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YouTube is experimenting with not allowing users to use the desktop site with ad blockers enabled on browsers

DragoonKain

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
www.pcworld.com

YouTube might try to block your ad blocker

New messages from the site are aggressively going after ad-blockers and pushing users towards YouTube Premium
www.pcworld.com www.pcworld.com

It's unclear whether this will be widespread or not, but honestly, I expected this for a while.

That's basically all big tech is today. Instead of offering an awesome product people would love to pay for with awesome features or new features, they just make the free experience intolerable and if you want your experience to get back to baseline, ya gotta pay. Instead if "You want these great features? Pay" it's "You want to not be annoyed any longer? Pay."

I'm sure ad block devs will try to stay on top of it though if this does roll out wide. We'll see.
 
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Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
Great, youtube without adblocker is not usable. They are completely overdoing it on Youtube. Not only that before, during and after the video advertising is played. The Youtuber himself still have sometimes 2 or more advertisements in the video.
 
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sedg87

sedg87

Member
Clicks Youtube video
30 second intro
Hello. Thanks for checking out my youtube channel. If you liked this don't forget to touch my bell icon.
So onto today's video
Youtube Ad
Video resumes for 30 seconds
Have you heard of Hello Fresh/Raid Shadow Legends/Nord VPN

zzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ
 
AJUMP23

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
See Ya Duck GIF by DefyTV
 
feynoob

feynoob

Banned
sedg87 said:
Clicks Youtube video
30 second intro
Hello. Thanks for checking out my youtube channel. If you liked this don't forget to touch my bell icon.
So onto today's video
Youtube Ad
Video resumes for 30 seconds
Have you heard of Hello Fresh/Raid Shadow Legends/Nord VPN

zzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ
Click to expand...
I have 50 million power in rise kingdom and that makes me the strongest player in rise.
 
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DeepEnigma

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
They should just change the name to AdTube, really.

sedg87 said:
Clicks Youtube video
30 second intro
Hello. Thanks for checking out my youtube channel. If you liked this don't forget to touch my bell icon.
So onto today's video
Youtube Ad
Video resumes for 30 seconds
Have you heard of Hello Fresh/Raid Shadow Legends/Nord VPN

zzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ
Click to expand...
That's why I love me some SmartTube.
 
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diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
big tech's business model of giving away its product and spying on users to sell ads is collapsing. It only works in a world of easy money. If you actually hold any of these companies save for Apple (who still makes the bulk of their money by building and selling stuff) to any sort of reasonable level of corporate scrutiny it is insane. Like, just take a step back, from the point of view of a corporation trying to make money, Netflix telling its customers to just share their passwords to as many people as they want, who cares, is crazy. It only works in a world where shareholders have been duped into thinking fake numbers like "engagement" are more important than money, but that world is over. Likewise with YouTube, when it comes to allowing ad blockers, you're just letting peole use the content without paying for it, which doesn't make any sense on a service built on ads. It is lunacy, exactly the same thing as subscription newspapers giving away their content for free on the internet (which they have mostly stopped doing btw). Obviously YT has an incentive to keep people from freeloading, and it is going to have to do that for the business to make any sense whatsoever.
 
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Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ and sometimes even more. I might be willing to pay 2-3 euros for youtube, but with the 12 euro per month they are on a whole different planet.
 
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diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
Spyxos said:
I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ and sometimes even more. I might be willing to pay 2-3 euros for youtube, but with the 12 euro per month they are on a whole different planet.
Click to expand...
Yea, these companies are going to have to "earn their keep" to keep getting revenue from people instead of just relying on free, or shared passwords, or any of the other stuff. I think it will result in better services. Prime Video is an interesting one as it freeloads on the Prime service which people get for free shipping and at some point Amazon might have to do some form of tiering as they do with music.
 
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StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
If it helps, I have this extension. I think it works most of the time with those canned 15 second intros. Of course, you cant avoid YT people who promote their sponsor's products by acting it out as part of their video. But at least those automated ones are less intrusive.

chrome.google.com

Youtube Video Skip Ad Trigger - Chrome Web Store

A plugin for automatically pressing 'Skip Ads' button on youtube videos.
chrome.google.com chrome.google.com
 
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DeepEnigma

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
StreetsofBeige said:
If it helps, I have this extension. I think it works most of the time with those canned 15 second intros. Of course, you cant avoid YT people who promote their sponsor's products by acting it out as part of their video. But at least those automated ones are less intrusive.

chrome.google.com

Youtube Video Skip Ad Trigger - Chrome Web Store

A plugin for automatically pressing 'Skip Ads' button on youtube videos.
chrome.google.com chrome.google.com
Click to expand...
ShareTube beautifully eliminates those as well. It even sees shout-outs and unrelated to the video cuts (but still contextual). The latter I turn off, since those splices of other pics or vids that add context and/or humor to the video (like watching Donut Operator videos) are not ads, but still nice to see how powerful the app is now.
 
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ÆMNE22A!C

ÆMNE22A!C

NO PAIN TRANCE CONTINUE
Tip toe apply where this is normalized in x months/years. Data gathering has been going on for decades. Social media was a huge win.
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
It's fucking terrible without adblock

I was already thinking about premium, if this works without a workaround I guess it successfully got my money, I do use it a lot but the ads are too frequent
 
March Climber

March Climber

Member
DKehoe said:
I pay for a bunch of digital subscriptions at this point. I use Youtube quite a bit. Yet I never entertain the idea of paying for YouTube premium and I don't know anyone who does.
Click to expand...
Ever since they packaged it together with Youtube Music I started using it. I used to pay for Spotify and decided to make the switch. However, from saying all of that, they really screwed up with Youtube Red(shows and movies).

I could imagine a scenario where they not only had ad-free viewing and unlimited music streaming, but also exclusive high budget TV shows and movies to rival HBO or Apple TV. Instead, Youtube Red was nothing of the sort and was quietly rebranded as 'premium' due to how badly they fumbled things.
 
DeepEnigma

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
LordOfChaos said:
DNS ad blocking doesn't for the youtube app since ads are served by the same video servers, I've tried Adguard Premium and all
Click to expand...
I use SmartTube myself on Andoid products/TV which blocks everything and very customizable, just going with what was last recommended on non jailbroken Apple/iOS.

With sideloading coming, I am sure we will see ShareTube for Apple products very soon after.
 
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HoodWinked

HoodWinked

Member
they solved adblock on twitch its very difficult to bypass now so its definitely doable especially since they own chrome.

surprised it didn't happen sooner, people that bought premium and users that didnt use or didn't know about adblock essentially subsidized all other users. The share of people that use adblock probably is extremely high now.

but also its probably a shift in attitude because of the change in CEO.

97996015.jpg


Wojcicki was more concerned with activism and growth, new guy seems the standard operator type so cutting costs, improving margins.
 
Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
HoodWinked said:
they solved adblock on twitch its very difficult to bypass now so its definitely doable especially since they own chrome.

surprised it didn't happen sooner, people that bought premium and users that didnt use or didn't know about adblock essentially subsidized all other users. The share of people that use adblock probably is extremely high now.

but also its probably a shift in attitude because of the change in CEO.

97996015.jpg


Wojcicki was more concerned with activism and growth, new guy seems the standard operator type so cutting costs, improving margins.
Click to expand...
I don't think many use it. I've only heard of people who once had the 3 free months. But no one in my circle of friends pays for it.

edit: ah fuck...

YouTube Premium combines music streaming with no video ads, and is available for the same price as Spotify. It reached 50 million subscribers in 2021.
 
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P

Portman

Member
I'm fine for ads from sites to support them and that are unobtrusive but they got so bad from there a while back I keep Brave installed just as a dedicated youtube browser. Between the built in adblocker and sponsorblock it has become tolerable again. I find it funny that sites/companies are willing to spend more to attempt to prevent adblockers instead of adjusting their ad delivery or asking actual users for feedback. For example I wouldn't mind the ads from youtube as much if they didn't drop them in the middle of the video randomly or let you watch them before the video and then be able to view uninterrupted.
 
Paltheos

Paltheos

Member
I haven't seen this just yet. I guess it was a matter of time? Here's to hoping adblockers keep up.

HoodWinked said:
they solved adblock on twitch its very difficult to bypass now so its definitely doable especially since they own chrome.
Click to expand...

An asterisk belongs after 'solved' imo. The solution involves frontloading ads every single time you click on a channel you're not subbed to. The effect on me at least is being disincentivized from trying out new channels since I can't be bothered to immediately see an ad shoved in my face blocking me from trying out something I might not even like (or I just open a channel in another tab and check back in like a minute but that's annoying).

As I was typing this up, I realized that... youtube does the same thing in its non-adblock form, right? The only time I go in not ad-free is when I browse on my phone and that's so rare.
 
Trunx81

Trunx81

Member
Spyxos said:
I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ and sometimes even more. I might be willing to pay 2-3 euros for youtube, but with the 12 euro per month they are on a whole different planet.
Click to expand...
Pay in rupees. Indian VPN. 1$ subscription.
 
DragoonKain

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I've noticed it's kinda been this way already on Chrome on desktop. For some reason on Firefox I get no ads with ublock origin, but I have ublock origin on Chrome also and it sneaks in ads every now and again. I'm sure obviously related to it being a Google browser.
 
Spyxos

Spyxos

Member
DragoonKain said:
I've noticed it's kinda been this way already on Chrome on desktop. For some reason on Firefox I get no ads with ublock origin, but I have ublock origin on Chrome also and it sneaks in ads every now and again. I'm sure obviously related to it being a Google browser.
Click to expand...
I use Ublock and Adlock in Chrome and so far no ads. Only one was no longer enough.
 
Husky

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
I don't use anything if I have to see ads. If a site finds out how to slip its ads past uBlock Origin, I completely lose interest. That's even how I stopped using Twitch. I'm not a big phone guy, but I even use hacked apps so I won't have to see ads. Hell, I'll go out of my way to avoid a product if I was forced to see an ad for it recently.
It'd really suck if YouTube successfully blocked me from using uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock, because I really can't stand ads. I'd just have to stop viewing (and it wouldn't even be a loss for them). It's a good thing I don't live in a city, because those places are packed with ads.
 
Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker

Member
diffusionx said:
Is YouTube really hurt if people who are freeloading stop using it?
Click to expand...

I dont think youtube themselves would be hurt but content creator metrics would for sure, which means less overall viewership, less appealing sponsors and what not. I think YouTube would like to keep their creators happy as the grunt of the work is made by them.
 
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