News YouTube is expanding its ad-blocking powers — closes loopholes that allowed some users to bypass restrictions

[QuarterSwede]

i don't even think they have to 100% remove ads from youtube. start the video with one, and then let me enjoy whatever it is i clicked on. i'll go with that and let it play.

but to start with 3, cut in with another few every 10 minutes, start more if i pause the video and then end with many more is too much to deal with.

so adblocker it is. it's that simple for me.

For me it’s also the sheer # of interruptions. It’s so greedy and unacceptable that I 1) refuse to support a platform that pushes users to pay due to user hostility and 2) will resort to ad blockers just to spite that hostility. Some ads to start, that I also think is acceptable for “free.”

Do better, Alphabet, a lot better.

 

[jlake3]

So I listen to YouTube while working out and recently had to disable uBlock on that machine until they workaround this latest update, and I also listen using my iPad while cooking and doing chores on the YouTube iOS app where I can't block ads, and they've been running an ad break about every 3-4 minutes today (on videos of 10-25 minute length), typically two skippable 30-second ones, sometimes two unskippable 15-second ones, but I swear they know when I don't have my hands free to hit the skip button and choose that moment to hit me with a single multi-minute ad.

I get that they've got bills to pay, but the cadence of these ads is obnoxious.

Then there's the seemingly total lack of standards in the ads they'll accept... During the election I got a campaign ad from a "non partisan action group" that impersonated the Wireless Emergency Alert Tone, which seemed like a ToS violation as well as possibly illegal, but it ran for weeks. I've gotten phishing scams dangling conspiracy garbage about secret hidden stimulus checks the government won't tell you about, but where you have to go through their recovery specialist to make a claim to your thousands of dollars of free money before the program expires at midnight and the politicians can legally pocket all the money for themselves, with the added sleezy twist that I only get those when at work, in an industrial area bordering on a lower-middle-class neighborhood, and never when on the moble app in a more affluent zip code. Coffeezilla videos always get filled with hilariously ironic crypto get-rick-quick passive income woo.

Actually made it through the winter without a "Miracle heater" ad this year, though.

But yeah... between the disruptiveness and the poor quality of the ads, the fact that Google is a multi-billion dollar machine, and every creator doing their own in-video sponsorships because the cut they get from Google is known to suck (along with Google just generally treating creators poorly), there's not a lot of goodwill towards the platform itself.

 

[Math Geek]

if you're on mobile, there are alternative youtube players that avoid all ads. it's not an ad blocker but takes advantage of another quirk in the way youtube works.

take a look into newpipe. i've been using it for years and no google ads EVER!!

i stream multiple hours a day as i work and never have to worry about ads. no desktop version but if you really want to, something like bluestacks will run it so you can stream to your pc ad free as well. unless google changes how they work with imbeded video, this won't be affected by their anti-adblock campaign.

 

[alrighty_then]

Growing up wathcing TV with no control over ads I've thoroughly enjoyed many wonderful ad-free years on the internet. Always figured it would end someday but maybe not. There are enough countermeasures possible, including writing your own software to strip ads if you're able to detect them - as I imagine AI powered analysis could - or just record everything to watch later and manually skip. If there is enough will to do it, there is always a way.

 

[top tsun]

Y'know, I've been using YouTube for years, and most of that time was spent without adblockers. It was only in the last year or two that I began to use them. And why? Because of how intrusive and omnipresent ads have become on the platform. Once upon a time, you'd watch an ad before your video, then watch the video. Nowadays I watch, like, an eight minute video with two ads at the start, one in the middle, and two at the end--one or two of them being skippable if I'm lucky, and a lot of the time YouTube's in the background, forcing me to stop what I'm doing to avoid a 30 second ad that was allowed to be so long BECAUSE it was skippable. Forget music on YouTube--you spend almost as much time in ads as you do in a two to three minutes vid.

I didn't start using an adblocker when ads were introduced. I started using adblockers when they were everywhere.

 

[tamalero]

Imagine if the ads were tolerable and not being 50% or more of the actual content of the video.
Or if the ads didn't have scams, adult content(even on children videos) or other malware like things..

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I use extensions to block YT ads from playing. They still seem to work although i'm now getting the message why videos are taking longer to load. My feeling on ads is simple. If there is a content creator I find that is useful and puts out quality content, such as Gamers Nexus or Daniel Owens. I have no problem watching their videos with ads.

I do however have no problem with avoiding ads for YT videos that I watch out of curiosity and fast forward most of the content because the content creator is too wordy just to make a longer video so as to insert more ads. I refuse to watch YT videos that are relentless with their frequent use of ads to the point I get sidetracked as to what I was watching in the first place.

Rumble is equally as bad as YT and in some cases, even worse.

 

[danwat1234]

Just my data point, Ublock Origin 1.63.2 on Chrome 124 still works great. And on mobile, Newpipe. USA

 

[jg.millirem]

>Good time for a reality check that Google has always at heart been another scuzzy ad purveyor.

No, not always. Google is the same as every other service or vendor. It starts with a compelling value prop--free video serving and no ads in YT's case--to amass enough users until it can attain critical mass. Once there, then monetize. It's the same formula that's been repeated for every Internet service. Users should be well familiar with the process by now.

>I’ll ditch YouTube if it somehow permanently defeats ad blockers.

I doubt it. YT has compelling value as a major provider of content you can't find anywhere else. When you need a how-to video, it's on YT.

I said Google, not just YouTube. Serving ads is Google’s DNA, going way back.

If I need something practical and short, I might hold my nose occasionally. But watching for enjoyment, my major use by far, would end. You don’t understand how being ad-free can so widely improve life.

 

[sgtkeebler]

Call your congressman or woman, it's time for Google to be forced to divest from YouTube

 

[MobileJAD]

Nobody likes ads. If they insist in preventing ad blockers from working, people will simply switch to another platform and Google will incur enough losses that they will enable ad blockers again.

Honestly I just want to see people jump ship already, give another site a chance...

 

[Mr Majestyk]

It's hilarious the authors says "it's understandable Google needs to make money" when in fact Google makes over $200B a year from ad revenue and YT does not need the revenue to survive, and never relied on ad revenue when it first started.
Google under their Indian overlord has become a purely mercenary company with 100% focus on revenue at any cost. When you can't even start a video without a 30s ad, and then every 4-5 minutes you get served up a 57s ad they can go screw themselves. I will abandon the platform altogether if needs be.

 

[bit_user]

No. "Countermeasure" denotes a counteracting effect (eg antivirus is a countermeasure against malware); it does not mean blocking or restricting. If you're going to be a word-Nazi, at least get it right.

Countermeasure is a fairly general concept. It simply means taking one measure to deal with another. There needn't be a direct, linear relation between them, nor does it specify the domain of action. If you regard Google's action in the financial domain, to deal with freeloaders imposing a cost on Youtube without providing any revenue, then blocking users of ad blockers from viewing videos (i.e. the main activity imposing costs on Google) would certainly be considered a direct and compensatory action.

Moreover, whatever definition you hold, there's no way you can argue in good faith that the article wouldn't have been clearer by embracing the term. The article was a word salad and stepped all over itself, trying to get its (fairly simple) point across, and only succeeds for those who already know enough to figure out what it must be trying to say.

Yes, the piece is awkwardly worded.

It's not just awkward, it literally says the opposite of what it means, in several places - including the headline!

That's par with most every filler pieces here, along with prominent typos that aren't corrected even when pointed out, and just basically low-quality, low-effort overall. That, and the increasingly annoying advertorial pop-ups. But nobody complained about it because of "free." Same for YouTube.

Not on par. I read most of the news articles published on this site, and this is probably the most clumsily worded-I've seen in recent memory.

I don't complain as long as I feel the meaning is sufficiently clear, which is nearly always.

>Google's whole approach to this issue violates the basic principle that a browser is supposed to act as an agent for the user, not the website owner.

The basic principle is that you get what you pay for. Google is entirely within its right to block adblockers. And it knows very well when adblockers are used, because adblock use is not hidden.

Whether there's a case against what Google is doing is really for lawyers to argue, or at least requires knowledge of the relevant laws. If you're trying to make a moral argument, you could say that a retail store could deploy face recognition and require all of its customers to agree to its use. You might feel the store has the right to do so, but there are certain jurisdictions where the use of face recognition is banned. So, that would be considered an illegal condition for service. Without knowing the laws they were alleged to have broken, you cannot say what they did wasn't in violation.

 

[bit_user]

Lets say that Google had stuck with the original value proposition of "Knowing what you'll watch makes giving you video for free in exchange for seeing those interests because then ad sales value goes way up". Or even "we're going to stick you with a skippable ad up front and that's it"?

People only started leaning on ad blockers when it was "thanks for your viewing info, we loved making 2-3x on ads served to you. And now that ad is unskippable and so are 5-6 of its friends in a 5 minute video. And we want you to pay $15/mo now. Also, forget about ad blockers."

IMO, you're overthinking it. Google is a for-profit entity. They make money by serving ads. The more ad views or the more targeted they are, the more $$$ for them and their investors. This creates a continual pressure for them to try and increase profits by increasing the amount of ad views or targeting, which means they will keep pushing ads and spy-tech until they go so far that they lose viewers and their profits go down. I'm sure they do well by their subscription revenue, but that's secondary.

Ultimately, the power you have to tell Google they've gone too far is to spend less time on Youtube. It doesn't have to be zero, just less than before. They'll get the message.

 

[bit_user]

I think most people wouldn't have a problem with Youtube ads for non-premium members if they were just pre-roll and pause ads with a duration that scaled with the video length (short vids get 5 second ads, hour long vids get 30 second-1 minute ads, for example), instead of ads that interrupted videos, and especially if they were just banner ads below the video as well.

I'm old enough to remember when one of Google's selling points used to be unobtrusive, light-weight ads. On your search results page, you'd get just like one banner ad and maybe a couple in the sidebar. They were quick-loading and mostly text, as well.

That was back when there was still meaningful competition in the search engine marketplace. Maybe also pre-IPO, or not long after.

 

[bit_user]

I have YT on continuously as background music for my mom. I use Firefox w/ uBlock Origin as default. In recent days, I did notice occasional "no adblocker allowed" pop-ups, but only after several hours of use, and only when starting a new (music) video. The pop-ups can be clicked away. In short, it's very mild nagware, at least for my particular region.

I presume Goog will gradually tighten the screws, with popups with increasing frequency and to the point when you can't click away. Then I'll have to white-list YT, and use other YT-specific *countermeasures* to mitigate or obviate the ads.

Yes, it's a cat-and-mouse game. But there's no moral high ground to be claimed here. We just want stuff for free with no ads. It's a want, not a right.

I use Amazon Music and have never heard an ad on it. Ever. Nor have I had to install countermeasures of any kind. That said, I did switch from the bundled-with-Prime tier to separate subscription tier, a couple years ago. So, I don't know if Prime users still get an ad-free experience on there.

 

[bit_user]

Y'know, I've been using YouTube for years, and most of that time was spent without adblockers. It was only in the last year or two that I began to use them. And why? Because of how intrusive and omnipresent ads have become on the platform.

IIRC, it was around that time that Google started paying out dividends to its investors.

Plus, how else do you think they're funding all of the new AI stuff they're doing? It's by milking their legacy business model, since AI isn't profitable yet.

 

[bit_user]

Call your congressman or woman, it's time for Google to be forced to divest from YouTube

Better yet, how about some meaningful privacy legislation, in the USA?

 

[coder0xff]

As one of the so called deadbeats, I did give up YouTube. I didn't go to a competitor. I now spend more time touching grass. Thanks for helping me break a bad habit. Good riddance.

 

[bit_user]

It's hilarious the authors says "it's understandable Google needs to make money" when in fact Google makes over $200B a year from ad revenue and YT does not need the revenue to survive, and never relied on ad revenue when it first started.

Google does need ad revenue. It's their lifeblood. You could say that someone doesn't need to drink as much water as they do, but they need some continual intake of water, or they'll die.

Youtube was a startup that lost money every day, until after Google bought it and started serving ads. They used the typical startup gameplan of relying on venture capital to provide services at a loss, because they judged that growing their userbase increased their valuation more than short-term revenues would.

As for the rest of your post, I strongly disagree that it has anything to do with the nationality or ethnicity of their CEO. This is just how capitalism works, where there's a continual push to grow and increase profits. Speaking more generally, in life, it's very hard to just "stay the same". Most of the time, if something isn't growing, it's shrinking (or will soon start to shrivel).

 

[bit_user]

As one of the so called deadbeats, I did give up YouTube. I didn't go to a competitor. I now spend more time touching grass. Thanks for helping me break a bad habit. Good riddance.

Yeah, back when Youtube decided to force you to use a Google account to comment on the videos, I just let my old account close and never commented on another video. I'm sure my quality of life improved, as a result.

Also, when Youtube veered deep into pushing conspiracy theories, I stopped spending any time on their platform, except when I needed to watch a very specific video, and then I promptly closed my window.

 

[MishterKirby]

I'd be okay with ads if they toned down the frequency of them to how it used to be.
I have a music playlist I used to listen to there that maybe every couple of songs I'd get a 30-second ad or two, but lately it's been like every time a song ends I get like 3 minute-long unskippable ads.

And if they were about things I cared about I would probably still tolerate it a bit more, but most are just call to actions or straight-up brainrot and it genuinely drives me up a wall.

 

[rambo919]

There is something everyone is missing..... the reason YT is in trouble with adblocker proliferation is the ads themselves are bad, badly done or sheer propaganda and people are not all mindless sheeple that just does as they are told and buys what they are shown.

On the other hand there was a MASSIVE uptake in adblockers in protest of the authoritarian measures that YT started taking in the last decade (especially during the big flu event) against content creators that they disapprove of such as shadowbanning and demonetization. A lot of people have absolutely no problem with ads from content creators themselves as part of the video because of this and the fact that these don't just randomly pop in or constantly repeat. In this case the more YT doubles down on adblocking the more these users will feel the compulsion to drift to alternatives like rumble which has actually improved a lot from how messy it was.

Put simply, if the platform is going to sneakily and disingenuously punish certain people and give others a free pass for technically the same thing or even purely personal reasons.... why provide them with ad money? Don't ignore the power of a p-d off user base that remembers some things better than elephants.

I don't think YT understands that not everyone can be programmed to accept desired corporate outcomes, if the ad situation becomes intolerable they will lose even normie eyeballs because even the normie content creators will start migrating to alternatives. So it's rather a push-pull thing atm where they try to find the balance between repression, exploitation and profit... and they have proven to be massively clumsy at this in a "hello fellow kids" way.... so well see how it goes.

BTW I have noticed bizarre fluctuations in content quality the last year.... bitrates are out of whack, on some browsers the videos stop playing and you have to refresh the page so that the ad actually plays and the video can continue which leads to using alternative browser use and adblocking in itself funnily enough, one video downloading constantly downloads AI translated videos in spanish or something, etc.... first I was annoyed now I just laugh at the morons.... burn baby burn if you are so desperate for that to happen.... just like the "traditional" TV you replaced you are now causing your own obseletion.

 

[das_stig]

When you open YT and the first thing it does is plays a scam advert, then a few seconds of video, followed by as scam advert and then you fast forward only to see a scam advert and finally maybe a few more seconds of video before a scam advert, then YT is heading down the drain.

I used to report scam adverts but stop when I realised YT/Google don't care, they got their payments even if breaking laws.

Anybody know of a good alternative site or cross platform apps that blocks the adverts?

 

[RedBear87]

if you're on mobile, there are alternative youtube players that avoid all ads. it's not an ad blocker but takes advantage of another quirk in the way youtube works.

take a look into newpipe. i've been using it for years and no google ads EVER!!

i stream multiple hours a day as i work and never have to worry about ads. no desktop version but if you really want to, something like bluestacks will run it so you can stream to your pc ad free as well. unless google changes how they work with imbeded video, this won't be affected by their anti-adblock campaign.

There's some kind of equivalent stuff on desktop, Invidious and Piped are two examples, but you either need to use the front-end hosted by someone else or self-host it, which isn't just as straightforward as installing newpipe on Android.

FTR, I can confirm that for now ublock origin with Firefox blocks the ads normally in Europe (Italy).