Inside the ‘arms race’ between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.::YouTube’s dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there’s an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

  • @[email protected]
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    252 years ago

    Meshkov said that assessment [that scriptlet injection is the only reliable method of ad blocking for youtbue] is accurate if you limit yourself to browser extensions (which is how most popular ad blockers are distributed). But he pointed to network-level ad blockers and alternative YouTube clients, such as NewPipe, as other approaches that can work.

    How exactly do these youtube front ends survive Google anyways? Why can’t Google simply block all the traffic coming from these front ends in order to kill them off entirely? Kind of interesting that some ad blockers are having a hard time being effective on YT while these front ends seem to be having no issues accessing videos on the site.

      • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️
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        62 years ago

        In order for someone to experience the video, it has to go from digital to analog. That will always be the weakpoint of DRM. Someone can always put a middleman application in that point. Expect corporations to push for chip implants that allow them to directly control what you experience.

    • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️
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      122 years ago

      If someone hosts their own front end, Google has no way of knowing whether or not it’s legitimate.

    • Victor
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      52 years ago

      Really enjoying LibreTube on my phone, for listening to long videos without the video on screen. Its audio mode is very clean in my opinion.

    • Karyoplasma
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      192 years ago

      There is no way to determine if the request comes from an alternative frontend or a legitimate user. Even if they start blocking all public instances of alternatives, which is highly unfeasible since most of them use VPN and blocking all VPNs is extremely restrictive for legitimate users too, you can host them locally.