get them i simply do not watch the video, i already hate to watch a 15min video that explains something that could be written in 3 paragraphs. Does people not read anymore?
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765
valdiorn 3y ago
You can pry uBlock from my cold, dead hands. I'll continue smashing that "Purge all caches" button for as long as I need. And I will not pay to watch content that was provided to YouTube for free.

21 points by mikece 3y ago

So tl;dr they uninstalled a shitty ad blocker and probably install uBlock origin

And how many people reduced the number of subscriptions by 90% and their video watch time by roughly the same amount? I don't know, but it's at least one.

PascLeRasc 3y ago
Two. Those particular ads are so intrusive and annoying that I never finish a video. I’d like to figure out a way to youtube-dl just by clicking the video link.
- xkcd-sucks 3y ago
  Haven't tried it on YouTube in the past few months, but the VideoDownloadHelper browser extension is shockingly effective despite maybe looking a bit sketchy https://www.downloadhelper.net/ https://www.downloadhelper.net/
lta 3y ago
At least two, and I expect many more to follow. It'd be great to have some other platforms to emerge (back), as this quasi Monopoly doesn't seem very healthy to me
yetanother-1 3y ago
They tried that on my 15 years old account, then they reverted it back because I could still watch them in incognito windows, or stopped completely watching Youtube. I am not very profitable to them anyway, but they appear to test you for a couple of days and see how you would react.

_8j50 3y ago

I just want to say that there are ways to watch youtube without ads that don't involve adblockers and vpns. Hint: it just works for me without ads by default and I am in the US. It's nothing fancy but I won't advertise it so they won't crack down.

rifty 3y ago
Oh interesting, i too had been experiencing no ads but what they did recently caused me to get them again. I could never figure how i caused it to happen. Good to know it is/was purposefully causable.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
DistractionRect 3y ago
Yeah, it's not hard. I've got an app on my phone and plug that redirects to a different front end on desktop. It all just works
leosanchez 3y ago
You are a bad rabbit :)

rifty 3y ago

Somewhat related, YouTube seemingly fixed an issue with this event which had been giving me ad free viewing without an adblocker everywhere i was logged in. I essentially had premium for free for 4-5 years. I wonder how many other accounts experienced this which are now being served ads again.

sushid 3y ago
You might have just been in a small holdback group. Not getting the same experience as others doesn't always mean it was an accident on their part.
- bilekas 3y ago
  4-5 years in a group specificly with no adverts.. from a company who's business model is ad revenue.. seems unlikely!

lapcat 3y ago

The source of this article appears to be https://www.wired.com/story/youtubes-ad-blocker-crackdown-spurs-record-uninstalls/ https://www.wired.com/story/youtubes-ad-blocker-crackdown-sp... See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 (3 hours ago, 151 comments)

e2le 3y ago

On Firefox, uBO and AdGuard don't appear to be doing badly despite the crackdown these last few weeks. ABP has being declining in popularity for years, 7.75M users in 2020 and now down to only 4.22M (-3.53M). Since 2020, uBO has gained 2.25M users. ABP [1] (Oct 18th - Nov 3rd): -16707 uBO [2] (Oct 18th - Nov 3rd): +197610 AdGuard [3] (Oct 16th - Nov 3rd): +11258 [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m... [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adguard-adblocker/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://addons.m...

bilekas 3y ago
I found that adblocker when paired with uBO actually circumvented the uBO filters specifically for the premium spam. So after disabling adblocker uBlock was free to do it's thing. Very strange but uBO seems to do everything now with a good filter list.

_lvbh 3y ago

Invidious gets around the ads. You can even just run it locally without hosting

mrandish 3y ago

uBO on Firefox is still giving me ad free YT like it always has. When and if that changes, I'll stop watching YT. Nothing there is worth watching ads for IMHO.

doublerabbit 3y ago
YT is still performing A/B testing. So probably your on group A. And I agree. Instant tab closure at any advert. I'm not going to watch five seconds of adverts on a 15 year old video of 30 seconds. Sponsors, I'm fine with.
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  I'm in group B. The ads definitely make it harder to perform "mindless scrolling", but if I actually "need" to watch a video (e.g. a setup video for a product purchased recently) I'll just eat shit and watch the ads.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    My favorite thing to do is mute unskippable ads (like on the Youtube app on my TV). Just cuz I can't skip it doesn't mean I have to actually listen or watch!
KingGeedorah 3y ago
I only started getting hit a few days ago
olyjohn 3y ago
I mean, I totally feel you. At the same time, I'm fine with a few ads. But holy balls, YouTube throws so many at you, it's unbearable. And it's the same ones over and over and over. Do they not have very many advertisers, or what? Also, I'm not going to be forced into paying for Premium, especially when they're still making billions of dollars in profit every year. They just need to keep making MORE money. Then after that, EVEN MORE. I mean for no real reason at all, they've jacked up the price of premium twice just recently... It's like back in the day, a banner ad didn't really bother me. But 52 blinking ads all over everything with one paragraph of real text? Fucking bullshit. Just like YouTube.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

Youtube encouraging people to uninstall adblockers at all is going to do a number on general network security in the population, isn't it?

asdff 3y ago
To say nothing of the climate cost of the massive waste of compute rendering an ad about tide laundry detergent on millions of cpus.

Kye 3y ago

Soon: 'hundreds of thousands' of ad blockers reinstalled as people discover the state of the web without one.

Moldoteck 3y ago

Why uninstall when you can disable it just for yt and keep for everything else...

wodenokoto 3y ago
Because you're in the middle of trying out a new adblocker

bradley13 3y ago

Funny, my wife asked me why people are so annoyed by ads. She didn't know about our pihole. I VPNed around it, and...she understands. One of my students came to me with a question. She had a browser window open, sidebar filled with blinking, animated ads. How do people stand it? The ad industry consists of parasites, sucking people's attention. Today, most people are free of physical parasites (worms, fleas, lice, etc.) Maybe someday soon we can eradicate advertisers?

jowea 3y ago

Uninstalled? Not just turned off on youtube? I'm surprised.

newaccount74 3y ago

Am I the only one paying for Youtube Premium? Everyone's always saying "if you aren't paying you are the product", but Google actually offers an easy way to pay to not get any ads! Unfortunately you still get the ads -- sorry, sponsorships -- baked into the videos, but the obnoxious interruptions and scummy links are all gone for 14€/month. Compared to Netflix this seems like a fantastic deal, there's so much more stuff on Youtube than on Netflix. Or is it because Youtube used to be free that people just don't want to pay for it?

asdff 3y ago
I don't agree with this sort of advertising as a business model. I don't like being extorted to not see ads. I don't agree with the assumption that me watching youtube without such invasive advertising is a valueless proposition for youtube, given what has been argued to mean value in shareholder meetings over the years. I don't like this idea that I must accept a firehose of data that I have no interest in, that I am not allowed to filter what renders on my own machine. I also don't agree that a 1.62 trillion dollar company now needs to start penny pinching.
- sushid 3y ago
  How are you being extorted? Who is forcing you to watch Youtube videos?
  - asdff 3y ago
    Unfortunately for youtube, they have positioned themselves as a de facto public utility now that things like local council meeting recordings and even federal announcements go directly onto their platform, not to mention things like conference recordings, school lectures, job training videos, the works. So yes, in theory, sometimes you very well can be forced to watch youtube at this point in time. We are no longer in the age where youtube was merely one of many equivocally popular media hosting sites on the internet. They have eliminated nearly all competition and monopolized most video hosting.
LordShredda 3y ago

neuralRiot 3y ago

I have ABP on my phone, it usually allows 1-2 ads at the beginning of the vid but no interruptions. If i ever get them i simply do not watch the video, i already hate to watch a 15min video that explains something that could be written in 3 paragraphs. Does people not read anymore?

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38128765

valdiorn 3y ago

You can pry uBlock from my cold, dead hands. I'll continue smashing that "Purge all caches" button for as long as I need. And I will not pay to watch content that was provided to YouTube for free.