13 ms·

YouTube steps up fight against ad blockers again

36 points by nsdfg 1y ago

dlcarrier 1y ago
I'm glad there's enough bureaucracy inside Google to make these measures roll out slowly with long breaks between changes. It gives the add blockers enough time to update their blocks, before the anti-blocking measures even make it out to all users.
Telaneo 1y ago
I wonder what the end goal is for Youtube. I doubt they have one, and they're just doing this on instinct/reflex. Not to mention they probably wouldn't have seen a need to to this as much if they didn't go down the path of shoving more and more ads down people's throats. If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Long term, a pipeline is needed to rip from YouTube and then torrent seed with magnet links per video ID (which your browser could then lookup and expose with an extension when surfing YouTube).
  - ycombinatrix 1y ago
    perfect use case for webtorrents
- rolph 1y ago
  ive said this before, when your [x] depends on people watching videos, you have to let people actually watch videos. its a corner youtube painted itsself into long ago, and means only so many ads can be shown, and videos must be of a minimum quality otherwise or the platform will implode.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  The end goal is probably some low level employee who is trying to justify their job or push for a promotion. The gain for them is a lot smaller than the negative for everyone else - but it is their own gain.
- mu53 1y ago
  increasing friction for ad blockers will increase ad views will increase revenue. It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult. Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
  - 1over137 1y ago
    But thats even less private. If you log in, they know exactly who you are.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      They likely have nearly as good an idea who you are based on what you watch from which IP address(es).
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    This is the reflex/instinct approach though. Sure, they increase friction for people with adblock, and then 5 minutes later, uBlock Origin does an update to undo Youtube's friction, and we're back to square one. No gain for anyone, no thought of what happens long term, just busywork. I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.
    - mu53 1y ago
      It is very likely that you are a customer that youtube would rather not have to deal with, so the feelings would be mutual
  - zahlman 1y ago
- tene80i 1y ago
  The goal is to increase revenue, and one way to do that is to make the experience worse for people blocking ads. Some, like you, will keep finding new ways to bypass them. Others will give up and allow the ads, or pay for ad-free. They don’t need to stop all the ad-blocking users, just more and more each time. And if you’re a die-hard who will never allow ads, they probably don’t care what you do at all. Why should they? It’s not personal - they just want to keep increasing revenue, and it’s not coming from you no matter what, so they don’t care what your experience is like.
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    I have a hard time imagining a world which Youtube ceases to work in a browser with uBlock Origin. Instead we're in a world where Youtube screws us around for a bit, and then uBlock does an update and everything goes back to 'normal'. This isn't productive for either side. It's just busywork. Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.
- msgodel 1y ago
  I really wonder how much they actually care about ad blockers. My understanding is that most people actually watch youtube on smart TVs and then smart phones. It may very well make sense for them to leave ad blockers alone and to keep youtube dominant while they make money off consumers like that which can't run ad blockers (or at least make it much harder to.) The kinds of people who use ad blockers are also the kinds of people who start new things and convince the larger consumer oriented people to follow them. The reason YouTube is dominant is because it's still usable for that set of people.
zb3 1y ago
The article was written more than two months ago..
jokoon 1y ago
I wonder what is the proportion of users using an adblocker I saw around me that many people are fine with ads, so I don't think it's much of a problem for YouTube I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads.
- roscas 1y ago
  "I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads." where you read that?
  - jokoon 1y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/1mrp58k/me_irl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/1mrp58k/me_irl/ saw this meme I think the article is quite old?
- commiepatrol 1y ago
  Wut?
roscas 1y ago
"About 11% of YouTube users openly say they use ad blockers. Some communities report 40-60% of viewers use ad blockers. Overall global ad blocker usage is around 42.7% for all internet users." So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site. First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them. If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple. A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy. Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.
- sanswork 1y ago
  Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.
  - bjourne 1y ago
    Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video. It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.
    - sanswork 1y ago
      Google has offered free hosting for millions of content creators and once they are profitable offers them a revenue source. It further helps those creators by trying to stop freeloaders. You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking about removing their income. Google offers an easy way to support creators and avoid as. If you were really concerned with creator well being you could go that route or Subscribe to the patron or similar of every creator you enjoy and bypass YouTube entirely.
roscas 1y ago
Talking about ads, just went in the living room and tv was turned on and there were ads. I never see any ads but let me take 30 seconds to see what is on tv. Absolutly disgusting. Wasted 30 seconds of my life and now I need medication to sleep tonight after seeing the *it goes on tv.
- sanswork 1y ago
  How many seconds of your life were wasted reading an article about YouTube ads then commenting here multiple times? If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    I was gift hospitalized for three months after reading your comment. We are very sensitive here.
  - soraminazuki 1y ago
    Collectively raising our voices against social injustices isn't a waste of time, unlike playing mental gymnastics to defend the abusive practices of trillion dollar companies.
general1726 1y ago
I mean just try to sumarize ads running on YouTube: Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam. Wooden cutting board as source of microplastics - scam. Muscular old geezer selling Tai-chi - grift and scam. Mobile games advertising a "playthrough" but real game is completely something else - scam. Palestinians having difficult life - propaganda. Israel delivering help to Palestine - counter propaganda. I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.
- zahlman 1y ago
  To be fair, the "wooden cutting board" ad is actually trying to tell you (if you listen to the whole thing) that plastic cutting boards are a source of microplastics but wooden cutting boards will instead result in bacterial contamination; thus they're selling you (supposedly) a titanium cutting board. Which of course will command some ungodly price tag both because of the material (supposing for the moment that this is legit) and because you'll supposedly only ever need one. And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised. (I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.) It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
  - general1726 1y ago
    > It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys. Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games... Btw cutting on titanium cutting board is the fastest way to have dull knives. So we moved from scam to deception.
Ms-J 1y ago
Youtube will lose the fight against ad blockers, again.
toastercat 1y ago
I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target). If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
- roscas 1y ago
  I understand this. I do disable the uBlock Origin on few selected sites. But this topic has grown more than I could imagine. Ads are a jungle. We do need to change this. Make this companies behave and not exploit people.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  > There is an unwritten social contract here. There isn't and never was. Adware and spyware have always been flavors of malware. Some people thought they could use that as a business model. It was pretty much immediately met with people blocking it and providing software to remove it. Some people have tried hiding botnet command and control functions in software they give out as a business model or putting crypto miners on web pages. That also doesn't form a social contract. That makes them malware authors.
roscas 1y ago
Engineers should not be worried. AI will first start to replace CEO and all managers. That will bring great value to companies. At the same time, AI will replace politicians and become president. Just imagine a president that does the right things and no lies. A prime minister that you can write and it will write you back with a proper decision. Government being efficient! Wow! And not someone being just an idiot trying to fake responsible spending or cut waste. And then no more contracts for their friends. AI will be really for the people and not for the rich. End those "meetings" with all presidents and ministers who fake being really worried about something. Any problem with the AI itself, Facebook will have a hot line where you can call... and talk to an engineer.

36 points by nsdfg 1y ago

I'm glad there's enough bureaucracy inside Google to make these measures roll out slowly with long breaks between changes. It gives the add blockers enough time to update their blocks, before the anti-blocking measures even make it out to all users.

Telaneo 1y ago

I wonder what the end goal is for Youtube. I doubt they have one, and they're just doing this on instinct/reflex. Not to mention they probably wouldn't have seen a need to to this as much if they didn't go down the path of shoving more and more ads down people's throats. If Youtube stops working with uBlock Origin, I'll just download the videos wholesale and watch them that way instead, and I doubt there's a realistic way to completely block that, and there will be/already is a large community of people who are willing to make that experience as smooth as it can be, if need be. I don't see an end that works out significantly worse for adblockers in the long run, so everything in the short term is just busywork.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Long term, a pipeline is needed to rip from YouTube and then torrent seed with magnet links per video ID (which your browser could then lookup and expose with an extension when surfing YouTube).
- ycombinatrix 1y ago
  perfect use case for webtorrents
rolph 1y ago
ive said this before, when your [x] depends on people watching videos, you have to let people actually watch videos. its a corner youtube painted itsself into long ago, and means only so many ads can be shown, and videos must be of a minimum quality otherwise or the platform will implode.
SilverElfin 1y ago
The end goal is probably some low level employee who is trying to justify their job or push for a promotion. The gain for them is a lot smaller than the negative for everyone else - but it is their own gain.
mu53 1y ago
increasing friction for ad blockers will increase ad views will increase revenue. It is pretty easy for a company whose existence depends on ads to see people that use ad blockers as leeches or freeloaders or other derogatory terms to justify making their lives more difficult. Youtube premium is around $15, and depending on people's video usage, it pays for itself
- 1over137 1y ago
  But thats even less private. If you log in, they know exactly who you are.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    They likely have nearly as good an idea who you are based on what you watch from which IP address(es).
- Telaneo 1y ago
  This is the reflex/instinct approach though. Sure, they increase friction for people with adblock, and then 5 minutes later, uBlock Origin does an update to undo Youtube's friction, and we're back to square one. No gain for anyone, no thought of what happens long term, just busywork. I'll pay for Youtube Premium the day they bring back a pre-2015-ish Youtube web layout, tone down the ads accordingly for those who can't pay, community subtitles, dislikes and annotations. I have no intentions of paying for a service that grows worse year over year, which I constantly have to counteract with either browser add-ons, or separate programs like yt-dlp and Freetube. I'll pay for the content if need be, but that's what Patreon is for in most cases. Youtube's a middleman I'd rather not have to deal with, but which we're stuck with.
  - mu53 1y ago
    It is very likely that you are a customer that youtube would rather not have to deal with, so the feelings would be mutual
- zahlman 1y ago
tene80i 1y ago
The goal is to increase revenue, and one way to do that is to make the experience worse for people blocking ads. Some, like you, will keep finding new ways to bypass them. Others will give up and allow the ads, or pay for ad-free. They don’t need to stop all the ad-blocking users, just more and more each time. And if you’re a die-hard who will never allow ads, they probably don’t care what you do at all. Why should they? It’s not personal - they just want to keep increasing revenue, and it’s not coming from you no matter what, so they don’t care what your experience is like.
- Telaneo 1y ago
  I have a hard time imagining a world which Youtube ceases to work in a browser with uBlock Origin. Instead we're in a world where Youtube screws us around for a bit, and then uBlock does an update and everything goes back to 'normal'. This isn't productive for either side. It's just busywork. Maybe Youtube sees it differently and can actually imagine that world, but even then, it doesn't really seem like that's the state of things they're working towards.
msgodel 1y ago
I really wonder how much they actually care about ad blockers. My understanding is that most people actually watch youtube on smart TVs and then smart phones. It may very well make sense for them to leave ad blockers alone and to keep youtube dominant while they make money off consumers like that which can't run ad blockers (or at least make it much harder to.) The kinds of people who use ad blockers are also the kinds of people who start new things and convince the larger consumer oriented people to follow them. The reason YouTube is dominant is because it's still usable for that set of people.

zb3 1y ago

The article was written more than two months ago..

jokoon 1y ago

I wonder what is the proportion of users using an adblocker I saw around me that many people are fine with ads, so I don't think it's much of a problem for YouTube I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads.

roscas 1y ago
"I read that people with either adhd or in the autism spectrum cannot tolerate ads." where you read that?
- jokoon 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/1mrp58k/me_irl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/1mrp58k/me_irl/ saw this meme I think the article is quite old?
commiepatrol 1y ago
Wut?

roscas 1y ago

"About 11% of YouTube users openly say they use ad blockers. Some communities report 40-60% of viewers use ad blockers. Overall global ad blocker usage is around 42.7% for all internet users." So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site. First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them. If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple. A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy. Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.

sanswork 1y ago
Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.
- bjourne 1y ago
  Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video. It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.
  - sanswork 1y ago
    Google has offered free hosting for millions of content creators and once they are profitable offers them a revenue source. It further helps those creators by trying to stop freeloaders. You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking about removing their income. Google offers an easy way to support creators and avoid as. If you were really concerned with creator well being you could go that route or Subscribe to the patron or similar of every creator you enjoy and bypass YouTube entirely.

roscas 1y ago

Talking about ads, just went in the living room and tv was turned on and there were ads. I never see any ads but let me take 30 seconds to see what is on tv. Absolutly disgusting. Wasted 30 seconds of my life and now I need medication to sleep tonight after seeing the *it goes on tv.

sanswork 1y ago
How many seconds of your life were wasted reading an article about YouTube ads then commenting here multiple times? If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  I was gift hospitalized for three months after reading your comment. We are very sensitive here.
- soraminazuki 1y ago
  Collectively raising our voices against social injustices isn't a waste of time, unlike playing mental gymnastics to defend the abusive practices of trillion dollar companies.

general1726 1y ago

I mean just try to sumarize ads running on YouTube: Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam. Wooden cutting board as source of microplastics - scam. Muscular old geezer selling Tai-chi - grift and scam. Mobile games advertising a "playthrough" but real game is completely something else - scam. Palestinians having difficult life - propaganda. Israel delivering help to Palestine - counter propaganda. I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.

zahlman 1y ago
To be fair, the "wooden cutting board" ad is actually trying to tell you (if you listen to the whole thing) that plastic cutting boards are a source of microplastics but wooden cutting boards will instead result in bacterial contamination; thus they're selling you (supposedly) a titanium cutting board. Which of course will command some ungodly price tag both because of the material (supposing for the moment that this is legit) and because you'll supposedly only ever need one. And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised. (I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.) It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.
- general1726 1y ago
  > It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys. Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games... Btw cutting on titanium cutting board is the fastest way to have dull knives. So we moved from scam to deception.

Ms-J 1y ago

Youtube will lose the fight against ad blockers, again.

toastercat 1y ago

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target). If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.

roscas 1y ago
I understand this. I do disable the uBlock Origin on few selected sites. But this topic has grown more than I could imagine. Ads are a jungle. We do need to change this. Make this companies behave and not exploit people.
ndriscoll 1y ago
> There is an unwritten social contract here. There isn't and never was. Adware and spyware have always been flavors of malware. Some people thought they could use that as a business model. It was pretty much immediately met with people blocking it and providing software to remove it. Some people have tried hiding botnet command and control functions in software they give out as a business model or putting crypto miners on web pages. That also doesn't form a social contract. That makes them malware authors.

roscas 1y ago

Engineers should not be worried. AI will first start to replace CEO and all managers. That will bring great value to companies. At the same time, AI will replace politicians and become president. Just imagine a president that does the right things and no lies. A prime minister that you can write and it will write you back with a proper decision. Government being efficient! Wow! And not someone being just an idiot trying to fake responsible spending or cut waste. And then no more contracts for their friends. AI will be really for the people and not for the rich. End those "meetings" with all presidents and ministers who fake being really worried about something. Any problem with the AI itself, Facebook will have a hot line where you can call... and talk to an engineer.