youtube blocking addblockers

It’s a strange one for me.

I have an adblocker and Ghostery on chrome.

I have them disable on certain sites, including Youtube.

However I still get messages from Youtube telling me to disable them and I have to refresh the page to get videos to run.

Well, the good news is that what YouTube is doing (or rather how they are doing it) may be illegal in the EU, so they might have to stop doing it:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/26/privacy_advocate_challenges_youtube/?td=rt-4a

Don’t hold your breath, but it’s a ray of hope.

I use Chrome and Firefox.

Firefox has AdBlocker always running.

Chrome has no AdBlocker.

I’m not against adverts but if they stray into the Local Newspaper stream of random crap advertising I never visit those sites again.

I use Chrome and Firefox.

Firefox has AdBlocker always running.

Chrome has no AdBlocker.

Same, FF for personal use, locked down with no end of plug ins to stop JS and just about everything running.

Chrome for testing websites, running with just a few debug plugins eg parasite.

the good news is that what YouTube is doing (or rather how they are doing it) may be illegal in the EU

Shame we’re not in the EU then, really.

Shame we’re not in the EU then, really.

Fortunately, some of use are 😉

Might check that clever add-on that makes it look like you viewed the ads.

Smarttube started working again with a fixed version. The main thing I like about that is it skips most of the shilling, and the like comment subscribe outro waffle, but still contributes to the recommendations. How else would I come across such vids as “Creating a Brainf*** interpreter in Haskell” ?  (gonna get a rollocking now for swear word filter avoidance, aren’t I ?)

Do you just need a VPN to Argentina for the initial setup? Or everytime you want to connect to You Tube you need the VPN?

Does the sign up process require a new email address / Google account or can you just use a pre-existing Google account registered outside Argentina?

Seconded – have heard of this method but a quick test with using a VPN shows a “we couldn’t verify your country” message when I try and sign up.

There were a couple of countries where advertising is banned outright. So VPN to make it look like you are there would be even cheaper than pretending you’re in India.  Just need to remember which countries, and which Youtube it was where I saw that howto.

There were a couple of countries where advertising is banned outright. So VPN to make it look like you are there would be even cheaper than pretending you’re in India.

But then you’d need to fire up a VPN every time, which tips it into the “more annoying than either watching ads or paying £12” territory for me personally.

You do know about the c45% rev share with YouTube content creators? Surely it’s reasonable to pay for content and you can either pay by being a customer, or by being the product, seeing ads and enjoying free content?

Surely it’s reasonable to pay for content and you can either pay by being a customer, or by being the product, seeing ads and enjoying free content?

I guess it depends on whether you consider their content is worth the hassle of having to watch ads.

Personally, I don’t think most of it is.

Although, to be be fair, I watch very little on YT anyway.

Am torn on this. Enjoy music vids, mostly thanks to people recording gigs, as well as a varied selection of documentaries. However I do believe the £13? cost per month to be excessive and offputting although would definitely not consider pretending to live outside the UK. That’s just downright dishonest. Any idea why they charge so much? There’s more and more ads, even on vids where previously there wasn’t.

Bring the cost down to a tenner and would seriously consider.

Edit: not saying that content creators shouldn’t be paid, of course they should. Any idea how many subscribers there are?

That Fadblock does seem to work, unless it’s just that I’m havinjg to change & use the only browser currently supporting it – Google Chrome.  I wonder if there’s a Google-shaped flaw in this workaround

You do know about the c45% rev share with YouTube content creators? Surely it’s reasonable to pay for content and you can either pay by being a customer, or by being the product, seeing ads and enjoying free content?

That’s my take is on it as well.
I wonder how many adblocker users would work for free?

However I do agree that the cost of a YouTube subscription is far too high, especially if you have no interest in the Music side of the package.

I wonder how many adblocker users would work for free?

I run a website FOC to users, zero ads.

It’s for my cycling collective, as we have no membership, there are no membership fees to pay to run a website, so I just pay for it myself.

A large chunk of the web runs that way, people just contribute stuff because they can / want to.

I run a website FOC to users, zero ads.

It’s for my cycling collective, as we have no membership, there are no membership fees to pay to run a website, so I just pay for it myself.

A large chunk of the web runs that way, people just contribute stuff because they can / want to.

Would you still run it for free if there were millions of users viewing it everyday, and you were having to pay for the bandwidth for all those users?

Would you watch TV if you were forced to watch the ads there, and have to agree to terms and conditions preventing you from going to the bog or going to the kitchen to put the kettle on?

Google are making billions, they are not running anything for free. Claiming it is about the creators rather than filling their own pockets is bullshit, they couldn’t give a flying **** about the creators, which they demonstrate all the time in the way they treat them.

I just think that they are now at the stage where they feel the need for so much constant financial growth, they are likely to ruin what made them popular in the first place. Rather than innovating they are trying to squeeze more cash from all angles. Their algorithms are constant failures in presenting anything new and interesting, just driving engagement through discourse is turning people off. And making people sit through adverts who won’t click on them will make advertisers pay less per view.

Indeed. Only a month ago they screwed over the creators, whose income dropped 30-40% overnight. And now the threatening popups trying to guilt people in to paying 50% more than a Netflix sub.

The biggest losers in the adblocker blocking will in fact be the creators.

I think they are still testing to see at what point people switch off rather than sign up. They’ve been doing this for months gradually rolling it out to more and more areas. What they have to remember is the freeloaders are part of the viewing stats that Youtube use as a whole, and are part of the viewing/subscription stats for each creator. Cheese off too many people and those numbers go down by more than can be recouped from subs.

I can tell you exactly what is going to happen. Those that pay now to make ads go away… will eventually end up paying for a sub and get ads again anyway.

YouTube has been awful for me today – loads of buffering. I’m not paying for that!

Would you still run it for free if there were millions of users viewing it everyday, and you were having to pay for the bandwidth for all those users?

Not really a very good comparison as Google Inc has revenues of approx $300bn in 2022, so they can easily afford a few freeloaders…..

Would you watch TV if you were forced to watch the ads there, and have to agree to terms and conditions preventing you from going to the bog or going to the kitchen to put the kettle on?

I never knew YouTube forced you to stay and watch every ad?

another alternative is Freetube, it’s a dedicated youtube client app.

Fadblock on Chrome was interesting last night. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Mostly it caused a hell of a battle between the two that was slower than just playing the ads.

Brave is working

Brave browser continues to work for me without the need to add any extensions, etc.

I never knew YouTube forced you to stay and watch every ad?

Well yes, how often do you get a roll that you can skip? Mini rolls every couple of minutes etc.

It’s either that or just stop watching.

@msp it’s final stage enshitification.

Only thing I did to Brave was transfer a few custom filters over from Ublock.  Mainly ones to remove a list of topics or something from the top of the screen, and to force it to not autoplay a preview of the vids when you mouse over the thumbnails (because the option in the settings fails to do that).

Freetube is ace for those that don’t want to login to youtube and subscribe to channels there. You can maintain a list of favourite channels in the app, without even having a google account, and will see whenever they get updated.  Shame it’s currently limited to 1080p at the moment though, but it’ll do.

weirdly it seems to have stop asking for me to turn off the adblocker :/ I was on the clock phase waiting to be banned or is that a fate that still awaits me ?

Fadblocker working for me on Firefox. Takes a little while to load the first video in a queue, then skips the ads as stated. Do the channels still get their ‘cut’ from the advertising with Fadblock?

I’m happy to support channels / presenters I like directly but until this week I hadn’t realised how many ads were in short vids. Watched a 12 minute NFL vid last night, must’ve had 5 ad breaks…

The largest proportion of ads on the Google platform are pay per click ads. The advertiser pays from their ad account every time their ad gets a click.

however, at the publisher/creator end all the revenue from these clicks get added up and combined with the actual impressions of the ad to calculate an effective cost per thousand (eCPM).

The result is that the publisher appears to be getting paid for every 1000 views of an ad. But they are in actual fact being paid for the clicks the ad gets. If the ad gets no clicks the eCPM will be zero.

A proportion of ads are actual CPM ads ie the publisher genuinely gets paid for every 1000 impressions of the ad but most advertisers prefer to pay per click on googles platform.
I reduced the ad placements on the site here in August by 50%. If we were getting actual CPM rates then that should have halved our revenue. It didn’t. eCPM went up 40%. Revenue stayed roughly the same and our CTR (click rate) went up. The reason is because no matter how many ads you put on a page the user will only ever click one. That means the others don’t get clicked and don’t earn anything (much) for the publisher.

It has a limit. Not all the ads are pay per click so taking it to the extreme of just one ad on a page won’t maximise everything, but while there’s a system that includes pay per click ads saturating a page/video with ads won’t get good results. All because publishers mistake eCPM for actual CPM.

The reason is because no matter how many ads you put on a page the user will only ever click one.

I think the simpler explanation is that STW was unusable prior to this change without using a third party tool to deal with the adverts. Much like the music companies who complained that piracy was killing music sales, the reality is somewhat more nuanced.

UX is important certainly but the site was far from unusable. Traffic was higher in August than it is currently and I noticed no increase in user activity after making the change. I’m happy to share honest insight into how this all works but I could do without the cynical responses to how I’m trying to keep Singletrack in business. Doesn’t really encourage me to share much.

Doesn’t really encourage me to share much.

It was ever thus.

“Why don’t the developers ever comment?”

A dev pops up: hi guys!

“You’re all bastards and your work is shit!”

Uh… bye then.

A lot of videos aren’t just from “content creators” looking for revenue, but just average users who upload a video for free. Still shows ads and makes money just for Google. Creators get a tiny share of the money anyway. This is a general problem and part of why Hollywood is on strike over streaming service payments.

Regardless of the moral side, my problem is the frequency of ads. That’s why we have ad blockers. Videos now have ads every minute or less and no natural break, and ad at the start also. If they’re there I’ll likely click off than watch the video. Their loss.

Besides, many videos are adverts in themselves promoting a product of some kind or with product placement. I’ve got no problem with that as the video is still watchable.

Also, some browser have ad blocking built in for privacy and performance reasons. Some ad blockers also have an allow acceptable ads option on by default, which mine is. If sites sign up to the acceptable ad policy and not make ads too intrusive, then they get their ads shown.

Google takes 40% of the ad revenue from ads they display on YT. 

It was ever thus.

“Why don’t the developers ever comment?”

A dev pops up: hi guys!

“You’re all bastards and your work is shit!”

Uh… bye then.

Conversely, from a user:

“The ads can be so intrusive they have a negative effect on visitors.”

A dev pops up:

“You don’t understand how a business works! But since you criticised the ad policy your post will be deleted anyway.”

And yet…

One day this sort of thing will be settledWhen adverts go beyond a certain point that makes the product unusable then folk will find ways to eliminate the adverts.   the answer IMO is a different solution.  In the past I have heard micro payments being a possibility but it never came to anything.   Instead of watching an ad you can pay a tiny amount – the amount the creator would get from you watching that add to have an add free experience.  You set up a micropayment account with say £10 in it and instead of an intrusive ad you get a message – to avoid ads allow micropayment of £0.0001.  Click yes to go ahead, click no for the advert.  Everyone wins.

Beyond a point adverts become counter productive leading folk to use adblockers or just to avoid the site

Videos now have ads every minute or less and no natural break

That’s what annoys me the most with YT ads. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were at a sensible breakpoint, but it’ll interrupt the presenter mid-sentence to tell you about the new Nissan Qashqai.

But since you criticised the ad policy your post will be deleted anyway

And yet…

And yet, you’re demonstrably talking bollocks?

I was a moderator for ten years. The only way that sort of post would be deleted is if you were actively encouraging the use of ad blockers on STW, because it directly harms the site.

I, for one, am always happy to hear from our lizard overlords Mark on the justification for the way the site operates. That doesn’t mean I always agree, but then I’m not employing folk. 😀

As regards the YouTube ads thing, I’m not seeing them (yet?). Is that because I pay for YouTube Music or is it being rolled out still?