YouTube cracks down on ad blockers

[Axo1989]

Yea, they have been using kid gloves so far. If they decide to take the gloves off, and start playing hardball by making software & hardware infrastructure changes, people are gonna get ads, or they won't get anything.

Yeah that happened for a while a couple of years back and it wasn't a drama. Not recently, but It's Alphabet, so I'm ok with not getting anything if it comes to that.

 

[DLS79]

I won't let YouTube push me around and force me into a subscription. Ridiculous, forget it! I'd rather go without than be played for a fool by these guys.

I've seen numbers similar to the following all over the place, and if they are even close to true, it's pretty obvious YT doesn't care if you have a subscription or not! For reference paid subscribers make up just under 3% of the user base.

Premium launched November 14, 2014
Music launched November 12, 2015

So its not like either service is a brand new thing they are forcing on users!

YouTube Statistics 2024 [Users by Country + Demographics]

Gain valuable insights into YouTube users statistics for 2024. Explore key metrics and emerging trends shaping the platform's user landscape.

www.globalmediainsight.com

According to the latest reports, over 2.70 billion people worldwide use YouTube per month.

In 2023, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music together have more than 80 million subscribers around the world.

And since i've seen so many people complain about mid-roll ads, i think its needs to be pointed out that they are 100% under the control of the creator.

This video is 3 years old, but the interface still works the same way.

 

[recycle]

Yea, they have been using kid gloves so far. If they decide to take the gloves off, and start playing hardball by making software & hardware infrastructure changes, people are gonna get ads, or they won't get anything.

there will always be people ready to fight the arrogance of power: I will always be there at their side

 

[mhardy6647]

I like to direct my wrath at Ohm's Law. Who is with me? It is useless to be a resistor!

 

[DLS79]

there will always be people ready to fight the arrogance of power: I will always be there at their side

Have we entered

there will always be people ready to fight the arrogance of power: I will always be there at their side

Well, that's an interesting point of view.........

 

[computer-audiophile]

I like to direct my wrath at Ohm's Law. Who is with me? It is useless to be a resistor!

One of my intellectual role models is Hans Magnus Enzensberger. He had a flair for the playful in the best sense and was a thoroughly mindful author of the 20th century. He coined for me the following essential phrase: Declining what is deemed appropriate. (Absagen was angesagt ist) Unfortunately, its conciseness cannot be directly translated into English.

 

[see_no_evil]

That will become permanent soon.

I am, too, afraid they will make ad-blocking bannable offence soon.

Yea, they have been using kid gloves so far. If they decide to take the gloves off, and start playing hardball by making software & hardware infrastructure changes, people are gonna get ads, or they won't get anything.

Not possible with the way web works currently. I hope many people will realize why Google's browser dominance and lack of software freedom for end user in general is a bad thing.

 

[DLS79]

I am, too, afraid they will make ad-blocking bannable offence soon.


Not possible with the way web works currently. I hope many people will realize why Google's browser dominance and lack of software freedom for end user in general is a bad thing.

I'm a systems engineer (server side web development), and i've been doing one form of web development or another since the 90's.

They can lock it down and force ads in several ways. It all comes down to how much they care, and how much money they are willing to spend to do it.

 

[see_no_evil]

I'm a systems engineer (server side web development), and i've been doing one form of web development or another since the 90's.

They can lock it down and force ads in several ways. It all comes down to how much they care, and how much money they are willing to spend to do it.

Dear colleague I don't see how they can do it without breaking multitude of clients (old and new TVs, consoles etc). Even on a browser side, it would take basically implementing a form of DRM to ensure content integrity. Surely can be done, but I am not convinced it is something they are desperate enough to try.

Unless I am missing something, there's currently no way for them to prevent users from modifying webpage content, without taking away current browser capabilities. Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[somebodyelse]

Dear colleague I don't see how they can do it without breaking multitude of clients (old and new TVs, consoles etc). Even on a browser side, it would take basically implementing a form of DRM to ensure content integrity. Surely can be done, but I am not convinced it is something they are desperate enough to try.

Funny you should say that - https://arstechnica.com/google/2023...m-for-the-web-still-wants-an-android-version/

 

[DLS79]

Dear colleague I don't see how they can do it without breaking multitude of clients (old and new TVs, consoles etc). Even on a browser side, it would take basically implementing a form of DRM to ensure content integrity. Surely can be done, but I am not convinced it is something they are desperate enough to try.

Unless I am missing something, there's currently no way for them to prevent users from modifying webpage content, without taking away current browser capabilities. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The apps are easy because the are compiled applications, so you can't revers engineer them, and they can implement anything they want in them.

Strait web is harder, because everything is controlled browser side via JS, and thus can be reverse engineered. The trick is to off load all anti spam/add blocking logic to the server.


Off the top of my head one method would be to use webgl as its been supported on all browsers for many years.

stratosphere level overview

1. The user loads the page and thus the YT JS
2. The JS calls the server and determines what ad needs to be shown. The appropriate information is stored in the the users session
3. The ad video starts playing in the video tag
4. The JS uses the webgl api to grab a rendered frame from the video
5. The JS use the webgl api to generate a fingerprint of the rendered video at some predetermined rate
6. the fingerprints are sent back to the server real-time as proof the ad was played/watched
7. the server validates the fingerprints are in the proper sequence and correct before letting you watch the video.

something dead simple, would be for the servers to just deny you request for the actual video.

• The user loads the page and thus the YT JS
• The JS calls the server and determines what ad needs to be shown. The appropriate information is stored in the the users session
• Since the server knows how long the ad is, it will not server you the video until atleast that much time has passed.

They can do a lot of things, it just comes down to how much time and money they are willing to spend to do it.

 

[sweetchaos]

YouTube is becoming more aggressive:

YouTube is reportedly slowing down videos for Firefox users (Update: Statement)

Users are reporting that YouTube has begun adding a five second delay when loading a video on non-Chrome browsers like Firefox. Read on!

www.androidauthority.com

TL;DR

• Users are reportedly seeing a five-second delay when loading YouTube videos in non-Chrome browsers, namely Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, despite not using any extensions or ad-blockers.
• The delay goes away when users switch their user agent to Chrome, indicating that the switch could be browser-related.
• Not all users are experiencing the delay, which indicates that it could be account-related too.

This is insanity. Please see my thread on all the various methods of blocking YouTube ads.

 

[DLS79]

TL;DR

• Users are reportedly seeing a five-second delay when loading YouTube videos in non-Chrome browsers, namely Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, despite not using any extensions or ad-blockers.

Sounds like some dubious reports from the anti ads brigade. I just tested a few videos on the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and had no delay!

 

[sweetchaos]

Sounds like some dubious reports from the anti ads brigade. I just tested a few videos on the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and had no delay!

I already experienced this a few days ago.
I thought I was crazy when YouTube videos weren’t loading quickly for me. I just assumed that one of my YouTube-altering extensions was acting up.
I was using Chrome+AdGuard for Windows at the time, plus logged into my Google account.
I didn’t see this for the last 24hours though.

So yeah, I can confirm this new tactic is already happening.

Update:
I see discussion on uBlock Origin Reddit, showing a quick fix is available and working to fix this exact problem, as of a few days ago.
I might need to switch to uBlock Origin adlists.

 

[mhardy6647]

The offending YT HTML
setTimeout(function() {
c();
a.resolve(1)
}, 5E3);

Those scalawags.

YouTube says it’s not slowing down Firefox — just ad blockers

The long load times will continue until ad blocker use improves.

www.theverge.com

 

[bloodshoteyed]

Sounds like some dubious reports from the anti ads brigade. I just tested a few videos on the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and had no delay!

first i thought my FF caches were full (been dragging gazillions of tabs, bookmarks and saved passes from pc to pc for a few years now), so i cleaned them and still had the loading issue, a user agent switcher agent add-on helped tho

 

[sweetchaos]

What YouTube are doing is extremely disgusting and disrespectful to users.

 

[DLS79]

What YouTube are doing is extremely disgusting and disrespectful to users.

I'd say that's what a lot of users are doing!

 

[Audiofire]

They can do a lot of things, it just comes down to how much time and money they are willing to spend to do it.

But they are likely making smaller experiments to prevent losing revenue, and there is real power in numbers if users move to a new video domain (and Firefox).

 

[GM3]

I'd say that's what a lot of users are doing!

Louis Rossmann made another video on the topic (Gist; some users generate money, others cost money, can't blame anyone for wanting to lose the dead weight.), and if you read the comments, you'll find plethora of extremely valid reasons why so many YT users use the platform despite of how much they despise it.

Let's face it, YT is basically a monopoly at this time. Just ask around see how many people know of Rumble & Odyssey, and compare to yt...

In 2022, the user count of YouTube significantly surpassed that of Rumble. According to a source, as of December 2022, YouTube had approximately 2.681 billion monthly active users, while Rumble had around 80 million monthly active users

So, 2681 million users for YT, vs 80 for Rumble... Odyssey is even less.

Big tech basically controls information. If you care or are aware of it, you likely wouldn't want to support it in any shape or form, let alone with your hard earned money... But unless you basically go off-grid, you just basically can't get around not using those platforms... X/Twitter kinda got rescued by Musk, although some will argue that even if it's better, not quite there yet in terms of free speech and all, and yt is really more comparable to old twitter. And I can easily foresee more yt purges coming, so hopefully, it self-destroys and users will move on to better (freer) platforms. But, its grasp on the populace is so solid, I have trouble seeing it happen any time soon... Just look at the most popular yt channels....... As long as so many people want that...