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.
Never under estimate the outrage of a nerd.
They even made a series of movies about it.
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.
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.
If someone hosts their own front end, Google has no way of knowing whether or not it’s legitimate.
Google could implement Widevine DRM for all videos.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
as soon as they start doing some sort of client verification it’s over for ad blockers
As it is over for YT, probably.
They can’t afford to do anything that would lose them a large slice of viewers. Same reason websites still support IE.
It’s funny you mention that since YouTube led the web in dropping support for IE 6: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
That kind of thing isn’t quite in their DNA anymore, but you never know.
they would mostly be losing the ad blocking viewers though, right?
Yes, but the point their are trying to make is to gain the adblocking users, not lose them. They need more people to watch the ads, not less people to watch YT.
i imagine many of them are addicted to youtube and would watch ads
“against all odds” my left asshole. This is always the way of hacker vs defense, it’s always an arms race and the attacking side always has the advantage.
Not really. There are lots of protocols and such that haven’t been broken in any meaningful ways. Attackers have advantage is a weird thing to say.
Defense is always playing reactive. Attack gets to be creative and figure out how to break whatever tools defense has. Defense has to wait until the vulnerability is found and then deal with it. It’s the nature of the arms race with regards to cyber security.
How many assholes do you have?
A left one and a right one.
And a center one. Well, that’s what I call myself. The central asshole.
To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?
Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.
I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.
Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.
Google = biggest advertising company in the world
Youtube = biggest money drain for Google
Adblock = a direct obstacle to the longterm feasibility of Google’s ability to ever reconcile the money drain against their primary product (advertising) and end up in the black
The current state of Youtube’s profitability is a long way off mattering for anything. For all it costs to run, it can be sustained indefinitely without much issue. This will remain the case until Youtube advertising reaches saturation. Given how much stuff like TV ads still cost, we can safely say this is still a long way off, regardless of the potential rise of competing platforms.
The landscape of youtube & adblockers is unlikely to be the same then, and restrictive measures taken now aren’t really representative of what it’ll be like. The actions taken now are for 2 reasons: maintenance of consumer expectation, so that it doesn’t feel like site monetization is changed substantially when the money faucet gets switched on. And market research.
I have no doubt that a primary intent behind recent actions to do with delays or slowdowns was to measure the blowback, using it a yardstick for further actions not yet taken, which will eventually culminate in some action which actually meaningfully changes Youtube’s monetization. But this may not be for many years.
None of us here are really experiencing problems, we have only heard of them and are discussing them. When something new happens, you’ll hear “what else is new? they’ve done [something similar to] this many times before”, with those people ignoring that the historic actions were totally mitigated everytime. And in the process, we the vanguard of the internet keeping Google’s advertising monopoly restrained by engaging with adblockers, become conditioned to yield to advertising and a Google-controlled internet.
Because that’s the only way they can win. Barring serious pro-Google changes to privacy laws around the world, the ultimate means to force advertising simply isn’t available to them. Their best hope is to try and convince us that blocking ads is just too much of a hassle, ideally without ever actually making it so in a way that causes some mass migration away from Youtube. That’s not a hard line to tread
This is likely to be going on indeed. It’s just that the drm failed (for now), so maybe they are trying to get the next best thing? For the short term it surely isn’t but a long term goal in case the drm fails to be implemented again could be a reason for these experimental actions. It isn’t bad to have a plan b I guess.
Great response, thanks.
You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.
You know how Firefox is built different from Chrome. You know what Manifest V3 is. You know how Ublock Origin is different from other adblockers, etc.
The fact is, we are the minority. Most people would just keep using Chrome or Chromium-based browsers and won’t know any better. They’ll end up (and already end up) in a trap that’s super easy to escape, they just don’t plan to/don’t know how.
And for us Firefox geniuses they prepare quite a few surprises, like the recently found artificial delay of 5s when your user agent reports you use Firefox on some experimental users. This will drag on, and while we absolutely know what to do to fuck them up, normal users, who are the majority, don’t.
You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.
You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.
The fact is, we are the minority.
This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.
Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.
That already qualifies you as tech-savvy, lol. Going so deep as to know what Lemmy is is quite an accomplishment in itself. You don’t have to be an IT specialist, you should just know the most general details on what computer is and how it works instead of “magic box that runs YouTube” with latter being synonymous to “video”.
I reckon when Chrome fully switches to Manifest V3, most users won’t bother looking for alternatives - for them it’ll just be the end of an adblocking era. Then maaaaybe some of them will learn to switch. But very far from everyone.
Frankly, with the prevalence of adblocks everywhere, even on your grandma’s computer, this way YouTube can actually significantly increase the ad revenue.
They probably believed there were easy things they could do that wouldn’t result in an “arms race” that would net them a larger profit than the effort they put in. Once you promise x% more revenue they won’t let you take that back so they keep pushing.
Very possible
There’s no need to look for conspiracies when the truth is simple enough. Current YouTube CEO Neal Mohan was senior vice president of display and video ads at Google. Ads has been his wheelhouse for quite awhile.
Could be but it’s such a bad short term solution that I can’t help but think there’s a little more. Look at the other replies, they have some interesting perspectives on the matter.
A question for the tech savy, free alternatives to youtube like newpipe relies on youtube servers to access content, right? I mean, if youtube were to disappear magically we wouldn’t have a palce where to upload and store so many Gb of videos?
Am I missing something (I know I’m probably missing a lot!)? Thanks in advance for the replies!
newpipe is just a client for accessing youtubes servers, yes, so if youtube went away we would need to use vimeo or something else (maybe peertube, open source yt alternative?)
Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies.
sigh developers will ALWAYS be able to outsmart companies stealing from others.
I was gonna say, the Internet wouldn’t be what it is today without those so-called open source hackers. They’re the giants that Google and all the rest are standing on the shoulders of.
We’re going to relearn this lesson with LLMs. Open source is a maximalist approach to productivity.
Lololol it’s been like 2 weeks.
And I am fucking loving it. With this move, Google has effectively started an arms race between the team they have implementing this Adblock-blocking crap and the vast majority of the technically competent internet users in the world.
Unless the rules of how the internet works fundamentally change, Google is not going to win.
i wouldn’t be surprised if this was partly a war between the team they have implementing this and the team they have implementing this, in their spare time
Why do you think they were pushing so hard for WEI? They did try to fundamentally change how the internet works.
Precisely.
I’m not that optimistic. They could implement some sort of aggressive DRM. In the US, all they have to do is label protection as DRM and then it becomes illegal to even have any discussion of how to circumvent it. The overwhelming majority of users aren’t going to bother with any ad blocking. In the end, this could end up hurting Google if people build decentralized Youtube alternatives and then they could take viewers away from Youtube.
They would end up shooting themselves in the foot. They are on shaky ground already and it would only take a new platform that can entice a few of their top content producers over to lose enough chunks of their revenues to hurt. And all they have do is keep fucking around to find out what a tech-literate group of nerds who hate big corps can do when they are aligned in a certain direction.
They can get the rest of Big Tech and the MSM to start smearing the platform as “far right extremist” and spreading “fringe conspiracy theories.”
Yeah, that is easy enough to build into the algorithm. Deprioritizing that sort of nonsense effectively would mitigate it gaining a foothold. The only reason why the current platforms don’t (in fact they prioritize it in many cases) is because discord is being equated with engagement and they see that as good for business. If you aren’t worried about business, then you can set up your priority algorithm to be more rational and egalitarian.
Well, in the US you can legally talk about it so long as you do not actually do it. It’s similar to how an actor is able to talk about commiting murder without getting in trouble.
By some argument, section 103 of the DMCA (which is what grandparent post is referring to) does make it illegal to even talk about DRM circumvention methods.
illegal to: (2) “manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in” a device, service or component which is primarily intended to circumvent “a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work,” and which either has limited commercially significant other uses or is marketed for the anti-circumvention purpose.
If youtube implements an “access control measure” by splicing the ads with the video and disabling the fast-forward button during the ad, and you go on a forum and say “Oh yeah, you can write a script that detects the parts that are ads because the button is disabled, and force-fast-forwards through those”, some lawyer would argue that you have offered to the public a method to circumvent an access control measure, and therefore your speech is illegal. If you actually write the greasemonkey script and post it online, that would definitely be illegal.
This is abhorrent to the types among us for whom “code IS free speech”, but this scenario is not just a hypothetical. DMCA has been controversial for a long time. Digg collapsed in part because of the user revolt over the admins deleting any post containing the leaked AACS decryption key, which is just a 32-digit number. Yet “speaking” the number alone, aloud, on an online platform (and nothing else!) was enough for MPAA to send cease and desist letters to Digg under DMCA, and Digg folded.
Thanks for the heads-up. Definitely hope that if something like splicing ads in that some country like Russia or any other country that doesn’t care about US law or US copyright law would be able to write, host, and update methods to get around it on a server they control.
I always wondered why YouTube doesn’t stream the ad intermixed into the video? Like, it’s DASH, right? How does that work, can’t the server send a video then switch to another stream source (the ad) and back?
Switching stream sources is the most easy detectable form of ads. Also the most easily blocked, simple dns blocking will suffice.
That’s interesting info, thanks!
Because YouTube doesn’t want you to skip ads? If the ad was just another part of the show, you would just fast forward past the ad.
Well obviously seeking would be disabled during those ads. But maybe that’s not preventable.
Then ad blockers could use this information to know which part of the video is the ad and block it again.
😏👏 Excellent
I would argue it’s not “against all odds”. The add-on devs probably know better how YouTube is working than the bunch of underpaid, outsourced script writers that are tasked to implement the stuff. The latter also have to make sure that it doesn’t break for legitimate viewers (oh, sorry, I meant “impressions”).
The YouTube team at Google isn’t all outsourced and generally Google uses it’s top talent for the money making side of the business
The people in the ads side are some of the best around. The problem is: they don’t necessarily care about ad blockers.
My laptop came pre installed with Firefox and ublock origin. Google Chrome had ad blocking in it as well. The devs in the company don’t like ads any more than anyone else… Also ads are a major security risk, and using ad blocking is just good opsec.
Your perception of Google software engineers is way off. They’re more often than not some of the best software engineers in the industry because their hiring bar is very high, and they get paid like it. YouTube is an astounding complex problem to solve with thousands of moving parts and non-trivial problems. It’s honestly astounding people are able to build sites that complex, and that they’re not only common but extremely reliable.
The issue is there are even more extremely intelligent software engineers outside of Google than in, and many of them spend some of their free time working on FOSS projects including ad-blockers. It’s also almost always harder to be red team (attacker, or the ad-blockers devs) as opposed to blue team (defensive, or the people trying to stop them).
$ mpv "youtube-url"best youtube adblocker.For some reason I’m getting:
Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=" [ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred Failed to recognize file format.Seems weird.
Probably need to update. With plain yt-dlp you just run “yt-dlp -U”
That was correct, but yt-dlp is disabled on Debian and Ubuntu (apt), so I had to go to the Debian archives and install manually.
What’s this? How to use it? Can someone please ELI5 ?
What’s this?
video player in linux. I think VLC can also do that
video player in linux
Not just linux, Android and Windows too. Even embeded devices, MPV basically supports everything
mpv video player with mpv-sponsorblock script using youtube-dl/yt-dlp hooks, run from command line / launcher.
Yes, there’s a sponsorblock plugin for VLC too.
Or (If you have the storage), yt-dlp.
mpv uses that (or youtube-dl) in background. I think yt-dlp still needs a config change?
Yt-dlp is the successor for YouTube-dl I believe you can have it function as a drop-in replacement if want to.
I’m on Linux and use Firefox with ghostery and AdBlock extensions. I’ve got hit with the “must watch ads to play video” thing on YouTube, but just end up activating a user agent extension and set it to report that I’m “running chrome on windows 10”. Voila. I can magically watch YouTube videos without ads again.
At least one popular ad blocker, AdBlock Plus, won’t be trying to get around YouTube’s wall at all. Vergard Johnsen, chief product officer at AdBlock Plus developer eyeo, said he respects YouTube’s decision to start “a conversation” with users about how content gets monetized.
Shitty AdBlock Plus.
ABP has always been a shitty adblocker because it’s meant to make money rather than actually block ads effectively. They’ve been accepting money from ad networks to allow their “unintrusive ads” (an oxymoron) for over a decade now, and I’m sure Google is paying for this to happen now.
shrug
I’m okay with unobtrusive ads as long as the place serving them up has a modicum of common sense sensibilities about their impact and has a rigorous enough vetting process that they’ll never be used as payloads for malicious software. Ads can be a way to find out about products I might otherwise never know about. I’m not outright against all ads as a concept. Hell, sometimes it’s an actual art form in rare cases.
I’m just against them taking up more space than the content itself, impeding my access to the content in any way, hijacking my property, or getting hijacked by malware which then hijacks my property.
Too bad Google doesn’t want to have a conversation, at least one that isn’t at gunpoint. I wouldn’t mind unintrusive ads. If it stayed at banner ads and things like that, I would probably enable them. Shoving crap in the middle of videos just makes it a horrible experience, so I’m going to get rid of them.
An Adblocker allowing ads to… start a conversation that’s already been had and over for decades at this point.
People don’t like intrusive ads. Give intrusive ads and we’ll always find ways around them. It’s a story as old as the internet. Google is no exception. You may have billions of dollars and thousands of employees but nearly everyone in the damned world hates ads. You can try to fight it all you want. The only reason that nearly anyone puts up with ads is they want to support the creator or don’t yet know they can avoid the ads. Even those supporting the creators don’t like the damned things.
I’ve seen so, so many people watching ads on their phones
AdBlock Minus
AdBlock Divided by Zero
