STN Beta on my AndroidTV still seems to work fine adless, though, I usually just cast my phone youtube to that and it’ll just play completely adless…
If I had any programming ability above the level of a sloth I’d make a blocker called “Muffler” that basically separated out all the adstreams and made them think they were viewed and played in real time, but invisible to the user.
Shouting into the void, and nothing to be done about it as they’d look like they were being played.
How about creating a bot that decrypts the blob format in which YouTube vidoes are stored in, and upload them to a PeerTube instance.
We should call this instance PirateTube. No ads, and technically, since we are not making money out of it, it will be considered as fair usage.
Like, downloading the video files with yt-dlp and then uploading them? Or streaming, like what Piped/LibreTube do?
I personally have my own piped server, and don’t enter to youtube for anything. The only 2 things it can’t do are post comments and see live streams comments. No ads, no tracking, i can do whatever i want without google’s permission
Sounds like what adnauseam is doing. It loads ads hidden and clicks on some of them but I am not sure if it does that with YouTube ads or just blocks them.
So does this cause advertisers to lose money since their ads are being clicked but never viewed by human eyes? Because if so, I’ll install ad nauseum asap
I thinkk the main idea behind ad naseum is to drown out any information you leave behind. Basically it hiides your data in a pile of useless and fake data that becomes useless.
Yep, advertisers are paying for ad clickthroughs that no human ever sees.
Not for AdSense ads, like what YouTube uses. Click-Through Rate (CTR) is only used to determine how much of a cut Google gives to the ad hosts, the advertisers just bid for the spots. The advertisers can see the CTR metrics, and so they might be willing to bid more, but that’s not guaranteed.
So google makes money either way, and the advertisers spend money either way. The only difference is that your favorite websites and youtubers get paid too.
Hmmm well for some reason I was under the impression that ad nauseum can be used alongside uBO, but I see now that it can’t so I guess I’ll keep uBO since I’ve got a ton of custom filters, but this was insightful so thanks.
In a vice versa way, that’s pi hole. The website makes ad requests to the DNS and pi hole says:
I use pihole. Pihole does not work for sites that serve ads from the same domain, like YouTube
Not a bad idea, but if possible, you want to skip loading the ad altogether, which is – to my understanding – what currently happens.
This is so inherently detectable, though, I’m amazed it worked for so long and that it’s still working now. Likely a consequence of offloading as much of YT onto the client side as possible, because if you’re doing anything server side how hard is it to require that the ad has at least downloaded before streaming the video?
The Spotify ripper “zotify” has an undetectable “realtime” mode that does basically what OP suggested. Instead of downloading every track as fast as possible, it pretends that it’s actually streaming and listening to them. Obviously it takes a lot longer to rip a whole album, but it’s a good idea.
I think Spotify ripping isn’t big enough that it’s actually needed at this point, but it’s good that they considered the potential for it.
I’m personally not a big fan of spotify ripping, the audio quality isn’t great and more annoying. If I were you I’d check out Soulseek or the alternative ui Nicotine+
I always thought the reason they don’t take any action, is exactly because adblockers would then work as the guy above described.
Companies posting ads would eventually become aware, that a not insignificant portion of viewers don’t even see the ads they are paying for. I don’t see how this won’t cause a backlash… i guess youtube calculated that in and thinks it’ll be worth it any way.
Good point, if you’re counting ad impressions and billing accordingly then it’s better to simply lose the impression than bill the customer for displaying a “ghost ad”.
However this is exactly what’s happening to sponsors with SponsorBlock, their section gets skipped and nobody knows (well, the channel owner knows from the watch stats, but does the sponsor demand those stats, do they only pay for clickthroughs on the referral link, I have no idea how the YT sponsor ecosystem works)
They don’t need any other information than referral link clicks/signups and video views, one of which they have metrics on, the other is public information. A SponsorSkip user is equal in their eyes to a person who isn’t interested in the product.
Piped is pretty much that.
There was an app that did that.
Google found it and killed it.
Another posibility for Vivaldi user
YouTube revanced still working for me…
I had it pretty bad for several days, having to purge the cache several times but I saw no pop-ups yesterday or the day before that. Hoping that’s still the case today
A proxied front end which works 10/10 , FOSS online and selfhostable, online with encryted server (SHA-384), very fast and lighweight, even more in Light Mode for PC with few resources. The best front end i’ve seen, nice UI without ads or other crap.
Is this something that surfaced only recently? Can’t believe I haven’t come across it already, if it’s as good as you make it seem
Yes, it’s pretty new. Seen in New Apps in AlternativeTo.
What the hell is an encrypted server? What’s special about SHA-384, where do they use it to improve privacy? Please don’t bullshit people with random IT terms.
Glancing at the code, this is just another YT proxy. Ofc they have your user info, they just choose to only store aggregated data.
Do you have anything better to contribute to solve the YT problem than what I have contributed in this thread?
Our servers are secured with SHA-384 Signature Algorithm; meaning we cant see the videos you watching, things you search, or things you do We migth use third party services on PokeTube, but third party request on PokeTube is proxied by default. no third party can see wat the hell ru doing on PokeTube. We do this by proxying the requests via a whole diffrent server, so no third party can see you.
Source code https://codeberg.org/ashley/poketube/
Do you have anything better to contribute to solve the YT problem than what I have contributed in this thread?
Apparently pointing out false or at least misleading claims, instead of making them.
Our servers are secured with SHA-384 Signature Algorithm
This is a meaningless sentence.
meaning we cant see the videos you watching, things you search
This is just not true. Go to a video on their site, the browser requests the video id as cleartext from their server. Search for something, your browser sends the search term as cleartext as well. There is nothing encrypted beyond the standard, it’s all visible to them.
This is how all YT proxy sites do it, but they don’t claim to use some sort of special encryption. It’s widely accepted that you have to put some amount of trust into whoever is hosting the instance you are using, because they can see the things you watch and search for.
I’ve exported my subscriptions and imported them in FreeTube. Seems to work even better since it doesn’t try to hide videos in my subscription list.
?
Why am I not having any issues blocking ads in YouTube? I use uBlock Origin and Firefox.
Me too. I’m also on Google Fi still for reasons, I know there are better options. The moment they start blocking Ublock I will be cancelling my phone plan.
Why wouldn’t they offer free services for you like YouTube premium (whatever it’s called) since you already buy in to their service?
That’s sort of my feeling as well. Putting my tin foil hat on. I think it’s why I’m in the group that isn’t being fucked with yet.
I forget the term but it’s something like “staged rollout”. Not everybody will see the changes at the same time. Solidarity is harder when people think they’re above getting affected
That’s true, I haven’t been affected yet and I just assumed my ublock was doing a good enough job. But I guess it’ll be my turn soon
A/B testing. I have your set up and am seeing g them.
And new circle between adBlocks and antiAdDlocks begins.
Maybe I’ve found a definitive solution, because adblocking only works for a few days, until Google noticed it and put contrameasures. In Firefox install Tampermonkey and in it this script
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477725-youtube-iframe-adblocker
In Vivaldi no need of Tampermonkey, download the link to an folder and don’t delete it. Open the Extension page in developer mode and drag the script in it. Done
It is an ingenious userscript that helps persistent YouTube viewers bypass the frustrating “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube” message. It employs a clever technique of dynamically inserting an iframe player to replace the standard YouTube player. This method effectively circumvents YouTube’s ad-blocker detection, allowing for an uninterrupted, ad-free viewing experience even after YouTube’s standard measures have been triggered. So you can still use your adblocker without problems.
This is working for me, super simple to install too.
I would just caution anyone that blocking ads while logged into your Google account is probably a bad idea if you care about still watching videos there. Google will grow more desperate to show tracked ads to users.
The only ling term solution is to seek to watch YouTube e videos in a private way. Freestone is a good start. New piped and individuals look promising as well. I’m still researching a good long term solution.
Google’s desperation to show tracked ads is but one vector in the equation which determines longterm viability for watching Youtube ad-free for free. There are also other vectors to consider like the level of obtrusion required to actually effectively adblock-block, and its related effect on the userbase. And also just the level of inconvenience presented by ads, determined by their length, skippability etc.
The proportion of the userbase blocking ads is still relatively negligible, and this is an outcome manufactured by Google toeing the line between too obtrusive and too ineffective. Any measure I can imagine which would actually capture a significant portion of users blocking ads would also significantly skew the balance in favour of obtrusivity, which they would pay for in lost users.
As long as many users are happy to continue being vigilant in blocking ads, IMO this balance will ensure blocking ads will remain feasible.
Long term, google will demand our identity to serve video data to us, even if only out of principle. I just think that service will degrade in the pursuit of more price extraction.
I have a longer term project to decouple my identity and property from online services. Part of the reaso thnat I am also on lemmy in the first place. With google products, it is becoming clear that anonymous use is really the only answer.
In general I would agree, but as it pertains to Youtube adblock blocking - there is no gradual slide into degradation (apart from perhaps to do with the implementation of ads itself, though I’d argue they’re less obtrusive now than in their original implementation many years ago).
There is fundamentally no way to adblock-block today which does not involve collecting info in a way that causes obvious privacy concerns. It’s not somewhere Google can get to by taking little steps. The adblock-blocking that’s been happening to date is easily circumvented. Logically an arms race between adblockers and adblock-blockers will ensue, except in practice it’d be like raising the stakes from a civil war re-enactment to actual nuclear war
Right. That is why I am saying: beocme anonymous now before google demands your identity to watch videos. That is where I believe this is headed.
Front-ends and streaming platforms are several outsite, but Google also is blocking those, its not a solution for a long term. I was recently using FreeTube as a desktop client, but it has become unusable. I recently replaced VLC with SMPlayer, MMplayer like VLC but way better, also FOSS, this allows me to watch, among others, streaming videos from different sites, among others also from YT so far without problems. I also use an extension (FOSS) that allows me to record the audio of the active tab and save it as mp3, that is, with this it does not matter whether it is a music video from YT or from other sources and with this outside of Google’s control.
A good option is also IMDB, or better its online service, Odysee, which allows you to import subscriptions and playlists from YT, it is somewhat complicated to do, but it is guided. Odysee is not related to Google, it has a UI similar to YT and a good number of videos of all kinds, many have already moved to this platform. In my opinion it is the best direct alternative to YT.
In any case, at least so far, this userscript works wonderfully and I think it will continue to work, since it prevents YT from discovering that you use an adblocker, not like other anti adblock killers whose script I also have in the Vivaldi blocker list, since these do block the YT detector, which naturally has already been discovered, however this script does not block the YT detector, but surrounds it by putting a “mask” over the video, with which the detector passes underneath without discovering anything.
The risk that YT discovers it and blocks me? Yes it does anyway if I continue using an adblocker and I prefer to suck my elbow before deactivating the ad- and all the other blockers on YT and swallowing all the garbage of ads, clickbaits and the other shit that YT is full of (a single music video, blocked 12 ads and more than 20 trackers and without the Clickbait Remover, YT completely changes the thumbnails it shows, which mostly have nothing to do with the content). No, thanks
Yeah, I definitely agree, and haven’t looked into all the options yet. It is pretty logical that they would catch on to stuff like free-tube very quickly. But I still think the only reasonable posture is to view video content anonymously, until google goes the twitter route and demands that you identify yourself to watch a video. They kind of already do that for mature content.
I know, there still videos blocked for NSFW content, where you need to identify you, eg the music video from Harakiri for the Sky - Funeral Dream is flagged as such, but you can still warch it from an other upload, Also not a problem to watch it in Andisearch or SMPlayer. But this filter has nothing to do with the current adblocker problem, age restricted vids in YT are exist since several years.
I last updated my uBlock yesterday and I haven’t seen a popup since, I might be lucky or maybe Google has backed off for now.edit: nevermind just got another one
Is there something I am missing? I am using uBlock Origin on Firefox and Youtube works the same as always.
Started on me today, but it looks like you can just remove the element that contains the message, tho
As with all changes at large tech companies, this change is being rolled out to a subsection of the whole userbase. As such, if you’re not seeing it yet, it might be because you just haven’t gotten into the rollout yet.
Or Firefox and uBlock are still managing to beat the countermeasures, who knows.
It’s how you boil a frog. They’re not gonna back down off of this. They decided a long time ago to maximize profitability at the cost of service degradation.
Rollouts are not made to boil frogs, they are made so that you can test the impact of changes, and crucially, quickly roll undesired changes back. It’s a great technique. This is important when you’re at Google-scale - any small mistakes will impact millions of people. The only realistic way to handle this is to roll changes out and monitor the changes for negative impacts - stuff like crashes and so on.
I agree that what they’re doing is boiling the frog, but rollouts have nothing to do with it.
I’ve started using Piped but oh my god the fucking buffering is ridiculous
https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances using an other instance from this list works realy fine for me
