The workaround: Switch from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin.
ABP has had random issues that break it often for years now. It’s crap.
Wasn’t adblock plus bought by some ad agency? I thought they were long gone…
I don’t know about that but they do have a program where advertisers can pay them in exchange for their ads being allowed past the block.
ABP has also been owned and run by a shady investment firm for the past decade.
The workaround
Quit using YouTube directly and proxy your request through an Invidious instance.
Your requests are mixed in with everyone else’s, ad’s are blocked and most importantly only 1 machine touches YouTube directly and that’s the server hosting Invidious.
Not a solution for most people, unfortunately…
Could you elaborate on why not?
I wonder what percentage of views are done with a general purpose web browser vs. YouTube apps on phones and TVs. Otherwise, yeah, if you have a web browser it is an option. And since this thread is about browser extensions, I too am wondering what they meant.
You see how often growing youtubers complain about more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed to the channel, or how just some videos have more views than their main content? The issue is that Invidious doesn’t have the algorithm Youtube provides to everyone, and that not a lot of people really watch their subscribed page.
more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed
Why would you have an account in that hellhole?
You see how often growing youtubers complain about more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed to the channel, or how just some videos have more views than their main content?
I actually don’t watch a whole lot of YouTube anymore so I can’t really comment on this here.
The issue is that Invidious doesn’t have the algorithm Youtube provides to everyone,
But isn’t this what people are trying to avoid when it comes to digital privacy? User data being used in less algorithms?
Just stick with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
Especially since Adblock Plus take payment to whitelist adverts.
Or even better, Librewolf.
Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER? In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?
In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings.
They’re abusing the default and making privacy settings require user intervention rather than defaulting to the most private settings and allowing the option of opting in.
It’s abusing consent, so people move to browsers where privacy is the default option.
This is what makes Librewolf better.
Librewolf doesn’t just block Mozilla telemetry, it also has an easy to understand default for cookies and privacy settings so someone who isn’t a computer expert can rely on the librewolf’s defaults to keep trackers from being able to build a profile on you.
Yes. I consider it better because it’s preconfigured for privacy, includes UBlock Origin by default, and rips Mozilla’s telemetry out. So you never have to worry about them sneaking something new in a later update.
I’m more worried about the updates not happening in a timely fashion. Is it just a passion project by a handful of devs, or is there some kind of funding?
Update frequency/latency hasn’t been an issue in the 2 years I’ve been using it.
Sure, but what about in 2 years from now?
I used IronFox for a couple years and it suddenly stopped getting updates, and it took me a few months to realize and switch to something else. I don’t want that to happen again.
I like the idea of librewolf, especially that it’s just a patch set on top of Firefox, but someone needs to maintain that patch set. This would be fine for simpler software, but browsers are complex and I just worry that updates will stall out with little warning.
as I understand their build system is automatic. updates are not, but they have an update checker companion thing, and flathub too can manage that if you install from there
I’m not a contributor to LibreWolf so I can’t speak with authority on it but I can’t imagine that they are so different from Firefox that they wouldn’t be able to just merge 99% of updates from FF with minimal effort.
From looking at the repo, it looks like it’s simply a set of patches that get applied to the Firefox source code. They don’t maintain a fork, just a set of changes that get applied before building.
There’s benefits to us not tweaking privacy settings. TOR explicitly discourages it. You don’t (always) get fingerprinted by a single unique item, it’s through an ensemble of data points that companies can identify who you are. There may be 10% of users with your same font library, and 1% who has the same monitor width, and 5% with the same time zone, and voila, when you multiply those percentages, you get close to one in a couple billion, and they’ve successfully fingerprinted you.
If everyone tweaks their settings from default Firefox, you reveal more information about yourself each time. You may think you’re protecting yourself, but the reality is the opposite, you’re creating a one of a kind browser config. This is where Librewolf can really reign supreme, if we all just use stock Librewolf, no one will be unique, and everyone will be anonymous.
As much as I like Librewolf as concept and ideology, I can’t keep thinking that if there’s a Firefox 0day, Firefox gets patched first, Librewolf later, and I’m potentially exposed for longer. That’s why I prefer to stick with upstream.
Sadly i have to stop using it. Librewolf has start getting some graphic bug, i also can’t upload pictures to some website (it show just lines). Now i’m trying Floorp.
This is caused by not allowing the website to access your html canvas data. You can fix this in the address bar by clicking the icon on the left of the URL to grant permissions.
To add to this.
This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Canvas data gives a lot of datapoints that websites can use to fingerprint your browser. This allows them to track you across multiple sites even if you’re blocking ads and pi-holing tracking services.
There is an unavoidable tradeoff between convenience and security/privacy. Privacy features are inherently less convenient than allowing everyone access to everything.
You could disable canvas blocking globally (I’m assuming, I haven’t looked) and the problem would go away, but you’ve then weakened the privacy protections that were built in to the browser.
Have you noticed uBlock Origin being a bit hit and miss on YouTube lately? I’ve had it happen a few times lately where the video won’t play, or an ad comes up but doesn’t play. I’ve had to keep refreshing until it gets to normal where it just plays the damn video.
No. It works across all my systems. I never see ads on YT. However…
Videos not loading or playing delayed: That’s a YT feature which they implemented for Firefox users, to annoy them. And to promote Chrome as “the fastest” webbrowser.
I also have dns issues at home… I should fix them already. Sometimes, a page doesn’t load on the first try.
You can try user agent switcher. Sometimes it is detected or causes issues, but if YouTube thinks you are running Chrome then you may get better service.
I experience the same issue. All the elements on the page load extremely slow or sometimes not at all.
I noted an experimental rule in uBO to address delays, but have not tried it yet myself.
Under settings, Filter lists, Built-in, uBlock filters - Experimental
Code has a comment:
! fake buffering on the initial load
I think youtube might have implemented something that prevents the server from delivering the video files until the expected duration of the ad has passed. This idea is completely unfounded, but this is what it feels like to me.
Maybe it is a regional thing? I was watching YouTube 30 mins ago with no issues and haven’t ever had any unless I open a new tab but don’t try to watch until the next day. Then I just need to refresh and it is off to the races.
a b testing
or he needs to update his unlock
Is this a sponsored article? Bc buying yt premium doesn’t seem like a workaround to me.
I think you stopped scrolling too early
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
They even link to what I assume is that process.
But…
It costs the same as Spotify
I used Google Play music and it was awesome, when it shuttered I tried Spotify and didn’t like it.
YouTube premium is worth it just for music on your phone/car, getting YouTube ad free is kind of just a bonus. But there’s a couple podcasts I watch on there, and I’ve found a couple really good channels for all the crazy science stuff that’s been happening. Not to mention a lot of UK shows upload full episodes, and there’s more than one account that somehow uploads full runs of shows after being upscaled to 4k.
I really don’t understand why so many people are against YouTube premium. It makes sense if someone just pirates all their other media. But people pay for a music streamer and a couple TV streamers… It seems like an arbitrary line.
Edit:
The article is from “toms guide” not “toms hardware”.
The guide has every article like this where it reads like paid advertising. The “hardware” one is a good resource.
But yeah, pretty much anything from “tomsguide” is going to read like paid advertising for something. I legit don’t know if they’re affiliated or it’s a ripoff site built to confuse people with the “hardware” site.
Three out of four of the paragraphs in the article’s solution were spent convincing people of the benefits to buying premium. Still feels like an ad despite the tiny mention of uBlock Origin at the very bottom.
I do agree that Youtube, premium isn’t bad value. But I refuse to support google or youtube directly with my money. If I ever want to support a creator, I can throw them a couple dollars on patreon and help them far more than buying premium ever would have.
Yeah, the site is pretty garbage and every article reads like an ad.
“Tom’s hardware” is still an amazing resource, but “Tom’s guide” is so shit I can’t tell if it’s a ripoff site or just how they find the good one. Especially since the sites look the same, just different background color.
I’m used to it now so I didn’t mention that, but for people who don’t know about the site it makes sense why they were thrown off.
People on Lemmy might be more likely to be trying to do things like de-google in general, or try to cutdown on account based usage for big corporations.
So not really want to give Google their payment information for YouTube and sign in to use YouTube.
About YouTube premium :
- I don’t like the idea of spending money for Google. I don’t find it very ethic to use their services in the way I do but no replacement has come up for years. I try to mitigate by donating to some content creators and I would love to pay a subscription to something like Nebula if there were at least 3 people I follow in there.
- I would use an adblocker even if I paid. On my phone Tubular is just a much better experience : multi platforms, aggregates my subscription, no addictive low quality suggestions and lightweight while still featurefull (and it integrates sponsorblock 🤫)
Also on my previous phone the YouTube app was super slow and would regularly crash because of RAM shortages. This was 6 years ago though.
I read that. But the way the article is written suggests that the workaround they’re implying is to buy YouTube premium. I am not per se against YT premium, after all its normal business to take money and serve a product, but what my biggest cons are
- The price
- I already use all of the mentioned premium features and more but for free
For example: YT music -> ReVanced (background play, no ads) YT App -> ReVanced (no ads, Sponsorblock, no shorts) YT on browser -> Extensions (uBlock, Sponsorblock, block yt shorts)
If I were to pay for premium and use the regular app, I would lose that functionality and 130€ per year. This money would support a company whose business model involves extensive collection of personal data, which is then sold to third parties, effectively contributing to the global surveillance infrastructure.
I would rather not use YouTube than pay for it.
My reasons:
- I don’t want a YouTube account, that just makes it easier for Google to track me
- premium costs too much relative to how much I use it (Nebula is more reasonable, which I do pay for)
- I can support my favorite creators in other ways (merch, patreon, etc)
I don’t pirate. I buy movies and TV shows and rip them to my media server, I buy lots of video games both physical and digital, and I buy books if my library doesnt have it or I want to keep it on my shelf. I’m not against paying for things, I’m against my privacy being violated.
I watch a few hours of content a week, and I’d be happy cutting down a bit. I don’t follow any of the big names, rarely listen to music, and really only watch videos from a handful of channels, most of which are a waste of time anyway. If Google blocked my ad blocker, I’d be fine just not watching YouTube anymore.
$14 is too much, I think $5 is about as much as I’d be willing to pay, or $1/channel. Give me that and I’ll consider signing up, despite my misgivings about Google.
This may not get well recieved but yt premium is worth the money imho, but again I dont wanna pay those evil corpos.
I think it’s decent value but I’m already running extensions or mods to skip the in-video ads, so I may as well just block ads for free too.
If YouTube Premium ever got an official sponsorblock, it’d become a good deal.
Tom’s Hardware, Ad Block Plus, paying for YouTube Premium as a “work around”?
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
Tom’s Hardware sold out looong ago, sold in 2007 to some faceless consortium. The original “Tom”, Thomas Pabst, who is GenX and not a boomer btw, has had nothing to do with the site since.
The editor of this article looks to be a millennial btw.
To gen z, a boomer is anybody older than them
Indeed. Tom’s Hardware for me has for long been one of the most useless tech news sites, mostly just dumb clickbaity ad articles in disguise.
If they would know anything about anything or done some actual research they would point to Firefox with a few relevant extensions that keep YouTube’s fuckery in check. Or the alternative mobile apps. Or stuff like Invidious. But guess they are too mainstream and thus afraid to upset Google in any way.
FreeTube with an ipv6 rotator and Invidious will make sure you never have to deal with this.
Please elaborate…
FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.
FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won’t be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.
Sometimes even this doesn’t block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking “open invidious link” will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.
The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.
Thank you!!
I too am intererted in your rotator script
https://github.com/ycd/ipv6-rotator
Edit: not my code, for the record.
Where can I get such a rotator script?
https://github.com/ycd/ipv6-rotator
Edit: not my code, for the record.
Why not just use the invidious instance directly?
I like freetube ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fair enough! I do wish that invidious had the “full window” option.
You can also use Freetube with tor/socks5 proxy, and every time you open Freetube, you automatically get a new IP.
This is true, but I try not to put such a heavy load on the TOR network personally. Its always good to have folks using it for clearweb stuff like this though, keeps the network legitimate.
Damn sure was clickbaity. No ads? Buy YT Premium they say.
Whoopee. Saved you a click.
I stopped using ABP years ago and switched to uBlock Origin. That and some *Monkey scripts.
Bah, This is just an add for a YouTube premium subscription
Ublock Origin and NextDNS FTW.
DNS does nothing for youtube.
This is correct, even pihole is helpless against YouTube’s fuckery
Never claimed it did. I have YouTube ReVanced on mobile, and SmartTubeNext for the TV.
(But TBF, Ublock Origin does in fact block YT ads on the desktop.)
No, author of this article, paying for premium is not a workaround.
It has some real “Ukraine should just stop fighting a losing war” vibes. I wonder how much Alphabet paid them for that article. Probably not much.
Is the fact it’s impossible for me to play any thing in (PipePipe|Outertune) these past few days connected to this ?
“If your adblock doesn’t work, a workaround is to pay for YouTube Premium”
AW NO I HADN’T FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT
Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.
I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.
I understand your reasoning, and you’re not wrong.
However, the amount that they charge you FAR outweighs the cost of compute, bandwidth and storage. The few tens of GB of bandwidth that you use and the storage costs of the video may cost them $1/user/month or less.
Their costs have been easily covered by ad revenue for decades. This subscription service is only because they’ve purchased all meaningful competitors and can now turn the screws and juice their customers for more money because they have no other options.
Sure, though they also need to pay people, run the platform, run Youtube music, pay for rights to things, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m not about to say that they aren’t another greedy corporation, that would be crazy, but ya’ll expecting to pay nothing are flatout ridiculous.
Their costs have been easily covered by ad revenue for decades.
This subscription service is only because they’ve purchased all meaningful competitors and can now turn the screws and juice their customers for more money because they have no other options.
I don’t care what YouTube’s costs are, I don’t want to pay. I’ll leave that to people like you.
I care about making google lose money. They deserve it. I will only make accounts on big tech just to abuse them.
All of big tech deserves to be bankrupt, convince me otherwise.
They only care about money. No ethics, no rights, no environment, just money. And money IS NOT more important than ethics, rights, etc.
We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don’t or can’t block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn’t deserve our money for Premium.
Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads… how long did that last?
Sure, if paying them ment that they also didn’t data mine the shit out of you and sold it to 3rd parties…but no they insist on double-dipping so they can get fucked.
For my wife and I, whose main background noise/entertainment is Let’s Play style videos on YouTube (Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, RTGame and such), paying for premium just makes sense. Like you said, we can and should criticize them for how they handle things, but everyone making a fuss about premium existing just makes no sense.
I hate when they say paying the premium is a “solution”. It’s worse. That’s why nobody is doing it.
I actually have a Premium subscription, but it’s kinda half assed journalism to suggest that as a solution.
How is it worse?
It costs money.
Having money is better than not having money.
Citizen, that sounds like communist anti-consumption talk.
Now go back to working 60 hours a week so you can buy things to feel better about having to work 60 hours a week.
I mean, I’d never buy anything by that logic alone.
The workaround is pay for YouTube premium.
Edit: the above is is what the article says. Not my opinion. YT can get bent. Firefox + uBlock has been my “workaround” for years.
Don’t shoot the messenger, they’re just citing the “workaround” from the article. The article also mentions using uBlock but only after writing two paragraphs convincing you that Premium is totally the solution to go with.
are you paraphrasing what the article said or saying it yourself?
I was just citing the article’s stated workaround since that’s what everyone will want to know.
With all due respect, no the fuck it ain’t
Agree. I was just citing the article.
The Internet is full of people who can’t understand irony unless they’re slapped in the face with the /s.
With all due respect, that’s exactly what the article suggests is the solution.
Didn’t read it, did you?
The article can say that the sun is blue, that doesn’t make it true - which is the point you’re ignoring.
Because buying premium is not a workaround for an ad blocker not working, it’s giving up on the broken extension.
I’m not going to debate you on that, but the original commenter was saving people the effort of reading a pointless article, and getting shat on for it.
I didn’t think that was fair.
there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin.
Vivaldi without any plugins also works. No ads. And I’m sure there are many more possible configurations. This article reads like the author thinks there’s only two browsers and two ad blockers.
Not sure about vivaldi but brave actually pulls its filters from ublock origin
YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus
They’ve been A/B testing anti-adblock attempts for months or even years now, idk exactly with my sense of time. Sometimes adblocker A doesn’t work, sometimes adblocker B doesn’t work. Sometimes switching browser makes the same adblocker work, sometimes clearing cookies helps, sometimes its dependent on your account. Different users at the same time report different experiences with different adblockers. Sometimes watching a single non-blocked ad restores adblocker functionality magically for a few days.
What I’m trying to say is, this didn’t “just” happen, and it’s specifically the author’s current experience. I myself use Adblock Plus on Edge and Youtube works perfectly fine currently. This has been happening for a long time, and I’m sure there’s uBlock Origin users currently who have the same experience while Adblock Plus works for them. Since that’s how it’s been the last times I’ve seen people talk about this, everyone talking about different experiences.
